May 4, 2009

• Spare a trip?

  

  So the Moms and I did a little weekend trip to Southwest Utah… but it started badly… Forgive me for not photo-documenting the incident, but I was preoccupied.

  Before the trip, we went to the lds family history library… which was MUCH cooler than less awkward then I thought. I finally found my ancestor from Switzerland (in case you don’t know, there is a suburb of Zurich called Affoltern). My triple-great-grandfather’s name was Ursub, born in 1817, and he was a shoesmith, which I apparently come from a long line of. Turns out we came in through Wisconsin… who knew?

  The idea for the trip was: Great Basin, Zion, and then Bryce in three days. On the way to the cave on Friday (at about 4 PM), we decided to take a dirt road to see Notch Peak. My tire light turned on about 14 miles in. I got out, looked at the tires, but they looked fine. After only another few feet, I started to lose control, and had TWO (2) flat tires–both rear. Like most people, I don’t carry two spares. After some fiddling with the one spare I had (by the way, I had a flat the week before, so that tire was brand new), I decided to drive out to the road… walking seemed out of the question.

  So, I drove at ~14 mph for the 14 miles (do the math) and parked at the intersection of the dirt road and the highway. As you might expect if you have ever been near mile marker 37 on US 6/50, there is not even a glimmer of cell service. The only thing we could do was hitchhike to Delta, the nearest town, 50 miles away.

  After a nice family with a full car stopped, we gave them our info and they said they’d call AAA. About 15 minutes later, a car could take us, so we got in. They were sheep farmers near work, as it turned out. The Mom freaked out that he had bullets on the dash; I never noticed.

  We got into Delta an hour later, called AAA on the way. The ‘nice’ lady told me that they could not pick up the car unless we were there, even after I explained that there is no way to call her in that scenario. Luckily, Darwin saw it fit to drop that call for me, and the next AAA lady was very nice, had the tow truck pick us up, and drove out to the car by about 8:30. At this point, we decided to ditch Great Basin and go for Zion, and the tow truck driver drove us toward there, to the town of Filmore. Turns out that I know the family of the driver, and his son is a mechanic with tires there (Thanks Deardons!!!). So, with all that, the rest of the trip was smooth driving.

  

  Afterwards, the only thing that remained was a strip of tire I picked up after it flapped off during the 14 miles of non-airy driving.

  

  We made it to Zion mid day. Thankfully, we missed most of the rain on the ordeal, as it rained that night and off and on Saturday.

  

  This is the Three Patriarchs, named after bible people like lost of things here. Why can’t we use the Native names? I forgot how cool Zion is… definately my second favorite Utah park, with Canyonlands the clear #1.

  

  After that, we started going toward Bryce, but not before I made a rock shop purchase that I’ve wanted for years. This is an articulated Crinoid, from the Mississippian of Indiana. It was a really good price (still too much than I should be able to afford), a really nice specimen with hairs on the arms and a good calyx, and a dream of mine for a very long time. It is now the jewel of my rock collection. I also picked up several great teaching specimens and had two great conversations with rock shop owners; one corrective (Cephalopods and Gastropods are separate orders under Mollusks) and one informative (about Liesegang banding).

  Oh, and I was wondering, a question for all you Paleoheads: what’s the object out from the top of the calyx, longer than the arms? Any ideas?

  

  We did Bryce this morning, my least favorite (but still great) national park in Utah. Note Thor’s hammer in the foreground.

  

  So, the trip was good, could have been worse, but good. Considering the start, the end was great. And yes, I have bad car karma, but if you can get over that, let me again extend the invite to all of you to do any of the above and more.

  • 1:08 am
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