Out West Adventure: Part 2--Pipe Spring and Valley of Fire

Mon. May 20: Monday was a very productive day for us. This is what we managed to do:

• We both took showers
• Made oatmeal for breakfast
• Did one more load of laundry
• Took down the camper
• Dumped the gray water to be ready for some dry camping
• Dropped from 8800ft elevation down off the Kaibab Plateau into Fredonia at around 3800ft, getting over 40mpg in the process
• Stopped by for a quick visit at Pipe Spring National Monument. Here we learned that the Kaibab Indians had used the spring for several thousand years and held it sacred. The Mormons came in with their ranches and pioneers and took it over, eventually building a fort OVER the spring, thus securing it from the Kaibabs. Now it is on the Kaibab Reservation Land and is jointly administered, with at least one Kaibab Park Ranger.  We took a half hour tour of the fort, which really served more as a residence and business venture by the Mormons.
• Returned eventually to I15 towards Las Vegas
• Arrived around 5:00 at Valley of Fire State Park, which we had visited in the winter and thought would be a great place to camp. Coming in from the north, we found a wonderful site at Atlatl Rock campground. This will go down as one of our Top Five camping places, EVER. There aren't many sites to begin with and we found one literally tucked down between the rocks with no campers in sight anywhere around us. The towering red rocks gave us some shade and later, when the sun had set, radiated heat for a surprising length of time. It turned out that the campground had flush toilets and showers, which we didn't expect, and a whole loop of full hook-ups, where all the other RVs went. We spent a lot of time, even after dark, just sitting and marveling at the powerful setting. Before dinner we rode our bikes for about 20 minutes up the scenic drive past Atlatl Rock, with its petroglyphs, and Arch Rock, with its campground, enjoying the almost complete lack of traffic at nearly sunset. Marv grilled chicken breasts for dinner, with enough left over for another meal. We hoped to see fantastic stars in the dark skies but the surprisingly bright half moon made it too light. Nonetheless, we sat outside, reading from our tablets or just enjoying the perfect temperature and slight breeze.

Pipe Springs

Outdoor spring pool

Inside the "Fort"

Enclosed spring run

Valley of Fire campsite in the rocks

Enjoying the evening

On our bike ride

Halfmoon over the rocks

Out West Adventure: Part 2--Grand Canyon north rim, Day 14

Sun. May 19: Originally, we hadn't planned on including the Grand Canyon in our travels. We had been to both rims in 1976 when we had our whirlwind camping trip Out West and again in the nineties with the kids, when we took the mule ride down to the point. But when it came right down to it, we decided we couldn't be this close to it and not visit. Taking only enough time to eat a quick cup of yogurt we got on the road early to drive the 43 miles to the north rim. We climbed another 300 feet or so, passing many acres of burned pines in the Kaibab National Forest. The main fire was apparently in 2006 and as a result the whole area is being filled in with colonies of aspen, which spread from the roots and each stand is genetically identical. They were just getting their early spring, yellow-green leaves and were all about 4 feet tall. We passed by large alpine meadows and saw many Kaibab Mule Deer, but none with their characteristic 30” antlers. And then we entered the park. The north rim is 1000ft higher than the busy, crowded south rim, and it’s amazing how different it is. While the south rim is desert country, the north is all pine and aspen forests. The north rim only opened four days before we arrived and wasn't fully staffed yet so the Ranger programs were very limited and the staff was all shiny and new. After walking a little way along the rim and out on Bright Angel Point we went to the Lodge to have the Breakfast Buffet as a sort of Brunch. We ate our fill and then filled our water bottles with water from the park’s Roaring Spring and drove to the North Kaibab Trail. This historic trail is the only way into the canyon from the north rim. It goes from Roaring Springs Canyon to Bright Angel Canyon, which opens into the Grand Canyon. We opted to hike 2 miles down to The Tunnel and just past enough to look down on Redwall Bridge and Eye of the Needle. The trail is sandy and full of mule “calling cards”, with lots of steps, some of them pretty deep. At the top there are lots of pinion and Ponderosa pines but as we got to our turnaround point, there were more desert plants and less shade. We had dropped 1000 feet in elevation and the temperature at The Tunnel was in the mid seventies with a few clouds. Then we had to climb out of that canyon. OOOOPPPPHHHH!! That was hard. By the end it was all I could do to slog 50-100 yards and then stop to huff and puff and take a drink and wait for my heart to stop pounding. But the whole time we were being passed by people who had hiked from the south rim, or from Cottonwood Campground or the Ranch Lodge down at the river. We even met two groups who had left at 2:30 in the morning from the South Rim who were hiking to the North Rim and then back to the South Rim all in one day. They were amazing!!!! I figured if they could do that 64 mile, 20 hour hike I could make it back to the top. Marv, of course, didn't find it nearly as rigorous as I did, but even he was pretty tired by the time we got back to the truck. 

Campsite near the Grand Canyon north rim

On the trail

Roaring Springs Canyon

Roaring Springs Canyon opening to Bright Angel Canyon

Coconino overlook

The Tunnel

Climbing out, we have to get way up there!

We were both happy to drive the road out to Point Imperial to look over the easternmost part of the canyon. Then we drove out over the Walhalla Plateau to Vista Encantada, Roosevelt Point, Walhalla Overlook, and, finally, to Cape Royal. There we walked about a mile on the trail where one can see the Bright Angel Window, then walk out on the Window for an amazing view of the canyon and the only views from the North Rim of the Colorado River, ten miles below. We exchanged picture taking with a couple from Pennsylvania and found out the woman had grown-up in Mount Joy, where Chuck and Mary now live! We strolled with them out to the far point of the trail at Cape Royal, chatting about our travels and mutual experiences as retired teachers with the man. It was a very pleasant way to finish our time at the North Rim before driving back to the RV Park for a simple dinner and early bed.

(See Above)

Looking west in the Grand Canyon

The Window

Close-up of The Window

Atop The Window

Looking down at the Colorado River

Close-up of the Colorado River

Patch of snow near the north rim

Out West Adventure: Part 2--Monument Valley, Day 13

Sat. May 18: The morning dawned sunny and clear with temperatures in the mid-sixties. We made it over to Monument Valley by soon after 9:00 and looked at their Cultural Displays in the museum, especially enjoying the story of the Navajo Code Talkers who were so crucial to the US in the Pacific during World War II. We learned that the entire Navajo reservation covers one-third of the 130,000 square mile Colorado Plateau. This is also the area where John Ford made so many Westerns with John Wayne and Henry Fonda, among others. The 17 mile, unpaved, very rough Valley Drive passes among many of the “Monuments”, fanciful and towering rock mesas and buttes formed over eons of time by water, ice and wind erosion.  We were happy to leave the camper in the parking lot and slowly creep along the drive, which took about 2 hours. Before leaving Monument Valley we had a delicious lunch of their “world famous” Green Chili and Indian Fry Bread at The View Restaurant. By 12:30 we had reattached the camper and were on our way to Jacob Lake, 47 miles north of the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Marv had mapped out how he wanted to drive there but followed the GPS directions instead of his plan and, when we got near Lake Powell and were going to drop south on US89 in Arizona we found that the road had fallen in and was closed. We had to go north back into Utah and come from that direction, about 30 miles out of the way. Luckily we found the road to be less rugged than our original plan and we made good time and good mileage until we climbed onto the Kaibab Plateau to an elevation of around 8000ft. Because we were finding that the propane gas option on the refrigerator isn’t effective over about 5500ft. we found an electric campsite at a nice RV Park near a dry BLM campground we first considered. The RV Park had a laundry and we were there early enough to do two loads of clothes as we ate a light dinner of soup and leftover blue corn tortillas from The View. Ken called soon after dinner and we had a nice, long chat to cap off the evening as the temperature slipped into the forties. 

Sunsetting on the Red Rocks

Three Sisters (left) and Totem Pole

Iconic view which evokes the old Westerns filmed here

Out West Adventure: Part 2--Natural Bridges, Day 12

Fri. May 17: This will not go down as the best day of the trip, but it had some good points. After getting groceries and gas we got on the road towards Monument Valley. There wasn’t a lot of traffic as we drove up and down many hills past more amazing rock formations. At the last minute we decided to turn off towards the Needles region of Canyonlands National Park, not to go all the way to the Visitors Center but to see Newspaper Rock along the way. 2000 years of humans have left petroglyphs carved into the rock varnish under a protecting outcropping. It is eerie and awe-inspiring to stand near a quiet wash and think of all the others who have passed this way. Along the road we saw a real, live cowboy on horseback, with two dogs, driving a small herd of cattle on the open range. We returned to South 191 and continued, stopping at a helpful Welcome Center and Museum in Monticello. From there we decided to go a little bit out of the way, but hardly, to visit Natural Bridges National Monument. They have a nice Visitors Center with a film explaining the park’s protection of the three bridges and of ancient cliff dwellings of ancestral Puebloans. We ate our picnic lunch on the porch of the Center and then drove the nine mile “Bridge View Drive”. There were very few people present which made it quite pleasant to explore in partial sunshine and with temperatures in the high sixties. There are short walks to give views of the three bridges, Sipapu, Kachina and Owachomo, as well as one to the overlook for Horse Collar Ruin. At Owachomo Marv took a longer hike that took him under the bridge. It was about 4:00 when we finished at the park and we began to take the road to take us 32 miles straight down to Monument Valley. But at the top there is a sign warning that it includes a 2.2 mile stretch of gravel road with many switchbacks and 10% grade. That sounded a bit too dicey for us with the camper. So instead we had to go 65 miles around and got there at 7:00. The brochure on Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park said they had a dry camp ground at the Cultural Center but when we got there we found out it is under construction. We had no option but to go to the overly expensive Goulding’s RV Park nearby. I made spaghetti sauce while Marv got things cleaned up from all the dust we had gotten in the desert and driving today’s roads. The WiFi at this park wasn't strong enough to allow us to do much but post one entry on the Blog. We were both pretty exhausted as we tried to make plans for visiting the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park in the morning and then go on to the north rim of the Grand Canyon for the weekend. 

My real, live cowboy!

Newspaper Rock

Fun telephones through the ages at Museum in Monticello

Sipapu Arch

Rugged scenery 

South Horse Collar dwellings

North Horse Collar dwellings

Natural Bridges Panorama

Owachomo Arch

Mexican Hat rock on the Navajo Tribal lands

Out West Adventure: Part 2--Dead Horse Point, Canyonlands, and Arches, Days 7-9

We rose early Thursday to break camp and get to nearby Arches National Park. The Visitor Center is down nearly at the level of the Colorado River, just a few miles north of Moab. We were happy to find that we could leave our trailer in the parking lot and decided to wait to view their video about the park for two reasons; this park gets over a million visitors a year and people were already pouring in and it was getting hot and we had some rugged trails we wanted to hike to see some of the 2000 arches that have been charted in the park. First we made a reservation by phone at an RV Park in Moab then we were ready to explore by about 9:30.

   Started by driving up the side of the canyon to get into the park proper. Bypassed most of the features closer to the entrance.

    Hiked the strenuous 3 mile trail to view Delicate Arch in its natural amphitheater setting. Along the way we saw the 100+ year old cabin for the Wolfe Ranch. This was the hardest trail we had taken so far, with an elevation change of 480 feet, much of it up the side of “slippery rock” and the end of it along a narrow ledge cut into the steep wall of rock. It was a spectacular sight and well-worth the difficult climb. I was very proud to have been able to make it and couldn’t believe the (young) people making the climb with kids in packs on their backs. One woman was starting out with a kid in a stroller but there is no way she could finish that trail with a stroller.

    Drove on to farthest point at Devil’s Garden area. We had our picnic lunch in the shade nestled next to looming red rocks. Then we hiked 1.6 miles to see Tunnel, Pine Tree, and finally Landscape Arch. Landscape is so named because at 306ft. it is the longest expanse in the park.  In 1995 it dropped a 60 ton chunk off its eastern span, which alert hikers managed to capture on video. Must have been pretty exciting!!

    We made more stops on our way back, having completed two of the major hikes we wanted to do. We took a short .3 mile trail to Sand Dune Arch, walking through fine red sand much like the white sands at Sleeping Bear back in Michigan. It was cool and pleasant within the narrow rock walls to get there.

   The last major trail was one mile long in the Windows Area to view North and South Window Arches and Turret Arch. Marv had the energy to climb up underneath Turret Arch but, having hiked 6 miles, I was done for by then. Marv still had energy enough to hike another half a mile to view Double Arch in the same Windows area.

   Finally we walked partway around Balancing Rock to get pictures of this iconic landmark.

    While at the Balancing Rock parking lot we parked next to the “Google Streets” car! The driver told us he was doing “Street views” of the trails in the park.  The camera and equipment weigh 40lbs! He told us that his work will be on Google maps/earth in 4 to 6 months.  He is the only person doing this west of the Mississippi and his friend covers the states east of the river.

It was a breeze to coast back down to the Visitors Center where we watched their video by Discovery Channel on what we had just seen. We were incredibly bushed by our 9 hour day as we made our way to the RV Park. It turned out to be tight packed and noisy. But we took a quick dip in their pool before taking showers and then walked a block to the Moab Brewing Company, which Janice and Lou had recommended to us. We had great dinners of chicken (Marv) and beef (Peggy) bar-b-que with two of their brews and had enough leftovers for lunch the next day. We were very frustrated by the RV Park’s convoluted WiFi access and finally gave up trying to get anything done and fell, exhausted, into bed with earplugs to shut out the noisy neighbors going strong after midnight.

Petroglyphs behind Wolfe cabin

Those specks on the rock hill are people. Yep, that's where we're heading!

Peggy climbing the slippery rock hill

Sand at the top of the rock hill, but we're not to the Delicate Arch yet

Narrow ledge to get around the cap of the hill to Delicate Arch

FINALLY!!! Delicate Arch

Tunnel Arch

Yucca blooming by the trail

Marv under Pine Tree Arch

Arch just beyond Landscape Arch

Trail to Sand Dune Arch

Under Sand Dune Arch

Narrows on path to Sand Dune Arch. It was nice and cool in there.

Broken Arch

More Moab Desert flowers

Marv doing his part to uphold the Park at North Window Arch

View through North Window Arch

Turret Arch

Double Arch

The GOOGLE  Street View Guy!

Balancing Arch

 Wednesday was devoted to exploring the Island in the Sky region of Canyonlands National Park, just a few miles from Horsethief Campground. The park has three regions. Island in the Sky at 5800ft. is most accessible and therefore most visited by about 300,000 people a year. Needles is south of Moab and gets 200,000 visitors and The Maze, which is west, is accessible only by four-wheel drive and then hiking. One is recommended to enter it only with a guide and they get only 25,000 visitors a year. The three areas are defined, formed, and separated by the Green River and the Colorado River. To make the most of our time we stopped first at the Visitors Center for a video and our passport stamp then began their Scenic Drive to see the features of the park:

  With few stops we drove the spur to Upheaval Dome to take the 1.8 mile moderate trail to two overlooks. There was a lot of up with some down and over “slippery rock” (which wasn’t slippery). There are two main theories of what caused the uplift at the bottom of a 1/3 mile across depression—either a giant asteroid or the rising of a buried salt dome. Either away, it’s an eerie sight.

   Drove to the Green River Overlook to see the many canyons carved by the river 2200 feet below.

    Back to the main drive with a stop at White Rim Overlook for a very windy picnic lunch with the temperatures in the low 80s.

    At the end of the drive we hiked the 2.0 mile trail to the Grand View, looking down 1200 feet to white rim, the plateau through which the Colorado and Green Rivers have cut another 1000 feet down. From here one can see for miles in every direction, including the snow capped 12000ft La Sal Mountains to the east, looming above Moab.

    A half mile hike to the cliff-edge Mesa Arch. There we traded picture-taking with a charming couple from Poland that we had noticed at other stops and whom we would see the next day at Arches.

By then we were exhausted and “hiked out”.  We had driven 37 miles inside the park and hiked for 4.3 miles over some pretty rough terrain and in desert conditions. We returned to the campsite to relax and make dinner. When we went up to the next campsite to take pictures of the sunset we got some camera tricks from a young German man traveling with his father. They had identical Canon cameras with different lenses so he was using both for different effects. Later in the evening he brought us a Styrofoam cooler with lots of dried and canned food, explaining that a Dutch couple had given them to him and his dad before they flew home and they weren’t going to need them all. Very nice! Each night was a wonderful temperature for sleeping and the campground was absolutely silent leaving us big fans of BLM dry camping. 

The Upheaval Dome from first Overlook

Green River Canyons and White Rim Trail

From Green River Overlook

Blooming Desert Flowers

Mesa Arch

Second Sunset

Tues. May 14: We picked up as quickly as possible, slowed a bit by conversation with the friendly couple next to us from Wyoming. Following the CD we did the west side of Capitol Reef with a couple of stops to see and photograph Chimney Rock and the panorama looking over the reef, the Henrie Mountains, and the vast surrounding landscape. The third and final scenic drive on the CD took us to the east side of the Park, where we could see what the reef looks like from the east, or the “back”. We met a German couple at the east entrance, just entering the park for the first time, and we gave the CD to them to use, since we would have no more use for it. Scenic Byway 24 followed the Fremont River for many miles through valleys and canyons sometimes broad, sometimes narrow. We turned north at Hanksville and drove 46 miles through the San Raphael Desert before joining I70 east to 191 south to Moab, Utah. 

More petroglyphs

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                                                 Moab Desert

We hoped to camp along the Colorado River but the first campsite was full and the second was closed for spraying. Before driving further along the river without knowing if we’d find camping, we decided to go to the travel information spot in Moab and on their recommendation decided to go to Horsethief, a BLM Campground, between Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. We bought some groceries and then headed up into the high desert on the plateau. The temperature in Moab had been in the mid-nineties and at 2200 feet higher it was still in the lower nineties. We will be dry camping, meaning the campground of 56 sites has outhouses and picnic tables but no water. Anticipating this, we had filled with water in the morning and were in good shape for Horsethief. By the time we had set-up and relaxed with a beer in the shade it was nearly 5:00. But Dead Horse Point State Park was only a couple of miles away. So we drove over there and went through their visitor center to learn about desert pothole ecosystems and cryptobiotic soils, and their importance to the animals and plants that exist in this formidable climate. There was a nice nature trail along the rim of the steep cliff that goes down to the Colorado River 2200 feet below. Then we drove out to Dead Horse Point where cowboys would drive wild ponies across the narrow necked ridge onto the point and then block their exit to pick out ponies they wanted. Legend has it that one time they didn't release the ponies they didn’t want to keep, leaving them on the point, to die from lack of water within sight but not reach of the Colorado River. By the time we finished on the Point it was 6:30 and the temperature had dropped into the high eighties so we thought we'd bike the 4.4 mile Pyramid Point Trail. The park brochure listed it as an easy to moderate trail that should take about an hour. It showed that it started out with the Intrepid Trail, which is only a mile and was listed as easy and perfect for families with young children or very beginning riders. Well, I made it a few hundred yards over the large rock outcroppings and loose sand and gravel, before I admitted my butt was being thoroughly kicked and I was in over my head. Marv went on as far as the rim edge and overlook, about half a mile perhaps,  before he too turned back to join me as I made my way back to the truck.  It was quite demoralizing and made us feel pretty old for the first time. Back at the campsite the lowering temperature and friendly interactions with some fellow campers restored our spirits as we made dinner, waiting to eat our Spanish Rice and salads until we had walked up the hill to view a spectacular sunset. The campground was silent as we cleaned up and relaxed before bedtime.

Looking down on the bright blue potash dehydrating pools from the point

Blooming Hedgehog Cactus

The Colorado River from 2200 feet above

"Easy" Trail, huh?!?!?!

First sunset