Travels with Gunther and Kara

Tuesday was a pretty easy travel day. We got up and had breakfast and coffee and headed off from Durango about 0900 on our 250 or so mile drive to Albuquerque. We ended up being on a 4 lane highway most of the way and there were only a few hills. One pretty steep one about a mile or so long getting out of the Durango Valley then it was just rolling hills mostly all the way into NM and down to Albuquerque. We pulled into American RV Park on the southwest side of the city about 1600 and got setup in a nice full hookup 50 amp pull though site. After unhitching BAT we back him right up to the kingpin to get him out of the road and parked the car in the back. Dinner was leftover pizza from the night before in Durango and we split a can of cream of mushroom soup. 

Here’s a shot of our site 204 here at American RV. The sites are spaced pretty nicely and it’s open so we have good satellite visibility.

This morning Connie worked until almost noontime…she got her assignment of students to affiliates approved and sent out the assignment letters for those who have completed all of their paperwork for the clinical rotation. Sure enough…within an hour she got a call from one of the students complaining about the location she was being sent to…Connie patiently explained to her that an hours commute to the site was within the guidelines and essentially said tough, you’re going there.

Once that was done we had a short chat with the folks directly behind us who are in a New Horizons Summit model; we met them at the rally in May and there have actually been 3 other New Horizons in and out of the park in the past couple of days…quite surprising to see that many in one location since there are only about 1,100 New Horizons total. We then headed off to Santa Fe to have lunch and tour around a bit. It’s about a 70 mile drive but pretty empty on the freeway on the way up. We arrived and parked and headed for our first stop…the Five and Dime store on the plaza for their famous Frito Pie.

Frito Pie is a bag of Frito’s Corn Chips cut open with scissors then filled with home made NM chili and cheese. 4.75 and it was an outstanding lunch. We saw this on Anthony Bourdain’s show Parts Unknown. His comment on it was that it felt in his hand like a full colostomy bag…but that it was really delicious. Ya know…he’s right, it’s squishy in the bag but tasted really good. 

After lunch we wandered around for awhile so Connie could buy some bargoons and then wandered up to the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi. This is the oldest cathedral in the US (construction started in the 1700s but the oldest part is the original church which dates from the early 1600s) and has the oldest Madonna statue in the New World…she arrived in 1625. The wooden beam ceiling is the only remnant of the original church…the cathedral nave was built around it in the 1700s…it’s a way old building.

It was a really beautiful church…we talked to Jose (one of the docents) for a few minutes and he gave us a nice history of the Madonna seen above as well as the Cathedral and Santa Fe itself.

After our tour…we decided against staying in Santa Fe for dinner…we ate lunch late and were still full so we drove home, had a short nap, went down to the hot tub for awhile then got dressed and headed out to find something for dinner.

Connie found a place locally named “The Effing Bar and Grill” and we agreed that it seemed like our kinda place from the description and reviews so we went there. Had a couple pints of Guinness for Neil and Sam Adams Oktoberfest for Connie. We split a Combo basket appetizer of fried mozzarella sticks, fried mushrooms, and fried zucchini sticks…had a nice conversation with a retired local couple we met at the bar, then headed home.

On the way back…we skipped the freeway and noticed that we were on Historic Route 66…

It’s sort of a lousy picture but Connie took it through the windshield with her iPhone. Route 66 is probably the most famous highway in America…it was the first cross country highway and back in the day was the main route from east to west…populated by motels, roadside cafes, and the like. It’s since been largely overcome by the Interstate Highway system and relegated to largely backwater status but it was nice to be on a piece of it and get a memorable (if somewhat blurry) photo.

Tomorrow we’re up early to break camp and hitch. Once that’s done we’ll get breakfast here at the park (there’s complimentary continental breakfast)…then we’re off 298 miles to Amarillo TX. We have one pass to get through just east of Albuquerque; about a 1500 foot total climb and then it’s a pretty easy drive over into western Texas. We’re really glad that we’ll be down below 3,500 feet tomorrow; Albuquerque is 5,200 and it’s lower than either Moab or Durango…we’re really looking forward to being at a lower altitude so that breathing is easier. We’ve also been in extremely dry conditions in Moab through Albuquerque so getting a little lower and farther east should give us a little more humidity in the air making us feel a little less like a piece of human jerky.

Cyas.

We had a pretty easy transit today…got here early…and have really good internet so I decided to go ahead and put a quick post. We got up this morning, finished packing and hit the road shortly before 1000. After a quick stop at Fuelman, a truck fueling station about a half mile down the road we headed off and 164 miles later arrived here at Aspen Rose RV Park on the north side of Durango CO. I gotta tell you; coming across the Rockies along the UT/CO border wasn’t too bad going up; we hit some fairly decent grades on the way but just downshifted and kept the speed about 45 or so and got up. The descent down into the bowl in the mountains that contains Durango however…that’s a whole ‘nuther thing. It was steeper than the way up; maybe 7 or 8 percent grade and about 6 miles long with a drop off into the valley on the left side of the road most of the way down. Again, we just downshifted and used proven RV/heavy truck braking techniques to prevent overheating. The trick is to downshift at the top of the hill; in BAT’s case the computer does that automagically for you and then you don’t ride the brakes down. You start at the top going 45 or so and just let the speed gradually pick up until about 65. Then you brake (assuming traffic behind allows) pretty strongly to knock the speed back down to 45-50…and repeat the process all the way down. We used more fuel today than expected since the grades kept the engine RPM up when we were downshifted; the computer said we had 320 miles of fuel when we left and we came 165 miles so should have had about 150 or so miles of fuel left. Instead we’re down to 105; which means the grades cost us about 2 miles a gallon.

Anyway; here’s a couple of iPhone shots of the Rockies across the way…that’s the San Juan National Forest, Baldy Mountain and West mountain you can see. I’ve included a shot of our site G here at Aspen Rose…it’s a nice 50 amp pull through. We’re going to run down and have a beer in a bit after Connie finishes working and then either eat some bar food or pick up a pizza and bring it home to eat…depends on what looks interesting on the menu.

Connie especially likes the fact that Colorado has trees…they were few and far between in Utah but Colorado is a wetter climate so there are some forests.

Cyas.

Today’s our last day in Moab and we pretty much did nothing. There’s plenty of stuff left to do in both Arches and Canyonlands…but since Neil can only hike a couple of miles before his foot gives out (it’s getting better albeit slowly) there aren’t any hikes short enough to go on. So…we worked on detailed route planning (rest stops, gas stops, and such), worked on what we’ll do between the time we leave Junction City after our repairs, watched the NFL, and Neil did the outside pre-travel stuff.

Bama won again last night…it looks like the team is finally forging an identity for themselves and playing the kind of football that they’re known for. The defense was incredible; shutting out undefeated Ole Miss and keeping them far below their season averages of 400+ yards, 27 first downs and 38 points…total yards were about 175 with less than 40 rushing, about 10 first downs and no points. The offense kept the ball 38 minutes out of the game and rushed for 250+ yards so it looks like the O-line is finally getting their communication down and working as a team. The Ole Miss D is pretty good as well; holding us to 40 yards rushing and 175 yards on 20 pass completions in the first half but we kept at the run game and eventually wore them down in the second half. We just need to keep improving and everything else will take care of itself.

Dinner tonight will be leftover Asian short ribs from last night served sort of soup/stew style over rice…it was really yummy and will be even better after aging overnight in the fridge. Connie’s working a bit since we will be traveling or sightseeing most of this week and she still has a little to get done on her upcoming clinical rotation scheduling.

I wanted to post one last picture from Arches NP to show you how high the plateau it sits on is…looking at the picture below this is looking northeast along the park entrance road. The highway is immediately to the left of the frame and essentially parallels the road the car you can see is on until it passes the far edge of the plateau you can see in the park…the edge is about another 2 miles up the highway from here. The two small buildings you can see right above the grass and below the sandy colored rock are the entrance station and visitor center then the park road goes almost to the left of the frame on the same level than turns sharply right up the side of the plateau; the road runs just about at the level of the top of the sandy colored section as it climbs up the side of the ridge. Just after the road passes behind the point of rock immediately in front of the car you can see it does a couple of final switchbacks and then emerges over the top of the plateau edge just out of frame to the right. The plateau is about 1,400 feet higher than the entrance road and once up on top it’s sort of rolling terrain across the top of the plateau; most of the road accessible portion of the park is up on the plateau with the hikes taking you either out to the edge of the plateau to see the arches or down into the canyons in the plateau. 

After Connie was done working we took a 20 mile or so drive up the Colorado RIver canyon heading upstream from Moab…we got some pretty dramatic photos in the narrowest part of the canyon. The bottom where the river and road were was maybe a quarter mile wide at best in the wide spots and the rim is about 1,200 feet higher than the river. After about 15 miles we got out of the canyon and into the high plains again with mesas and other rock formations around us but again in one of those miles away scales…we stopped at a little campground named Onion Creek and took a quick tour of the no hookups dry camping area and then headed back home. Stopped by the Moab Brewery for Happy Hour, came home and jumped in the hot tub for a few minutes, and put on the rice to cook for dinner. Here are the views from the Colorado River Canyon…again just fabulous and incredible. We kept saying Wow! again.

There probably won’t be a post tomorrow or Tuesday…I’ll try to put something together Wednesday night after our day in NM. We’re staying tomorrow in Durango CO then continuing on to Albuquerque NM and then resting a day…although we’ll more than likely drive the 70 miles to Santa Fe after Connie works in the AM and do some tourist stuff followed by dinner before driving home.

Cyas.

We got up early today (0530) and after coffee, breakfast, and getting some Asian style short ribs started in the crockpot we headed off about 0730 for the park. Our destination for the day was the Windows Arches and the Double Arch with a total hike to the two sets of arches of about 1.5 miles. Entering the park there wasn’t much traffic…guess we were ahead of most of the people. After climbing up the side of the plateau onto the central area of the park our first stop was to take some photos of a group of female Mule Deer along the side of the road. There was a group of about 6 of these grazing on the side of the road and Neil got a nice photo of a group and a closeup of what appeared to be the alpha female.

He would have taken some more but these loud folks off a tour bus scared them off. 

Continuing on we arrived at the parking lot for the North Window South Window, and Turret Arches and set off up the hill to get some views and photos. Before getting up to the arches we spotted this formation that looks eerily similar to one of those Easter Island Moai statues.

Off to the right side of the trail shortly after this shot we saw Turret Arch…no idea why it’s named that though.

We next came up on then west side of North Window Arch and got several angles and moods in the pictures we took there…including a couple from underneath the arch looking out the far side toward the valleys below. The lighting near dawn on the red sandstone is breath taking.

Continuing a bit south we spotted South Window Arch from the west side.

Then we hiked down what was marked as a primitive trail to the east side of the Windows Arches to get some front lit shots. This turned out to be a mostly level trail but it did have a couple spots where we had to climb up onto a fair sized rock to continue.

We then continued to the right around the Windows and back down to the parking lot, across the road, and off onto the Double Arch…getting some great photos of it as well as of a smaller arch on each side of the trail.

With that we headed back down to the parking lot…and since Neil’s foot was a bit more sore today than it was on our past several hikes we headed home after picking up a few groceries we need.

Neil tried to make some reservations down in Santa Fe today…but as it turns out this is Balloon Festival Week so there are no RV sites to be had. So we’re going to go to Albuquerque instead. We might drive over to Santa Fe…it’s only about 30 miles or so…to see the artsy stuff and/or the balloons…but then parking will probably be a zoo so maybe we’ll just stay in Albuquerque instead. Then it’s over to Amarillo and then Junction City for our scheduled work.

The Asian Short Ribs are smelling pretty good…we got some French bread to go with it and a piece of carrot cake to go with it.

Cyas.

Just a quickie today.

Connie had work to do so she ended up working 8 hours on scheduling her students. Meanwhile…Neil did laundry, balanced our checkbooks, went on a bike ride, bleached himself in the hot tub, and picked out a couple of campsites for our departure from Moab on Monday. We gave up on going across the I-70 pass to Denver due to the likelihood of snow and chains required conditions and instead will make a 2 day transit to Sante Fe NM with an overnight stop in Durango CO. We’ll spend a day in Sante Fe then transit to Amarillo TX where we’ll stay another day. Then it’s a 2 day transit to Junction City KS with an overnight stop in Dodge City. We picked out some decent parks and will likely have a nice evening out in Sante Fe and in Amarillo.

We just grazed for lunch along with leftover baked beans from last night. Dinner was some cheese tortellini with caramelized onions, chopped up leftover chicken from last night, and Italian mix spices along with a glass of red wine. As we sat down to dinner Connie looked out our rear window at our view and saw the sunset on the ridge. Neil ran out and grabbed a quick shot so I would have something for the blog for today.

Pretty decent view, eh?

Tomorrow we’re off for a last few arches and hikes at Arches NP then home for the ball game. Sunday will be Mass and then I think we’ll just take a drive up the Colorado River since there’s a road along it and there’s a picnic area at the other end.

Cyas.

We had another great day today…although it was a lot windier up on top of the plateau than it was yesterday down in the canyon. We set the alarm for 0530 today instead of 0600 and were up, had coffee and breakfast and were on the road just a bit after 0700. Our destination the Islands in the Sky region of the park. It’s about 10 miles north from Moab on UT-191 then down UT-233 all the way to the park entrance. On the way we were passing Dead Horse State Park which is supposed to be the best state park in Utah…it’s perched on a narrow point of land 2000 feet over the Colorado River…and you can see the Green River and the Confluence of the two rivers as well. We thought that the state park would be pretty empty since we were getting there just a couple minutes past 0800 but we ran into a large group of birders out on the point…they were all watching the falcons flying around the point and taking some smaller birds for breakfast. We had left the long zoom lens in the car as we were only expecting landscape pictures so Neil passed on pictures of little black dots…they were moving pretty fast anyway so getting a shot would have been difficult at best. So you’ll have to just settle for these beautiful views of the two rivers down below. The last one is about a 140 degree panorama shot.

Leaving Dead Horse State Park we entered the National Park about 5 miles later; our plan was to stop by Mesa Arch on the way in since it’s best in the early morning…then go out to the far end of the road and get some early morning canyon vista shots followed by hitting the other view points and interesting things on the way back out.  Here is a nice shot of both the arch itself and then one of Neil’s favorite shots of the day; the canyon wall taken through the arch as a frame. I’ve also included a couple of shots of the two walls of the canyon that leads away from the arch location as well as a panorama of the entire canyon… and finally a wildflower for Connie that we saw on the hike back to the road.

Heading on down the road another 6 miles or so we arrived at the Grand View Point Overlook and I gotta tell you…the views were truly spectacular. The point is surrounded on three sides by the canyon and river 2,000 feet or so below…and I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves. Some of these were taken at Grand View and the others at various viewpoints as we headed north toward the park entrance. Simply spectacular…words and pictures cannot adequately describe how awe inspiring and small these wide open spaces make you feel.

We passed up on taking the hike out to the Upheaval Dome…the scientists aren’t sure whether this is the remnants of a meteor strike or a salt dome but it was a mile and a half hike round trip and was pretty steeply uphill…and we wuz tired.

We did stop by the visitor center and watch the movie…it was pretty decent but not up to the usual standards for National Park movies as far as information went. Outside the visitor center we were getting into the car and Neil spotted one final view he had to go get a shot of…this is the La Fall Mountains in the distance across the other side of the canyon. This is the clearest we’ve seen these mountains and he really liked this view particularly as well.

With that our day was again done…we headed home and had some chicken and baked beans for dinner. Tomorrow Connie has some work she really needs to get done, and the weather isn’t supposed to be very nice (mostly cloudy is the forecast)…so we’re going to cancel our planned drive down to Monument Valley. It was going to be a 300+ mile round trip and the only things we would have been able to see are the 17 mile Monument Valley road tour plus the famous Mile Marker 13 on Old Highway 163…this is the sign that Forrest Gump was next to when he gave up his cross country run. The view from Mile Marker 13 is one of the most photographed in Monument Valley…so it’s highly likely that you’ve seen this view of the road…the usual photo is taken looking down the road from the centerline and you see the road going downhill for about 2 miles or so then turning 45 degrees and heading straight off into the distance with a couple of buttes highlighted in the background. We’ll hope to get down there next time we are out this way though. Assuming the weather is clear tomorrow evening we’ll likely head into Arches and find a spot to watch the sun go down followed by some post sunset star over mountains shots…Neil’s never tried to get any of those since he went the digital camera route and wants to ‘speriment.

Saturday we’ll probably take a short hike in Arches then we’ve got the Alabama game in the late afternoon. Sunday we’ll either rest or head back into Arches if we’ve missed anything we want to see then Monday we’re off somewhere…we have to make a decision tomorrow on either the northern route through Denver and the Colorado Rockies and risk snowy passes or the 280 mile longer southern route through Durango CO, Sante Fe NM, Amarillo TX and then over to Junction City.

Cyas.

Today was the first of two scheduled visits to Canyonlands National Park…this was because there are essentially two entrances to the park with accompanying road systems…and no connection between the two systems so it’s almost like two different parks. The northern end of the park is an area named Islands in the Sky and primarily consists of hikes and viewpoints up on the top of the plateau that adjoins the northern and western side of the Colorado River gorge…we’re about 250 miles or so upstream from the Grand Canyon and it’s a different gorge through Canyonlands, not quite as deep or wide but still pretty impressive.

The southern end of the park is an area known as The Needles because it has a large population of topographic features known as needles (discussed in more detail below). The far center west portion of the park is named The Maze and is essentially impassible except via hiking…and maybe by a high clearance 4×4 vehicle. You need a back country permit to enter The Maze so we left that off of our tour.

Our destination today was The Needles…we got up at 0600 but Connie had a bad headache and tummy issues from the pain so we ended up not leaving until after 0800. We had to drive about 40 miles south then 30 miles west and then northwest into the visitor center.

On the way down UT-191 from Moab we happened across a road side arch named Wilson’s Arch. This is actually bigger than most of the arches in Arches National Park and is basically about 200 yards away from and parallel to the highway…so it was an easy get. We got pictures both in the morning with back lighting and again in the afternoon when it was front lit. It’s about 200 feet up from the road to the bottom of the arch and the opening is probably 60 feet high and 80 feet wide.

After getting the morning photo we continued down another 20 miles or so then turned west and headed toward the park. After going pretty much across the plain for 20 miles we hit a steep 10% downgrade as we descended off of the plateau and into the Colorado River valley. Heading north along the river we quickly entered the approaches to the park and started getting beautiful views even before we entered the park. We came around this curve in the canyon and both said “Wow!”. It was that cool…and we kept saying it over and over the next 15 miles as we transited through a relatively narrow portion of the canyon before entering the park. We liked Arches yesterday but the Canyonlands area is seriously cool and extremely different from Arches. If I had to pick one I would pick Canyonlands as being a more scenic, spectacular park because of the huge size of some of the chunks of stone we saw.

Here are the first views we got of the features approaching the park…although pictures really cannot do the views that we saw today justice…you simply can’t fully appreciate the size, massiveness, and how far away these features are visible from a photo. These formations are probably 2,000 feet higher than the valley floor and maybe a half mile away from the road. These shots were taken approximately perpendicular to the road which continues to the right of the frame and then curves to it’s left and back through the open area between the farthest left hand and farthest right hand mesas then sort of back and to the left into the park. The mesas are solid rock with just a little dirt and vegetation on top and are surrounded by piles of rubble from erosion over the millennia. The center portion of the mesa is composed of harder rock than the outside so over time the outside erodes away through a combination of wind blown sand and the freezing/thawing in cracks in the rock to split off huge house sized (and larger) boulders. One thing we were struck by was that the mounts of rubble are all at almost exactly the same angle and the top of the rubble pile is almost exactly the same on all the mesas.

Speaking of Mesas; we found out today what the difference is between a Mesa and a Butte. Mesas are wider than they are tall as you can see from the above photos and Buttes are taller than they are wide; for instance this repost of the Organ and Tower of Babel from yesterday’s Arches post.

There are a couple of other erosion caused features very common in Canyonlands…needles and mushrooms. Needles are caused by a layer of sandstone sliding on subterranean salt layers (the salt came from the former inland seas that occupied this area). As the stone slides it cracked in roughly a checkerboard pattern…then the cracks are eroded by wind/freeze/thaw cycles as in the mesas and buttes until you end up with what looks like a forest of tall thin towers. Mushrooms are caused when a harder layer of rock overlies a softer layer…erosion reduces the diameter of the softer stone faster than the cap and you end up with a mushroom shaped cap on top of the softer stalk. I’ve got some pictures of these later.

Our first stop in the park was to see the Wooden Shoe Arch…which was both pretty small and pretty far away; not to mention back lit so it didn’t make all that great a photo.

Our next stop was the Big Springs Canyon Overlook where we got a nice shot of the canyon itself and also one of a mushroom and what would have been a butte if it was larger than this specimen, but the proportions are right for a butte.

We then stopped at the Pothole Point overlook which has some fairly decent views of the valley bottom and also a large stone surface area potted with potholes. These potholes gather rain at every storm and shortly a plethora of invertebrate life springs forth…tadpoles, shrimp, and other crustacean like creatures that quickly grow, mate, lay eggs and die before the puddle dries up. There were also some really strange rock formations up at the point; we took about a 0.6 mile hike around the point to see all the cool stuff. We also spotted this neat little gecko/lizard near one of the pothole pools.

Our next stop was the base of Elephant Hill which required a 3 mile drive down a gravel road; we had to ford a couple of dry washes with some sand in them but had no trouble getting the Mazda over them. At the bottom we were as close as we could get to The Needles themselves so got a couple nice shots of them…it’s really, really rugged terrain in between those towers.

Next up was our second hike on the Cave Springs Trail…another 0.6 mile hike which took us underneath the cap of a mushroom to an old cowboy camp, the weeping spring itself, and an area with a lot of petroglyphs left by Indians.

With that we headed out of the park towards home…stopping for a few more shots of the impressive mesas along the way.

Stopping at an area known as The Big Crack…which turned out to be a rock climbing area we were taking a few more pictures and heard some voices. Looking up on the side of the mesa we spotted some climbers so Neil grabbed a series of shots showing first the climbers then zooming out until the whole mesa is visible…I’m really trying to just give you a sense of scale for these huge formations. The hiker is in the center of the photo in all 4 of these shots…and you can barely see him by the time the whole side of the mesa is in the frame.

And this was just a medium sized mesa as far as some of the others we saw today goes. As we turned back north onto the main road to Moab and our final destination for the day Connie spotted this neat rock across the road…she was particularly taken with the color layers in it.

Our final destination was the Needles Overlook which isn’t actually in the park itself but in an adjoining Recreation Area. We were talking to a guy at one of our stops and mentioned we were going up there for some views from the rim…he tried to talk us out of it by saying you can’t see anything from the rim of the canyon. Guess he’s never been up on top of a canyon rim taking in the views. We ignored him and went to the viewpoint anyway and as expected the views were spectacular. We could see all the way across to the far rim probably 20 miles away and 30 or 40 miles up and down canyon in both directions…although since it was getting late in the afternoon it was getting a bit hazy. Here’s a nice 140 degree or so panorama taken looking northwest from the overlook.

Really crummy view, eh? Glad we took that guy’s advice and skipped this portion of our trip. Not!! To give you a sense of how tall this plateau us; here’s a wide angle shot he took looking down from the overlook at about a 70 degree angle (i.e., almost straight down) of the canyon floor. Those light lines you can see above and to the left of center are the 4×4 roads on the canyon floor.

There was another viewpoint on the east side of the canyon but it required a 25 mile round trip over a gravel road…and it was getting late…and we are going to a bunch more canyon view overlooks on tomorrow’s trip to the Islands in the Sky region in the north of the park; which means we’ll be essentially across the canyon from where these were taken from……so we skipped the other overlook for another trip. Not to be outdone though; before leaving Needles Overlook we grabbed a couple more panoramas looking in different directions.

With that our day was done. We headed home, filled up the car with gas and got back to the house about 1730. A quick change into our swimsuits later we popped up to the hot tub for 20 minutes then had some oven baked potato wedges and burgers…we found these really good pre made burgers from Walmart that you cook frozen so they make a really easy meal when you need one.

Tomorrow we’re off to the northern portion of Canyonlands NP…the Islands in the Sky section. There aren’t many short hikes in this section so we’ll mostly just drive, check out overlooks, and take photos including a state park with a 2,000 foot high overview of the Colorado River that’s supposed to be the best state park in the state of UT. We’ll check it out and let ya’ll know.

Cyas.

Today was a really good day. After our work yesterday we were ready for some fun…so we got up about 0600 and had breakfast and coffee. Our goal was to get in our hike (a) before it got hot and (b) before the crowds, We were mostly successful…when we got out to our first stop in the park the small main lot was full but there was still plenty of overflow parking along the roadside. 

Our first stop was at the Devil’s Garden area of the park; this is just about as far from the entrance at the south end as you can get…it’s about 12 miles into the 14 mile across park. On the way up we spotted a few places we wanted to visit on the way out…but our plan was to avoid the crowds as much as possible. We got parked and headed out on the Devil’s Garden Trail and shortly came to our first glimpse of one of the stone arches for which the park is known. These arches were formed long ago by the formation of long deep cracks in the stone with two parallel cracks generating a fin shaped projection of stone between them. Over the millennia the racks expanded due to erosion so that the fin was left standing alone and then a combination of erosion and water freezing in cracks breaking off pieces of rock eventually carved a hole through the fin resulting in the arches we see today. 

About a quarter mile into the hike we took a short side trail to the Tunnel Arch and Pine Tree Arch. Tunnel Arch is about 70 feet or so across and tall and is different from most arches in that the base fin it is in was much thicker causing more of a tunnel effect than a window or door effect. You can only get to within 300 yards or so from Tunnel as it’s much higher up the hillside than the hiking path. One must stay on the path and not wander generally about the area as the ground cover is very easily damaged and takes many years to recover from casual foot traffic.

What struck us most on this hike was the expansiveness of the park…everything is literally huge chunks of stone hundreds of feet high and you can easily see for 20 or 30 miles in the clear and thin air here at 5,500 feet.

We continued on down the side trail and shortly came across Pine Tree Arch…I’ll let you figure out how it got it’s name. This arch is maybe 60 feet or so high and wide and is right next to the trail…we actually walked through it to the other side to get a couple of shots.

Yup, those pine trees are directly under the arch…the second shot is from the far side after we walked through it.

After these shots we headed back out the spur trail (to the right of the arch in the first photo above and once we regained the main trail continued on towards Landscape Arch. On the way we started hearing this strange Indian sounding flute music and eventually came out at the Landscape Arch viewpoint to find an elderly gentlemen playing the tunes. We were not able to get a movie of him playing or a recording but we were pretty much alone on the trail at this point and hearing the music echoing through the canyons in the quiet early morning was beautiful.

Once we arrived at Landscape Arch we were suitably impressed. This is the largest arch in the park at almost 300 feet long and about 200 feet high. You used to be able to walk out and go underneath it but in the early 1990s a large piece of it fell off from underneath the right hand end. After that it has continued to shed small stones over the intervening years so it is now off limits to people. Good thing; if it collapsed on you it would definitely leave a mark. Landscape is the arch in the front; the second one behind it is Partition Arch and the third one you can see behind it in the second photo is Navajo Arch. The fourth arch you can see on the right of the second photo appears to be unnamed…but there are over 2,000 arches in the park so I guess they didn’t name all of them. We thought that Landscape was the best arch we saw today. We also decided to get the obligatory tourist shot standing in front of the arch…sort of a “We were there.” thing. An obliging fellow hiker took this for us.

On the way out to Landscape Neil shot a couple of panorama shots looking to both sides of the hiking path…left side then right side.

After the Landscape Arch viewpoint the trail went pretty steeply upwards for a couple hundred yards. You had to hike up a piece of one of the fins about 10 feet wide with 30 foot drops on both sides…and you had to sort of shinny around several rock projections on sloping footing. Connie decided her vertigo wouldn’t allow her to get up and down safely so she stayed at the bottom while Neil went up. He didn’t go all the way out to the Double O Arch that was the terminus of the trail but did go far enough to get a shot of it.

Neil spotted this chipmunk and also got a slightly different view of Landscape…you can really see how thin the arch is in this view.

Here’s a shot of the Double O Arch from afar…it was another 3/4 of a mile out there from the top of the steep section; the arch is over on the right side of the photo but you really can’t see it very well in this shot.

Neil crept out on the end of the fin and took a shot back the direction we came from…it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it looks. From the back side where he came up the fin it was pretty flat and got down to maybe 15 feet wide…albeit with a couple of hundred foot drop on the other three sides. Connie is standing (but you can’t really see her) just below center in this photo; I’ll put in one down a bit looking back up from where she was to where Neil was sitting for this shot.

Here’s a dead tree shot for our friend Howard Payne of RV-Dreams as well as one looking back up from where Connie was in the shot above to where Neil was sitting. He was in just about the same location as the single guy you can see on top of the rock just above and to the left of the center of the shot. The steep section that deterred Connie is the one with all the people going up it in the second shot. 

We got back to the car and had a sandwich for lunch then headed generally home with some planned stops for more short hikes and picture taking. Next up was the Sand Dune Arch which I guess was named because it’s pretty sandy getting up to the arch. This one is about 50 feet wide and 30 tall and again you could walk up and underneath it. After squeezing through this 4 foot wide slot canyon for about 150 feet we trudged a couple hundred yards through the sand and got a shot of the arch. There is a lot of iron in the stone in this area of the park which causes the reddish hue in the shots.

Continuing on south through the park we spotted another unnamed arch next to the road.

Our next stop was the Fiery Furnace Overlook…this is named because of the very hot conditions in this complex maze series of deep, narrow slot canyons. The only way to get into the area is either have a back country permit or else go on a ranger guided hike so you don’t get lost. Neil got a pano shot of the slot canyon area…this is about a 140 degree wide view.

Next up was Delicate Arch. This is supposedly the most famous and most photographed arch in the world. The road out there was closed earlier in the week due to some flash flooding which was finally cleaned up today so we were able to get to one of two viewpoints to see the arch. The second is a longer hike and we were tired so we’ll grab that one later in the week I guess. I hope it looks better up close…but we were underwhelmed by it from a distance today.

Next up was the second most famous landmark in the park…Balanced Rock; and right next to it a formation that Connie named Butt Cheeks Rock. Balanced Rock is about 200 feet tall with the skinny portion part way up being maybe 15 or 20 feet thick…Neil was surprised it hasn’t fallen over yet as it’s leaning 5 or 6 degrees and from the side most of the mass of the upper section is cantilevered out past the left side of the lower section.

Neil spotted this rock a bit later…strangely similar in shape to those bushes we saw up in Graham a couple weeks back…he named it Richard Rock. Looks like a 200 foot tall phallic symbol he thinks.

With that we thought we were done…but when we got down by the Organ Viewpoint Neil decided that since it was mid afternoon and the light was perfect we stopped there. The light won’t be nearly as flattering of these formations when we are there later in the week as it will likely be morning then. From left to right we have The Three Gossips, Sheep Rock, Organ Rock with the Tower of Babel, Elephant Rock, and a couple of other unnamed formations. These rocks are massive; The Gossips, Organ, and Tower of Babel are most of 1,000 feet tall above the surrounding plain and are solid rock. You can also see Balanced Rock and the Windows Arches from here but we’ll be closer later so I’m not going to post those pictures.

With that our day was done…it was 1500 and we had been on the go hiking and walking about since 0830 and we were tired. We exited the park, picked up a few groceries we needed, gassed up the car for tomorrow’s trip down to the southern Needles portion of Canyonland National Park and came home. We decided to skip a shower and just hopped in the hot tub and pool and hot tub and pool and etc until we were bleached clean. Came home, had a beer and left over spaghetti from last night and called it a day.

Cyas.

Sunday we got up and had breakfast which was some brownies we had gotten the night before at the deli up on the corner. We got the rig ready to travel, pulled in the slides and disconnected utilities. Then it was off to Mass at St. Henry’s…after that we came back to the park, loaded up and were on our way. The first couple of hours on the road were pretty uneventful; we got through Salt Lake City and Provo without really hitting any traffic and stopped at a Flying J one exit before we were getting off the freeway for fuel and lunch. We then hit the road again and headed on UT-6 and UT-119 down towards Moab. This was mostly a 2 lane road with a third lane for trucks on the uphills…but it was a bit curvy and had plenty of places with drop-offs into canyons or riverbeds and very few guard rails. To top that off…it started raining so that visibility was crap and traction and braking ability were reduced. So…we just slowed down and let the cars pile up behind us; they had chances to pass every 10 miles or so where there was a passing lane. That didn’t stop at least a couple dozen lunatics from passing us with double yellow lines, on blind curves and uphills, and with no visibility to tell if anybody was coming in the other lane. They wanted to speed and so they did. 

After an hour or so of lousy weather we conveniently ran out of the rainstorm about the same time we got off of the curvy mountain road and back onto the plains…Neil wished it had rained on the plains instead of in the mountains but nobody asked him.

Neil grabbed a few shots of the views and mountains at a couple places we stopped along the way.

We thought we were going to run into another serious rain storm…but luckily UT-119 curved to the south around a couple of mesas and then back to the east so we missed the downpour. Shortly after that we joined up with I-70 for about 20 miles then headed south on 119 again…by this time the weather had almost completely cleared up. Temperatures during the day fluctuated quite dramatically…it got down to 49 degrees in one of the rain storms in the mountains and was up to 75 a half hour later down on the plains in the sunshine. Sheesh.

We pulled into Moab about 1600 and found our way to our destination Moab Valley RV Park about 2 miles south of the entrance to Arches National Park. We got all settled into site 68.

This shot was taken the next morning (today) as it was threatening to rain again while we were parking so all Neil setup yesterday was utilities. This morning he got out and held colors, put the sigh, and got the awning out and comfy chairs ready to go. He’s kinda proud of the great view we got…he looked at all the sites available when he made the reservation and specifically picked site 68 since it had the best view of the nearby ridge. There’s another one about the same distance away but behind where he took this shot from.

After that we headed downtown to the Moab Brewery for dinner…we were going to have some stuffed pasta from the freezer but we were so tired we ended up going out instead. After a quick beer and dinner we came back home and were asleep in the recliners by 2030…Neil woke us up about 2230 and dragged us off to bed. He did get a nice shot of this rainbow that was visible when we came out of dinner…it had rained while we were inside. This was a full arch rainbow and he took a picture of the other half as well…but it had light poles and parking lot in it so I didn’t bother posting it. Not bad for a shot with his iPhone though…but he’s looking forward to getting a new iPhone 5s once we get down to Fort Myers since it as a significantly improved camera.

Connie worked most of the day today while Neil vacuumed the house, set up outside, updated some software on our computers, and generally puttered around with things in the IT department. Dinner tonight was some nice tomato sauce with garlic, shallots, red wine, and green chili peppers…served over linguini with a couple of Italian sausages so we would have some protein.

Tomorrow we’re off to Arches National Park then Wednesday and Thursday we’ll do the southern and northern portions of Canyonlands National Park…there are two separate entrances and visitor centers and it’s not possible to get to both in one day. Friday we’re going to drive down to Monument Valley, then do the rest of Arches on Saturday. Sunday we’ll rest up from our week of fun and figure out exactly how we’re going when we leave here.

Cyas.

Saturday morning we got up about 0630 and started getting ready to leave Boise. We had taken a shower and washed the dishes yesterday afternoon so on the way out to dinner (Neil declared it to be Date Nite) we dumped the black and gray tanks…no reason to carry all that extra weight up and down the grades. We were ready to roll and on the road about 0930.

There was a short (10 miles or so) section of freeway shortly after we started that was 1 lane each way (the other side was  getting some construction done on it…but it was a pretty easy run through there and then we headed on east and south on I-84. Traffic was pretty light most of the day and by the time we were into Utah the temp was up in the high 80’s. We pulled into Golden Spike RV about 1530 or so and got registered. Connie was having some tummy issues after lunch…we ended up eating pretty late (about 1400) and she was really hungry so ate too fast and ended up with terrible gas pains. As a result; she wasn’t paying as much attention to things as she should have…and inadvertently left the parking brake on the Mazda not engaged when she was helping Neil pull into the site. He saw the car rolling and yelled at her over the radio…but she didn’t understand him at first and by the time she figured it out it was too late. The car did a slow roll about 20 feet until it was stopped by the front tag and bumper hitting the step in rail on the side of the pickup 3 sites down. No harm done though…the owner Ron was pretty laid back about it so we moved on.

We ran up to the local deli/bakery and got a roast beef sammy to split for dinner and a couple of cream cheese brownies for breakfast tomorrow…then we watch the Alabama-Colorado State game. The Tide won 31-6 but didn’t really play that well offensively and it was only 17-7 into the middle of the fourth quarter. They scored a couple of late TDs to put the game away but it was a lot closer game than the score indicated.

Tomorrow it’s Mass early then we’re off another 286 miles to Moab where we’ll be at the Moab Valley RV Resort for a week…looking forward to some great hiking, photos and all that fun stuff.

There are some really nice mountains out to the east of where we are here in Brigham City…I’ll try to remember to get a photo tomorrow and add it to tomorrow’s post…we’re sort of in a large valley area with the Wasatch Mountains on the east side and a large flat plain which has Great Salt Lake on it as well as most of the major cities in Utah.

Here’s a shot of our site 44 at Golden Spike; a nice little park right off the freeway.

Cyas.