Great Basin National Park (10-10-21)

 Where was I?  Where did I leave off?  What did we do?? Those are questions that I ask myself when I wait too long to write a blog post (like now.). I will start a little backwards- we are home, and have been in Havasu for a little over a month. More on that later (probably much later).

So. Number 46, for us.  Great Basin is the 46th national park that Paul and I have visited. Every time we wanted to come, it was the wrong time of year- Wheeler Peak sits at 13,000 feet, and usually sees snow by October. 

We spent a week in Baker NV, exploring this area.  Since most people will never get to Great Basin, allow me to be your tour guide.

Great Basin was designated a national park in 1986. It gets its name because it is located ……in the Great Basin. 

This basin is the largest endoreic watershed area in North America- that’s a fancy way of saying  that all the precipitation that gets here, stays here. There is no path to the ocean.  It all either evaporates, falls into a lake, or sinks into the ground.  As you can see, this basin is enormous, and this national park preserves a small portion of it. 

It also preserves Lehman Cave, and is a designated Dark Sky community.

With the weather forecast being perfect for hiking, we made our way up the scenic drive to the Alpines Lake trail.  

Along the way, it became obvious that winter is on its way.

The Alpine Lakes trail is only about 3 miles long, but it starts at about 10,000 ft and I wasn’t sure how my lungs would handle it.  Neither of us had any issues, and we enjoyed the lakes that were along our path.

One of the other things this park is known for is the Bristlecone Pine. 

These are the worlds longest living tree and they can live for almost 5000 years.  This tree is 3300 years old.

These trees thrive in extremely harsh conditions, and because of that, grow very slowly. Because of the slow growth, the wood is very dense, and resistant to decay and erosion.

An interpretive trail tells their stories. This particular tree was “born” in 100 BC and “died” in 1400 AD.

We were happy to hear that there would be a star party during our stay in Baker.  We arrived at the visitor center in plenty of time, and were treated to a short, informative talk by an astrophysicist while we waited for dark.

  Unfortunately, there was a bright “flashlight” in the sky, called the moon, and it was hard to see much of anything. Add to that, there were only two telescopes, and about 80 people, so it wasn’t worth staying.

That’s ok though, we have been to some pretty good star parties in the past.

Apparently I was a little late doing my research for this park, and almost didn’t realize in time that the tour of Lehman Cave required reservations, which were limited by Covid protocols.  By checking the web regularly, I was able to snag two spots, when someone canceled.

The cave was discovered in the late 1880s, and by 1922, it was a national monument. Unfortunately a lot of damage was done during that time period, but there are still some really cool formations.

These are called shields, and there are about 500 of them in the cave.  It’s not really clear how they were formed, although there are several theories.

Our final hike in the park was a 5 mile hike with 937 ft of gain, to the only glacier in Nevada. The trail was pretty rocky (maybe that’s why they call it Rock Glacier). 

Actually, a rock glacier is just a glacier that is covered with debris and rock. The trail ended at about 11,000 feet and although tiring, was well worth it.

We didn’t want to leave the area without exploring a little outside the park, so we took a day to head up to Ely, NV, home to the Nevada Northern Railway Museum.

Over 100 years old, this is still a working rail yard, and as such, very dirty and noisy.  In fact, it’s home to a cat named Dirt.

With all the tools and machinery, Paul had a great time exploring and checking things out.

Since September was starting to wane, we figured it was time to head home.  Baker NV is less than 500 miles from our house, just a bit too long to make in one day.  Besides, there was somewhere we wanted to stop along the way- Cathedral Gorge State Park.

This park has incredible rock formations- like nothing we have ever seen before.  

It reminded me of a Disneyworld playground. 

The formations are made of silt, clay, and volcanic ash.  They are solid and fun to climb, although you do have to watch your step- there are also lots of holes to fall into. 

And finally, we went home.

Hiking Capitol Reef (09/25/21)

 We spent a week in Capitol Reef National Park years ago, but our game plan this time around included one thing, and one thing only…hiking.

Looking at the trail map, I had to go back in my blog and try and determine which hikes we have already done. There are enough trails here that we didn’t need to repeat any unless we wanted to.

We started with Golden Throne. The trail head is all the way down the scenic drive, at the end of a dirt road (we were glad we chose this hike first- it rained the next day and the road was washed out for several days).

 

The trail is 4.5 miles with 1200 ft of gain, and we felt every foot of it. The trail followed along an edge of the “mountain” as it climbed higher, to the peak.

To give you and idea of the scale, the arrow points to several people on the trail.

The “throne” itself wasn’t particularly exciting, but the trail was good and it was worth it, although by the time we made it back to the truck, I wasn’t really sure. I knew the hike took a lot out of us, and it turns out it was mostly due to the heat- it was 104* when we finished the hike.

The next day was much cooler, and our hike was a 3.7 mile loop called Chimney Rock. We both enjoyed this hike, stopping often to admire the views.

The following day, Sunday, we had a plan, but when we got to the trailhead, it was overrun with people and there was no where to park so we went to Plan B.  Along the way we stopped to pick some fruit in the orchards that are still in the park.  We had never done that before- we ended up using the apples to make apple crisp.

Anyway, as we drove to our Plan B, it became apparent that the road we needed to access was closed due to flooding. Thwarted again, we had no Plan C, so we gave up and went home.

Monday was what we call a twofer.  We hiked two trails.  This time we got up and out the door early and managed to get a parking spot at Hickman Bridge Trail. 

Its also the parking lot for Cohab Canyon trail, but we knew Hickman Bridge would be the crowded one so we headed there first. The trail heads up first, and then over to a natural bridge. There were actually two smaller bridges along the way that were really neat too. Its hard to get a decent picture of a bridge or arch.

After two miles and 350 feet of gain, we finished that trail.  As a side rant, we had 2-3 groups ask us if they were “almost” to the bridge. They  were less than 1/4 of the way there, they were all wearing inappropriate footwear, already hot, and not ONE of them had any water.  I literally told all of them they would never make it without water- so they turned around.

Having finished that hike, we walked across the street and headed up Cohab Canyon trail. We never planned on hiking the whole trail, we just wanted to get as far as the scenic overlooks. It turned out to be 2.5 miles and 500 ft of gain.  The views of Fruita were worth it, for sure.

Our final hike before leaving Capitol Reef was longish, at 5 miles, but had very little elevation gain so we got to give our legs a rest.

We hiked through Grand Wash- it wasn’t the most picturesque trail but we still enjoyed it.  Although, looking at the pictures again, it wasn't too bad.

On the Move (09-12-21)

 

Rather than stressing over finding reservations for Labor Day weekend, we decided to head to our friends Tom and Dianne’s house. We were soon joined by our friends Liz and Randy and the 6 of us had a fun filled weekend. Fun for the guys is having projects to work on, so they spent time moving wood and trimming trees, while we girls chatted, and cooked.

Tom and Dianne came off the road of fulltiming to return to homesteading, and their yard is full of fresh vegetables and egg laying chickens.  The dinner that Dianne cooked for us was amazingly tasty and fresh.

Of course, when it was our turn to cook we made our traditional Mexican meal.  It’s always a great time at their place, although we did decide that our day focuses an awful lot on food!

Moving on from TD Homestead, we stopped briefly in Green River Utah, before heading to Capitol Reef National Park. Our main purpose in Green River was to catch up with our friends Dave and Nancy, who are staying in nearby Helper UT.

Green River is known for their watermelons and Nancy asked us to bring her one. At the farm stand, they ask you when you want it to be ripe, and they pick one for you accordingly. When we opened it later, we discovered it looked and tasted more like a honeydew melon.

The town of Helper is one of those interesting old towns that works to keep their history alive, including some of their old buildings, which are still in use today. 

We strolled down Main St. looking at buildings and reading historic plaques. After a while we were approached by a woman who said that she could see we are obviously tourists, and she gave us a couple of brochures about the town. We asked how she knew we were tourists and she said “I’ve been following you down the street”.  In a big city that would be creepy, in a small town, it was awesome.

Helper actually got its name from a train engine. Back in the day, when trains came through town, they needed to add extra engines in order to make it over nearby Soldier Summit- and this is where those engines, called helpers, were attached.

After lunch we took a drive out to some mining ruins (always a fun time for Paul) where we enjoyed speculating about what each building was used for.

 

Paul and I have been to Green River twice, but for the life of us we couldn’t remember if we had ever been to the small museum in town.  I had to read through my blog to discover that in fact, we had not.

The museum was small but interesting, detailing not only John Powell and his expeditions on the Colorado River, but also others who came after him and made their living running  and exploring all of the nearby rivers.

Leaving Green River, we headed towards Capitol Reef National Park. Our path took us through the San Rafael Reef, created by a volcanic bubble which caused an uplift.

In the 1970s, it took 4.2 million dollars to create 8 miles of highway.

Within 30 minutes the scenery completely changed and we were now driving through green rolling hills. I really enjoy driving through Utah- the state is gorgeous, and its difficult to get bored.

Glenwood Springs CO (09-05-21)

 

SILT

Well, first of all, we didn’t actually stay in Glenwood Springs, we stayed in  Silt, about 25 minutes away. Had we realized how far it was, we might have looked for something closer.  Oh well, our first adventure was to explore the tiny town of Silt (1.4 square miles). There was supposed to be a farm to market store, so we headed there first to get some goodies, but it was closed. We did notice that down the street there is a Historical Park, so that was our next stop.

There are about 10 or so old buildings on the property, which were interesting to meander through. We were hoping to learn about the town history, but there wasn’t much information about the town. Judging from all the farming equipment, we assumed it was a farming community, and later found out that in fact, they used to grow sugar beets.  I have heard of sugar beets but don’t know much about them. Turns out 30% of the worlds sugar production is from sugar beets.

Paul is always fascinated by antique gadgets and equipment, and was happy to explain to me what this gadget is. It’s a smudge pot, which would be loaded with diesel and used on a highway as a flare. As an added footnote, I absolutely remember having baskets like the one in this picture.

I like looking at the day to day items of yesteryear…such as this iron. To my way of thinking, the old saying “too many irons in the fire” should mean that someone was heating too many irons at once and couldn’t iron their clothes fast enough to use them all. In reality of course, it refers to a blacksmith and how many irons he has in the fire.  Apparently a good blacksmith will have Just The Right Amount.  Anyway, I doubt either of my kids has ever even used an iron.

Aspen

 

Our intent on our second day was to hike Grizzly Creek- an 8 mile hike with lots of elevation gain. We weren't sure we’d make it the whole 8 miles, but I was game to try.  It didn’t happen though. Many people may have heard that Rte 70 headed to Denver, was closed for quite a while due to a mud slide. Although it is now open, the parking lots for the hiking trails are not. We took a drive through the beautiful canyon before heading up to Aspen for the afternoon.

John Denver was one of my favorite musical artists when I was growing up, and I was happy to hear there is a John Denver Sanctuary in Aspen.

 There are all kinds of pathways in the park, and a rock garden that features boulders with the lyrics to his songs etched into them.

Flat Tops Scenic  Drive

This scenic drive took us through the White River National forest, which is actually the second national forest to ever be created (the first was Shoshone). The road loosely follows the White River. Years ago this area was home to the Ute Indian Nation, until an unfortunate misunderstanding resulted in their removal to a reservation. 

 

It is still home to one of the largest Elk herds in the country. We were therefore expecting to see some elk- but we only saw one.  Had we been camping up here at 10,000 ft. we could have done some hiking, but today we didn’t have time.

Doc Holliday

When you do a search for the town of Glenwood Springs, three things pop up : Hanging Lake Trail (closed due to mudslide), the Hot Springs Pool, and Doc Holliday’s grave.

One of our few hikes was a short one to his grave. All I know about Doc Holliday is that he was at the shootout at the OK Corral, in Arizona.  Turns out, he spent his last few years in Glenwood Springs, suffering from late stage Tuberculosis.  He died destitute, and was buried here, and since  no one knows exactly where his grave is, a memorial was put in place overlooking the town.

 

I was interested to learn that Kid Curry is also buried here. In 1904, after robbing a train, he was so severely injured by the posse that chased him, that he took his own life. I will admit, most of my "knowledge” about Kid Curry comes from the TV show Alias Smith and Jones.

 Rifle Falls

There are 3 state parks near us, and one day we drove out to check them out. The most interesting one is Rifle Falls State Park.  

There is a short hike that circles the falls. Taking our time, we walked the trail and enjoyed the falls.

Glenwood Springs Hot Springs Pool

 

Our last day in Glenwood, we finally made it to the hot springs pool.  This thing is enormous!   Built in 1888, it is the largest mineral hot springs pool in the world.  “The small” pool is 40’ wide and 100’ long. It’s kept at 104*, a little too hot for me. 

 

The regular pool is 100’ wide and 405’ long.  There are swim lanes for lap swimming, and a diving board at one end.  It is kept at about 93*, much better for us. After about 2 hours we were waterlogged and made our way back home.