Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: USA Road Trip 2011
Across the state line
| The Best Western Grand lost
a little of its shine at breakfast time, as the area used
was hopelessly overcrowded and felt like a bit of a zoo. My
plan for this morning was to visit Kodachrome Basin State
Park, a short drive away via Tropic and Cannonville. This
park was named in the 1960s after the Kodak company's colour
film brand, at the earlier suggestion of members of the
National Geographical Society and with the film company's
permission. I spent an interesting and enjoyable time there. It wasn't busy at all, but those visitors who were around were further evidence of a trend that I had noticed throughout the last week: a marked predominance of German tourists. It was clear who had the buoyant economy! I walked an easy trail to begin with, before visiting a number of viewpoints. I finished by taking my Escape along a dirt road with two forks: one to Chimney Rock and the other to the start of a short trail to Shakespeare Arch. |
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I drove back to the main park road and back-tracked to Highway 12 at Cannonville. A short distance later, I pulled in for lunch at Clarke's Diner in Tropic, breaking my established pattern of light lunches. The food turned out to be really nice, and excellent value too. I also took the opportunity to fill the car up before embarking on the main journey of the day, which would take me into Arizona. I retraced Thursday's route through the Red Canyon, then turned south on Hwy 89 towards Kanab and then east - still on the 89 - towards Page, AZ.
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Having crossed the state line into Arizona, a short stop at Wahweap Bay on Lake Powell seemed to be in order, so that I could reserve a place on a cruise for Sunday afternoon. Strangely, they didn't require pre-payment or even a deposit in order to do this, but I wasn't complaining! |
Despite the presence of a large body of water, the afternoon heat was intense. I remembered to put my watch back an hour because, although Arizona is the same time zone as Utah, it is the only one of the 48 contiguous states not to observe daylight saving time. So in winter it's aligned with Utah and Colorado, but in summer the clocks match those in California, in the Pacific time zone. That's not to say that Arizona is on Pacific time - officially it observes Mountain Standard Time (MST) all year round, while Utah switches to Mountain Daylight Time (MDT) in summer and California adopts Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). I hope you followed that so far, because there is also at least one exception, as we shall see in coming days!
My journey continued across the Glen Canyon Dam and into the town of Page itself, which dates from the 1950s and was originally a camp for the dam and power station construction workers. Finding the Holiday Inn Express proved to be quite easy. As I'd had a good lunch, I decided on a lighter evening meal, buying some sandwiches and other items from the branch of Safeway about a block away. Despite the rather basic nature of the room, I readily fell into a deep sleep lasting most of the night.
