Snowdon

Ask any kid raised in England in the 1970s what the tallest mountain in England and Wales is and I guarantee you 90% or more of them know it's Mount Snowdon in Wales. Guaranteed. 

We planned to spend nine nights in Wales and our first stop was the seaside town of Llandudno, which is located about 30 miles or so from Snowdon. We had to get to the top of this mountain on one of our eight full days in Wales. Had to. I mean how many times in your life do you get the opportunity to travel to the top of the highest peak in a country? 

Those first two paragraphs are loaded with rabbit holes and I'm going to venture down a couple of those right away. 

First, there are some strange things I remember from my childhood education in England and highest mountains in Britain is one of those (I discussed this same issue a few years ago on this blog about the year 1066...). The highest mountain in Britain is Ben Nevis in Scotland. Every '70s English kid should know that information. In fact, the highest 22 mountains in Britain are in Scotland (I did NOT know that as a kid). But as if to not let Scotland be the best at anything, my teachers drilled into our heads the highest mountain in Britain AND the highest mountain in England / Wales. There's where Snowdon becomes a household name.

Second, a mountain in Britain is not like a mountain in most other countries. Climbing the highest mountain in the the United States means expedition-ing up Denali to a height of 20,310 feet. Mont Blanc in France is 15,766 feet and you'd need some similarly professional gear and guidance. Same for Kilimanjaro, Everest, and any country in the Alps, Andes and other large ranges. Mount Snowdon? 3,560 feet. It's a hill. It's about a third of the height of Haleakala in Hawaii and you can drive up to top of that mountain. Snowdon? Mountain? Barely. This should be a piece of cake.

One last thing before we get to the meat of this post. I don't remember any teacher in school ever making us memorize the tallest mountain in England. I haven't looked it up and I have no idea what it is. I find that strange, assuming my memory is correct. 

Time to climb Mount Snowdon.

The path to Snowdon's summit.

The walk up and down Mount Snowdon takes pretty much all day. We knew this before we arrived in Wales because my cousin (who has made the hike) told us. We are no strangers to long walks while on holiday. Over the last 13 years, we'd done some pretty epic hikes. Delicate Arch in Utah. Machu Picchu in Peru. Gorilla trekking in Uganda. Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto. A couple of others maybe. We can get some steps in while we are traveling the globe.

So how does the hike up Mount Snowdon compare to those other walks we have taken on other continents? Honestly...I have no idea. We didn't walk up Snowdon. Or down for that matter. We don't see everything that CAN be walked up or to or around as a MUST walk up or to or around. And we just had too darned much to do on Snowdon day to spend the whole day walking. So we didn't hike it.

But we did make it to the peak. Only we took the train most of the way there. We did walk to the peak itself, like the last 50 to 100 feet or so.

Our chariot to the peak.

I can't imagine there are too many mountains in this world where you can take a train pretty much the entire way to the top. I mean I know there are some peaks in the Rockies and I'm sure in various other places all over the world that you can drive to. But train? Can't imagine there are too many. But there is one at Snowdon.

According to the quick briefing before we got before we boarded the Peris (that was the name of our train) for the summit, we were told that folks started visiting Snowdon for tourism purposes at about the end of the Napoleonic Wars. That would be at about the first or second decade of the 19th century, or the 1810s or so.

A few decades later, someone figured out it was possible to build a railway pretty near to the top and so they acquired the land (I guess...we were told no public lands were used for the railway) and went ahead and did it. The railroad took just 14 months from 1894 to 1896 to build. Voila! Tourist access to the top of the tallest mountain in England and Wales (but not Scotland)!

Stopped at a passing place part-way up the mountain.

I know what you might be thinking...isn't a mountain a little steep to be building a railroad on? I mean, isn't there like a maximum slope that you can really run a railroad? And not just up, but down too? Isn't this a recipe for failure? 

Well, yes, it would be. Last summer I wrote about this exact same issue with the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway after our visit to the Canadian Rockies. Railroads don't operate very well on sloped ground. The ability to move is based on the friction between the train's wheels and the tracks and the steeper the track is, the harder it is to move. Or stop.

So the builders of the railroad to the top of Snowdon designed it to be different. Take a look at the picture above. Not at our train but at the other track. That track has two outer rails like a typical railroad, but it also has two inner rails which are notched. It is these two inner rails that allow the engine to pull the cars of tourists to the top of the mountain. It's called a rack and pinion railway or a cog railway and the notched or toothed rails in the center of the track are matched with a gear on the engine itself. It's that mechanism that allows the train to ascend and keeps it in place so it will never descend uncontrolled in the event of some sort of emergency situation.

When you are being pulled up that railway you can feel the gravity working against you. The carriage shakes on the steepest portions of the hill as those teeth interlock with the track. You can also feel the whole train being held on the track on the way down. Like it's waiting to break loose but can't.

The rack and pinion railway in situ and in mockup form.

The original trains that took tourists up to the top of Snowdon were all steam powered. Today, the Snowdon Mountain Railway operates both diesel and steam trains on the same route. We wanted to take a steam train but they were sold out when we made our reservation for this mountain climb six months in advance (!!!!) so we settled for the diesel. I'm not sure the experience is much different. The hour long trip to the top and descent of the same length was still impressive and gorgeous and filled with views of sheep in fields. 

If there was a concern I had about this trip, it was the length of time we were allowed at the top of the mountain. The turnaround time between arrival at the top of mountain station and departure back down the slope was just 30 minutes. 

I shouldn't have worried. On the other hand, I could see myself worrying if I ever were do to this again.

The final push for the summit (I know I'm making it sound like we had done a lot to get close...) is not a huge effort. It's a quick walk up some steps to a monument at the top with a gold disc on top which points out what you can see in the distance from the summit. The queue to the top was slow, mostly because people were taking pictures of themselves or their traveling companions, and the way down was actually pretty treacherous, particularly if you have issues descending irregular rocky slopes like I do. After we got done with that, we made a quick stop at the souvenir store and we were back in plenty of time to make the return train.

However, that plenty of time scenario came with absolutely no view because the mountain was completely fogged in. It was so foggy that we could barely see five feet without the mist obscuring our view. I honestly would have liked to see the view from the top of Snowdon, particularly if you can see all the way to the Isle of Man or the Lake District. And I think if i had been able to see all that way, I would have been rushed.

The fog made it not an issue. 

Proof we made it to the top.

But the fog also made a huge impression on me.

I remember watching Ken Burns' The National Parks and being told that Denali (North America's tallest mountain) in Alaska was so massive that it created its own weather. I thought that made sense at 20,000 plus feet all the way in Alaska, even if it was embedded within a mountain range. I'd heard or read similar stories about flight paths that avoid the Himalayas in Asia for the same reason.

I didn't consider Snowdon a real mountain before we visited this year. Even considering when I visited Snowdon as a kid in England and had a snowball fight in June somewhere up the slope. I mean the top elevation of the mountain is about half the elevation of the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico. In my mind, I couldn't see Snowdon having any real effect on the weather. I took a jacket, but I almost didn't. And I only took a jacket because I thought it might rain because it can rain at any time in Britain no matter the current conditions.

But here's the thing. It was warm and sunny at the base of the mountain that day when we boarded the railway. It was also warm and sunny when we got back to the base of the mountain, as it was when we were about maybe a third of the way up. But at the top, a mere 3,500 feet or so above sea level, it was not. The weather was completely different, including a dense layer of fog that somehow the sun seemed unabel to penetrate when you were standing (or training) just a couple of thousand feet lower. How is it possible that a hill affects the weather that much? It honestly elevated my respect for Snowdon.

We visited Snowdon because we wanted to get to the top of the highest peak in England/Wales. We thought it would be a comfortable journey to the top along a standard railway and that we'd get a great view of the Welsh countryside. We didn't get that at all. We came away impressed by the railway and how different it was from anything we'd ridden before. 

But we came away more impressed with Snowdon. The Mountain named Snowdon. It was obviously wild and inhospitable despite it being late May and despite the Mountain not being really that tall compared to some other mountains we'd visited. It's not all about size, I guess.

Snowdon done! Maybe the next mountain we come to we'll walk. Or not. Maybe.

Of course there's a pub called The Snowdon. In Llandudno.

Wales

It's easy to overlook Wales. Or not know it's there. Or forget about it entirely, even. 

Assuming you even knew about or had heard about Wales in the first place, can you pinpoint it on a map? And if you can, do you even want to spend time there? What's the big deal?

It's confusing to understand the appeal of the place. And political divisions and history and a re-emergence of national identity with a resurrected language after playing second fiddle (or is it third fiddle?) for a millennium or so don't help clarify anything.

It sits just to the west of England so is it part of England? Is it a separate country? How does it relate to Scotland and the United Kingdom and the British Isles and Great Britain? Why is there a Wales national team in the football (soccer) World Cup (although not this year) but not at the Olympic Games? Is Ireland in the mix here somehow? Or is that a different country? Or is the island of Ireland not just one country but two? And does that last question even have anything to with Wales? These are some tough questions to answer. It's difficult enough for people who have lived their entire lives near Wales, let alone folks who have never been there or contemplated being there. 

This year, we decided that we would spend more days and nights in Wales traveling than we would spend anywhere else abroad in 2026. Hopefully we'd get some clarity about just what this Wales place is and was. Hopefully.

Four puffins and a dragon. There are a lot of both in Wales.

There was a time it felt like I was in Wales a lot. Not a lot like living there or anything but it seemed like every summer in the mid-1970s (before we emigrated to the United States), we would borrow the caravan from my dad's mum and dad and take it and roam around Wales for a week or two. Probably. I don't know how many years it was, really. Maybe it was two. Maybe it was four. Maybe it was somewhere in between. I don't even know if it was one week at a time or two. Or if it was once or twice or three times a year. I just remember being in Wales a lot. Like every summer for a while. I can remember Portugal at age 4 and France at age 9 and 10. In between, all I remember travel-wise is Wales. 

I've stayed away since. Until this year. And honestly, my wife made me do it.

I resisted going back to Wales. I fought it. I'd been there already. Many times. And I was convinced there was nothing interesting to do there. 

For years, I got my way. But love and marriage is not always about getting your way. Sometimes you have to give in. Sometimes you have to let go. And sometimes when you stop fighting about the concept of something because you think it's going to be boring, you might end up loving the actual thing you've been fighting all this time. Sometimes, intertwined about and around all the other spectacular places on this planet that you want to visit, you have to go back to Wales and give it a shot. Once. Probably. 

I did. It was worth it.

Welsh cakes in Cardiff Market. Welsh cakes are very, very good.

Rainy Aberystwyth as seen from about halfway down the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway.

We didn't tour around Wales in 2026 in a caravan. We rented a car and we stayed in hotels. Bed and breakfasts in Llandudno in the north and Aberaeron in the west and a big, renovated Hilton with dysfunctional elevators in Cardiff. We thought Llandudno was a useful place to stay to daytrip from; we were underwhelmed by Cardiff; and we loved Aberaeron. I could easily live in our hotel room on the top floor of the Harbourmaster Hotel in Aberaeron harbor (or harbour, if you prefer) and look out over the Cardigan Bay for weeks or months. Or at least more than the three days that we actually did.

We explored Wales in a way that I never had as a kid. I imagine we had a lot more freedom than my parents did 50 or so years when they took me and my sister there. There was no caravan to drag around this year.  There were no kids needing to be catered to. And we probably are a bit more tolerant of driving hours and hours to get to places that are in the absolute middle of nowhere just so we can get a signature Wales experience than my parents were all those years ago. 

And full disclosure, there was a lot of driving with a lot of time spent on two-way, one-lane roads between hedges about six feet high on either side that curved between mostly farm properties with very little visibility and a sort of constant, continuing prayer that there is no other car actually on the road coming the other way any time soon. It's not relaxing driving. It's stressful.

It's also absolutely gorgeous. There are roads in Wales where you can be completely surrounded by green as you wind your way through the landscape. I mean hedges on both sides, fields in front of you and a full canopy of tree leaves over your head. There is green dripping all around you other than the thin strip of asphalt (with no center divider stripe) that you are traveling on. It's green in a way that other roads that I have driven in other countries have never quite been. 

Cefn-Coen Viaduct (top) and the resting place of the victims of the Aberfan mining disaster (bottom).

So is everything that exists in Wales boring? Absolutely not. I was way off base on my thinking here. I have no idea now why I fought against a Wales trip for so long. Just plain wrong might just sum up my attitude towards the place.

We split our time in Wales doing mostly two things: exploring history and exploring nature. Those two things are just fine with me. We spend a lot of time focusing on both when we travel. Nature in Wales meant the coast and the seaside. Nature also meant wildlife reserves and farms and boats to islands packed with birds. It meant mountains. It even meant driving down those completely green two-way, one-lane roads. It is everywhere in Wales. 

Welsh history is darker than Welsh nature. Edward I conquered Wales and made the Welsh feel every part of it. Rich men used poor men to extract slate and coal from the Earth and transported their spoils over fantastic works of civil engineering. And men invented massive machines to process a product so simple but so valuable and in the process wrecked a cottage industry comprised of men and women working out of their homes.

The event from Welsh history that hit us hardest though was in a town called Aberfan near Merthyr Tydfil just a bit north of Cardiff in the center of mining country. On October 21, 1966, a colliery spoils tip collapsed and cascaded down a hill and buried the Pantglas Junior School. It killed 116 children and 28 adults, most within the school itself. Of all the ways to go out of life, I can't imagine too many ways more awful than being buried in coal spoils as a child. The cemetery holding the victims of this disaster is chilling. Just grave after grave of kids aged between 7 and 10. It's discouraging.

Aberaeron harbour from our hotel room (top) and jackdaws and chimney pots (bottom). Chimney pots were definitely a thing.

There's one other thing we did in Wales: spend time with extended family.

One of the reasons we visit the United Kingdom every two years is so I can maintain connection with some of my extended family. Emigrating to the United States in 1979 effectively cut us off from most of our relatives and my refusal to travel back to England to maintain that connection for a period of about 20 years from the mid 1980s to the mid 2000s (is that the right term for the aughts?) didn't help matters any. 

But lately I've made a conscious effort to do more, so England trips in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2024 and a Scotland trip in 2022 have always included a stop for a couple of days in Yorkshire, which is where most of my family is now. The script is the same: train into town and stay one day with one side of the family, find a way over to the other side and then move on after the second night. It never feels like enough.

So on this trip we were fortunate to be able to coax both sides of my extended family to Wales for a day or two. I love traveling with other people sometimes and so being able to supplement one or two days with extra people was a plus. But considering we managed to meet up with the very people who are a significant reason behind why we visit that country so often was a giant plus. 

This whole thing worked out great. 

Oh...those questions earlier. Wales is not part of England but not really a separate country either. It has nothing to do with Scotland except being on the same island and it's part of both the United Kingdom (full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), the British Isles (which includes the entire island of Ireland as well as all the other islands in that part of the seas) and Great Britain. The Republic of Ireland is a totally separate country from the United Kingdom but the U.K. does have some territory on the island of Ireland. And I have no Earthly clue why Wales is represented separately at the World Cup and not at the Olympic Games.

Blog posts to follow.

Nothing like having a pint with family. In Cardiff.

New Orleans Jazz

Every so often life hands you a travel gift. Something unexpected or completely unplanned or relatively inexpensive but always way, way too tempting to pass up for some reason. Maybe it's a destination wedding. Or a family member (or a friend) springs for a vacay. Or it could be a work trip either for a project or client or just a conference or something (and yes, work trips can have some fun tacked on every now and then). Whatever it may be, it's a bonus surprise. And you take it gladly.

Why start this post the way I did? Well, obviously because this year I got one of those unexpected surprises. And yes, it was a work trip. New Orleans. Late April and early May. But it wasn't MY work trip. It was my wife's. And this is the kind of work travel I can get into. No happy hours with colleagues or clients. No late dinners with your boss or bosses. Just get your work done remote (because I did log 8 hours each day) in the hotel and quit right on time and start exploring. And New Orleans is a place worth some exploring. 

Now, my wife did tell me before we left that she wasn't going to be able to pay attention to me during the day or even after hours on a couple of nights. I think I'm good, honey. I'm going to a bar and drinking some beer and listening to some music. And if it's the Big Easy, that music is jazz. Let's explore!

So I know what you might be thinking...isn't jazz dead? Or at least on life support? Well, without getting too Timotheé Chalamet about something...maybe. But not everywhere. Not in New York certainly, where you can visit a different world-class jazz club every night of the week. And definitely, defintiely not in New Orleans. Alive and well doesn't come close to describing the status jazz in the Big Easy. Thriving would be better.

Most people regard New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz. It's a tricky thing to ascribe the origin of any particular art form to a specific time and place but in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a style of music emerged in the Crescent City that borrowed from African, Creole, Caribbean and various European music forms. This new type of music based in rhythm and syncopation with improvisation as a key component of its character borrowed heavily from southern blues, ragtime and African call and response music. It was unique. And it worked. It stuck!

New Orleans was likely the only place on the planet where this sort of music could develop. We often think of the United States as a melting pot but that's not really true in most places. We are a heavily segregated society even today, let alone in the late 1800s. But New Orleans was an exception. Its status as a port town on the Gulf of Mexico combined with its relatively loose attitude toward separation of races brought cultural influences, instruments and people together who wouldn't normally have any opportunity to intermingle. And out of all that came jazz.

Let's not get too confused about this subject. Jazz today and over the last century is and has been complex. It has spread across the country and the world and has been interpreted and added to and mutated in ways very different from what was created in the Big Easy 120 plus years ago. Big band swing, jazz manouche, be bop, hard bop and all sorts of other forms of jazz were created in places other than Louisiana. But it all got started in New Orleans. And it is very alive there today.

I am not a huge jazz guy. But my dad is (or was) and there is a legacy of jazz in my family that is passed down from my him to me. Now, truthfully, I've been a reluctant adopter of jazz in my life. While there have been times before my 50s that I engaged with this form of music in a couple of visits to New Orleans and the odd CD purchase over the years, it was really relatively recently that I could actually sit down at home and listen to a whole jazz album and enjoy it. And ironically, it was when my dad started losing interest in everything (including jazz) that I adopted part of his collection and consciously started listening to this / his music. 

I've documented more of my relationship with this kind of music and my dad in a prior post. I won't re-hash that same thing here. But suffice it to say, I felt much more prepared to like or love the music I would be hearing in New Orleans in 2026 that on prior trips. I also wanted to explore some New Orleans jazz history on this trip, rather than just camping out in some club every night I was in town. I wanted to connect the dots of history around this music.

If there's a place to start exploring the history of jazz in New Orleans, it's at the New Orleans Jazz Museum near the Mississippi River at the west end of the French Quarter. Now truth be told, I didn't start my 2026 jazz voyage here. I planned to make my way to the Museum on Saturday morning and I'd been in New Orleans since Tuesday night and there was no way I was letting all those nights in town pass without hearing some live music. So Saturday it was, with two shows under my belt already.

The New Orleans Jazz Museum is in the old United States Mint and it shares the building's exhibit space with displays and information about the Mint itself. It's not an hours long experience. I read about every word in the place and it took me a bit more than an hour or so. And sure, it included all the stuff that I wrote above about New Orleans being the perfect place for different muscical forms to collide and emerge as early jazz.

But it also told an older story about the origin of jazz in the Crescent City. One that I didn't fully understand until I got to the Museum. And like some tales like this, the uniqueness of New Orleans as a site for jazz to begin is in some part rooted in laws and rules that ultimately make little sense. But they led to something magical.

The economy of French colonial Louisiana, like every other place in the southeastern part of what is now the United States, depended on slave labor, African people torn away from their homes and families and involuntarily transported to the United States to be forced to work against their will (that is, if they even survived the journey). But unlike the American southern states at that time, French colonial Louisiana prohibited slaves working on Sundays and holidays. And for some reason, slave owners allowed their slaves to leave their properties on these days and congregate together. One of the places where they did that was Congo Square, where enslaved African peoples (among other things) created music. This was the first root of jazz in New Orleans. And it started as early as the 1780s, about 100 years before the generally acknowledged emergence of jazz.

Congo Square, Louis Armstrong Park, New Orleans.

If I got nothing else out of the Jazz Museum, understanding the historical connection to Congo Square was important, particularly because that was my first stop after the Museum. But being in a museum about jazz in New Orleans is only going to get you so far. There is a display with the following text on the first floor of the Museum. 

The jazz that you hear in...the clubs all over New Orleans may feature musicians of the present but it shares the syncopated rhythms, blues patterns, improvisatory prowess, spiritual depth, and breathtaking technique that echo more than a century of music in the Crescent City. These artists connect the jazz they play to their lives and the current world, just as Bolden and Jelly Roll did in their era. The best way to appreciate and honor the luminaries of the past is to seek out and patronize today's virtuosos as they continue playing and developing this music. Jazz is a living and changing art, and it thrives both within and right outside these doors.

Well said. Time to hit some clubs. Let's start with Preservation Hall, which is not where I actually started listening to live music on this trip. But from a narrative perspective, Preservation Hall is a good place to start.

It seems to me that there is a need to keep the history of jazz from a performance standpoint front and center in New Orleans. I mean this is where it started, after all. And I assume others feel that same way and that's why Preservation Hall exists. The place was founded as a performance hall in 1961 and has been carrying the torch for traditional, New Orleans jazz ever since. It's a dusty, grimy-looking, basic building on St. Peter Street in the French Quarter which hosts multiple performances of jazz on a nightly basis. 

The line outside Preservation Hall.

If you want to hear musicians every night that push the edge of their craft and are that making music that is breaking ground or super creative, Preservation Hall is not likely the place to do that. The music presented to us the night I visited was not current and I imagine most shows in that building are the same way. We heard music created by or played by (or both) Duke Ellington, Al Hirt, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Benny Goodman and others. None of those men in the prior sentence were either born less than 100 years ago or were alive in the 21st century. It’s sort of an oldies show, with the exception of Caroline Brunious’ original composition called Spooky.

Don’t misunderstand me, there’s nothing wrong with skilled musicians playing timeless classics. The 45 minute long experience is essential New Orleans and it was enjoyable. The whole mission of Preservation Hall is historical and deliberately created just that way, right down to the building where the musicians play. I mean there is no reason for Preservation Hall to look as old and run down as it looks. And it’s really not old and run down, it’s just made to look that way. It’s part of the act. It’s a stage set. Or a museum, if you prefer. And there’s a lot of value in preserving New Orleans’ history and presenting it to audiences every night.  

I had visited Preservation Hall on my first trip to New Orleans, which I would put at about 14 years ago (going from memory). I think going once a decade and a half is about the right pace. I assume the show here is going to be basically the same every night. It has its place and it's super valuable as a preserver of tradition.

Wendell Brunious at Preservation Hall talking to the audience at the end of the show.

We were in town in New Orleans this year for five nights, including the first night when we got to the hotel at about 8 or 9 p.m. I heard and saw live music on three of the five (but really four) nights. I thought that was pretty good. Preservation Hall was the only show I saw in the French Quarter. The best jazz in the city can be found elsewhere.

My intent on this trip was to make this a true New Orleans music week / weekend. I fully intended to find a New Orleans piano show and hear some zydeco to go with my Preservation Hall pilgrimage. If you didn't know it, the Crescent City has a long tradition of piano jazz. From Jelly Roll Morton to Alain Toussaint to Fats Domino to Professor Longhair to Dr. John to James Booker to Harry Connick, Jr. And I was set up to a solo piano show at the Maple Leaf Bar on Thursday night, the very place where James Booker used to be the house pianist. In fact the piano series on Thursday nights at the Maple Leaf is named in Booker's honor.

So Preservation Hall on Wednesday, Maple Leaf Bar on Thursday and I did manage to find a zydeco show at dba New Orleans on Frenchmen Street just east of the French Quarter. And not just some zydeco show...Rockin' Dopsie Jr. (somehow pronounced Doopsie) and the Zydeco Twisters on Saturday night. This is the same band (minus Dopsie Jr.'s father) that played on Paul Simon's Graceland album and a connection back to the legendary Clifton Chenier (and the King of the Bayou).

Zydeco by the way is an accordion-based music invented by French-speaking black Creoles in Louisiana and it hasn't really spread much further than its point of origin. In addition to the accordion as the main instrument in the band, it is not uncommon for someone on stage to be wearing a washboard on his or her chest which is played with spoons or some other metal device.

My music agenda was all set up.

And then I strayed.

Rockin' Dopsie Jr. and the Zydeco Twisters. dba New Orleans.

Before the Maple Leaf announced the Wednesday James Booker-themed show the week I was there, they posted an electric organ show on their schedule page on Thursday night. And it is about impossible for me to resist an electric organ as the centerpiece of a show. Look, we all have our vices and weaknesses in life. Electric organ is one of mine. So I faltered, turned my back on the piano show and bought a ticket for Wednesday instead of Thursday (which pushed Preservation Hall to Thursday). I like what I like.

Most music clubs in New Orleans are small and have about zero seats. Maybe they have some benches on the side of the main hall, which is sometimes little wider than a large corridor. I'm not talking about seated jazz clubs that serve dinner. I mean straight ahead music venues.

Both Maple Leaf Bar and dba fit this mold. They pack as many paying customers as possible into the place for a show who all eventually at some point make their way as close to the stage as absolutely possible. It's electric and it's loud and it's fun to be that close to the band making this incredible music. That is until it gets really hot from being in a mob of people really close to you in a place that can't actually have adequate ventilation for that situation. And inevitably either someone taller than you ends up standing directly in front of you or someone whose personal assessment of their ability to dance does the same thing as the taller person mentioned earlier in this sentence.

I'm not really complaining here (although it could easily be interpreted that way) but the dude who started out to my right at Maple Leaf but ended up with the back of his head about 12 inches from my face before he started bopping his head and shoulders back and forth and the women who both jumped right in front of me at dba and who both stepped on my foot (which hadn't moved) while "dancing", give me some personal space please. I lasted 45 minutes to an hour at the front of each show before retreating to the back. It was cooler in the back.

Joe Ashlar (organ) and Stanton Moore (drums), Maple Leaf Bar.

Both shows were fantastic. I'd go back and see either of these two bands perform any day. Could I complain about the covers a little bit? Sure I could. I didn't really need to hear Chris Stapleton's Tennessee Whiskey at the Rockin' Dopsie, Jr. show. I was there to hear original music from musicians trying to create music that is serious and which honors musical traditions created in New Orleans and elsewhere. The covers at both shows were mostly just a distraction from what I really wanted to hear. There was plenty of original music and I heard enough of what I wanted to go home happy both nights.

Was it jazz? I don't know. Neither show likely fits strict definitions of what jazz is to most people. I would think most people would be looking for some horns when they think jazz and there were none of these at least in the organ show that Joe Ashlar and Stanton Moore (with guests) at the Maple Leaf. But both shows had music with syncopated rhythms, blues patterns, improvisatory prowess, spirtual depth and breathtaking technique which is what the New Orleans Jazz Museum said makes up jazz. And for real, free-soloing around a consistent beat and rhythm was the foundation of both shows (except maybe for the Tennessee Whiskey cover).

And if you need any further proof on the Maple Leaf show being jazz, Stanton Moore's picture is actually in the New Orleans Jazz Museum.

Pictures of James Booker at the Maple Leaf Bar. Booker was a New Orleans original.

The first two times I visited New Orleans, I winged it with the music a little bit to a lot bit. I expected that I would be able to hear what I regarded as jazz (and, yes, I likely would have described it as something with horns) anywhere I turned. If there is any doubt about me winging it, let me say that on both prior trips I looked for some good jazz on Bourbon Street (apologies a little to Fritzel's for making that statement). Who seriously does that? I came away in 2012 and 2015, feeling that my New Orleans musical experience was lacking despite stumbling onto a pretty good blues show on Frenchmen Street the first time I was in town.

This time I did it right. I did a little bit of research on where to find the best music, checked out the artists on Youtube where I could to get excited about some and reject others and then made sure I had some tickets in advance of the shows. Does that kill the spontaneity a bit? Sure it does. But I wanted some music this time that aligned with what I love. And if I needed spontaneity, I had Friday night open for that if my first two nights turned out to be failures. I didn't go to a show on Friday.

Honestly, where else in the United States are you really going to be able to find this amount of music on any given week of the year and come away satisfied with three different shows? New Orleans' music scene truly is a national treasure, particularly for a city of its size. I could easily make an argument that New York City can offer the same sort of variety and quality but the population of Manhattan alone is five times the size of New Orleans. This much music in a small city is worth traveling to see and hear.

I didn't have New Orleans on my radar for 2026 so it was great that it worked out successfully. We concert-go here at home the entire calendar year when bands and artists that we love come into the DC area. We likely make it to 8-12 shows a year, which i know is not a huge number but it's a lot more than a lot of other people I know (not judging, just saying...). This trip to the Big Easy flipped my concert experience on its head. For four nights, I had to discover something that I liked over some dates that I had no control over selecting. It's a testament to the quality of music in New Orleans that I could do it and do it easily. I actually had backup shows on two of the nights. This was a huge success.

And one other thing...you can find James Booker music on CD way, way easier in New Orleans than you can find it at home. Or even on the internet. I came home with one to add to my collection.

Next trip: intentional travel on a trip we've been planning for months. Just like always.

Last pics: Stanton Moore drumming (top) and Rockin' Dopsie Jr. and his brother Anthony (on accordion).

Memory Of Water

Last month we spent a long weekend in Northern Arizona visiting a canyon. And of course by "a canyon" I mean the Grand Canyon. What else could I possibly be talking about? 

It feels like a long time since I've been to a canyon. It's not something that I seek out for visits very often. I'm not sure I can even remember the last time I went to anything resembling a canyon, let alone named a canyon. I'm thinking maybe Zion National Park in 2015. Does Hovenweap's mini canyon in 2020 count? I'm not sure. Canyons are just not my thing, I guess.

So how did we spend the day after our trip to the Grand Canyon? Well...by visiting another canyon. What else? Grand Canyon done. Time to visit Antelope Canyon.

Now, there is the very real possibility that you have no idea what I'm talking about when I write Antelope Canyon. But believe me, there's a very real possibility you know Antelope Canyon, even if it's just through online pictures of sinuous red-orange carved rock lit magnificently through cracks and crevices by the hot desert sun. You know...like the pictures above and below this introduction. Somehow, somewhere, you've likely seen some pictures of Antelope Canyon.

And it's very likely that you have been wowed by the photos.

I wanted to take and have pictures like you (and I) have seen online. But more than just the pictures, I wanted to find out more about this thing. It's not a canyon in the sense that the Grand Canyon is a canyon. And by that I mean a giant, gaping place in the planet way wider than it is deep. The Grand Canyon is a mile deep and at its widest point 18 miles wide. Antelope Canyon isn't like that. It's way smaller. It's also a slot canyon.

What's a slot canyon, you ask? I had to look it up. And just so you don't have to look that same information up...

A slot canyon is a canyon with a depth to width ratio of anywhere 10 to 1 to 100 to 1. That's a canyon that's between ten times deep and 100 times deep as it is wide. At its widest point, the Grand Canyon has a depth to width ratio of 1 to 18. Not 18 to 1; 1 to 18. If the Grand Canyon had a 10 to 1 depth to width ratio, it would be a tenth of a mile wide and a mile deep. That's pretty deep and skinny. If it had a 100 to 1 depth to width ratio, it would be 1/100th of a mile (or 53 feet) wide and a mile deep. THAT is a slot canyon.

The Grand Canyon was formed by the slow action of the Colorado River carving it's way through the Earth over millions of year. Not so with Antelope Canyon. Slot canyons are formed by sudden torrents of water moving at a very high rate of speed through soft rock (like sandstone). These sudden torrents of water are flash floods, which are typically only common enough to create something like Antelope Canyon in very dry locations where there is effectively no way for the land to absorb sudden large rainstorms. The carving of the rock is caused by the water moving at extreme speed and the fact that the water is carrying abrasive dirt and sand. Water carves out both large open canyons like the Grand Canyon and tall thin canyons that are slot canyons. But the action and the result is totally different.

Those flash floods, by the way, are still doing their work. If it rains at the wrong time, Antelope Canyon can be flooded with water to 25 or 30 feet deep in a heartbeat. Sound dangerous? Well, if there's nobody watching the weather, then I guess it is. But they typically only happen during monsoon season in July and August.

To get to Antelope Canyon, you need to do two things: (1) drive to the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona and (2) book a tour. You need to do the first because Antelope Canyon is on land owned by the Navajo. You need to do the second because since 1997, taking a guided tour is the only legal way to visit. 

Before 1997, the Canyon was just open to anyone who could get themselves there. And there were side effects of that completely open availability. That meant trash, graffiti and those pesky and extremely dangerous flash floods. Since '97, it's been guided only. 

We booked our tour through Roger Ekis' Antelope Canyon Tours who took us out into the desert to visit Upper Antelope Canyon. And, yes, there IS a Lower Antelope Canyon (and more). We picked our trip based on reviews off TripAdvisor and figured we didn't need to do both Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons. Aren't they pretty much the same? We don't know that answer to that question necessarily. 

When we checked those TripAdvisor reviews, by the way, most were super positive, but some were overly critical about what I will sum up as the staged photography nature of the tour. More than one review complained about what I interpreted as a scripted tour where everyone on the tour was tutored in photography of the canyon so that everyone would emerge with the best (and presumably the same) pictures of the place. I'm not a huge fan of believing negative reviews, particularly when the majority of the reviews of any experience are very positive. Still, there were concerns there.

Don't get me wrong, I wanted those best pictures. But I also wanted freedom to take more than the classic photographs that everyone went home with. I hoped I'd get that.

I also just wanted find out what this place was really like. The images that are shown online are completely context-less. How do you get to the Canyon? How do you get into it and out of it? What's it like to walk through? How tall is it? Are there ever any people in this thing because there are never any photos with people in them it seems. I assumed I'd get this.

Antelope head in the top photo. The bottom is the sunrise and sunset scene.

So first of all...yes, the tour we took was heavily focused towards a series of what I'll call classic views of Upper Antelope Canyon. We were advised how to set the screen brightness and the filter on whatever version of the iPhone or Android phone that we happened to have with us and in a couple of spots, our guide actually took the same picture for each group on the tour. We have a vertical panoramic shot of us standing at the entrance to the Canyon and color and black and white versions of a spot where if you take the photo just right, it appears that you have angel wings. So does everyone else on our tour.

There's also a face in one spot, a couple of bears, an antelope, a sunrise / sunset scene and an alien. And the tour stops so everyone can take the exact same pictures. Everyone.

But you know what? If you didn't want to do any of that, that was fine too. If you wanted to do your own thing and take whatever pictures you like, you could. And so we did. We took part in most of the staged photographs but we also took pictures of whatever the heck we wanted. Our guide, Cindy, was just awesome. She was patient and thorough and even gave a very effective demonstration using water and the sand near the canyon of exactly how it was formed. The tour was honestly fantastic. And I think we emerged with some amazing photos.

But I really wanted to find out what the deal behind this canyon was. And we did that too.

The Grand Canyon is a large, long gash in the surface of the Earth. When you are standing outside the Grand Canyon you are on a very large and very flat high desert plateau and to look at the canyon you stand on the edge and look down. Want to walk into the Grand Canyon? Find a trail and walk down.

Antelope Canyon isn't that. It's effectively a very large sandstone lump (I was going to use the term boulder but it's way, way larger than a boulder) sitting on the surface of the Earth with a very large and not necessarily straight crack running straight through the middle of it. It honestly looks like some secret cavern or hideout from some fantasy or science fiction movie or series. I'm thinking Star Wars, Game of Thrones or Dune here. It's astonishingly different than the Grand Canyon. It's in fact probably as dissimilar as an experience as you could possibly get from two places with the word "canyon" in their names.

It's a heck of an entrance. And I swear I've never seen this is any of the pictures online.

The Navajo call Upper Antelope Canyon Tsé bighánílíni or "the place where the water runs through rocks". But they also refer to it as "The Crack", which is appropriate because that's exactly what it is.

The entrance to Upper Antelope Canyon.

Once you step into Antelope Canyon, you are in the world that shows up in the pictures online. You don't have to walk 20 minutes or so or even into the second "room" of the Canyon. Step in and you are in. All the way in. The sand path and light ahead of you hints at the way through the Canyon but look up and that rock just hangs over you like billowing sails frozen in time. The colors and the shapes are just amazing. Something that really only nature can create while it's almost unbelievable at the same time that nature can actually do this. 

It's tall. We were told 120 feet tall at its deepest point. You are dwarfed by the rock but you also don't feel like you are at the bottom of something really deep, particularly because you can rarely look straight up to the sky because the rock twists and turns above you. You don't feel like you are in a canyon in the traditional sense. 

It is also tight. There are places you can spread your arms and touch the smooth and at the same time rough rock walls (which are decidedly not anywhere close to vertical) on either side of you. Having said that, our group was I'd say 15 in size and I really didn't feel cramped for space that often. Touching, by the way, is encouraged.

The Canyon is tall.

The time we were allotted in the Canyon itself was about 30 minutes. It honestly felt longer. This experience was not rushed in any way, although I'm sure it helped that we were on the last bus from the tour company we selected and I'm sure Cindy allowed us a little latitude to dawdle a bit.

We walked through the entire length of the Canyon. I'm guessing it was between a quarter and a half a mile long, then we walked out of the back side of the Canyon, up a sandy hill and back over the top of another piece of rock that was to the left of The Crack as we entered. 

Did we see Lower Antelope Canyon while we were there? No we did not. We drove by it on the way to Upper Antelope Canyon but it's really nowhere near the place we visited. It's a totally different lump of rock with some sort of vertical fissure created by flash floods, rock and sand. There are apparently four additional parts of Antelope Canyon you can visit but it's not like they are contiguous or anything. They are likely just different sandstone canyons that look a little different. That's not what I imagined at all. I figured they would all be connected. Physically that is, not metaphorically.

Looking up at the branch of a tree in Upper Antelope Canyon.

This place is magical. It is as breathtaking as the pictures I saw before I got here. And by breathtaking, I really do mean it. That first room that you step into is astonishing. It is simultaneously gorgeous in its form and awe inspiring in its structural beauty. I can't really remember feeling this same way recently about a place we've visited that wasn't built by man.

I can also confidently say that there's no way I want to be in a place like this during a flash flood. As we walked through the Canyon, we saw limbs of trees wedged into the crannies of the Canyon above us. And not like at eye level or on the ground. Try like 25 or 30 feet above us. That means the water level during a flood is really that high. Can you imagine the force of a 25 foot high wall of water coursing through a narrow slot canyon all of a sudden? I'm not sure I want to.

On the name...we didn't see any antelopes when we visited. Antelope Canyon is located near Page, Arizona, which was established in the 1950s when Lake Powell was formed by when a dam was built nearby. When the Lake was formed, it interrupted the travel patterns of the pronghorn that lived in the area. Proghorn are often referred to as antelope but are really no such thing. That wouldn't be the only misnomer out there about wildlife in the American west.

Exiting Upper Antelope Canyon.

But...that's not the whole story. There are three more things. Yes, I know, three is a lot more things. I'll try to be brief.

First thing: The time.

When we booked our tour with Antelope Canyon Tours, every confirmation and reminder email we received (and there were a lot of emails...) prominently reminded us that our tour would operate on Phoenix time and to remember that. We figured this reminder was likely because the state of Arizona doesn't participate in Daylight Saving Time and that if you were coming from Utah (Page is just south of the Utah border) and didn't remember that the state immediately south of you was an hour behind you from March through October, you'd be an hour early.

So we are cruising along Arizona Highway 89 and all of a sudden the time on Waze jumps forward an hour. Arrival time is now 10:05 a.m. for a 9:50 a.m. tour time. What the heck? Did we somehow get delayed? Did we actually leave Flagstaff later than we thought we left? We were a little freaked out. We can't be late for this tour, can we? We checked the time in Flagstaff and in Page and both locations showed an hour earlier than Waze (which was really operating off the phone time) showed.

So we decided to check the time zone map of Arizona. As it turns out, not all of Arizona refuses to participate in Daylight Saving Time (see map below borrowed from the Department of Transportation website). The northeast corner of Arizona DOES observe Daylight Saving Time. But not the WHOLE northeast corner; there's a little piece of the northeast corner that is not connected to the rest of the non-DST-observing part of Arizona that also refuses to acknowledge Daylight Saving Time. And we happened to be traveling from the DST-denying portion of Arizona and through the DST-compliant piece of Arizona to the smaller DST-denying portion of the state. 

We weren't late. The time changed back to Phoenix time 1.6 miles from Antelope Canyon Tours' office. But as people who don't like to be late EVER, this was a little freaky.

Second thing: The bags.

The other reminder that we received (over and over and over again) in emails from Antelope Canyon Tours before we showed up in Page was that no bags were allowed on the tour. Check that...no opaque bags. Clear bags are cool. And they DO sell clear bags in the gift store.

We run into this kind of thing when we attend sporting events and we assume it's so people can't bring bottles of alcohol into the event but why would anyone bring booze on a Canyon tour in the middle of the day? So we asked when we checked in. The answer? People sometimes bring their trash and leave it up at the Canyon. This made no sense to us. It's OK for me to bring trash in a clear bag that I might leave for good out in the Canyon but it's no good if the bag in not clear?

But when we boarded the bus, we were reminded no non-clear bags and we were also asked to shake our water bottles. Huh?

As it turns out, the issue isn't trash, it's ash. Like ashes of deceased loved ones. Why anyone who is not Navajo feels like they should bring their dead relatives' remains out to this place is beyond me. But apparently people do it. And when they do, the Canyon has to be closed, cleaned and blessed before it can re-open. Don't bring human remains here, people. Please!!

Navajo Taco, Hope's Frybread.

Third thing: The frybread.

This trip had one more foray into Navajo culture and history besides just visiting Antelope Canyon. On our way up to the Flagstaff area, we stopped for lunch at Hope’s Frybread, a Navajo-owned restaurant in Mesa, just east of the Phoenix airport. I’ve had frybread before, most notably on my 2001 vacation to Arizona in the fall of that year. I can still remember the frybread topped with pineapple I had outside the San Xavier Del Bac Mission on the Tohono O’odham reservation just south of Tucson on that trip. Frybread is basically flour and water made into a crude dough and then deep-fried in oil. It was invented by the Navajo in the 1860s but it is very decidedly not an historic native American food. It was invented out of necessity based on cruel treatment of the Navajo by the United States government.

 

The Navajo, like many (or is it all?) Native American peoples, were eventually confined to a non-traditional territory by the government of the United States. “Non-traditional” in that previous sentence really means pretty much undesirable and way smaller than lands they had previously lived off. The best parts of their former land, of course, were taken for use by American settlers of European ancestry. Confinement meant just that: don’t leave the assigned area. But some Navajo didn’t want to obey rules they had no part in making, which brought punishment from the men (usually Army officers) assigned to keep the Navajo in their assigned spot in the new American southwest.

 

The punishment for 10,000 Navajo for a few of their people leaving their assigned territory against the Army’s orders? A forced 300-mile march from the west side of what is now New Mexico to the east side of that same state with a subsequent internment for about four years. It’s now referred to as the Long Walk of the Navajo. Of the 10,000 forced to walk across the southwestern desert, approximately 35% of those died either during the Long Walk or during captivity.

 

A major cause of death was starvation, a result of the inadequate rations provided by the government to the Navajo. Part of the meager provisions made available to the Navajo were flour, lard and sugar, which Navajo women used to make a kind of dough from flour and water which they could then deep-fry in the heated lard. That frybread is the origin of the stuff we ate on our way to Flagstaff and is regarded as a symbol of Navajo resilience. Rather than allowing the substandard ingredients they were forced to live with, the Navajo women in the 1860s turned those raw materials into something that allowed their people to survive. I see it as an eff you to the United States Government and I love that.

So before we headed north to Flagstaff and Upper Antelope Canyon, we had a Navajo Taco at Hope's. Ground beef, beans, cheese, lettuce, tomato and some kind of spicy sauce atop bread improvised from substandard ingredients. It kept me fed and nourished until Flagstaff.