#v171

We only flew into Salt Lake City and left as soon as we got the rental car from the airport, so I don't feel that I got a sense of the city, but I'm okay with that. There were lots of large families waiting where the arriving passengers exit the airport with signs welcoming back "Elders" coming back from missionary trips, and all the men were dressed identically. I'd forgotten that Mormons were like, you know, real.

I felt the elevation difference immediately. Most of my life has been spent between 120 to 0 feet above sea level. This trip was almost entirely above 5,000 ft elevation, and I was getting winded from just minor physical activity. It was particularly bad at night, trying to fall asleep and suddenly gasping for air. I do not know how people live up there.

Arches National Park - true to its name - has a bunch of massive naturally-formed stone arches you can walk under. The star attraction is the Delicate Arch, which is hidden away at the end of a surprisingly grueling trail that kicked my ass (again, blaming the elevation). Taller in person than I expected, and also perched right at the edge of a surprisingly high cliff, which explains why it's always photographed from the same angle.

Canyonlands unexpectedly became my favorite National Park. Beautiful drive into the park, hardly any people at all, and had a crazy sense of scale. It felt like a Matryoshka Doll of different canyons stacked into one another, but not in the same way the Grand Canyon does; the different levels felt more distinct. This was also were my fear of heights was at its highest (hyuck), and there was one point in particular I thought Andrew was gonna fall off a 500' cliff getting a picture. I absolutely understand why so many people die in National Parks each year now.

The second night into the trip I came down with a sore throat that transitioned into a cough and sinus congestion that is continuing today, over a week later. Unlike when I got sick in Portugal however, this is a free country and I have the god-given right to self-medicate with an alarming amount of over the counter drugs. Walgreens off-brand NyQuil and DayQuil saved this trip for me.

Mesa Verde National Park was very cool, and felt very distinct from everything else we'd seen up to that point. Yes, it was more canyons and stunning vistas where you could see for miles in any given direction, but this one had human-built ruins from the Ancestral Puebloans built in the 1300's. I feel like I wasn't taught much about pre-Columbian America growing up, so it was cool to see something I only learned about as an adult.

The Four Corners monument was exactly as gimmicky as I expected it to be. Just a small pavilion in the middle of the desert you spend ten minutes at making jokes before hopping back in the car. I don't regret it.

Goosenecks State Park is a stunning view of a dramatic, serpentine canyon carved out by the Green River... and that's it. Another quick stop that I don't regret.

Valley of the Gods simultaneously felt like the surface of Mars and like it was someone's private property we weren't supposed to be on. There was no fee booth or visitor center for this one, just an abrupt exit off a side street and miles of unpaved road that I wasn't sure our rental sedan was capable of driving down (it got dicey at parts). We spent 15 minutes trying to break open a big rock Andrew found because we thought it was a geode, but couldn't manage it. Didn't see anyone else during this time.

This was the scariest road I've ever driven on in my life. Just 3 miles of steep, unpaved "road" on the literal side of a mountain that handles 2-way traffic and has no guide rail. I'm guessing there are beautiful views on the way up, but I was more concerned with hugging the wall and not driving over a cliff.

Natural Bridges National Monument was an impromptu day-of decision and I'm glad we stopped. This probably had the most strenuous hike of the trip for me though, I was gassed by the end of it.

Taking a tour through Monument Valley at sunset was one of my all-time favorite travel experiences I've ever had. Just a surreal environment to begin with, but there are parts of the valley you can only get to with a Navajo guide that I'd never even known about. Everyone knows the iconic mitten buttes, but there are other parts of the park that are just so green and unlike anything I'd ever seen.

Andrew scared the shit out of me waking me up in the middle of the night to see the night sky in Monument Valley. Easily the most stars I've seen in a very long time, even if my heart was racing and the sleep aid+decongestant combo knocked me right back out ten minutes later.

Navajo National Monument was like a smaller, more compact Mesa Verde site, but you can't get as close to the structures. I don't regret taking the time to break up the drive though.

Maybe controversial take: I was a little underwhelmed by Antelope Canyon. We did the upper canyon, which is supposed to be less crowded, but it still very much feels like you're on a tourist conveyor belt. The experience felt over-curated and even though our tour was around noon, it was still darker inside than I expected. The really dramatic shots with vibrant colors you see photographers capture only happen in certain areas at certain times of day.

Horseshoe Bend in Page, AZ at sunset was gorgeous. The main overlook was much more crowded than I was expecting, but you can go over to some rocks beyond that to get away from the busier parts.

I had an interesting reaction to the Grand Canyon. We approached the south rim from the east and did multiple stops over the course of two or three hours before reaching the Visitor Center. At first, it just felt like a bigger version of all the canyons I'd seen earlier in the trip, but I noticed a giant scaled model of the overall canyon inside the Visitor Center. A park ranger pointed out where we'd started the day and where we currently were, and it wasn't even a tenth of the overall length of the canyon. It was only then that I realized I couldn't understand how big the place was, and came back around again to being impressed.

I'd visited the Hoover Dam a long time ago as a kid, but now as an adult with an engineering background I appreciated it so much more. The sheer quantities of the measurements and calculations that went into it are frankly insane.

I haven't been to Vegas since 2003, and it's kinda funny how the then-"newer" hotels now come off as dated. The city still comes off as desperate for attention in a way I pity, but it was interesting coming back after such a long hiatus.

That 14-hour flight time is no joke. I distinctly remember around hour 5 thinking, "Okay, I'm ready for this to be over now!"

Friday the 13th was my birthday, but due to International Date Line fuckery I actually experienced my birthday for fewer than 24 hours. It was basically: plane -> trial by fire trying to figure out the labyrinthine beast that is the Tokyo Metro system while sleep deprived -> committing the cardinal sin of travel, which is getting to the hotel and saying (lying) "I'm just gonna lie down for a little bit and then we'll head out again."

Mt Fuji is way bigger than I expected it. All my travel guides were like, "On a clear day, sometimes it's possible to see the peak from as far away as Tokyo." Once you're high enough in any building, I don't know how you couldn't see it looming in the distance.

We caught a couple doing wedding photos outside Meiji Jingu wearing traditional Japanese clothing and the formal menswear looks so much more comfortable than Western-style tuxedos.

The only attraction I had to pre-book an appointment for was for the Akasaka Palace State Guest House in Tokyo because it's still used to host foreign dignitaries and has a heavy security presence. The woman giving the English tour did not have the best grasp of the language and was using needlessly complex vocabulary with mixed success. An awkward 45 minutes or so, but damned if she wasn't a trooper.

A tongue-in-cheek saying I heard before this trip was: "In the 1980's, Japan felt like it was in the year 2000. In the 2020's, Japan feels like it is in the year 2000." It was odd still seeing payphones all over the place and a surprising amount of businesses are still cash-only; I ended up running back to an ATM seven separate times. Most convenience stores also had fax machines you could use.

We did a daytrip up into the mountains to a town called Nikko where Tokugawa Ieyasu is interred, and it was a beautiful forested area that wasn't too crowded at all. There was also the Tamozawa Imperial Villa nearby, which was basically like a 20,000 s.f. Art Deco ranch which was one of my top sites on the entire trip.

I much preferred the Tokyo Tower observation deck to the Tokyo Skytree. For some reason they were playing an episode of Madoka Magica at the top of the Skytree at stadium concert decibels and visually it was also just way too overstimulating. Tokyo Tower felt more retro and authentic.

Not a big breakfast dining culture present in Japan. Every morning we'd go on the hunt for someplace to sit down and grab a bite to eat before beginning the day, but most cafes and whatnot don't open until 8:30 or 9:00 AM, some even later than that.

The raw numbers of the Shinkansen bullet trains blew my mind. Each one is 16 cars long, can hold over 1,300 people, hit a max speed of 200 mph, come to the main stations about once every 12 minutes, and were all consistently packed. Imagine getting from NYC to Richmond, VA in under 2 hours for $75. Just an insane capacity of domestic infrastructure I have no other comparison for.

In Kyoto we went to Ni-jo Castle, famous for its "Nightingale Floors" that have a distinctive squeak to alert the shogun for approaching would-be assassins, a little piece of trivia I excitedly shared with Andrew before we went in. We go inside and immediately see a sign that says, "yeah, that's an urban legend, they're just squeaky nails."

Japanese street vendors will see literally anything edible, ask, "does anyone mind if I grill this and put it on a wood skewer?" and not wait for an answer.

Just in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima was an old man with a sign that read, "I am an in-utero survivor and have been here every single day for the past 19 years to answer your questions." I didn't get the chance to speak with him, but some of the plaques he had set up were very squarely in the, "This happened because the Japanese government didn't surrender sooner" camp, and I'm not sure if that's the general Japanese civilian's opinion or not.

Took a ferry out to Miyajima Island which has a cool temple built on a dock suspended over the water. The ropeway/lift to the mountain peak was closed for inspection, and we were debating whether or not to hike up the long way. We saw an old white couple approaching and Andrew said, "If these people are German, I don't wanna do the hike because that means it'll be really difficult for us but easy for them." Guess what language they were speaking?

We didn't do the hike.

At this point in the trip I developed tendonitis or something in my right heel because my Achilles tendon was in a lot of pain. I had a noticeable limp for the rest of the trip (and still do), and at times I had tears in my eyes from the pain of simply standing, exacerbated by the fact that there is little to no public seating anywhere in the entire country. Over-the-counter painkillers only get you so far.

I hit up an old stone medieval castle every time I'm in Europe, so it was interesting to see how different Himeji Castle was. Way more vertical, and was primarily a military structure first, no quarters or throne room because it wasn't lived in by a ruler or anything.

Osaka was so fucking cool and had the most grit and character of all the cities we visited, I wish I'd spent more time there. I hit all the big attractions I wanted to there, but it just felt like a place worth meandering around aimlessly to see where you end up.

After seeing it hocked by vendors literally everywhere I gave in and tried some matcha tea. I am now a convert, and ended up ordering it 4 times in a single day at one point.

Our most out-of-the-way stop was Horyu-ji, which has the oldest original wooden buildings in the entire world, built in 607 AD. Very impressive, especially because most of the temples and castles we went to were like, "this structure has been burnt down two/three/four times, but this current iteration is still like +300 years old." The most egregious example was Kofuku-ji in Nara, which burned down five times, and the most recent iteration was completed in 2018.

I got headbutted by a deer in Nara Park, and they were pretty pushy about demanding food from people in general. We saw people literally getting chased by them.

At the Toyota Museum in Nagoya we got to see demonstrations of industrial weaves and looms that make textiles and fabrics. Imagine an extremely loud, extremely fast sewing machine that makes 100 stitches per second. We also watched a humanoid robot play a violin and massive robotic arms assembly a car chassis.

On our last day we got to the gold pavilion at Kinkaku-ji right as it opened and avoided big crowds. It actually kinda hurt to look at in the morning light because I'm not used to seeing an entire building gilded in literal gold. We also caught a huge flea market outside of To-ji that apparently happens on the 21st of each month. This temple has the tallest pagoda in Japan and each floor can move independently in an earthquake to dissipate lateral loads in a technique called the "Snake Dance." It has been burnt down three times, but it's never fallen over from an earthquake!