Hello Fellow BUSKATEERS!

Safe travels from Zion National Park!

More of a real communication coming shortly...

have to upload photos from the Granddaddy of Canyons...

and drink some beer/wine

ASWAH

Monument Valley – Navajo Lands…

Put on Bob Marley’s Time will Tell and drive into the park. Somehow it really fit the mood as we drove through some the most amazing scenery on planet earth. Since it’s Navajo lands our Eagle Park Pass didn’t work, but the five dollar per person charge was fair. In this day and age we pay eight or ten dollars to see some [BLEEP!] Hollywood dramatization of a story they somehow messed up anyways. Five dollars to see what Heaven surely looks like.

Honestly at first I thought we had been given a wooden nickel. The road sucks. The first views are slightly better than what you see driving past anyways.

The wild dogs followed our van like they knew that we had some serious good food inside. Cute little dogs though. I should probably preface this entry into our journey with “damn am I buzzed… a few bottles of wine with fellow buskateers and oh yeah, it’s four frigging twenty”. Forgive me, shoot me.

Then Monument Valley opens up like a flower in full bloom. Damn, she just smacks you in the face and asks you questions to which there really are no good or valid answers. Eyes dripping with tears, happiness. Nature replenishes my soul and makes my heart just smile with love. I wanna scream. JOY! HAPPINESS! LOVE! think the rocks and cliffs understand me even if you don’t.

Ending up driving down to the Grand Daddy of ALL Canyons in Arizona… got there after dark and somehow only paid a pittance of the nocturnal camping charge… Nice, small camping area.I made a great Pork and Broccoli stir fry over Orzo…

ASWAH

Zion National Park

12.13.8

Woke up to sun shining on a distant rock face. Slowly sipping coffee with Lucy laying next to me. She is so super sweet. Seems like a paradox to be online and in nature.Two days ago I awoke in the Grand Canyon. The mixed aromas of frying bacon and coffee is very intoxicating. I found a jar of unpasteurized honey from a beekeeper friend in Prince Edward Island deep down in the cupboards of Kaya. Lisa wanted buttermilk biscuits to eat the honey with. I rigged an oven out of a sauté pan and a pot and started slowly cooking the biscuits. As soon as the biscuits were done I fried some bacon then a few eggs in the resulting fat. Even Lucy rejoiced in breakfast as an egg and some bacon found its way into her bowl.

We drove around the Canyon stopping here and there for short walks and great views. Somewhere real close to Grand View is a sign for the Arizona Trail. If you head down that road far enough you come to a fire tower and many a stealth spot to camp. Lisa and I made a mental note to return later in the evening and avoid a charge in the pay-per-view spot. I always sleep better in nature rather than the asphalt pull offs.Dinner was a stir fry of Pork Loin, Broccoli and some green onions I had been squirreling away for a while. We had a bottle of Golden Eye Pinot Noir from 2003 that went well with it.

The next morning we had the same breakfast as we still had four uncooked biscuits and half a jar of honey. We returned to the camper service area with it’s two dollar hot showers and laundry and cleaned up, loaded up on water, dumped our grey water and headed out of the park listening to New Minglewood Blues.

Met two folks on almost the same journey as us except their bus was air cooled. Saw two Park Rangers ripping apart some older women’s car searching for god knows what. Thank God it wasn’t us.We decided to head towards Zion and eventually Reno. The drive between parks is simply amazing. You drive through the Painted Desert, Vermillion Cliffs, Marble Canyon and then into Utah.

We stopped in Kanab at a great Bookstore, Espresso Bar and Outfitter store called Willow Canyon. Made it to Zion just as an amazing sunset brightened the sky in a blaze of orange, then red, then deep purples…

For dinner we ate some pork chops that I seasoned with olive flor de sal (a sea salt hand harvested on the coast of Spain and mixed with black olives), Espelette peppers (a paprika like pepper from the small town of Espelette in France) and pancake batter powder. I slow, slow cooked them so they retained their juicy selves. We complimented the pork chops with a mixture of new potatoes, red onions, whole garlic cloves and baby carrots.

The buskateers we met at the Grand Canyon joined us for some cheese and wine and merriment… cool folks… sleepy time…