I’m writing this whilst comfortably crashed at the Doubletree hotel near the Salt Lake City airport. A nice warm chocolate cookie and a comfortable chair have revived me from the four hour drive from Moab this morning. I was running on vapors by the time I got here. I have enough energy left to do some writing, have an early dinner, and then maybe watch some of the NBA playoffs before falling asleep. I have an 11:00 flight home tomorrow so I don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn for a change.
Tuesday was my last day in Moab, and I was really feeling the effects of six days of sleep deprivation. I did not get back to the hotel until 4:00AM that morning, so I was pretty much trashed that day. I gave up any thoughts of doing a 7th Milky Way shoot, and the same for sunset at the park at 8PM. After yet another pseudo breakfast at noon (I discovered my favorite gelato shop, Elsie’s, also did late breakfasts), I settled for one more low-energy tour of the park. No long hikes, just a drive around to see a few features i’d driven by, but not stopped to photograph. A cold front was moving in, and clouds had already started rolling in by the time I left for the park so I was glad that I went out for that last shoot the night before.
First stop of the day was the Courthouse Towers, a huge block of sandstone, with some great views of the big wall formations across the road. Spectacular scenery.
After that, I headed back to the Windows parking area – I had already been on two of the trails there for the Windows and Turret Arches, but want to see the spectacular Double Arch as well. It was just a short walk on a packed gravel trail to get to the base of this feature. Most everyone climbs up the rocky base to get into the arch – I scrambled up a bit, and found a very comfortable boulder to sit on. I was too woozy to go too much further on the steep, sloping sandstone. I made it this far without doing any damage – I wanted to make it home without any new cuts or bruises.
Funny thing about Arches – I had not seen any wildlife at all either during the day or at night, other than hearing some owls one time. As I was walking down this trail, a young couple in front of me came to a stop and shouted – snake!!. Sure enough, there was a very pretty, six for snake slithering across the trail. It was not a rattler – I have yet to identify it, but it was nice to see something other than ravens.
I was about done for the day after that, but I had wanted to see one other area on the way out – The Garden of Eden, which has a jumble of sandstone fins and spires. I was way too tired to hike around the area, so I just watched a couple of rock climbers, attempting to work their way up a nasty looking crack on one of the spires. The lead was really struggling, and I did not really want to see him fall, so I left and headed back to town.
I really could have gone for a good martini, or a good IPA beer or two at one of the many brewpubs in town. But, I’m sticking with my cardiologist’s orders, and settled for a really lousy non-alcoholic beer with dinner. At least the ice cream was good. I think there were more ice cream and/or gelato shops in Moab than brewpubs. Nothing wrong with that. I tried four of them – maybe I’ll go back there again to try the rest.
I’ve got a lot of thoughts about this trip bouncing around in my head, but I’ll do another post tomorrow…once I’m rested and home. Maybe I’ll have some of the Milky Way photos curated by then too.
I wish my arms looked like that. Maybe I can trade.
March 29th, 2026 (thru April 2nd)
Well, I’m finally home, and thought I’d start my trip summary – I’ll have a lot of photos and videos to add to this but it will take a few days to sort and curate the collection of images. So this will probably be posted in early April. For now, I’m just adding in a bunch of those random thoughts about the trip and life in general, that have been bouncing around in my head the past few days, and jotted them down in my journal. Most were written on the trip, sitting in the airport on the way home, or in between naps when I made it home. They are in no particular order. Here goes.
I’m really looking forward to getting home – I love traveling, but the getting to/from the starting point for international trips is getting to be a real drag. This one should have been relatively easy, but the TSA walkout turned this into a stressful and expensive trip. I really did not want to stay in a hotel last night but had no choice. And this morning, I had to get up a Oh-Dark-Thirty to avoid the four hour delays getting through security – even then, at 7AM, there was a sea of humanity in Terminal E, but a well organized one. It only took a little over an hour to get through it all. I did like the signs TSA posted in the maze, which gave the estimated time from that point. Sort of helpful.
I try to keep politics out of this blog (it sneaks in once in a while), but I have to ask – What the heck are all the armed ICE agents doing at the airports? There were clusters of them, all wearing body armor, all carrying sidearms, and all doing absolutely nothing other than chatting and drinking coffee. They cannot replace the TSA agents since they are not trained, and the airport staff organizes the lines. I did see one ICE agent helping to direct people. That was it. He’ll probably be fired.
And while I’m into politics, here’s two more thoughts: Do any of the leaders in Congress really think that it is a good idea to make the TSA agents suffer through this, just to make a political point? At some point, they will become tired of being political pawns and never come back to a job where they can be forced to work without pay, based on the whims of a few leaders in the government.
And (the last complaint), somehow money was magically found in the bloated DHS budget to pay the TSA agent salaries, and now the huge lines have disappeared in airports like Houston. Why was this not done right at the git-go, and avoid the inevitable chaos at the airports? Just saying, End of political rant.
This was the first trip where I’ve signed up for one of the pre or post extensions, and I’m glad I did it. I had read through the extension itinerary, and it sounded like it might be interesting, but still had no idea on what to expect. It more than exceeded my hazy expectations – it was nice to be with a small group of people and establish a few relationships before getting on the ship. That helped to avoid the bane of my existence on these trips – the first night of looking for people to sit with at lunch and dinner. Plus, it really helps to settle into trip mode before getting on the ship. I’ve already signed up for a post-extension on the Patagonia trip (plus I’m getting there early) and the same for the Sea of Cortez trip. I’m also getting in early for Kodiak and Iceland. It’s just nice to be able to recover from the long trip before the daily activities begin.
This trip was something of a learning experience for me, on how to handle my latest body failures. I was extremely concerned about how i would handle my cardiac issues (high blood pressure, rapid heart beat/ arrhythmia) – stress is likely the main trigger for these “attacks”, and just worrying about having an attack can be a trigger. I found myself looking down at my watch all the time to check my pulse rate, and then stressed out if it was high. When my worrying finally led to a tachycardia (look it up) incident, the ship doctor basically talked me into relaxing, and that helped for the rest of the trip. I stopped checking and just focused on the activities. I even made it through the somewhat stressful trip home without any problems.
I had another epiphany during the trip, one I’ve realized before but keep trying to ignore. News Break: I’m not 25 years old. I’m not even 65 years old. I’m in my mid-70’s, with heart disease, a bum knee and distal neuropathy. I need to be careful on what activities I sign up for. Fortunately, I’ve already begun to favor outings that are focused more on photography than on meeting some aerobic goal for the day. Although I did manage to make it up two observation towers, and two hikes which involved a few steep sections. I also have to consider my stability now and remember to use the hiking sticks that I bring along – I might have avoided a very embarrassing and potentially dangerous trip/fall I had on the last day. But I am giving some thought now, to selecting trips that are mostly cruise based – no more land trips with lots of hiking, and multiple hotels. I have three of those scheduled in the next year (2 to Iceland, 1 to Madagascar. Kodiak is sort of in-between). I intend to stick to longer trips with Nat Geo/Lindblad or possibly Natural Habitats that are entirely cruise based going past 2027.
I’m definitely getting the hang of solo traveling after 6 major trips (5 with Nat Geo/Lindblad, 1 with Road Scholars) and a countless number of shorter domestic trips, but I still miss my wife all the time. It’s hard experiencing some of the most amazing places without her. And it’s difficult being alone in the midst of so many couples and families – no matter how welcome people on these trips make you feel, you still feel awkward not having a partner to share the moment with. It’s just something I have to try and deal with.
Here’s a few observations I’ve made after 5 Nat Geo/Lindblad trips:
1 – I’ve been on four different ships so far, and the experience has been excellent on each. The shipboard hotel services are consistently superb – all the staff, food, cabin comfort, lounges, bars are all top notch.
2 – The National Geographic trip leads and naturalists are fantastic – most are local to the countries the trip is centered on, and are literal fountains of knowledge on the culture, history, fauna and flora. Plus, they are lots of fun to be with. I learned a lot on the trips, which is the point of these expeditions.
3 – One of the best features of these expeditions is that the itinerary can change daily and sometimes hourly depending on the weather, ocean conditions, and sometimes on where animals have been seen. Keeps you on your toes.
And for the fun of it, here are the highlights of this trip for me:
Best Activity – so many choices. This was a unique trip. I’ll pick two: the VIP tour of the Miraflores lock on the Panama Canal, and the Zodiac cruise around the Monkey Islands, in the Gatun Lake. Great videos of the canal, and great photos of three species of monkeys.
Funniest Moment – that one is easy. The cemetery/prison tour when we were attempting to get to the docks in Colon.
Best “But I got the Photo” Moment – getting some great shots of the Tamarin Monkeys after my finger was smashed between the boat and some trees. I’m a very dedicated photographer.
Most Stressful Moment – trying to get past customs at the Panama City airport. I was close to pleading for mercy when they decided I must be a National Geographic photographer. Smashing my finger beween the boat and a tree was a close second.
Biggest Surprise – how much I enjoyed the “Pre” trip, which had nothing to do with animals, and all about learning some very interesting things about Panama history, and the Panama Canal.
Best Evening – going through the canal locks at night. It was like a party on the bow, in the rain. Passing through the narrow Culebra Cut channel would be a close second.
OK, enough random thoughts. Many of the photos below were already included on my trip posts, but I’ve had more time to curate them on Adobe Lightroom, using the RAW formats instead of JPEG. As I continue to organize and review the files (using Lightroom Classic), I’ve found a few gems as well. As I’ve mentioned before in the blog, you can expand each photo to full size by simply clicking on them.
OK, I’m tired of this post but still have more photos to share, mostly from the Panama Canal. I’ll do another post – no long stories, just photos and videos.
The Traveling Widower 