On The Road Again

One of the many blue highways in Utah.

Mom and Dad came by the trailer one more time this morning for one last breakfast. After we ate, we took a walk around town so Mom and Dad could stretch their legs in anticipation of hours in the plane later.

We wandered over to the farmer’s market which turned out to be more of a craft fair than traditional farmer’s market. Elise bought a few beads for a necklace and the rest of us sipped iced tea. Our last stop in town was the Love Muffin Cafe for a coffee, muffin and a few last minutes together.

After Mom and Dad left, we spent the afternoon vegging in the trailer. It was super hot today (97) so Bobby and I worked on updating the blog, I washed the floor and Elise entertained herself admirably. We jumped in the pool around 5:00, showered afterward and ate a dinner of leftovers close to 8:00 p.m. Oh, and Bobby did some more laundry.

Now we are geared up to finally leave Moab and Utah. Tomorrow we will drive to Mesa Verde National Park and check out the cliff dwellings there. We plan to tool around Colorado for a while, then head to Kansas to see Bobby’s cousin Matthew and a friend of mine who recently moved there with her husband and newly adopted daughter. From there we’ll make our way to Kentucky (via Missouri maybe) and then back to the Old Dominion. Not sure what our internet connections will be for the next few days, so we’ll update when we can.

Happy Father’s Day to all you dads!

 

Not Such An Unlucky Day

Sorry not to post. Here’s some.

Mesa Arch

Our Friday the 13th was just dandy. We visited Canyonlands again, this time to see Mesa Arch and turn in Elise’s and Mom’s Junior Ranger books. Mom has been working hard. She has to do more in the books than Elise since she’s older so she stayed up late last night working on hers. She makes an excellent Junior Ranger!

Our walk along the trail to Mesa Arch was incredibly pleasant. The sun was warm, but not yet too hot and the wildflowers were in bloom. We were able to identify some of the flowers using one of the books from Elise’s backpack. The prickly pear were abundant and we saw their pink and yellow flowers everywhere. We even saw a peach-colored flower on one, a color we hadn’t seen from the cactus before.


View from Mesa Arch.

Mesa Arch frames the ever-present La Sal Mountains along with a few other named features: Washer Woman Arch, Monster Tower and Airport Mesa. The other side of the arch is a 500-foot sheer drop. We saw a few not so bright folks walking out on top of the arch, luckily not too far.

After Elise and Mom were sworn in as rangers, we headed to the Colorado River for a picnic lunch. Route 128 follows the river into Moab. We pulled off at a campground a few miles down the road and borrowed a site on the river for an hour or so while we nibbled on bread and cheese, fruit and gorp. While we ate, we saw a few raft trips go by. The water here flows quickly but there are no rapids. Still couldn’t convince Mom to take a rafting trip, though.



A picnic at the river required lounging at the pool afterward. Elise and I got the party started and Mom, Dad and Bobby joined us soon after. As hot as it was outside, you were cold when you got out of the pool. Elise spent a lot of time lying on the concrete with a towel completely covering her in an attempt to warm up.

Next stop: dinner at the diner! The Moab Diner deserved another visit, so we parted company to shower and agreed to meet at the diner in an hour. I was feeling super hungry so I ordered The Moab Diner’s Sweetwater Skillet, a blend of fried potatoes, bacon, diced green onion, bell peppers, and melted cheese all of which is spiced just right and topped with two eggs any style. In my case, scrambled. It was the perfect meal.

After dinner we went to the last used bookstore we wanted to check out. Bobby bought a book by Franz Kafka (who does that?!) and Elise and I each got something. Coffees and hot chocolate all around and then we were off to Arches one last time. We hadn’t spent any time at the Fiery Furnace area and had read it was a good place for the sunset. It is called the Fiery Furnace because of the light it gets in the late evening from the setting sun. We got there a little late, though and only the tops of the fins were lit up. The sky to the west was spectacular, though, and we happily chatted while we watched the sky change color time and time again.


The Fiery Furnace fins are in the left foreground. Below is the Salt Valley with the La Sal mountains in the background.

We got back to the trailer too late for another game of Ticket to Ride, though we did manage two rounds of UNO. Mom and Dad leave tomorrow and we are sad to see them go. It has been a wonderful week with them, but we console ourselves with the fact that we will be home in a mere six weeks and we’ll have plenty of time with them then.

 

Two Junior Rangers in the Family

Today we explored the Islands in the Sky district of Canyonlands National Park. However, on our way there we stopped at Arches to collect two hard-earned ranger badges: one for Elise, and one for Mary Lou. Mary Lou had to do every activity in the booklet — we didn’t even help her too much!



Islands in the Sky is the most accessible of the three districts in Canyonlands. It’s only 35 miles from Moab and sits atop a large mesa overlooking the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers. The Needles district has many strange formations and makes up the southeast section of the park. From it you can take a hike to actually view the confluence of the rivers. It is 75 miles from Moab. The Maze district is the whole western portion of the park. There are no paved roads in it or to it: a true wilderness.

We are only tackling Islands in the Sky this week. Our drive in was lovely. The weather the past couple days has been cooler (around 80). We stopped at the much smaller visitor center (compared to Arches). We walked right into a ranger talk on John Wesley Powell and his exploration of the Green and Colorado Rivers. I’ll sum it up: Nobody knew anything about the degree of danger on these rivers; one third of their food ended up in the river; everybody figured they died until the showed up on the downstream side of the Grand Canyon; only three men were lost — they didn’t want to shoot the last tough bit of rapids in the Grand Canyon and instead tried to hike out of it.

We drove down to Grand View Point Overlook at the end of the road. On our way we encountered a Top Secret Car Commercial being filmed. I took a picture of the Brand New Top Secret Car. It looks like a car with a nightgown on. Innovative!



The canyons are about half as deep as Grand Canyon, but spread about as wide. Upon arriving at the overlook we walked into another talk — we are so lucky! This turned out to be the absolute best geology talk we’ve heard. Jerry, a former teacher, walked us through the processes that led to the formation of the canyon. Of course, these processes are still going on. We have never had it so clearly explained. It was an Aha! moment for all of us.



After a long walk along the rim, we drove back up the road to Green River Overlook. It offers a nice, distant view of the Green River to the west. As a bonus we watched a male bighorn sheep perform feats of incredible dexterity on a nearby outcrop of rock. How do they do that with just hooves?


Upheaval Dome

Our final destination of the day was Upheaval Dome. This consists of a series of concentric ridges of rock with little peaks at the center. There have been two theories as to how it formed. One says it was due to a vast salt deposit under layers of rock. The salt bulged, pushing the rock above it up into a dome that eventually eroded and left the circles of uplifted rock. That’s the wrong theory. The signs at the overlook present both theories with equal weight. However, Jerry told us a scientific paper was published recently showing evidence of shock quartz. This is a type quartz that can only be created by a really big, Pow! Like from a meteor. So that’s the answer. A meteor went, Pow! It made a crater, and that crater eroded away, leaving only the ripples of the impact in lower layers of rock.

Our evening was filled with a dinner at Eddie McStiff’s brew pub and visits to a couple book stores. We can’t resist!

 

Dangerous Arch

Landscape Arch

Arches fall down. It’s inevitable. In fact, most of the precarious sandstone structures in Arches NP will fall or crumble away. It’s just a matter of time. Fortunately, none of them fell today.

We toured several of the scenic areas of the park that we did not see yesterday, starting with the North and South Windows. Near these is Turret Arch. All are huge and prominent on an otherwise gently rolling high desert landscape.


Clyde stands in triumph beneath the North Window.


Turret Arch

Arches is a very accessible park. Many features can be seen from the road or a short, paved trail. It’s only five miles north of Moab. This means it can be pretty crowded. We made our way to the end of the road where a series of trails take you through Devils Garden. The devil, apparently, is very good at creating rock formations. Our goal was to see Landscape Arch before it collapses. Back in 1991, some large chunks of the arch fell, leaving it only about six feet thick at its thinnest point. The arch is 306 feet long: the longest natural arch in the world.


The trail through Devils Garden

Talk about a naming mix-up. Landscape Arch is really a delicate arch and Delicate Arch, with its otherworldly terrain, is really a landscape arch. I hate to keep stuffing the suggestion box, but what can I do? Despite the name, we admired it and enjoyed the walk to see it. Along the way we encountered a strangely unbashful long-nosed leopard lizard. One guy was trying to pick him up. Luckily he was not successful since they bite when cornered.



After our walk we found a shady table in the nearby picnic area and ate a late lunch. Danine offered to make her delicious corn soup for dinner which required a trip to the grocery store. We got there right around 5:00 p.m. It was insane. People were everywhere. Had it not been a summer day in the middle of the desert, I would have thought a snowstorm had been forecast and everybody needed to stock up on bread, milk, and TP. Why do you need a lot of milk during a bad snow storm? For hot cocoa?

While Danine prepped for dinner and Clyde helped by chopping roughly 14 pounds of vegetables, Elise, Mary Lou and I hung out or played catch. A good deal, I’d say. The soup was great, as was the company. We capped the evening with another game of Ticket to Ride. This time Danine crushed us, Clyde and Mary Lou finished respectably, and I lost badly (Elise collapsed out of sheer exhaustion). Tomorrow: Canyonlands!

 

Not-So Delicate Arch

Delicate Arch

My mom had knee surgery last year to repair a torn something-or-other. Since then she has been working hard to bring her knee back to its prior reliability and goodness. This has not always met with great success. This did not stop her today.

Mom and Dad came by the trailer around 8:15 and we all had breakfast, packed lots of water, some snacks and headed out to see Arches. The forecast for today was a high of 96 and lots of wind, with gusts up to 50 mph. After stopping at the visitor’s center to pick up Elise’s and Honey’s Junior Ranger packets, watch the movie — a very slick one done by the Discovery Channel, by the way — and reconnoiter, we headed up the very steep and curvy road to see some of the over 2,000 cataloged arches in the park.



Since it was going to be so hot today, we decided to blow past the overlooks and viewpoints and head straight for the day’s hike, Delicate Arch. The hike begins at Wolfe Ranch which was worked for 20 years. This is remarkable because it’s in the middle of the desert. We can’t imagine how the Wolfes managed. The first half mile of the trail stays in the sand, winding through sage bushes and juniper. We took a detour to a small group of petroglyphs depicting big horn sheep. After this first section the trail leads onto the slickrock: wind and water worn sandstone.



Delicate Arch can be seen from a great distance if you know where to look, but the trail leading to it carefully keeps it hidden until the very last moment. Then you walk along a protruding edge of a tall fin of rock. As you come around the end of the fin, the arch stands huge before you just on the other side of a smooth bowl of sandstone. From this viewpoint it frames the distant La Sal Mountains. It is a happy site. The arch is huge and widens at the bottom, inviting other names such as Lady’s Bloomers and Cowboy Chaps. It’s not so much delicate as dramatic, standing as it does in an otherworldly landscape. We enjoyed it for as long as we could, but the wind picked up something fierce and we didn’t bring anything to tether Elise to the ground.

Since it was such a hot hike and there had been very little shade, we decided that would do it for our first day and we would retire to the campground pool for the afternoon. So we did. We may have mentioned in an earlier blog how dangerous Angels Landing in Zion NP can be when there are boy scouts nearby. Well, same goes for the pool. Troop 127 worked hard to drown each other while we huddled fearfully in the shallows or stayed in the safety of our lounge chairs. Another close call.

Surviving peril can give you an appetite. We took ours to Moab Diner. It is a proper diner, not unlike the one we enjoyed with my brother Shawn in Vacaville, CA. The key component: breakfast served anytime. Moab Diner claims to have the best green chile in all of Utah. We got a bowl with tortillas for all to try. It was good, inspiring Bobby to have the green chile omelette, which is a cheese and bacon omelette smothered in green chile. He left nothing on his plate. Even as we ate we vowed to return here for a second go later in the week. They also have Dreyer’s (same as Edy’s) ice cream and serve it up in generous portions.

We didn’t quite get enough of Arches, so we returned to the park after nightfall to take a look at the night sky. It was pretty impressive despite a bright half-moon. We saw the Big Dipper and Scorpio. Dad told us that Scorpio is never in the sky at the same time as Orion. You may think there is some logical scientific reason for this, but actually it’s because they are mortal enemies. Orion (ancient Greek hero) was a boastful hunter who said he could kill every animal on Earth. This angered the goddess Earth who sent the giant scorpion to sting him. It gave him a lethal sting, but he killed it before dying himself. So basically they don’t get along.

It was neat to see the desert at night. We were surprised at how much light the half-moon provides. No doubt, it’s helpful for all the creatures that make their living at night. Fortunately, mountain lions pass through the area now and then, but don’t live here. We were plenty tired when we got back and went to bed, hoping for another great day tomorrow!


The Wolfe’s root cellar, only slightly smaller than their cabin

 

Honey, Pop and Delicious Cookies

Honey and Elise.

This morning and early afternoon were spent in anticipation of my parents’ arrival. We laundered and grocered and did a little straightening up in good ol’ Shackleton. Mom and Dad arrived close to 4:00 and Elise ran through the campground to hug them as they walked up the road.

They are very graciously staying in a motel across the street to be near us. There are better accommodations in town, but the motel is the most convenient. I say they are “graciously” staying there because they just returned from a week with my brother Chris and his wife Caren vacationing in upstate New York at The Point, one of Rockefeller’s “Great Camps”. It is a 5-star rated resort and a place that dreams are made of. I think my parents did this backwards — they should have come to us in the RV park first and then gone with Chris. Thank goodness we at least have an Airstream!



We spent a very enjoyable afternoon sitting outside at the picnic table catching up and eating yummy cookies. Elise and I made sugar cookies for Pop (what the grandkids call my dad) this afternoon. Elise and Pop have a tradition of cookies before dinner as an “appetizer”. Unbeknownst to us, my sister and niece made delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookies yesterday that my mom brought with her. Thanks, Lyn and Taylor! So we feasted on sugar and flour goodness while we chatted. We haven’t seen my parents since our trip home at New Years, so there was plenty to discuss. Eventually, Elise convinced Honey (what everyone calls my mom) to come inside and play on the computer with her while Bobby, Dad and I hung out outside. Soon after a dinner was made and eaten. Elise got out her soccer ball and she and Honey played catch. Pop got in on the action, too, and the three played catch with a baseball and gloves.

Dessert was called for so we walked a block to the Starbucks for drinks. Once back at the trailer we dove right into a game of Ticket to Ride. Somehow, Elise and Honey won.

 

Goodbye for Now, Capitol Reef

Once again, a bonanza of blogs below.



Yesterday evening we took a drive down one of the few paved roads in Capitol Reef. Near the park entrance, beneath the cliffs, is a little green valley filled with orchards of fruit and nut trees, as well as the historic remnants of the settlement of Fruita where stout people made a life in the midst of a harsh land. We are camped near apricots I think. It’s a lovely place. The old Gifford house is part historic site and part store, selling fresh baked breads and pies, and canned goods.



The drive takes you away from this oasis and south along the mighty upturned rock. We drove from the end of the pavement onto a dirt road that wound into a canyon. It ended at a picnic area and a trailhead leading farther in. This was once the main transportation route through the reef. It’s just a wash, sandy and rocky. The only hint of its past use are some iron pipes sticking out high above that once held utility lines. We walked past petroglyphs to the Pioneer Register. It’s historic graffiti was made by the rugged folks who walked through this gap. The earliest date is 1871.



After returning for a quick dinner we walked over to the campground amphitheater for a ranger talk. Elise sat with the girls she met yesterday, and we talked again with Doug and Elaine. The talk was another Mountain Lions Will Kill You type thing, similar to Big Bend. This ranger was much more cheerful about it, so it wasn’t so bad.


Elise with, from left, Heather, Mariah and Amber in the old schoolhouse

This morning the girls came over and played in the small field behind our site. Both families drove over to the Fruita schoolhouse when it opened. It is also small: eight grades and up to 26 kids in the space of your living room — another reminder of how simple and hard life was here. The school closed in 1941. Electricity got here in 1948.



We are due in Moab today to meet up with Danine’s parents for a fun week exploring Arches and Canyonlands. Checkout from the campground was 11:00 and we said our goodbyes to our new friends and got back at 11:05. We hitched up, but just couldn’t bring ourselves to leave yet. Instead we parked our rig in an overflow spot, gathered some water and snacks and took a nice three-mile hike up into a remarkable canyon to an overlook of Fruita, Highway 24, and the cliffs. Before we left, we bought an apple pie for breakfast tomorrow.

You must come here.

 

A Short Stay in a Long Park

We didn’t get up for sunrise. The main problem was that sunrise occurs very early in the day. To see it, you must get up before it’s light out. I hate that. Actually we all slept poorly last night and decided to forget it. That permitted us a leisurely morning and an early start towards Capitol Reef National Park.



The drive there is incredible and we took the less scenic route to avoid some significant grades on Utah 12. Southern Utah has hoarded a large portion of the nation’s beauty. It seems unfair, but makes for great driving. We left red canyons for green meadows, pasture land, and mountains. Then we suddenly found ourselves driving in an otherworldly landscape with huge ornately carved cliffs rising on our left. This was the our first look at a waterpocket fold.



A waterpocket fold is a giant wrinkle in the earth, in this case, 100 miles long. The layers of rock have folded, creating a vertical crease which, over the millenia, has eroded into astounding cliffs. Capitol Reef preserves this stretch of dramatic geology. We went straight to the campground in the park and claimed the last large spot. Whew! It fills up quick. It’s the most popular national park in Utah among Utahans. Uh, I mean Utites. Or is it Utes? Not sure.

We didn’t have to be here long to recognize that we should have spent one day in Bryce and two — or more — days here. It has many of the neat features we found in Anza-Borrego and Big Bend, plus the ever-present, jaw dropping cliffs. There are slot canyons, dirt roads, natural water carved tanks, and orchards. Seeing an orchard at the base of a massive red cliff is… not usual. The early settlers here planted 2,700 fruit and nut trees of various kinds. You can pick and eat them right off the tree if they’re ripe. We were too early for everything, but the mulberries are right on the verge.


While Elise learned geology in the nature center, I chased lizards. Andrew, I think this one is an eastern fence lizard (iguana family).

Elise attended a ranger talk on geology with three sisters, Heather (9), Mariah (7), and Amber (5). Afterwards we talked with their parents Doug and Elaine while the girls played. They are traveling (in the opposite direction) for a few months, but have no exact deadline or destination — sounds good! In fact, they reminded us of what we most like about our trip. We like the meandering and the lack of much planning and the enjoyment of simple being in a place.



Ironically, Capitol Reef is one of those places where you enjoy just being there, but we planned only one day for it! It’s a keeper, a place to return to — more so than Zion or Bryce and those aren’t shabby places.

 

Queen Victoria, God of Thunder

The view from Bryce Point

We took a nature walk this morning at Mossy Cave, which is a little removed from the main portion of the park. You walk below some lovely hoodoos and above a small fast-flowing creek. The creek is actually a diverted fork of the Sevier River. It provides water to the town of Tropic which sits below Bryce. The town can turn it on and off as needed and have rights to it because the diversion was made around 1890, before the park existed.


Sniffing a ponderosa pine. Some folks smell vanilla, some butterscotch, some 10W40 motor oil.



The cave is really just a curved overhang of rock with water seeping from its roof. It would be fun to see in early spring when the dripping water has had all winter to freeze and build columns of ice. The cave was mossy, but it was like a very humble version of Weeping Rock in Zion.

The view from Bryce Point is not humble. It’s spectacular. Bryce Canyon NP is kind of a one-trick pony and the trick are the hoodoos. As the edge of the plateau erodes, it forms fins of rock. Through cycles of freezing and thawing, the weaker parts crumble leaving strange towers and spires of rock — hoodoos — and the occasional arch. It’s a good trick.



We took a walk down among the formations on a trail called the Queen’s Garden. It was excellent. If you ever come to Bryce be sure to take a hike down into the hoodoos and forest. This walk culminates at a view of a hoodoo that supposedly looks like Queen Victoria in a big gown. One word: anticlimactic.


That center hoodoo is Queen Victoria, supposedly. She’s the part above the thin disc of rock, and looks like she’s wearing a gown. She’s in profile with her crowned head at the tippy top. Holy monolithic monarchs, Batman!

We continued on and climbed back up through Wall Street — much more appealing than the New York version. You walk through a slot canyon with a few tall, straight douglas firs growing right between the cliffs. Near the rim, you can see another named feature, called Thor’s Hammer: a big square rock resting on a narrower spire. Don’t let the few named features distract you from the thousands of unnamed ones. They are equally fascinating.



We headed home, had an early dinner and played Ticket to Ride. We wanted to get a good night’s rest so we could get up for sunrise at Bryce Point.

 

Bryce (not a) Canyon

The view from Rainbow Point goes on and on

Before we hitched up I drove the half mile to the entrance station to scout out who was working. Our rules-stickler ranger wasn’t there so we headed in. After a friendly chat (and no measuring tape), we paid our $15 fee and rolled on towards the tunnel. Did our extra six inches get us stuck? Nope. Easy as can be. Our fee gave us the privilege of driving first through the tunnel, and right down the yellow lines if we wanted. For the rest of our drive through the slickrock and past Checkerboard Mesa we had what Elise calls a private road. That is when no one is in front of you or behind you for as far as you can see. It was nice.

From Zion to Bryce is a short, handsome trip. We heard from one of our neighbors that the dump station at the park was out of order. That wasn’t crucial, but we decided to stay in the Red Canyon campground in Dixie National Forest about ten miles shy of the park entrance. We like the National Forest campgrounds. They tend to be a lot quieter, tidier, and a little cheaper than the park campgrounds. Of course, the park campground is more convenient, but if the drive’s pretty, what’s a few extra miles?



We settled in to our site and then headed over to Bryce. We picked up that thing that Elise does at these places and then drove to the end of the 18-mile road through the park. It was late afternoon and the shadows were beginning to grow on the cliffs and hoodoos. Bryce Canyon is chock full of wrong names. First, it isn’t a canyon at all. It’s the edge of one of the plateaus that rise like enormous steps and make up the Grand Staircase Escalante. The lowest step is the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Zion is near the next step, the Vermillion Cliffs, and Bryce is near the top step, the Pink Cliffs.


Natural (not a) Bridge

After you ignore all the names using “canyon,” you have to confront features like the Natural Bridge. A proper natural bridge is carved by water. The one in Bryce was caused by erosion processes working on a weak spot in a fin of rock. It’s really an arch.



At the end of the road is the Rainbow Point overlook. From it, you can view the hoodoos that make Bryce unique, the Pink Cliffs in the distance (they are pink), Navajo Mountain 80 miles away, and far, far to the south the faint purple expanse of the Kaibab Plateau — where we camped at the Grand Canyon. Bryce has some of the best visibility in the lower 48. In Shenandoah NP the visibility on good day is about 16 miles. In Bryce it’s 100 miles or so.



Many people come to Bryce for the day and just drive along the road, stopping at each overlook, snapping a few shots and moving on. We did this today, but tomorrow we’ll take a couple hikes and save the quintessential view from Bryce Point for then too.