A Visit to Lake Powell - and More

A Visit to Lake Powell – and more

In taking the RV to Cedar City we’ve always used Route 89A through Jacob Lake, as we did this year.  Now we need to retrace part of this route but both agree that the road down from Jacob Lake to Vermillion Cliffs would be scary, if not dangerous for us due to the steep, curvy road, sometimes with little shoulder before a drop-off.

So we choose the alternate route along US89 which parallels the UT/AZ border on the Utah side, eventually passing over the Glen Canyon dam which created Lake Powell.  We stay overnight in Page, just beyond the dam, and having arrived early decide to take an evening cruise along the lake.  The scenery is spectacular, multicolored crags and wide lake vistas - that is until the threatening storm – thunder, lightening and heavy rain – catches up with us.  We lead a quick retreat from the open-air observation deck and get good seats in the covered cabin.

Of course, I have the only window that leaks, but the staff mop up the leak with towels and when the wind changes the leak stops.  The rain prevents me from taking any pictures, but after it stops there are some great cloud formations and we’re able to enjoy the cliffs with twilight illumination.  The interplay of colors on the rocks is magical, and we agree that despite the rain, this was a worthwhile trip.  There are longer boat tours on Lake Powell and we’ll definitely be back to see more.  My only regret is not seeing any animals.

After a dinner of “nouveau southwestern” food and a night in the campground we return to Cottonwood for a week’s stay.  Vicky returns to the Park Model to meet our new tenant and prepare the place for her, while Quill and I have some bonding time.  I’m able to do some water aerobics each morning, mostly having the pool to myself except on the weekend.

The surprising thing about this stay in Cottonwood is that we’re down in Section A, close to the pool but also low down and close to the river.  I don’t expect to get cell phone or internet coverage, and I have to take an online class.  This isn’t a problem as the park has a rec center next to the pool, which has free WIFI.  But it turns out I don’t even need that – our site, despite the low elevation, has cell phone and internet reception.

Vicky returns fairly late on Friday, but we still take the time to head into town for dinner – an Italian steakhouse, of all things, with food we decide needs to be further explored next time we’re in town.

Now we’re off again – following highway 260 up the Mogollon Rim, stopping for lunch at the little country café in Happy Jack, then on to Winslow, site of the “repair” to the first car transmission last year.  We’re both pleased we don’t have to stop there this year, and get on I-40.  As always it seems to take forever before we arrive in New Mexico, but once we do it’s only 20 miles or so to our overnight stop in Gallup.

An early (for us) start the next morning takes us up the lonely but ruggedly scenic road from Gallup to Shiprock, then over to Farmington and up to Aztec, where we’ll be volunteering next Fall at Aztec Ruins National Monument.  I described this when we discovered it last year, but just to remind you, while it is the site of many buildings from the Pueblo culture 800 years ago, it has no connection with the Aztecs of Mexico, who never made it this far north.

It’s cool to do this trip together this year – last year we went back and forth on these roads between Winslow and Pagosa Springs with our car and rental cars, driving separately until we could return the rental car to Farmington Airport (which has no scheduled flights, just car rentals and private planes!).  This year we’re able to share our discoveries of the scenery.

The final leg of this trip, just like last year, takes us to Pagosa Springs, Colorado.  Last year we had a week here waiting for the car to be fixed.  This year we simply spend a few nights at the East Fork campground outside town.  In the next episode I’ll tell you about a very dark play we see, as well as our other activities and our expedition to Santa Fe.

Canyon, Amphitheater and Bard

Canyon, Amphitheater and Bard

Just like last year, we visited Cedar City Utah for the Shakespeare Festival.  A lot of this will duplicate what I wrote last year so I’ll just highlight the differences.

We traveled from Cottonwood to Jacob Lake for a 2-night stay.  Took a short hike round the area near the campground.  Not a lot of wildlife but great views.  We also enjoyed the tasty homemade cookies at the Jacob Lake Lodge, and drove down to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  It’s always quieter there than at the South Rim, but this year there weren’t a lot of people.  A walked along the rim a little way and had a picnic lunch, then drove out to a more remote area where there’s an easy nature trail leading to spectacular views of a natural arch.   We made friends with a Canadian man and his teenage son, and recommended our favorite restaurant near Cedar City, which we later found they’d visited.

Unlike last year we had not problems getting up the hill from Vermillion Cliffs to Jacob Lake, and the journey from there to Cedar Breaks was uneventful.  We pulled in to our favorite spot in the National Forest to find another RV already camped there.  This wouldn’t have been a problem – it’s a big area – but the woman was very unfriendly, and told us a lot of her friends would be arriving on the weekend.  While she had no right to make us move, we considered other options.

There’s a campground right at Cedar Breaks National Monument which is usually full, but we discovered there are 6 first-come-first-served sites, 2 of which would accommodate our rig.  The camp host was very nice and suggested we get there before 11am if we wanted one.  So we just spend one night near the unfriendly woman – not seeing here again – and then 2 nights in the campground.  This turned out to be great – there are no hookups for the RV but they have clean showers, and we’re within walking distance of the visitor center and the trails.  This year we’re here in wildflower season and there are spectacular growths of columbine, brilliant purple Markagunt Penstemon  (a local flower that doesn’t look at all like other penstemon), Arizona thistle (which I avoid) and even varieties of sunflower.

We talk to the rangers, and take a walk close to the Alpine Pond, hoping to see marmots or pika, but we have to be satisfied with a cute chipmunk.  The nights are not as cold as in August last year, and on Sunday we drive the steep hill down to Cedar City and check into the KOA campground.  Once settled we go out for dinner at Milt’s Stage Stop, enjoying the prime rib, bountiful salad bar and the hummingbirds (less this year than usual for reasons we’re not sure of) outside the windows.

Then it’s time for Shakespeare.  We jump in with both feet on Monday for a 4.5-hour marathon of Henry VI Part II followed by Henry VI Part III.  It’s in the new “black box” Ames theater, performed in the round, so everyone has an intimate connection to the players.  As expected, the actors give us stellar performances.  We see Henry descend from an idealistic young man into probable insanity, his wife Margaret of Anjou manipulating him and everyone else, as well as Earls, Dukes and other Lords who are mostly just politicians, not much different from those we see today.  Gloucester, the only one other than Henry who is a decent man, is soon removed by the others.

These two plays are among the earliest of The Bard’s writings, and are not considered his best by scholars.  They’re seldom performed and neither of us have seen them.  But the performances kept us not only awake but on the edge of our seats for the whole time.  A great start to the week.  Although there are evening performances, we’ve decided to give tonight a miss after the marathon afternoon.  We do enjoy the outdoor Green Show, where young actors get their chance to shine in 3 different outdoor song, dance and story shows.  Tonight is English night, and we agree it’s one of the best we’ve seen especially when they catapult stuffed sheep into the audience while sharing outrageous puns like “What to you call a sheep in a tutu?     A Baa-lerina!”

Tuesday is a full day.  We start with the Curtain Call Lunch – this year flavorful Mexican tortillas in the company of 4 members of the company.  In the past we’ve had Fred Adams, the Festival’s founder (Still active in this late 80’s) and Brian Vaughn, the Artistic Director, but this year we have 4 actors, one in his 50’s the others much younger, including a student from Southern Utah University in her first season with the Festival.  After the Q&A session we both agree this was really interesting – different questions than the usual mix, allowing us an insight into how actors get hired, and how they develop, here in Cedar City.

Now it’s time for a day of (Shakespearian) tragedy.  The afternoon performance of Hamlet is in the indoor Randall Jones Theater where we’ve discovered we can get great box seats at reasonable prices.  We get clear views of the actor’s faces, sharing their emotions.  We met Andrew May, a very friendly Canadian actor, at lunch and now we see him as the villainous Claudius – a totally different character.  Quinn Mattfield as Hamlet is superb – we can see him wrestle with difficult emotional decisions, and find him totally believable.  This is Shakespeare’s longest play, but again it keeps us involved throughout.

We have dinner in town before heading for another Green Show – Scotland this time, ending with everyone singing Auld Lang Syne.  The tragedy continues in the open a Engelstadt Theater with Macbeth.  A tragedy in two ways - the story, of course, but also the performance.  This was the first Shakespeare play I saw – as a high school student – and one I really enjoy.  While it had its moments, as plays here always do, Vicky and I both found the performances lackluster.   Macbeth’s inner struggle between his inherent decent character and his ambition, and his wife’s descent from her own ambition to madness, just didn’t work for us, nor did MacDuff convince us of his hatred of the protagonist.  We usually find there’s one lay we like less than the others, and this was it.  But a disappointing play here in Cedar City is as good as a mediocre play elsewhere!

From Tragedy to Comedy.  Wednesday afternoon we’re back in our box seats for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”.  Written as a short play for a privat school when the men were 19 and 23 respectively, it didn’t become a success until they were already celebrated for “Jesus Christ, Superstar:  It tells the biblical story of Joseph in a whimsical style, and this director carried the whimsy further, even make the killing of a sheep hilarious.  Aaron Young, as Joseph, not only looked the part of a young innocent, but carried the show with his strong voice and highly believable acting.  This is one of the shortest musicals ever to be successful in the West End and Broadway/.  The company extended it with a 15-minute curtain call featuring all the upbeat songs from the play, with the words projected so we could sing along.  A great afternoon.

After a dinner of BBQ and an excellent Russian-themed Green Show, it’s back to Shakespeare for another comedy – Twelfth Night.  For the first half hour we get to watch the crew covering the stage with a tarpaulin and then mopping it dry after the storm passes.  Vicky convinced me not to get us seats on the front row of the balcony, and although I had given her a hard time, we’re able to avoid the rain.  Once the storm passes, we enjoy a strongly acted performance.  The casting crew managed to find a Viola, who dresses up as a boy, and a Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother, who actually look alike, so the confusion that is at the heart of the show actually works.  For me, though, the starts of this show were the haughty and conservative steward Malvolio, and the comic characters Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Maria, who make a fool of him.  The comic scenes have us in stitches, and the rain never returns.  This is why we come here every year.

For Thursday we have only an evening show and have planned to spend the day in Zion National Park.  However, with temperatures there forecast for over 100 degrees we re-think this.  There is another Festival in town – formerly called the Neil Simon Festival but now renamed SimonFest, it features newer plays, often with SUU students.  We’ve never attended one of their plays, but “I Hate Hamlet” sounds like fun, especially since we’ve just seen the Danish Play.  The audience is small, but the artistic director gives us some background on the history of the play.  It features a television actor who’s gone to NYC and has been offered the part of Hamlet at Shakespeare in the Park.  He’s ambivalent about it.  He’s staying in an apartment once owned by John Barrymore, the most successful Hamlet of his era, and Barrymore’s ghost coaches the young actor.

We learn that the original “ghost” was a temperamental English actor who would not take direction.  During one performance he ignored the choreographing of a sword fight and actually wounded the other actor, who walked out of the theater and never returned.  No such theatrics this time, but we do enjoy a fun performance - not up to Shakespeare Festival standard, but still worth seeing.

Finally, back to the Engelstadt theater (did I mention it’s modeled after Shakespeare’s Globe) for a new play “The Book of Will”.  It’s a dramatization of how the First Folio of The Bard’s play was assembled.  After his death, three members of his troupe “The King’s Men”  (John Burbage, Henry Condell and John Heminges, realize there are few definitive scripts of the plays, and are particularly disgusted with a performance of Hamlet they see.  With the help of the young son of a rogue publisher, they’re able to assemble the plays and in a touching final scene they present the first copy to Shakespeare’s widow Anne and her daughter.

The play is a thriller, with some comic moments, and you find yourself rooting for the Kings Men.  Several of the actors were ones we had enjoyed lunch with, which, as always added to the experience for us.  This was a brilliant ending to this year’s visit, and we’re already planning for next year.

The plan at this point was to spend the next month making our way through Utah and Colorado to Santa Fe for the opera, but we have someone who wants to rent out our park model in Peoria from August to December, so we need to return and get it ready.  Stay tuned for my next post with a lake cruise in a thunderstorm and more!!

Two weeks in rural surroundings

On the Road Again

We enjoyed the first 2 weeks of July at the Thousand Trails resort in Cottonwood, where we spent some time last year.  It’s hot, but not like Phoenix, and it does cool down at night.  It was partly a time to relax, but we did make some short trips.

It’s about 35 miles from here to Prescott, the original territorial capital, which is the home of the World’s Oldest Rodeo.  Before living abroad, we traveled extensively to rodeos,  following many of the top cowboys, and Prescott was always on our list.  So we spent a day there this summer.  The announcer, who’s been there for almost 40 years, was the only person we recognized, although we did see cowboys who were the children of the men we followed way back when.  It was a lot of fun, and we topped it off with dinner at Prescott Station – no trains but one of our favorite restaurants.

You can get from Cottonwood to Prescott via Interstate highways, but the slower and more interesting route is over Mingus Mountain, a steep, twisty road that takes you through the old mining town of Jerome.  I was about to call it a ghost town, and indeed it almost was when we first discovered it in the ‘90’s, but these days it’s full of arts and crafts, places to eat and slow moving traffic.  The streets of the town are narrow and almost vertical.  Residents must have great leg muscles!  Once through the town the mountain views are terrific, so we enjoyed the drive in both directions.

Another nearby town is Clarkdale.  Our friends Donna and Mike recently moved there, and we haven’t seen them in a while.  We had a fun evening at their new home, catching up on each other’s lives.  They are now running an organization that supplies food to needy people throughout the area, helping a lot of people and enjoying the life.  We returned the following day to join them in the town park for a concert – they happen every Saturday night during summer.  This was a tribute to Buddy Holly & The Crickets.  We enjoyed it and even danced a lot, and met many of Donna’s and Mike’s friends and co-workers.

We also drove the 50 miles to Flagstaff one day.  We’ve been many times but never visited the historic Riordan house.  It is actually two identical houses connected by a large room used for games like billiards.  Brothers Tim and Michael Riordan each occupied one half, with their families, from the late 19^th Century onwards.  They, and their brother Matthew, were the founders of a very successful lumber company.  Tim’s half is still decorated as he would have known it, while Mike’s house has been turned into a museum.  Both had electric light and refrigerators at a time when few people had these amenities.  We enjoyed an almost 2 hour tour with a docent, then returned to the 21^st Century for dinner and a movie.

A relaxing two weeks after which we headed for Cedar City Utah.  But that will be the subject of the next post!  Stay tuned.