Honeymoon

June 2, 2008

I've been to Las Vegas a half dozen times -- usually on my way to somewhere else -- and honestly, I wasn't all that excited about going there again. It's fun if you can maintain a certain state of mind, but since my mind was set on getting away from noise and neon and people, I wasn't too jazzed. It was simply a necessary evil on the way to wide open spaces. Deborah had never been to Las Vegas, though, and asked if we could stay an extra night before heading out on our grand adventure. "Okay," I said. "Why not?"

(Turns out I was wrong, she had been to Vegas before, but a long time ago, and stayed in a rundown casino on the outskirts of town.)

Within a few hours of our arrival, however, she decided that casinos are annoying and said, "I guess we should've just stuck to the original plan."

Too late.

The Sahara has fallen far from its former glory and isn't much more than another shabby, budget hotel. Despite the cheap rooms, however, a 16-ounce bottle of water cost four dollars.

Deborah wasn't keen on handing her money over to dealers, or feeding her hard-earned bills into a machine -- "a reverse ATM," she said -- so rather than gamble, she chose to relax by the pool. She went for a short swim and lay in the sun for a little while, but between the perverts prowling poolside with twisted fantasies of Las Vegas escapades on their minds, and dozens of bleached grasshopper carcasses floating in the pool's thin film of scum, she didn't stay there long.

Deborah showered and changed, and we walked across the street to "The World's Largest Souvenir Shop," where Deborah bought two refrigerator magnets and three rubber balls. The rubber balls were clear -- or had been clear when they were new, I think. Now they were yellowed, scratched, and foggy. Encased in each ball was a small plastic toy that you could barely see, as well as a few flecks of gold glitter. One had a ninja fighter, one held the space shuttle, and the third, and perhaps most intriguing, housed a small black baby in white diapers.

"The boy in the rubber bubble," I said.

"Score!"

"Are you really going to buy those?"

"I sure am."

The next day, we rode the monorail that runs parallel to The Strip, which, other than a couple of conventioneers, was empty. Each casino is a climate-controlled, neon-lit biosphere designed to sustain people indefinitely, and apparently not many people see a need, or feel a desire, to travel from one to the other. At least not via a monorail.

Back at the Sahara, we stood amid the bling blang blong and ding ding ding ding of money taking machines and tried to decide what to do. A guy walked up to a video poker machine near us. "Hello, old friend," he said, before feeding it several twenties.

We decided to go to bed early so we could get up early and get the hell out of Dodge. We knew we'd be returning on the back end of the trip, anyway.

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Sleeping in a tent is generally a lot cheaper than sleeping at a motel. Or so I thought. Zion National Park, our first stop out of Vegas, did a lot to blow that conception out the window. In addition to the 25 dollar admission fee, the park charges an additional 16 dollars to camp in one of its designated campgrounds. Forty-one bucks is still cheaper than the cheapest motel we stayed in, but not by much.

Since my last visit to Zion, roughly ten years ago, the park has implemented a shuttle system. To get beyond the visitor center, you have to leave your car and ride a shuttle bus. You can get out wherever you want, and and it's easy to flag down a returning bus to get back to your car, not such a bad idea for a heavily traveled park like Zion, but the idea of standing in line to ride a crowded bus wasn't exactly "getting away from it all" so instead we hiked a nice trail -- more like a well maintained path, really -- that led south, away from the park and away from the people.

Developed campgrounds in National Parks are generally a drag. They're more like overgrown parking lots filled with the sounds of screaming kids and slamming car doors, while house-sized campers clutter the view. But we hadn't done much planning, and were still getting our bearings, so it seemed like as good a place as any to get started. If nothing else, it gave us a chance to check out my old camping gear -- some of it nearly twenty years old -- before heading for more remote areas. Other than two brand new sleeping bags that Deborah's cousin gave us as a wedding present, the only new piece of equipment I had was a camping stove. Although I own an old backpacking stove that still works, it was against post-9/11 airline regulations to pack it in my luggage. Instead, I bought a new one in St. George, a city named, not after St. George of St. George and the dragon fame, but rather one of the "Latter Day" Saints, George A. Smith, who wrote:

"We breathe the free air, we have the best looking men and handsomest women, and if they (Non-Mormons) envy us our position, well they may, for they are a poor, narrow-minded, pinch-backed race of men, who chain themselves down to the law of monogamy, and live all their days under the dominion of one wife. They ought to be ashamed of such conduct, and the still fouler channel which flows from their practices; and it is not to be wondered at that they should envy those who so much better understand the social relations."

When People hear I went to Utah, they invariably ask, "Did you see any Mormons?" Of course I did. Nearly every town in Utah was founded by Mormon pioneers. But it's not like I could tell just by looking at them. Not always, anyway. Sometimes, they had to tell me.

Late in the trip, Deborah and I stayed at the Grand Staircase Hotel, a large but humble hotel near the entrance of Kodachrome Basin State Park. There was a gas station out front, but an old man was switching the old gas pumps for new ones, and there was no gas. The first floor was a large but sparsely stocked grocery store. In one corner, they had about a dozen used, faded Aeropostale sweatshirts for sale, as well as a couple of dusty baseball caps with "Bryce Canyon" written on them.

Included in the price of a room was a complimentary breakfast of coffee and toast. There were a couple of loaves of white bread on the counter, an old toaster, an open tub of margarine with a plastic knife stuck in it, and a stack of white paper plates. Deborah and I tossed some bread slices in the toaster, pushed the plunger, and sat down to wait.

"Where y'all from?" asked an old man at the table next to us. He was sitting with his wife and another couple. The man who called to us was grubby and wrinkled. His wife wore a pink sweatshirt and sansabelt slacks. The other woman in the group must've been a looker in her day and her husband, too. He wore a cowboy hat and a pristine white shirt tucked into a pair of clean, pressed jeans.

"Brooklyn," said Deborah.

"Brooklyn," the man exclaimed. "You're foreigners! "

We laughed and nodded.

"What brings you out this way?"

"We're on our honeymoon," said Deborah.

"Your hon-ey-moon . Wull con-grat-u-la-tions," he said, drawing out each word long and slow.

"Where are you guys from?" I asked.

"We're from just over the hill. St. George, you know where that is?"

"Sure," I said. "We passed through St. George."

"We come here with our ATVs to go four-wheeling," he said.

The state is crisscrossed with hundreds of dirt roads, and every other car is a truck, and every other truck is carrying a dirt bike or ATV.

There was a pause while I got up to get our toast and hunt around for a couple of individually wrapped pads of jelly. When I sat back down, the man said, "We're Mormons."

Deborah nodded, not quite sure how to respond. Were we supposed to declare our religious preferences in return?

"We have horns on our heads," the guy said, crooking his index fingers on his forehead.

Deborah and I laughed.

"Is that what you hear?" he said. "Is that what they tell you? What do they tell you about us Mormons where you live?"

I didn't have the heart to tell him that Mormons don't rate very high on the radar in New York, and that, recent headlines about Fundamentalist Mormon sects aside, I don't hear much shit-talk about the average everyday Mormon. Maybe if there weren't so many other groups for people to shit-talk, I would, but as it is, Mormons are low on the list. Besides, I wasn't even sure who he meant by "they." The Jews? Either way, whatever I've heard about Mormons in Utah can't be any worse than what they hear about people in Brooklyn.

"The only thing anyone ever says about Mormons is the whole multiple wives thing," said Deborah.

"Oh, we don't practice that anymore. The church did away with all that a long time ago. That's the FDLS that still does that, but that's not us. It'd be nice to have more than one wife, though, don't you think?" he said with a wink. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Sure," I said.

"Sure," he laughed. "Why not?"

His wife muttered something, but I didn't catch it. She and the other couple in the group seemed a little uncomfortable by the conversation, and they stood up together and walked outside, the sharp-dressed man tipping his cowboy hat at us as they did. "Wull enjoy the rest of yer honeymoon," the man said as he got up and shuffled out behind them.

Their ATVs were loud and smoky and we watched through the window as they drove off into the red dawn sun.

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Delicate Arch is unquestionably Utah's most famous rock. It's strange when rocks become rock stars, but they do. This one even made it onto the state license plate. It's a short hike from the trailhead, roughly a mile and a half, but with an elevation gain of nearly 500 feet, it's not exactly a walk in the park. Well, okay, it is a walk in the park, but you know what I mean. The wind was wicked at the top, and Deborah was feeling pretty scared. "I thought you were afraid of heights," she said as I walked along the exposed slick rock to get a closer view.

"I'm not exactly afraid of heights," I said. "I'm more afraid of fences. When there's a fence, I have the urge to jump over it. When there isn't, I feel more sensible."

"Did you get a photo of me over there?" I asked when I returned.

"No. I just want to head back down. Can we?

On the way down, close to the trailhead, we passed a group of about ten Asian tourists. One of them was a young girl in a pink dress carrying two small dachshunds in her arms. Perhaps she didn't know that pets aren't allowed on the trails, but she'd realize soon enough.

Since Deborah and I both work freelance, we don't pay much attention to holidays. Vacations and long weekends don't always relate to the calendar, and our wedding was no exception. The wedding day was picked randomly, and the honeymoon simply followed. I was surprised, then, when we pulled up to the entrance of Arches National Park on the Friday before summer's traditional launch, Memorial Day Weekend, and found a huge traffic jam.

"Memorial Day? Fuck!"

I pulled a quick U-Turn at the Visitor's Center and booked into town, hoping to find a vacancy at a nearby motel so we could regroup.

"I don't suppose you have any rooms available, do you?" I asked the woman behind the desk of a Best Western near the park's entrance.

"No, she said, but you might try the Archway Inn." She pointed out the window to a hotel I hadn't even seen.

I saw the line of people being turned away from the Best Western and sped to the Archway as fast as I could.

"We only have one room left," the woman there said. "The honeymoon suite."

"Well, we are on our honeymoon," I said.

"Oh, then that's perfect."

"How much is it?"

"Well, normally, it's two hundred and twelve dollars per night, but since it's your honeymoon, I'll let you have it for a hundred and sixty."

Through the window, I could see the same people who’d been turned away at the Holiday Inn starting to file into the parking lot, so I didn't hesitate. "Done."

"You're lucky," the woman said. "The couple who had the honeymoon suite reserved for the weekend cancelled just a few minutes ago. The woman had been in a car accident."

"Geeze, I hope that isn't any kind of omen."

I went back to the car, where Deborah was waiting.

"No luck?" she asked. She'd been watching the streams of people going in and out the front door, and assumed we'd been turned away, too.

"We got the last room," I said. "The honeymoon suite. The couple who were supposed to stay there had a car accident."

Deborah raised her hand, high five.

Since Deborah had never been camping before, I thought the best way to approach the trip might be to camp for a few days, clean up and rest in a motel for a night, then camp for a couple more days, and so on. Although we had planned on camping at the park, the honeymoon suite was not an unwelcome pit stop. especially the in-room jacuzzi.

The problem is that after sleeping in a king-sized bed, lounging in a motel hot tub, relaxing poolside, and eating nice, full meals, it's hard to face getting sweaty and dirty, eating questionable camping foods, sleeping on the ground, and shitting in a pit toilet again.

However, shitting in a pit toilet turned out ot be a luxury as well. Since we weren't able to camp at Arches National Park, I dug out a map that my friend Brad had sent me before we left, and drove several miles to a remote campsite he'd recommended. No crowds, no ranger station, and no toilets. The protocol for such a place is to pack out whatever you pack in, including your shit. I won't go into the details of how that's accomplished, but Deborah was a good sport and did what she had to do. Unlike in more temperate climates, where, if you shit in the woods, it will eventually decompose and wash into the earth, in the desert, shit simply desiccates and stays around forever. Nothing ruins the sense of communing with nature quite like random piles of dried-up human shit. Of course, even without the petrified shit, we'd be reminded of humanity anyway, by the sound of gunshots echoing through the canyons, but that's another story.

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As I said, although Deborah had never been camping before, she had no problem hiking around in the hot desert sun, climbing up and down 500 foot canyons, sitting behind juniper trees in the middle of the night, or any of the other stuff that goes along with "roughing it." Sure, she got sick of it toward the end of the trip -- so did I -- but for the most part, there wasn't anything she wasn't willing to do. Even the rattlesnakes we saw while hiking didn't faze her. "Aww, so cute," she said. Not that we dilly-dallied or got too close taking pictures. "That's enough, let's go." But she didn't freak out, so who would've expected her one true panic attack would come while driving? The Moki Dugway, an old gravel mining road that climbs 1100 feet in three miles, with thousand-foot, sporadically fenced drop-offs, was a rather stressful drive, I must admit. Though not as stressful for me as it appeared to be for the Harley tour group we passed as we climbed the hill. Despite being exposed to such intense desert sun, every rider's face was pale, and their knuckles even whiter through the perforations on their studded leather riding gloves, as they concentrated on easing their oversized touring bikes down the steep grade.

"Would you like to ride a motorcycle on this road?" Deborah asked.

"Yeah, a small dirt bike. A big-ass Harley? No thanks."

We rode the Moki Dugway on our way back from a whirlwind visit to Monument Valley -- maybe we were just getting jaded to the rocks, but we didn’t linger too long. We felt like we were in "National Lampoon's Vacation" the way we hopped out of the car, took some pictures, and just kept going.

Nearly everywhere we went, we saw more Europeans than Americans. They were easy to spot, as they were all at least 100 pounds lighter than the Yanks, which is perhaps why, at the row of souvenir shops outside Monument Valley, we were stopped by a huge Navajo guy who ushered us into his stall and asked where we were from.

"Brooklyn," said Deborah.

"You're from The States?" he said with a wave of his hand. "Pffft. I thought you were from France or something."

He was disappointed. Probably because the exchange rate is so good for the Europeans, they’re probably throwing money around like confetti. Since Deborah had declared the day to be a "No Hiking" day, she was wearing a little yellow sundress, which also made her stand out among all the dusty hiking boots and safari hats.

No surprise to the guy, we didn't buy any of his pottery.

I suppose I should clarify that not every American was 100 pounds heavier than the Europeans. Most of the Utah locals were trim, fit, and unspeakably clean. And Moab, especially, was filled with suntanned mountain bikers, river rafters, and assorted outdoorsy types, looking like they just walked off the set of a Mountain Dew commercial. I felt like a pasty, out-of-shape schlub.

I may very well be.

I don't know. Maybe we weren't jaded about rocks after all because Natural Bridges National Monument was our next stop, and it was probably the highlight of the entire trip. Despite nearly collapsing after a six-mile hike up and down the canyon -- we had just barely enough water with us -- we were finally in a groove, feeling nice and relaxed.

As we huffed and puffed our way up the trail from the bottom of the canyon, we passed a Dutch couple on their way down. They asked where we were coming from and if it was possible to hike from one of the natural bridges to another. "Yes," we said, out of breath, and described the trail to them.

The man thanked us, his wife smiled and nodded, and they proceeded down the trail. They were both dapper, continental types, and the woman was wearing a long-sleeved black sweater, and they both wore shoes more suited for a casual stroll in the city.

"How far do you think they'll get?" asked Deborah.

"The Dutch are nuts," I said. "I bet they make it all the way."

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When graffiti gets old enough, city and state governments stop trying to clean it up and begin trying to protect it. Mainly, what they try to protect it from is more graffiti. It’s a compulsion for some people to see a name on something -- whether written, painted, or carved -- and want to follow suit. In Snow Canyon State Park, a few miles outside St. George, there is a short trail leading from the side of the park road to a rock face covered with pioneer names dating from the late 1800s, supposedly written with wagon wheel axle grease. On either side of the names, you can see where park workers have done their best to erase modern spray paint additions. I couldn't help imagining, in a few hundred years, archeologists trying to restore the spray paint.

There are a lot of petroglyphs scattered around southern Utah, many attributed to the Anasazi Indians who once dominated the region before mysteriously disappearing -- and not disappearing the way a lot of other, more modern tribes were made to disappear. Newspaper Rock State Historic Park is one of the most accessible examples of these rock carvings. By accessible, I mean you don't have to hike or climb or do anything other than get out of your car to see it. It's not on a very heavily traveled road, though -- there weren't carloads of tourists or anything (not the day we were there, anyway) -- and it would be easy to hop the fence and scratch a few additions into the rock without being seen. By the looks of it, that's what people do. Two thousand years and counting of taggers making their mark.

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The manager of this hotel must be miserable. Aside from the big sign out front, "If you want to be criticized, marry", the lobby was decorated with dozens of plaques emblazoned with marriage jokes. I can't remember any of them; they were so dumb. Despite his obvious anti-marriage bent, however, when we told him it was our honeymoon, he smiled broadly, upgraded our room, and gave us a discount. Felt sorry for us, I suppose. Wanted to give us a last hurrah.

I bought Deborah this "puzzle box" for 75 cents, out of a vending machine in a hotel lobby when I went out for ice. Minutes of fun! Deborah wanted to know what other treasures the machine held, and went out to see. She came back with a pack of cards. We broke the cards out at our next campsite and quickly realized neither of us remembered any of the games our grandmothers taught us. We had a few false starts. "I forget, is it two cards or three? One face up or face down?" And so on. Again, minutes of fun. Whatever. The cards were blowing all over camp anyway.

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Deborah is addicted to iced coffee. She makes fresh coffee in the morning, lets it cool to room temperature before adding it to a glass of cold milk and ice cubes, and then puts the whole thing in the freezer while she takes a shower. She does this every morning, even in winter.

When we were camping, she was willing to settle for hot coffee in the mornings, and instant at that, but she got increasingly frustrated that none of the restaurants we stopped at served iced coffee. "I can pour regular coffee over ice, if you'd like," was the best offer she got, but she didn't go for it. The hot coffee only melts the ice, and you wind up with lukewarm, watered-down coffee.

"No thanks. I'll just have an iced tea."

She might've been less irritated if she could've found a decent hot cup of coffee somewhere, but every cup she tried -- which I think only totaled three before she gave up -- was bad.

"Let me guess," she said to the waitress when we caught a late breakfast at a roadside diner, "you don't serve iced coffee, do you?" It wasn't even a question.

"Iced coffee? Naw. We're a little slow around here," said the waitress. "We're just starting to get the hang of putting a little hot chocolate in our coffee 'cause of the Europeans. They all say they hate our coffee and it's the only way they'll drink it."

This didn't bode well, and Deborah played it safe with another iced tea; however, I made a stand against the coffee snobs and ordered a cup.

"Are you sick of hearing me complain about the coffee yet?" she asked.

"Almost," I said, but when the coffee came, I had no choice but to side with Deborah and The Great Nations of Europe.

A few days later, we decided to crash early and found a motel in a random small town along the road. As we pulled into the parking lot, Deborah immediately noticed that directly across the street from the motel was a coffee shop boasting espresso and internet access. It was painted lilac with periwinkle trim and decorated with Tibetan prayer flags. It had some kind of clever, hippy dippy name, which I forget, and looked totally out of place and unlike anything else we'd seen.

"Oh my god, let’s dump our stuff in the room, quick, and get over there," said Deborah, excited by the prospect of having a nice leisurely espresso while checking her email.

The motel receptionist typed my information into the motel's computer and sighed. "Aww, Brooklyn," she said. She was young with a stylish two-tone haircut and heavy eye makeup.

"Have you been to Brooklyn?" I asked.

"Once."

"Where'd you go?"

"I forget—that Island place—"

"Coney Island?"

"That's it."

"That's pretty different, right? An interesting place."

"I wanna go back."

I wasn't very optimistic about the coffeeshop, but after unloading the car, Deborah and I ran across the street anyway. Of course, the place closed at 5 p.m., and it was 5:15. I half expected Deborah to smash the window. "Who the hell closes at five o'clock?" she said.

For most of the trip, Deborah slept late. Why not? We were on vacation, but the next morning, Deborah was up, showered, and dressed at the crack of dawn.

"I doubt they're open yet," I said.

Deborah distracted herself with a dip in the pool for an hour, then we packed our suitcases -- which hadn't really been unpacked in the first place -- loaded up the car, and checked out of the room. First stop: hippy coffee shop.

The gentle ring of bells on the door announced our arrival. There were a couple of customers already there. A yuppie-ish couple who were perusing the natural soaps and Indian jewelry, two twentysomething guys dressed in hiking gear, seated at a small round table, who seemed to know the hip young Native barista. They were doing their best to flirt with her as she prepared a cappuccino for the guy ahead of us.

"Where did this place come from?" Deborah wondered as she took a deep breath -- freshly ground coffee beans combined with the faint smell of incense. She marveled at the young barista's care in carefully cleaning the machine before making Deborah's double-shot latte. Or cappuccino, or mochaccino, or whatever it was she ordered.

"Oh my god, this is so good," Deborah said, instantly rejuvenated and relaxed. She was happy for the rest of the day.

Despite Utah's diverse and dramatic terrain, the towns are all the same ---all designed on a grid with a church at their heart. I don't suppose that's too unusual and could be said for much of small-town America, but what I found especially curious was that every town shared the same street names. They all have a "Main Street" which, again, isn't too surprising, but all the streets that cross Main Street are numbered: 100N, 200N, 300N, and so on, in one direction, and 100S, 200S, 300S, et cetera, in the other. If the town is big enough, it might have 1000N, or even a 2000N, but most of them only seemed to get as far as 500 before petering out. We didn't do much backtracking, but we often felt like we'd been through a town before, even when we hadn't.

"Were we here earlier in the week?" Deborah asked a few times. It was often impossible to tell.

"No," I'd say, and I'd take a hand off the steering wheel, draw a map in the air, and show her where we'd been and where we were going.

But as the trip drew to a close, and we began heading back west, toward Las Vegas, we did drive through a few towns we'd visited before.

"There's your coffee shop," I said. "Wanna stop?"

"Nah."

I was only mildly surprised. When you hit a driving groove on a long road trip, it can be difficult to stop for anything.

We drove silently for a few miles, Deborah's feet on the dashboard, wiggling her toes in the sun. Although her fingernail polish was nearly completely chipped away, her two-week-old wedding-day pedicure was holding up well.

"I miss the cats," she said.