Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (05-07-12)

The 1.9 million acres of Grand Staircase Escalante are some of the most rugged, and remote acreage in this country. This area is so remote, it was the last area to be mapped, and for a long time, showed up on maps as a huge, blank white spot.  there aren't many roads that go through the National Monument, but Utah rte 12 is one of them, and its one of the most beautiful drives we've been on.  



     Our first expedition was to the visitors center, which we've been to before, but this time we wanted to check out the hiking, and also to find out where there was BLM land where we could park for free because the state park here only had two nights available.  

Armed with the information we needed, we set out early the next day to hike to lower Calf Creek Falls. This is an interpretive trail, so we picked up a sheet that pointed out what we would be seeing along the way.  There were petro glyphs as well as ancient granaries high in the canyon walls. 

After a 3 mile hike into a canyon, we turned a corner and this is what we saw.  Such a gorgeous waterfall!  When I had found out about this particular hike online, the person who hiked it mentioned swimming in the pool, so I was all excited and ready to bring the swim suits.  When we talked to the ranger however, she smiled and said we can swim there, but with a water temperature in the low 50s, we may not want to.  Oh well. We did wade in up to our knees, and watched some young guys swim all the way to the falls.

With our time here somewhat limited, we made the most of the day by continuing our adventure after the hike.  We drove up Rte 12 and came to an area where we could stop and admire the view.  To our surprise, the view included a top-down view of the falls that we had just hiked to!  If you enlarge the picture you can see the waterfall, but it also gives you a sense of what hiking in a canyon is like around here. (the top picture also pictures the canyon we hiked in.)

We spent the afternoon driving Hell’s Backbone Road, a road that was built in the 1930s by the CCC in order to connect Boulder Utah with the neighboring towns.  The main attraction on that road, beside the feat of actually building the road itself, is the 100 ft bridge with 1500 ft drop offs on both sides that they built.  Quite an accomplishment on their part!

Continuing our exploration of the area today, we headed to Hole in the Rock Rd. and parked the trailer in a small lot.  We had to drive 26 miles down a washboard road to reach our destination- Coyote Gulch, home of Peek-a-boo and Spooky canyons. We debated for quite a while whether we wanted to drive to the end of the road, but in the end, decided it wouldn’t be worth the 100 mile trip.  The road ends at Lake Powell, at the “hole in the rock.”

In the 1800s, a group of Mormons left the Salt Lake area and headed out to colonize a new area. They decided that coming through this way would be a short cut to their destination, saving them months of traveling.  150 people, with 80 wagons made their way through this area,  and kept going, right up till they came to the Colorado River, which was 1800 feet below where they were standing. There was a small “hole in the rock” leading to the river, but it wasn’t big enough for anyone to get through.  They spent the next 6 weeks blasting and digging in order to widen the hole, so they could reach the river.  Tenacious!

After climbing down into Coyote Gulch, Peek-a-boo canyon was the first one we came to, but the entrance to the canyon itself required a climb of 12 feet.  Since the canyon is only .3 miles deep, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk of injury, and I waited for Paul at the entrance. 

He actually said it’s one of the coolest slot canyons he’s been in, with all kinds of nooks and crannies, and places he had to either crawl through, or climb over.  As soon as he left, a woman who works for the National Park Service as a biologist showed up, so I had a nice chat with her while I waited.

A half mile further down Coyote Gulch was Spooky Canyon.  I know why it’s called that- because it’s so narrow and dark (and cool, which was great, since it was hot out) that it’s spooky.  Apparently quite a few people have literally become stuck, and have had to be rescued.  Luckily we weren’t two of them. Again it is a short canyon, but fun.  You can see Paul in this picture if you look into the canyon. He couldn’t wear his hat or his backpack to get through this area.

As if we didn’t get enough accomplished today, we hitched the trailer back up and left Escalante at about 2:00 in the afternoon.  That’s highly unusual for us, since we ordinarily like to be finished traveling by then, but we decided to get as far as we could towards Capitol Reef National Park, our next destination.

Bye Fresno… (05-02-12)

Hello, Utah.  Well, tomorrow we’ll say hi to Utah.  Right now we are in Boron, CA overnight after leaving Fresno this morning.  We plan to leave here very early in the morning because the forecast calls for pretty strong winds.  We didn’t unhook, so we should be able to scoot out of here pretty quickly.

I really fell down on the job of picture taking in the last week or so, so I asked Kirk to send me the pictures that he took last weekend.  This is the best of them. Paul and I went up to Kirk and Karen’s cabin again to make them work on the cabin some more.  Paul and Kirk tore apart one of the bathrooms, moved the sink and were planning on moving the toilet, but they decided they need a corner toilet, which they didn’t have, so they stopped after moving the sink.

In the meantime, Karen and I were painting the living room wall, and a closet.  The projects were fun, partly because it wasn’t our cabin, and partly because we just have a good time with Kirk and Karen, regardless.

The month we spent in Fresno went by very quickly and had a different feel to it than our usual stops.  There wasn’t any sightseeing or hiking- it was more like just day to day living. We spent some days working on projects, or hanging out at the trailer.  Thanks to Suzy, I had a gym membership for the time we were there.  I didn’t go as often as I should have, but at least I went a few times!  We managed to squeeze in quite a bit of socializing between projects, giving us a pretty good idea how it would be if we actually lived near our friends, although we all agreed we are exhausted and couldn’t have kept up that pace.

Our original plan called for us to leave Fresno last week, but one of the major things Paul needed to do in Fresno was install the Straight-line System on the trailer axles.  We have tandem axles on the trailer and the way it works usually is that the front axle is pulled along, and the rear axle is pushed.  (In theory) That can cause irregular tire wear, which we have had an issue with in the past.  DRV, the manufacturer of our trailer, shipped us this Straight-line system for Paul to put on, at no cost to us. Unfortunately, the package was missing a few crucial bushings, which meant we had to wait for them to arrive to finish the upgrade. Once they got here, it only took him a few hours to finish the installation. Once that was done, he rotated the spare tire into the mix, so he can assess whether there is still a tire wear issue or not.

Since we had to stick around anyway, I decided to go ahead and order my new Verizon iphone. It arrived yesterday, so I’ve been busy updating all the contacts etc.  Unfortunately the phone that has most of my contacts is dead and I won’t be able to retrieve everyone’s phone numbers.  I have some of them, but not all. 

I’ve also been doing a fair amount of research.  In the next month we will probably visit 7 national parks and monuments, before landing in Salt Lake City at the beginning of June. I don’t in general like to over-research things, but I also don’t want to arrive at these parks with no idea of what we should see and do.  So, all of my traveling friends, if you have thoughts on Capitol Reef, Zion, Canyonlands, Grand Staircase Escalante, Mesa Verde, Arches, Moab, and Natural Bridges, bring it on!

I think we might have waited just a little too late in the year to visit these parks, based on the weather forecast, so I also did some shopping and got some new hiking boots that will be more appropriate for hot desert weather. My good boots are really backpacking boots- heavy, leather, hot, but very stiff and sturdy. I bought a pair the other day that will be lighter and not waterproof, so they’ll breathe better in the heat.  We are already figuring we’ll have to get up and out early every day, to beat the heat, but if we need to do that, that’s ok too.

I’ve also been calling and bugging Yellowstone National Park every few days.  When we booked our reservation there for this summer, we made two separate 11 day reservations, with a 3 day gap between them.  Our thought was that we would try to get there in mid June, but if it was too cold or snowy, we’d cancel and just use the early July reservation.  Now we’ve decided we might as well use both reservations, so we can relax and enjoy the park.  But, we still have a 3 day gap.  So, I call every few days to see if there are any cancelations. The people on the phone are awesome, and apologetic. They encourage me to keep calling- there’s bound to be a cancelation!  Of course, we’re so big, there aren’t many spaces that will fit us, but we’ll keep checking.

So, tomorrow it’s on to Zion National Park. One of the hikes we tried to do there last time, but couldn’t, was The Narrows. Hiking the Narrows is essentially hiking for miles in a river. In order to do the hike, the water flow has to be below a certain level.  Last year it definitely wasn’t.  This year we’ll have to see!

The View from the Window

What does 1.9 million acres of remote and rugged landscape look like? We found out the answer today. Paul was not in the mood to drive on a major freeway, so when we left this morning to head towards Denver, we took Utah Rte 12, the Scenic Byway. This area was mapped by John Wesley Powell and his sister, and was the last area in the lower 48 states to be mapped. We passed through multiple National Parks and monuments along the way, with a constantly changing landscape. We climbed in elevation a couple of thousand feet, and then back down again. We stopped at scenic turn-outs along the way whenever we wanted and just enjoyed the beautiful day.
We went through the small town of Boulder Utah, not to be confused with Boulder Colorado. Boulder, UT was the last town to receive it’s mail by mule rather than automobile. They also didn’t have electricity until 1947. It wasn’t until the new Rte 12 was finished in the 1980s that the townspeople really had consistant access to the surrounding towns.

At the end of the day we landed in Green River Utah, and spent this evening booking campgrounds for the next week.