Desert Christ Park Last Weekend

A recent visit to Desert Christ Park, Yucca Valley. Wonderful desert weirdness. A must see if your Byway adventures bring you this way.

Desert Christ Park

Desert Christ Park sits on a hill overlooking the town of Yucca Valley. It is a small park (3.5 acres) with 40 bright white statues depicting Jesus and his teachings. The park has been around since 1951, the work of sculptor Antone Martin who started sculpting the statues during the cold war, hoping they would inspire world peace. You can walk or drive around the park every day during daylight hours. Its an odd little place and worth a visit.

Yucca Valley Attraction!

The gang's all here!

I call this one Sassy Jesus!

Teaching Jesus.

Wild with this desert back drop.

Hallelujah Jesus

Tracy Aviary

We visited the Tracy Aviary in downtown Salt Lake City again a few weeks ago. My third visit over the past year. Awesome place. Totally worth visiting.

Antelope Island, Great Salt Lake

If the Byway ever takes you out this way, you must see the Great Salt Lake and Salt Flats to the west of the lake. Its a very unique environment. A week ago I finally made it to see Antelope Island on the Great Salk Lake. I had wanted to see it since we arrived in SLC two years ago, but just never made it over there even though its only about a 45 minute drive north from downtown SLC. 

Why do we do that? There are these things we want to see in our own backyards, and they are easy to see, yet we just don't make it happen Then when we finally get ourselves there, we wonder what the heck took us so long. I was definitely thinking that when we drove across the 7 mile causeway out to the island - hardly any traffic, water on both sides, the island looming ahead, about a million ducks to the right of us who we later learned had just flown in a few days earlier migrating north. What a beautiful place! Why wasn't I coming out here to hike and bike and hang every weekend? And now we are leaving SLC. Sigh..

Antelope Island is this giant island in the Great Salt Lake. You can see it from very far away. It is 42 square miles and the largest of 10 lakes that sit in the lake. You access it from a 7-mile causeway from the mainland. It was a natural causeway built up with a road. Its only flooded once back in the 1980s. 

The island was named for the pronghorn antelope that lived, and still live, on the island. Plains bison were introduced to the island in 1893 and have thrived, with a maintained herd of about 600, as the island is mostly dry grassland. In addition to the bison and the pronghorn antelope, the island is home to mule deer, bighorn sheep, coyote, bobcats, badgers, porcupine and as you might expect many, many birds and waterfall - some native and many more who migrate through (more than 250 species have been identified on the island). The precambrian rocks on the island are some of the oldest in the United States, older than the ones at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

The island was settled by Mormon pioneers from 1848-1870. It was then sold to John Dooly, Sr, a private land owner, who managed cattle ranches on the island until 1981. The state of Utah purchased some land on the north side in 1969 and then purchased the rest of the island in 1981 from the Dooly family, including the Fielding Garr Ranch, the only residence on the island. Antelope Island became a Utah State Park in 1981. 

There is a beach where you can walk around in the stinky, salty water and swim/float out if the water is deep enough. The water is saltier than the ocean. The island has hiking trails and nice looking campgrounds that were not crowded. They have horseback riding, boating and wildlife walks. And it is an amazing place for biking. This trip we just did a drive around the island to see the main sites that you can see by car, but I will definitely return to hike and bike and camp. Check out the photos, check out the links and then make a plan to check it out in person. I promise it will be a beautiful Scenic Byway adventure.

Amazing Virgin River Gorge

The Virgin River Gorge is located on Interstate 15 between St. George, Utah and Littlefield, Arizona. This section of I-15 is one of the most expensive parts of the US interstate highway ever constructed. That should tell you something. It is amazing! If you haven’t driven through this canyon yet – it is a must. Trust me. I think this drive is one of the coolest things I’ve seen. Think Grand Canyon kind of cool. It will blow your mind.

We drive through it at least once every month or two and every single time it blows my mind. I try to take photographs and they never, never, ever capture what you see.

I’ve seen this canyon in the early morning light, the afternoon setting sun and at night under a huge full moon. Always amazing. I always stare up the sheer walls, into the many caves, hoping to see an animal – I’ve yet to see one but hope one day I will. I wonder where are the climbing routes and how have people managed to get up there? This canyon has some of the toughest climbing routes in the US. I dream of what it would be like to be on top of some of those sheer, rock faces, or to fly over in a helicopter, close enough to see all the details.

This canyon was carved out by the Virgin River connecting the southwestern rim of the Colorado Plateau and the northeastern edge of the Mojave Desert. The Virgin River not only created this gorge,  it created Zion National Park as well.

Check out the few photos below (from different trips)…and remember these photos barely allow you to see the massiveness of this canyon. Better yet, get on the Byway and go see it yourself!

I also found a video on YouTube that gives you a better sense of the magic. See below.

Sky Village Swap Meet, Yucca Valley, CA

I went to the Sky Village Swap Meet in Yucca Valley today - for the first time. Finally! I have been dying to go to this since I first started coming out here with my husband, but we never seemed to be able to make it there. A swap meet for those of you who aren't familiar with this term is a flea market. I've only heard this term used out west, but apparently it is used in Australia too. The Yucca Valley swap meet is held every Saturday and Sunday from 6 am to 2 pm at the former Sky Drive-in Theater. What a kooky wonderful place! Those who live around here know about this place as its been running for many, many years. Hippies, artists, hipsters, old timers, desert rats, tourists - all come together for some socializing, people watching and bargain hunting.

Photo: Sky Village Swap Meet

I get the feeling that you can probably find just about anything there if you visit frequently. There is a lot of junk, but you can find some hidden gems.  It was fun to look through the record albums - it was like taking a step back to my early teen years and I spotted many familiar names and faces on the covers. Had I been in a different mood, I might have bought some. Some arts and crafts people set up to sell their work. Check out High Desert Test Sites - a group of local artists. Some of the vendors have been there for a long time and have permanent spaces set up in little shacks and structures - like a little old village. They've just completed a rock and crystal cave that you can check out. You can get food. Someone had puppies for sale that were absolutely adorable. Someone was playing live music. My husband got to see old friends (he used to sell things here many years ago), and I got to meet the sweet, funny owner - Bob Carr (see photo below-I don't know the woman). It was a great day. If you find yourself in the area, check it out. Go for the people watching and to soak in the general vibe of this area. 7028 Theater Road, just off Highway 247, Yucca Valley, CA.

Owner Bob Carr on the right. I do not know who that is on the left. Photo from the swap meet website.

Latest from the Scipio Gas Station Petting Zoo

The last few trips to the desert we didn't stop at one of my favorite Byway sweet spots - the Scipio gas station petting zoo. If you follow my blog you've heard me rave about this place before and you've seen the photos. A lot of people want to know about it - many people come to my blog looking for information about the place. We first discovered this gem in September 2010. Every time we would make the drive from SLC south on Route 15 towards St. George - every few months - we would stop here to check out the animals. The last time we visited was in September last year and we were happy to see the new baby zebra.

Today we finally stopped, and as usual, the place delivered. We got a beautiful site - the gang all together grazing in the afternoon coolness. This place always makes me happy. Be sure to make this a Scenic Byway stop over if you are passing through. Happy travels.

There's Even a Shoe Tree in Park City!

If you follow my blog you know my obsession with shoe trees ever since discovering my first one out in the California desert on one of our Byway adventures. I've written about shoe trees. I love finding new ones.

Have you Seen a Shoe Tree? - my first siting in California

RIP Shoe Tree,  You Shall be Reborn - our discovery of a former shoe tree and a new one on Route 50 in Nevada

I was Here and I Left my Shoes - discovering yet another one in the California desert on a drive east to Arizona

So imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that all this time there has been a shoe tree in my backyard - Park City. To be honest I rarely get into Park City even though its just up the road and my dentist is right outside of the town. However, one day we decided to drive through town just to see it before heading off on a driving adventure around the back way to Orem/Provo and I finally saw it in all its glory. 

You can find this shoe tree (which is quite large) along Deer Valley Drive near Heber Avenue, right next to a park in downtown Park City (which if you've been there you realize is not very large). I am not sure when this shoe tree was started, but I have seen several references to it being around for 30-40 years!  There is even a plaque there about the tree (which I have not yet read). The unique thing about this shoe tree as compared to all the others I've seen out in the desert is that because this is a ski town, you will find a lot of snow shoes and boots in the tree. Check it out next time you are in Park City (perhaps for Sundance which starts next week...). Here are some shots I took. If you know of other shoe trees I should see, please let me know. I want to see them all!

On the Road with TripAdvisor and Yelp

TripAdvisor: Do you use TripAdvisor? I've been using it for several years now, first for information about hotels, and now also for information about restaurants and site seeing attractions. If you aren't using it in your travels and travel planning, I recommend that you try it.

We used it a lot planning for our honeymoon in Europe - to find hotels in Paris, London and Bruges, and restaurants in Berlin - and we weren't disappointed. In the US we travel though a lot of little towns in the west and we use it to find decent hotels and places to eat when the choices are slim. TripAdvisor has an iPhone app, and you can just use the internet browser on any smart phone to find it. We use it on our iPhone while on the road to find places to stay the night or grab a meal. Its especially useful when you are traveling through small towns and looking to eat someplace that isn't a fast food chain or scary.

The site's information has grown so much over the past few years that I find it really covers most places all over the world. While some places have mixed reviews that make it tough to get the real picture, you can usually weed out what is a real trend of bad service/experience vs. one person's personal bad experience which can happen even in the best of places. 

For a long time I have wanted to give back by writing my own reviews. We visit a lot of sites, hotels and restaurants and I feel that if I am using this wonderful information from others, I should also be giving back with my own information to help others. Well, a great, magical restaurant experience we had last week in the small town of Pahrump, Nevada finally motivated me to write my first review. You can see the link here: Tommasino's Fine Italian Dining. I am proud that I finally stopped being lazy and did this. Now I owe long overdue reviews to some dear friends who own hotels in Monrovia, Liberia and Tbilisi, Georgia. This is one New Year's resolution - to write reviews.

YELP: Another great place for travel recommendations, especially restaurants, that I use more often than TripAdvisor, is yelp. I started using this when I lived in Washington, DC. We used this a lot while driving across the country on our move to Salt Lake City, and I use it all the time when we are on our road trips. 

I am a bit obsessive about checking out yelp anytime we want to get something to eat anywhere. I think it drives my husband a little crazy. Wait...scratch that...I KNOW it drives him a little crazy. He feels that using these services takes a bit of the mystery and adventure out of just stumbling upon a great place. I get that and I agree, but I also pose that even with the information you get from these sites, you are still not sure what you are going to get. There is still a mystery there when its your first visit to a place. You don't know if those reviews are really going to be right. Things change all the time. We've found some terrific places using yelp and TripAdvisor, and this year I am going to give back more by adding my own reviews, good and bad, of places we've experienced.

Happy travels on the Byway and may you find excellent restaurants and hotels on your journeys...and if you do, please share your reviews!

Obsessing on Death Valley

I've got Death Valley on my brain. I still can't get the place out of my head. I was so blown away by its beauty - I can't wait to get back there and see more!!! We made a very brief half day visit. The place is worth it if that is all you can do, but you will want to do more. I say put this on your list of must see places. Make your Byway take you there. You won't regret it. I will be blogging soon about recommendations for places to stay and eat in the area.

Death Valley, nestled between the Armagosa mountains to the east and the Panamint mountains to the west, is home to the lowest, driest and hottest locations in North America. Did you know that the lowest and highest elevations in the United States are here, only 84.6 miles apart? Those would be Death Valley and Mount Whitney to the west.

Death Valley National Park has 3 million acres (!!) of land, or 5,262 square miles. The salt pan on the floor of Death Valley (seen in my photo further below) runs 40 miles long and 5 miles wide.

Winter is definitely the time to see the park. We were there on December 30 and it was sunny and cool. I would not want to visit in July when the temperatures are at their highest record breaking temperatures. It might not be so beautiful then...

Below are some photos from my husband. He takes gorgeous photos and makes me look good :)

Looking out across the Devil's Golf Course - amazing.

I am in love with this rock that looks like some kind of alien being.

My photo of Paul walking out onto the salt lake bed. 

My photo of my feet on the salt lake. At this point you are standing at the lowest elevation in North America - 282 feet below sea level.

See the tiny people out there walking on the ridges?

Death Valley

What a way to end the year, right? A visit to Death Valley. The death of 2011 and the birth of a new year. It seems fitting, doesn't it?

Earlier today we woke up at 5:30 am in Pahrump, NV (love that name and will write more about this place later) and drove to Death Valley. We watched the sun rise across the land, saw a coyote and wild horses. Drove around to see some sights before heading south to the Mojave.

It was my first visit to this wondrous place and certainly, hopefully not the last. I can't wait to return and see more. The place felt magical and was far more beautiful than I expected.

I am sitting here now, several hours south in Yucca Valley, visiting with friends, talking about new year's resolutions, listening to music, drinking wine in front of the fire and remembering the beauty from today. Beautiful images and memories to close out the year and ring in a new one.

Wishing you happiness, health, peace and love in the new year! P.S. Go see Death Valley!