Tuesday, May 27, 2008

And a very nice weekend it was.

Overall, it was a good Memorial Weekend trip. Guy and I ended up in southwestern Utah, visiting St. George, Utah and Zion National Park as well as Bryce Canyon National Park. We didn't realize we were only two hours from Las Vegas, where Guy and I got married in 2005 and go for our anniversary every year, as well as the new home of Baxtersmum and her menagerie of bad critters. When Guy gets the umpteen digital photos downloaded, I'll post a few of the best, but here are some written highlights:

--Utah loves them some sheepies. Every third farm had a field full of sheep, which i loved and Guy hated because when I pass a sheep field, I shriek "SHEEPIES!11!!!!!" like a third grader. However, there were also plenty of cows and horsies, and even a few antelope and mule deer and a couple of wild turkeys and aggressive squirrels. And llamas. I llove llamas.

--Traffic was less than we usually see, which was to be expected given high fuel prices. The least Guy and I paid all weekend was about $3.87 a gallon. What surprised me though was the amount of European and Asian tourists. At least half the tourists at Zion and Bryce Canyon were European or Asian. I heard a fair amount of German/Slavic/Dutch folks, several French families, and three British groups. And there were craptons of Japanese, Korean, and Indian subcontinental peeps. Well, there's an upside to the weak dollar, huh?

--Americans still don't know how to behave towards visitors. I saw an American guy stop and glare at a German/Dutch guy who brushed him arm-on-arm at Bryce Canyon, and the European guy didn't even turn around. I can see how the American thought him rude, but hello, folks: Europeans are used to much smaller personal space than we are. Bumping into people doesn't bug them near as much as it does us. Please stop interpreting everything they do as "rude", okay?

--It's not a good idea to eat baked beans and then sleep in a Ford Explorer Sport with your loved one. *funk!*

--Guy's best quote of the whole trip, with apologies to Rev. Kit: "The problem I have with organized religion is that I'm not willing to lower my morals to their standards. All that shit in the Ten Commandments, I already do. Every religion does. The rest of the rules, like no gay marriage or sujugating women, those are bullshit rules designed to make them feel different from the rest."

--It's never too late to learn something. I'm usually pretty useless on these trips, but this time I figured out how to unload the truck and inflate and make the bed. Finally, I'm contributing something to the trip. About time--it's only been eight years.

--Vacations with Guy are really fun.

3 comments:

Lilylou said...

Hey, tell Guy that I feel his pain---and tend to agree with him. Remind him that not all organized religion is like that. When I found the Unitarians, I felt better about being a church lady.

revintraining said...

Ha! It sounds like you and Guy had a blast.

xtine said...

It's not just the weak dollar.

I remarked on this to my HS German teacher (who really is more of a grandmother to me than a former teacher. I finally told her this a couple of weeks ago, and her eyes teared up. Which in turn made me tear up)

Apparently, for some reason, one of the airlines runs such incredible deals to Key West (and so presumably other American destinations) that's it's actually cheaper to have a vacation here than on the continent.

But yes, good god...at the Grand Canyon, and Arches, I heard an awful lot of German. I think German was the only other language I heard spoken at Arches, whereas at the Grand Canyon, I alsoheard French, a good number of Slavic speakers, and some Scandinavian ones, as well as Asian ones I can't identify.

Canyonlands was empty