The Adventures of Devin and Maggie

Updates!

2008-03-04T07:18:00.000-08:00

NEW POSTS will show up below - SCROLL DOWN

We are now back from Alaska and living in California, but I am enjoying reliving our trip as I continue to update the blog, so check back, and I hope to have the trip completed by this summer (in case we take a blog-worthy vacation!) Posts show the actual date they happened, not when I post them, so they will appear below this note.

Posts to look forward to: the rest of British Columbia, Yukon Territory, Northwest Territories, ALASKA, and our return trip and happy ending!

In the meanwhile, you can check our photo albums (which will also get updated) here: picasaweb.google.com/devinandmaggie/

Alaska Highway: Entering the Yukon

2007-07-24T14:45:00.000-07:00

Road from Liard to Teslin

Soon after we left Liard Hot Springs, we saw a large herd of bison grazing along the highway - mostly cows and calves. We had seen "watch for bison" signs, and they weren't kidding! Luckily, the highway is straight and has wide shoulders for better wildlife visibility, and there is not much traffic, so it is easy to avoid collisions. It would be very intimidating to ride through a herd of Bison on a motorcycle, though, not to mention a bicycle!

Today it rained most of the way, but as the sun came out, the scenery got better, and it's quite beautiful here. This stretch of the Alaska Highway plays keep-away between the British Columbia and Yukon border, crossing back and forth several times before finally deciding to move into the Yukon.

Along the way, we began to see mystery tracks along the side of the road. At least Devin thought they were tracks - I was pretty sure they had been made by something mechanical for the highway, since they were so regular, there was a set on each side of the road, and they went on and on for miles. I just about had him agreeing with me, when we caught up with the makers of the mystery tracks - two HUGE Bison bulls, one on each side of the road, walking north. The mystery deepens! The cows and calves were miles back - why were these two solo bulls walking north on the highway, on opposite sides of the road yet together, away from the herd? Were they outcasts? They were both so huge and healthy looking, it is hard to imaging they had lost a dominance challenge - maybe the females just didn't want them around...?

Finally we got to the official border crossing and stopped to take our obligatory photo of the sign - "Welcome to North of 60" and "Yukon, Canada's True North." Shortly after the border we came to Watson Lake and many more signs- tens of thousands more - the famous Watson Lake Signpost Forest! According to the website Explore North,

One of the most famous of the landmarks along the Alaska Highway was started by a homesick GI in 1942... and you can even add your own sign to the over [60,000] already there!
In 1942, a simple signpost pointing out the distances to various points along the tote road being built was damaged by a bulldozer. Private Carl K. Lindley, serving with the 341st Engineers, was ordered to repair the sign, and decided to personalize the job by adding a sign pointing to his home town, Danville, Illinois. Several other people added directions to their home towns, and the idea has been snowballing ever since.

What a crazy place. We didn't stop or add our own sign, but did drive around the block and took photos of the tens of thousands of signs taking up a couple of acres of land.

Further up the highway, we checked out Dawson Peaks RV Park as a potential place to camp - it was very nice, in a forest on a lake, and we read in The Milepost that it was featured in the Sue Henry Alaska Mystery,"Dead North" which sounded interesting, but something told us to keep going that day.

We ended up at the famous Mukluk Annie's, where everything is FREE, FREE, FREE!

Free camping on Teslin Lake
Free dump and fill
Free boat ride with dinner
Free RV wash with dinner
Salmon Bake (not free, but a great deal by itself!)

What a deal! The free campsites are really nice, overlooking Teslin Lake - we needed water and to dump our tanks, so that was great, too. We were hungry and went to dinner - omg. HUGE portions! Quite good, too - salad bar with green salad and fixin's, potato salad, pasta salad, rolls, baked beans and baked potato, then a huge plate of salmon and/or ribs, grilled right there, coffee and/or tea to drink, and even dessert!

The only problem was I fell asleep after such a huge meal and missed the free boat ride. It was supposed to leave at 8pm, and I got there probably a minute or two after and the boat was already pretty far out, so I think they left early. So sad, standing at the dock alone... I guess I'll try to collect on the way back, if they are still open.

Teslin and Teslin Lake seem to be big Tlingit areas - with museums and stores offering Tlingit goods. We crossed the continental divide again today - up here the water on the west drains to the Bering Sea/Pacific via the Klondike River, and the waters to the east drain into the MacKenzie and into the Arctic Ocean up by Inuvik. The native people on this (west) side of the divide had Pacific salmon runs and a plentiful, regular food supply, so tended to be more settled in villages, where the ones in the Arctic watershed generally did not have a reliable food supply in one place, so followed the Caribou herds and were more nomadic. A very clear example of how environment affects culture.

I talked to some bicyclists in front of the restaurant who were riding the Alaska Highway south, and I was thinking how intimidating it would be to have to ride between those Bison bulls on a bike! The woman was from Quebec and had monster thighs - she's obviously been doing this a while. She is riding to South America! The man was from Germany, and they were just riding together for a while for safety - they had just seen a bear crossing the road earlier today.

Today, in addition to the bison, we also saw Harriers, Golden Eagles, deer, and two black bears - one dead and one alive. The lake here has swallows - barn swallows and rough-winged(?) and terns and gulls. I'm sure there are ospreys and bald eagles, too. We passed through lots of moose country, but didn't see any today. We also passed through a Caribou Herd area, but didn't see them, either. Still, a herd of bison, two huge lone bison bulls, a golden eagle, 3 harriers, a deer and 2 bears is pretty darn good for one day's drive!

More photos from today's drive

Liard Hot Springs

2007-07-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

Liard (rhymes with "weird") River Hot Springs Provincial Park was quite wonderful. The public campgrounds in Canada are all so nice and well-maintained. This one was quite full and we were lucky to find a campsite, but we found a nice private site with trees all around. This area is very lush with vegetation. After driving all day, Devin is usually pretty tired, but I wanted to take a look around, so I took a radio and walked over to check out the hot springs. They were much farther in than I expected - maybe almost a mile into the forest on a boardwalk path. It first crosses a large fen, then enters the forest. I felt a bit like Dorothy on the yellow brick road - expecting to encounter the tin woodsman around any corner!

When I finally got to the lower pool, I was surprised to find several people there since I hadn't seen anyone on the way in. I foolishly did not wear or bring my swimsuit, since this was supposed to be just a short scouting mission! So I continued a bit further, checking out the "Hanging Gardens" before it started to rain in earnest.

The "Hanging Gardens" were dry, but the gardens along the boardwalk all the way to the end were lovely - I noticed 2 kinds of orchids (the white Ladies Tresses, and the green Rein Orchid), white Anemones, yellow bush Potentilla, wild Rose, Baneberry, False Solomon's Seal, wild Raspberry, Horsetail, Rushes, yellow Monkeyflowers, Fireweed, and some blue flowers - I thought they were a kind of flax, but I think they were something else, and more I can't remember.

I decided to head back as it was starting to rain harder, but in the shade of the large trees I was staying dry... along with several dozen mosquitoes who had the same idea, apparently! After a while, getting wet didn't seem like such a bad idea, as it wasn't all that cold, so I started down. I stopped at the lower pool and sheltered in the dressing room, but started feeling sort of creepy being in there with no good reason. I sure wished I had a swim-suit, since the pool looked so inviting and steamy in the rain. It was definitely not a "swimsuit optional" vibe, though, so I walked back in the rain.

When I got back I was able to take a hot shower in the RV and crawl into bed all warm and toasty.

The next morning we discovered that the towel over the Jeep window may not have been a great idea. Since I had attached it by hanging the ends inside the removable "Freedom Hard Top" (front of the roof), and since it had rained on it, it was all wet and had wicked water into the Jeep - it was humid and a bit mildewy smelling in there - ewwww. So we left the windows down and put the towel on the roof to dry and decided we'd just risk rocks hitting the windshield.

We decided to stay another night here so Devin and I could go back up to the hot springs and soak. Devin took his Segway, which was great on the boardwalk. We walked all the way to the upper springs, but the Alpha (lower) pool is much nicer than the Beta (upper) pool. Though beautiful, the upper pool is 3 meters deep (over 9 feet) and mucky on the bottom. It's like very warm bathwater - you can swim in it. But there are no benches, just stairs going in, so it just wasn't as inviting for us. Both are natural, minimally developed (not cement pools, just added decks and benches). The lower pool had a nice gravel bottom, a waterfall between pools that you can sit under while it massages your shoulders and back with warm water, underwater benches out in the middle and at the edges, a deck with stairs into the pool at various points, changing rooms, benches, and composting toilets set away from the water. What a beautiful setting!

After a nice long soak, we had a pleasant walk back as it started to rain lightly again. We saw a moose cow and calf in the fen area on the way back! A perfect ending to another wonderful day.

See more photos of Liard Hot Springs

Alaska Highway, Fort Nelson to Liard Hot Springs

2007-07-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

Today's drive was spectacular! Quite a contrast from day 1 on the Alaska Highway (yesterday), we passed through some of the most spectacular scenery and wildlife sightings of the whole road today.

Stone Mountain Provincial Park took us up into the Rockies again, over Summit Pass, the highest point on the Alaskan Highway, and wildlife was abundant. We saw many Caribou with calves and Stone Sheep, a kind of bighorn sheep. Technically, the stone sheep are "small horn" sheep, but I couldn't have told you the difference by horn size. They were a darker color than our Mojave and Sierra Bighorn back in California, though. And not at all shy!

The weather was beautiful - stormy with little spates of rain toward the end of the day. Nice cloudscapes. The road took us along beautiful rivers and through gorgeous mountains - this is definitely an area that would be worth a trip to explore all on its own.

There is camping in Stone Mountain and also along the beautifully surreal turquoise waters of Muncho Lake, where we saw even more Stone Sheep clinging to the cliffs along the road, Caribou and calves, and even Bison! The Highway around Muncho Lake is quite a feat of engineering - we read that they lowered men on ropes to place explosives underwater to make the road cut in the cliff. It's one of those places where you almost feel guilty for driving at the same time you are glad the road is there so you can see it.

Devin said, "it's nice to be away from the hustle and bustle of places like... Montana" ha. But that's the way you feel as you get farther and farther north - fewer and fewer cars are on the road, more wildlife, and more a feeling of the freedom of the open road. Adventure is always just around the corner!

We drove to Liard Hot Springs, where we camped for two nights. Liard rhymes with "weird," by the way. We got into camp early enough that I went on a little scouting walk to the hot springs - fantastic! More about that next post.

See more photos of today's adventure

See more photos of Stone Sheep

Alaska Highway, Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson

2007-07-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

Dawson Creek is "Mile 0" of the Alaskan Highway! We had to drive by the little Mile 0 marker "downtown" Dawson Creek and get the obligatory drive by shot. Since it is in the middle of the road, it was a little hard to get from the passenger side, so Devin did a little driving and shooting in the RV. I bet Dawson Creek sees a lot of this!

A little history - the "AlCan" was built as a WWII military road. It was built by the US Military, through Canada, to connect the lower 48 states with Alaska. It was truly an amazing feat, building this road through the densely forested, mountainous terrain, criss-crossed with many large rivers, in a very short time, even by today's standards. It's worth reading about the history of the Alaska Highway in the Milepost and at the various historical markers along the way. They started at both ends and met in the middle!

Speaking of the Milepost, a bit of advice: don't do what we did and wait until you get to Mile 0 to buy it! Canadian prices are much higher - think of paperback prices, where they show US and Canadian prices.... You'll save about $10 if you buy it in the US. Plus, the Milepost contains valuable information about roads getting to Mile 0 in Dawson Creek, and you can read ahead some, and do some planning ahead, if you have it sooner.

As long as I'm giving advice, we learned another valuable lesson in Dawson Creek: just because our wireless broadband card worked there, didn't mean we were in our home territory. We had signed up for the Verizon "America's Choice plus Canada" cell phone plan, and assumed it covered our wireless broadband card (for accessing the internet) also. Not true. Later we got a bill for about $600 - we were being charged by the minute because we were roaming. Be sure to find out all the details of your plans in advance of leaving the country! From Dawson Creek north, we didn't get much internet or cell service, anyway, in spite of what the service area maps had shown. "No, I can't hear you now..."

Our first day on the Alaskan Highway was uneventful. As we left Dawson Creek, we passed more agricultural fields - hay and the brilliant yellow fields of canola (I think) - very pastoral. It was a bit windy, too, so it was good there wasn't much traffic and the road is quite straight, for the most part. Devin talked about our position in the tourist open... ha. He says we're winning, usually. It's good he has such a rich inner life.

Great visibility today! Fair weather cumulus clouds marching off to infinity.

After a short way we began to get into Spruce and Aspen forests with wildflowers along the road. Beautiful, but no spectacular scenery. Just miles and miles of spruce forest - mostly black spruce - fading up and down in elevation to white spruce, aspen, and pine. This peaceful monotony was broken occasionally by evidence of oil and gas exploration - 'poison gas' signs on side roads sort of discouraged stopping and picnicking.

Landmarks along the way were the Peace River, crossed by a long, uphill bridge, and Bigfoot! The Peace River Valley is a lovely area with farms and fields along the river.

Bigfoot, well, Bigfoot Crossing is apparently a truck stop. We didn't stop, but got a picture...

We arrived in Fort Nelson and stayed at an RV park on the north side of town, with a "saloon" where we ate a tasty dinner.

We camped next to a gentleman from Iowa with a large motorhome - he had a blanket across the windshield of his tow vehicle and I asked about it. He got to talking about the roads, and he said they were "worse than you could ever imagine"! I sort of doubt that... we have pretty good imaginations, and plus, we've practically taken the RV 4-wheeling... out in the Mojave Desert in Johnson Valley, when we had to go around an RV stuck in the sand - we "jumped" a sand wash and all the dishes fell out of the cabinets... but that's another story. he he.

Nonetheless, I decided maybe it would be a good idea to cover the Jeep windshield, so I took off the "Freedom Hardtop" (the front part of the roof) and put a big beach towel across the windshield, held in place by the (reattached) roof, doors, and windshield wipers. Now any stray gravel might get its impact dampened a bit, at least.

Jasper to Dawson Creek

2007-07-16T19:52:00.000-07:00

As we left Wabasso campground, on our way up to Jasper, we saw a bear right on the side of the road - I even got a photo. Our first photo of a bear!

While we are enjoying these beautiful parks and the Canadian Rockies, we are anxious to continue on with our journey. You see, Canada is nice - nice and expensive!!! Gas is over $4/gallon here! And groceries are expensive, and it costs $17.80 a DAY to just BE in the national parks, and camping is an extra $20 on top of that, for unimproved campgrounds! So we're talking about $38/day just to camp in the national parks in the Rockies. Didn't make us feel like lingering too long, though it was beautiful.

We went up to Dawson Creek from Jasper via the "Scenic Route to Alaska" - a bit of a short cut. We missed seeing the neat couple we met in Baja who live in Edmonton by doing so, but it is getting late and we want to get to Alaska before it closes! Just kidding. I really regret not taking the extra side trip, time and miles to visit Alethea and Bernardo - they were just a wonderful couple, but we needed to get to a place with WiFi by Monday so Devin could do some work, and we wanted to be on the Alaska Highway asap. Dawson Creek is "Mile 0" of the Alaska Highway.

The "scenic route" paled by comparison to the incredible Icefields Parkway and scenery of Banff and Jasper, but it was pleasant. We drove through forested rolling hills, crossed a big river, and drove by a very large coal mining operation of some sort - not a mine, but where the coal was either shipped from or processed or something. We passed one small town at the crest of a hill before descending into another river valley, and ultimately getting out onto flatter country.

Getting up to Dawson Creek we left the Rockies and were on the prairie - the towns could be anywhere with malls and housing tracts, except for the Real Canadian Markets and the Tim Horton's. Some beautiful fields of bright yellow flowers - I think it may be Canola oil (Rapeseed) plants. Also, more hay.

Dawson Creek is a nice town - it has a mix of newer shopping areas, and some historic districts around the "Mile 0" marker, and agricultural surroundings. The Northern Lights RV Park where we stayed had some nice views of the sunset over town and was across from more fields.

Nothing too exciting happened in Dawson Creek - Devin worked three days remotely; we got the RV oil and leveler fluid changed. Devin went to clinic for more antibiotics. Friday, my eyelid started swelling again (the same one that sent me to the emergency room in Jackson Hole), so I started on the eyedrops (which I had leftover), and washed the lid with baby shampoo, and it went back down.

The clinic experience is worth recounting: we called to see if we could get an appointment and they said to come on in - they were really nice, of course. We saw the doctor and got a prescription, which we were able to pick up in their pharmacy, no problem. The interesting part was paying - Canada, as you may know, has national health care. So when I asked how to pay, they asked if the price they quoted sounded fair and reasonable. I wonder if they would have lowered it had I said no? But $55 for an office visit and $40 for prescription (10 days 3xday penicillin) seemed quite reasonable. They weren't used to dealing with cash - no credit card method, checks were "a problem" and so they let me go get some cash from the credit union around the corner, and the nurse made change from her purse!

The Northern Lights RV Park has some nice services for travelers - one of their sons does work on RVs - he changed our oil and hydraulic leveler fluid, as I mentioned before, and they also repair windshield chips and make special rock guards for tow vehicles. The rest of the trip we would see these guards and know that those people had stayed at Northern Lights! More on the need for rock guards later.

We had a thunderstorm!! The rain was nice, and it cooled things off for us, finally.

Beautiful sunsets at the Northern Lights RV Park.

Click here for a few more photos

Radium, BC to Jasper, Alberta - Kootenay/Banff/Jasper Parks

2007-07-15T14:55:00.000-07:00

We drove from Radium, BC to Wabasso Campground near Jasper, Alberta today, and took so many photos! It was just a beautiful day, with spectacular scenery, as we traveled the Icefields Parkway from Banff to Jasper. Our day's drive took us through three national parks - Kootenay, Banff and Jasper! Along the way we saw a bear, glaciers, lakes, rivers in amazing colors, waterfalls, and incredible mountains.

The Wabasso campground was pleasant, and our campsite was near the Athabasca River. We took a bypass to get here - which was a fairly narrow and bumpy road after the smooth highway, but nice to be on a quieter side road in the beautiful Jasper National Park.

Here is a slide show of some of the highlights:

Crossing into Canada

2007-07-14T14:43:00.000-07:00

Oh Canada! I want to be Canadian. I'm mad at Devin for not becoming a Canadian citizen when he had a chance - when he was married to Maple! (If he had become a Canadian citizen then, I could now, and we could move to Vancouver!) Canadians just seem... generally less insane than Americans. Canada is so neat and, well, nice. And beautiful - the Canadian Rockies are Gorrrrrgeous!

We kept seeing these signs along the road, and so we followed them. The signs advertised smoked salmon and more for miles, and finally led us to a fish truck! We bought some smoked salmon - yum! They were frozen, and I kept them cold and ate them like popsicles - Devin thought the idea of Salmon-sicles was gross, so, hey, more for me! He he.

We drove up through funny name entry - uh, Port Rooseville, up to Radium Hot Springs. There were these odd boulders up on legs at the crossing - art? Nice easy crossing with no waiting - and yet again, we didn't even get checked.

At Radium, we were looking for a campsite, and realized that if we went west there, through Kootenay National Park, there were only two choices and the likelihood of us finding a spot big enough on a Saturday evening in July, so close to Calgary and the Stampede days, were probably pretty slim. So we decided to go north, which would take us through Yoho National Park and into Lake Louise, from where we would continue on up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper. We stopped at the visitor center in town and the terribly nice staff loaded me up with free information and maps, and we headed north - only to find that traffic was backed up because of a bad accident, and it could take 2 hours to clear... another very nice Canadian drove over to our window to tell us this. Canada is just so nice!

So, since we were by a driveway, and up the road there would be no turning around for us, we turned around there. I noticed it said RV Park, so we figured it was serendipity and drove down. Secure gate with intercom to get in - it looked extremely nice, but when I asked how much, it would be $50 for the night!!! Not so nice. So we consulted maps, turned around and drove back south of town to a nice little Provincial Park, Dry Gulch, where we found lots of open campsites for $17 a night. That's more like it.

Driving through the campsite, we were witness to the final stages of what must have been a very heated argument, as a guy was throwing someone's stuff all over the campsite, a girl was on her cell phone crying across the street. Okay, maybe not all Canadians are perfect. Then the campsite staff came running - there were at least four of them, and when I was down at the pay station, the Mounties were there! The RCMP - a very nice young man, and I directed him to the trouble. They all spent quite some time sorting it out - quietly - and ended with the arguers leaving and apologizing profusely. Okay - when do drunken (I'm assuming here) arguments end with heartfelt apologies to authorities in the states? Not that often, I'd wager. Back to nice.

A Thunderstorm came through as they were sorting things out - with the same rhythm of build-up, crash and flash, then gentle rain and sunshine through the clouds in the end. Very nice - especially since it cooled down the very hot afternoon considerably! Devin and I sat out in lawn chairs during the rain! I wanted more, but it was great to get any after such heat.

I made another version of "Bamix Bean Dip" for dinner (with black beans, pepper jack cheese, non-fat plain yogurt, lime juice, some salsa, cumin, lemon pepper, cayenne, and paprika), and that's all we ate (with chips). A nice cool meal. I wish we could run the air conditioner on the inverter - I mean, we can, but it would drain our batteries pretty quickly, I'd guess. It's hotter here than it was in Baja!! Of course, we were there in March and April, and it's July now.

With new tires in front, and properly aligned front wheels, our ride today was SO much smoother!! Now we are ready for the Alaskan Highway - and we'll probably get there by next week. We hope to be in Jasper tomorrow night, and then we need to find an RV Park with good WiFi so Devin can do some remote consulting/contract work for a few days. After than, we are on the Alaskan Highway! We may have to stay in Dawson Creek for the WiFi, as there aren't any listed in Jasper, and as long as we are heading up, we may as well go to Mile One of the Alaskan Highway.

Glacier National Park

2007-07-13T15:31:00.000-07:00

Enjoy our "Going to the Sun" Slideshow:

After getting our alignment done this morning, we spent the rest of the day enjoying the scenery! We drove through Glacier on the "Going to the Sun Highway" - beautiful! It is a narrow, winding, mountain drive that hangs on the edges of cliffs, goes under and over waterfalls, up above timberline at Logan Pass, and is generally gorgeous. Highlights were seeing Mountain Goats - even if they were right in the road, surrounded by tourists, licking water off the road (instead of drinking from pure mountain streams nearby - I guess they liked the saltiness? The "Weeping Wall" where we drove under misting waterfalls with the top off the Jeep and I got a little shower, views of Bird Woman Falls and numerous others, beautiful mountains, and , yes, even some glaciers. We also enjoyed the area behind the visitor center at Logan Summit - meadows full of Glacier Lilies, snowfields, and scanning for wildlife.

I mentioned previously how Devin stayed in a cabin in Glacier years ago, and read "Night of the Grizzlies," which happened right in the area where he stayed. I read it, too, so I could share in that memory with him, and we drove by Lake MacDonald on our way out and looked at the cabins in "Kelly's Camp" area where he stayed. Though we kept our eyes out, we didn't see any grizzlies today, though.

The weather was VERY warm - it was 100 degrees in Kalispell, and not all that much cooler in Glacier - no wonder the glaciers are melting at such a rapid rate! Glacier is still a beautiful National Park, though it will be sad to see its namesake glaciers all retreat into tiny snowfields as world temperatures rise. In places like this, as well as above the Arctic Circle, Global Warming is a very real and very serious threat. Here it is to scenery and the local ecosystem, but other places it is to people's very way of life and even ability to live there. No one in Alaska is arguing about global warming - they see it up close and personal. But more on that later...

After our long day's drive (and yes, we are contributing to carbon emissions that contribute to global warming by doing so, as is everyone who drives - we have bought carbon offsets through TerraPass, however, and we hope that helps), we returned to Kalispell by way of Whitefish and the UPS store, where we picked up packages in the nick of time - we walked in just as they were about to close! Now we are ready to head north.

Back to Kalispell to get ready to head to Canada tomorrow!!

Kalispell - Legacy Timber Town

Saw a sign in a store window that said "We Support the Timber Industry" and it reminded me of Humboldt County, where I went to college. It made me sad, because it reminded me of the divisiveness and polarization of that community around forest management issues. Politicians like to reduce complex issues into simplistic sound bites and talking points, like "jobs vs. owls" which is SO untrue - but gets people elected as folks fear for their livelihoods. Logging is an old and time-honored profession, and I hope there is still logging hundreds of years from now - because of course, that'll mean there's still forests big enough to log. Sustainability isn't just for forest ecosystems, wildlife, fisheries, watershed, and recreation, but also for the economy and jobs. If loggers want to retire and have the next generation also able to retire doing what they love doing, we can't cut down the last remaining forests!

Kalispell is a "legacy" timber town, because although the timber industry still seems important here, there is a large amount of growth and new construction, shopping malls, and suburbs sprawling out from the town's center, which is also beginning to see renewed growth.

It's a beautiful area, obviously undergoing some difficult changes in economy, but I see lots of hope there for it to become a really wonderful place to live and enjoy.

Bozeman to Kalispell

2007-07-11T15:28:00.000-07:00

We headed up to Kalispell today, on the way to new tires, alignment, and a visit to Glacier National Park on the way to Canada.

On the way, we took a side trip into Butte (or "boot" as the nice lady on the Ford referral switchboard called it ;-), which is a neat old mining town. It reminded me a little of Santa Rosalia in Baja, but bigger; it was very historic, on the side of a hill, with lots of neat old brick buildings. And a HUGE copper mine, bigger than the town. Apparently, Butte is the place to be on St. Patrick's Day - lots of Irish in the town and the whole town goes nuts. Sounds like fun, if you're into that sort of thing. We just liked the view from the Butte Hill.

Other sights along the road:

A big smelter chimney - according to Josh it was once the tallest freestanding building in the country. All brick.

As we turned to follow the Blackfoot River from Missoula, we saw Bighorn Sheep - a herd of ewes right on road! Our first bighorns of the trip.

The road paralleled the river, and we saw a raft full of girl scouts waving - and giving the "honk your horn!" sign. We honked and made them very happy :)

Lots of tubers and flyfishers on the Blackfoot - nice river!

Devin saw a bear at Big Fork, our second for the trip (and Devin said maybe his best bear sighting). I missed it, so I can't confirm that he wasn't just making it up (kidding). He said it was standing up to see and when we came by it ran back into the woods. Good call, bear!

We passed Swan Lake (and several others along the road) full of lily pads - beautiful!

The Kalispell area is a nice combination of hayfields, rivers and lakes (like the HUGE Flathead Lake), forests and farms.

Once we got to town, we took a tour of Kalispell RV Parks - they all look pretty nice, but those long-term residents... the "neighbors" can make all the difference in your experience.

We went with a beautiful park right on the river with big trees and green grass, but apparently we chose poorly... we immediately were treated to a screaming foul-mouthed rant argument by guy who must be an announcer for Monster Truck Rallies or Wrestlemania - I could hear the veins bulging out on his neck... I was shaken and a little scared - worried about getting caught in crossfire! THEN... we were given an overflow spot on someone's yard with a regular (20amp) extension cord and a garden hose for water - ewww. At the regular price.

We went across street to another park that was mostly visitors, nice folks, had a spot with full hookups for same price! The first park was really nice, actually - the people that worked there were very friendly and they really tried to make it right, but the only other open spot was next to another motley looking group - cue banjo music - eek! Some spots at the first park were great, but taken. In good "neighborhoods" and on the river, very cool and shady, grassy - nice. Too bad about the redneck crack ho's and meth addicts that live there....

Today was a really long day of driving (over 300 miles) and we are getting new tires tomorrow, and alignment on Friday (...the 13th... dun dun DUN).

Speaking of tires,

"Tire-O-Drama," continued...

The 40 mph shudder, the one that disappeared after getting the new wheel, reappeared today. WTF? We also had a 60 and 70 mph shudder. Devin says they've always been there, but I wonder. Seems our alignment is getting worse by the minute. Hoping the alignment is the cure-all! maybe we've got major suspension problems - but we do have that Continued Service Plan from Good Sam that should help, if so!! We also bought oil and fluid for hydraulic levelers. Devin decided to change the oil himself, and we are having an oil drain quick connect shipped to arrive Friday also. AND, we are also getting an air compressor for our tires, and a new battery for my laptop. So Kalispell/Whitefish will be business days!

We do hope to get a trip through Glacier National Park in, too.

Mo Tires

OMG - our tires were almost bald!! the left front WAS half bald, and it wasn't when we started out yesterday morning!!! So in one day, we had an inordinate amount of wear. These tires have only about 5,000 miles on them!! Bad alignment can really mess with your tires when you weigh 9 tons. No wonder my feet hurt... ha.

We are going to check to be sure we don't have worn king pins or the like that would allow the tire to wobble, but we think maybe it was just cumulative - the tire was so unevenly worn that it pressed even more on the worn side - like driving with it on the side almost. We'll find out when we get our alignment in the morning.

WOW - what a difference!!! The alignment was WAY off and is now fixed, and with new tires, inflated properly, it's like gliding on ice it's so smooth!!! Well, in comparison anyway.

All's Well That Ends Well - no more tire drama! Hooray!!

Tire-O-Drama

2007-07-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

We moved up to an RV Park in Bozeman, but ended up having to deal with motorhome stuff instead of visiting my brother-in-law like I had hoped we would do. The main thing I regret on our trip are the people we've missed - I wish we could do this forever so we could take the time to visit everyone! But since this is the only year we'll have to do this huge of a trip, we do feel a bit of pressure to get places like Alaska before winter so we'll have time to get to all the places we want to see.

Wheels, Tires, Aligment - Oh My!

Background:

First, we developed a shudder at 40 mph - this happened after we replaced our spare and flat (from Baja) in southern California. At first we thought maybe the wheels had been moved around, since we did a tire shuffle to make sure we had matched sets, and maybe the wheel that was out of true had been in the back where we didn't feel it. Now we are starting to suspect that it was the alignment we got in San Dimas. I think it was a really, really bad alignment.

But then again, the wheel ~was~ out of true and couldn't be balanced (we found this out in Grand Junction at the Big O Tire Store). Anyway... in Arizona (Dead Horse Ranch State Park), we noticed there was this black residue on the sides of the RV and we couldn't figure out what it could be... we now think it was tiny shreds of our tires being grated by the road and the really bad alignment... the tires looked fine then, on the outside, and they still do. We got all the left side tires balanced in Grand Junction and found out about the wheel.

Now:

We bought a new wheel in Bozeman, and got it put on - no more shudder! yay! But they pointed out that our front tires were really worn. Upon inspection, they were right - they are badly worn on the insides, indicating a very poor alignment. Maybe they couldn't align the tires properly because of the one being out of true, and maybe it was moved from rear to front, which is why we didn't have the problem before, so maybe it's not particularly anyone's fault, but the combination of these things has eaten up a pretty new (and really damn expensive) pair of 19 inch RV tires.

So now we need new tires and an alignment.

Devin called everywhere and no one seems to do alignments on RVs! Not the Ford Dealer, not the RV service center, not the tire store that replaced the wheel and pointed out our bad tires and need for alignment... Tire-o-Rama in Belgrade could do it, but not until Friday. We've already been here almost two weeks, and would really like to move on, before it gets too late to go to Alaska!

And not only this, but no one in Montana, apparently, sells (or has in stock) the Goodyear RV Tires we want!

Finally we found an alignment shop in Kalispell - still no appointments till Friday, but at least it is near Glacier and we can move on a little closer to Canada.

The reallly funny thing about the tires is Devin was searching on the RV.net forum and found a guy that was having the exact same problem about a month ago - he was in Missoula, and was looking for the exact same tires! He finally settled on Michelins and had them installed in Kalispell, so we may end up doing the same thing.

Night of the Living Dead Moth Attack!!

2007-07-07T11:45:00.000-07:00

Last night we found out our screens don't work really well. There was a thunderstorm, and some rain - finally! A wonderful relief to the heat, and the smell of the sweet grass and hay in the rain was wonderful. Our RV Park is right on the Yellowstone River, and apparently, there was also a hatch last night.

We had our windows open for the breeze and our lights on inside the RV, and we suddenly noticed the screens weren't holding the thousands of small moths on the outside.... it was like a horror movie! the door screen was absolutely covered with moths and there was a small gap in the screen at the top where it was coming out of its frame. They were crawling through this gap, like orcs breaching the wall at Helm's Deep... AAAAAHHHH!

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit - ha. But we did see several places in the screens that either were loose from the frame or where the screen frame didn't sit tight against the weatherstripping against the window, where they were getting in. This made us think we need to fix that before going to Alaska, and having mosquitoes, which would be FAR worse, pour in through the leaky screens! Worse because they are smaller and not as easy to notice, and of course, because of the whole biting and itching thing.

I ended up using the vacuum cleaner to get rid of the moths - some survived and could be seen fluttering around in the clear dust container, poor things. Vaczilla won out over Mothra's progeny - Tokyo (and the Moho) was saved!

Beartooth Highway

2007-07-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

What better way to celebrate our country's birthday than to visit its first National Park? The National Park idea and system is something that makes me very proud of my country! Today, we went on a drive through the northwestern part of Yellowstone and out over the Beartooth Highway, the longest stretch of alpine highway in the lower 48 which Charles Kurault called "America's most beautiful highway," through Red Lodge, Montana, and back through Livingston to our Yellowstone River campsite. What a fantastic day!

We crossed the Blacktail Plateau in Yellowstone, and the Petrified Tree near Roosevelt, and on through the Lamar Valley. There, we saw a huge herd of Bison, which was crossing the road, grazing alongside the road, rolling in the dirt, and generally enjoying life in the Park. We also saw Pronghorn, a little too far away to photograph. Click here to watch a little video from our pocket camera of the Bison.

Coming through the Lamar Valley, we enjoyed spectacular scenery, a few geysers like Soda Butte, lovely brilliant green meadows, and rugged mountains. The road exits the park through Cooke City, Wyoming, and continues on through more gorgeous scenery to climb toward Beartooth Pass. Pilot and Index Peaks were a spectacular sight near Cooke City, which you could also see from up on Beartooth Pass.

Once we left Yellowstone, we began the official Beartooth Highway Scenic Byway, and the scenery kept getting even better as we climbed higher and higher. We stopped at Beartooth Lake, at the top of one grade, which was spectacular. The lake comes up so suddenly we almost crashed the car in our awestruck surprise! Okay, I exaggerate, but it was quite beautiful and too sudden to get a photo of that first view from the road. We pulled into the campground by the lake, which was nice, got some photos of the lake from the boat launch area, and we saw a moose in a meadow. The views were very nice as we climbed, but there was so much more! According to the Scenic Byway website, "The Beartooth area is one of the highest and most rugged areas in the lower 48 states, with 20 peaks reaching over 12,000 feet in elevation. Glaciers grace the north flank of nearly every towering mountain peak." This statement is no exaggeration!

We began to see snowfields and the vegetation changed to tundra. Wildflowers were filling the alpine meadows and flowers I've only seen when I've climbed high mountain peaks were lining the road! Sky Pilots are a beautiful purplish blue flower that are unusual for tundra species because they grow taller than the usual mats and "belly flowers," and I always get excited to see even one or two of these alpine beauties, so you can imagine my delight to see them as roadside bouquets. Beautiful little glacial tarns - small lakes - dotted the hillsides along the road. And we kept going up!! We kept thinking it must be the pass, but no, the road seemed to go over the top of the mountain instead of a pass. What looked like a natural pass had vertical cliffs going down the other side for thousands of feet - oh, okay, so that's why the road keeps going up! It's amazing a road was built here at all, and for those who can't hike up to the alpine life zone, this road offers a rare opportunity to enjoy life at these great heights. It really made us excited to get to the Arctic Tundra we hoped to visit on our trip, in Yukon/NWT and Alaska!

Finally we got to the pass - there are two summits to the pass, and we went to the west summit. There were dark clouds threatening an afternoon thundershower and some early fireworks, but we enjoyed the view for quite a while. We met some guys on motorcycles who were just as excited about the tundra as we were, and who knew about the Dempster and Dalton Highways (one was from Canada) and told us how much we'd love them, and that in August it will be autumn on the tundra and is just like New England with lovely fall colors, only a foot tall! We can't wait.

After the pass, the road descended a winding steep grade into a steep, avalanche prone canyon with a viewpoint looking back up toward the pass and down the canyon. There was a campground at the bottom that looked really nice for future reference.

The road then led out of the mountains through Red Lodge, which we hit at sunset - a great little town, home of Crazy Creek Chairs (we like ours!), with flags lining the charming main street. We cut over to the main highway through fields of wheat and hay in the rolling hills, and headed home. This was the part of the road where the bugs were so bad that we ran out of window washing fluid - we were running it constantly just to be able to see. We had to pull over at a rest stop and use Windex, which we happened to have in the car. A family in a minivan saw me doing that and asked if they could use some - it was bad out there! A few minutes later, it didn't even matter. We bought a gallon of windshield fluid when we got into Livingston before continuing back to the RV Park. Happy Independence Day bugs! Be free of our windshield!

Along the highway, we saw lots more fireworks - it seemed every little ranch and small hamlet along the way had huge fireworks going off!! What a fourth of July!! Enjoy the slideshow of the day below:

Livingston, Montana

2007-06-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

We arrived at the "Yellowstone's Edge" RV Park on the banks of the Yellowstone River north of Yellowstone National Park, just south of Livingston, Montana in the Paradise Valley today. It's a nice RV Park, though we like to call it "Highway's Edge" since it is as close to the highway as to the river, and the highway makes more noise. We ~could~ potentially, put kayaks or rafts in the water here and float to Livingston to visit Josh and Nikki, but we just drove the Jeep in, successfully dodging leaping deer and unsuccessfully dodging the prodigious hatches of stoneflies and other bugs - no wonder there are so many flyfishermen in the river! Leaping Trout, Batman! But I digress... the bugs were so thick on the highways at times that we had to refill our washer fluid, since we had to continually use the window washers to be able to see at times! At least they weren't mosquitoes or deerflies.

Josh, of course, gave us the Grand Tour of Livingston - he is so proud of his little town and loves to show it off in all its western classic glory. It IS a great place, with just enough culture to be really interesting, but not enough to make it snooty. It's a real place, a railroad town with the railroad still the centerpiece. But also with some great restaurants, cafes, shops, and theatre, downtown right alongside the Montana classics like The Stockman and Bob's Outdoor sporting goods. The light was especially good because of a fire in Yellowstone making the sky a little smoky, and giving everything a beautiful glow in the late afternoon light. Lest everyone think of moving there after seeing the pictures and hearing about the town, it does get cold there in the winter!

After we were settled in, we went on a drive in the Jeep - Josh took us up to the Bridger Mountains over Flathead Pass, and we explored almost every side dirt road that led up the mountains on either side of the road. Josh was funny, getting all excited every time we saw another road that looked promising! We found a few really nice little side roads that led up to meadows or views, and some "interesting" dead ends where we all got out to help Devin get the Jeep turned around safely. At one place, an open mountainside meadow with a view of the surrounding countryside, Josh tried to fly a kite, "tried" being the operative word there - ha. There were so many deer flies or meat bees Devin and I stayed in the Jeep to watch, laughing hysterically at ourselves sitting inside watching Josh and his pitiful little plastic kite fight the bugs between small gusts of light breeze - ha. The bugs weren't as bad at all on the other side of the pass, where we found a great road that led up to a fantastic view in the other direction and had a tailgate picnic lunch. Then we went across a little creek where we had to stop and wait for a deer who was getting a drink. Devin and Josh had a laugh coming back on that trail, as they went up the steep side of the trail that I wouldn't "let" them go down - ha. Lots of beautiful scenery and a little Jeep adventure and of course good company - it was a fun day!

Click here for more photos of Flathead Pass

The next day, Devin wasn't feeling well on the day of the parade for the annual Livingston roundup - Josh had told us how great the parade was, and how everyone in the town is either IN the parade or watching it. Sadly, we didn't make it this year, so we'll have to come back again someday.

We did, however, make it to see the Livingston Roundup Rodeo! Devin had never been to a rodeo before!! The rodeo has been a 4th of July tradition in Livingston for something like 75 years. Nothing like going to a big rodeo in a small Montana town to celebrate the 4th! It was one of those all American experiences that take you back to younger days and simpler times. We got tickets for July 3rd, or rather, Josh got us tickets, which was great. The clown was also really funny and sort of like the emcee for the rodeo. For a small town, Livingston puts on a pretty great rodeo, but even more than the calf roping, trick riding, barrel racing, bronc and bull riding, their fireworks display eclipses every other fireworks show either of us has EVER seen! The Pasadena Rose Bowl bills its display as the largest in Southern California, but the one in Livingston was MUCH bigger and better. It just kept going on and on and on... spectacular! We enjoyed it quite a bit! Since it was dusk and we were sitting behind a fence, our photos didn't turn out all that great, but you can still get the feel for the excitement - we were so close that we had to watch out for dirt clods getting thrown from hooves of bucking broncs and kicking bulls! Click play on the slideshow below to see more bronc bustin' action:

Yellowstone

2007-06-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

We drove from Jackson Hole to Madison Campground in Yellowstone, where we got a last minute cancellation so we could stay in this central location in the park tonight. Then we explored the southern loop of Yellowstone's scenic "figure eight" roads. Highlights included the new Canyon Visitor Education Center, where we learned that the waterfall we passed on the way in marks the edge of the caldera, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Yellowstone Falls, the Hayden Valley - Where the Buffalo Roam, and apparently wolves - though we couldn't see any, Yellowstone Lake and the West Thumb Geyser Basin, all topped off by a dinner in the Old Faithful Inn and watching Old Faithful erupt by moonlight. Some photos in the slide show below:

More Jeep Adventures - of a different variety

2007-06-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

Back in Ouray, Devin threw his keys on the dash at a restaurant, and when he retrieved them, there were less keys... it was then that we noticed the black hole that exists between the windshield and the dash in our Jeep! Looking with flashlights, we spotted the rest of the keys wedged between some wires behind the speedometer panel. We used a coat hanger and tried to fish them out, but only succeeded in pushing them down further to where we could neither see nor access them from any point above or below the dash.

We thought maybe some good bumpy four wheel drive adventures would jiggle them loose and they would fall onto the floor, but no such luck. Devin consulted the Jeep forum and got all sorts of commiseration and advice, ranging from "bummer" to tales of items they'd lost, and advice from take it apart, take off the dash, take down the windshield, and my personal favorite, "take it to the dealer and tell them there is a rattle and let them take it apart, and when they find the keys, say "what do you know?! Those are my wife's keys - she didn't mention she'd lost them!"" ha.

Well, after having tried most other things, such as taking off various panels, center console, stereo, etc, Devin finally decided to take the windshield down today. About 4pm we heard thunder, and Devin radioed asking if we had a tarp. Ha. The Jeep was completely taken apart - the windshield laying down on the hood, the hard top off and resting on the tailgate, the dash torn apart, front roll bars hanging akimbo. Devin thought that people driving through the campground would think we had stolen it and were stripping it for parts. A couple of people did stop - the usual, "how do you like your new Jeep?" questions ("fine, except for the key-eating dash hole!")

And guess what? Still no keys. We both tried a while and different techniques to at least see the missing keys, but no such luck. More poking about with the coat hanger, but not even a jingle. Wherever they are, they are well-wedged and I doubt we'll ever find them at this point. With both of us working, we got the Jeep put back together in about an hour. So now Devin has taken the windshield down and he'll never do it again! Why anyone would want to drive, even off-road with the doors and top off, without a windshield, is beyond me. Especially when taking the windshield down removes the front seat roll cage protection! That feature seems like a relic of the Jeep's days in the army, when you could mount a machine gun on the hood and shoot while driving through enemy territory. Not really needed so much any more. Though it all would have been worth it if we had retrieved the keys. Sigh.

Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole

2007-06-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

We dallied about and left Lander quite late - waffling a bit on whether to stay or go. It would have been an easy choice to stay if we weren't running out of time before we have reservations near Livingston, and we had both Grand Teton and Yellowstone to see in the next 5 days. So we finally left around noon, and drove up through the Indian Reservation, which is quite beautiful, and along the Wind River. The Wind River is well-named! Devin was fighting the wind all day, which makes the motorhome act like a giant sail. We drove through Dubois, "Valley of the Warm Winds," which is cute in a tacky tourism sort of way, over the Continental Divide again - this time a 9,658 foot pass through mountains, and down into the Jackson Hole area.

The Jackson Hole valley is incredible - reminiscent of the Eastern Sierra, with a broad flat valley with the Snake River winding through it and the Tetons jutting up suddenly to the west. We saw 3 different herds of bison on the way in, and some pronghorn. We arrived at the Gros Ventre (pronounced "grow-vahnt") Campground, near Kelly and the Teton Science School (where I took a winter ecology course a few years ago - the place looks quite different covered in snow at 15 below zero!). The Campground is very pleasant and quiet - we chose a site in a "no generators" loop with a view of the Tetons over a ridge, surrounded by Cottonwoods and Willows and Sagebrush. It is very quiet - birds are singing, and we may see bears and moose while we are here! Tonight we are going into Jackson for dinner. I better get dressed...

We found a nice little Thai restaurant off of the main street, and it was quite delicious.

The next day, I (Maggie) stayed home in bed and rested all day as I had an eye infection that caused my eyelid to swell up. I thought it might just be a clogged duct, or allergies, so I took Benadryl and soaked it in hot compresses. Devin went out exploring, went back into Jackson, went grocery shopping, shipped off a faulty charge controller for our solar panels (we are boondocking on only half of them now, but it is enough). He drove up Gros Ventre road to the slide - a very large landslide that probably dammed the river when it occured. There is a guest ranch up there that looks awfully nice, and the river looks like a perfect fly fishing river.

The day after we arrived, I finally decided I needed to see a doctor about my eye - it wasn't getting better so was probably an infection. I went to the emergency room - another nice small resort town hospital experience with a cowboy doctor. Got antibiotics and eyedrops, and we had lunch at a great little tacqueria (Pica's). Afterwards, we drove up into the National Park, saw more bison, a couple more pronghorn, a black bear, a moose and an elk. The Black bear was a radio collared yearling that was browsing in the bushes off the main road, resulting in a bear jam. Bunches of tourists with cars blocking the road, out of their cars, practically chasing the bear to get photos and movies. I can't blame them for wanting to see a bear, but it just made me sad. The young bear was obviously already in trouble, wasn't running from people like a "good bear" and all those folks helping it to stay habituated were practically signing its death warrant.

Bears are wonderful creatures - objects of both our fascination and our fear, each of which emotions feeds the other. They are near mythical symbols of the wild, and yet we destroy that wildness in trying to get close to it. Paradoxically cuddly stuffed toys and slavering monsters, depending on the light and distance they are viewed from, bears probably feed our imaginings and longings of wilderness more than any other animal. Long may they roam the wild places of the world, unmolested. Maybe people will learn, someday, that they are merely wild animals, struggling to survive, following instinct and learning, fellow travelers on the planet - neither wild pets nor monsters - unless we make them so.

We drove down a "scenic drive" along Jenny Lake - ha. The main road is MUCH more scenic! You can see all of the Tetons and Jackson Hole from the main roads through the valley, but this "scenic" drive was down in a swale, surrounded by trees and you couldn't even see the mountains! It did go by an overlook of Jenny Lake that was nice, but that's the only scenic part. They should re-name it from "scenic drive" to "road to scenic viewpoint" or something. We thought it was rather funny.

We checked out Coulter Bay Campground off Jackson Lake - it is the other large campground in the Tetons that generally has camping available. The Gros Ventre campground is MUCH nicer! We made the right choice staying here. The sites in Coulter Bay are almost all pull-throughs right on the campground road, and very close to each other. It is in the pines, and each loop looked like a parking lot for RV's with both sides lined with motorhomes and trailers. They had a "no generators" section, but it wouldn't accomodate RV's longer than 27 feet, according to the sign, so we would have been stuck with the big monster RV's running their diesel generators all day - ick. We are camped in a "no generators" loop in the Gros Ventre campground that is open to anyone, as long as they don't run a generator. We really love having our solar panels and not ever needing to run our generator - they are noisy, stinky and obnoxious. Also, the campsites here are very spread out, and it is so large it never fills up, so the spots closest to us have never had anyone in them. As a result, it is very quiet here and we've been enjoying the wind in the Cottonwoods and the birds singing. Robins, Flickers, Bluebirds, Peewees, sparrows, finches and more. It's very peaceful.

The moose we saw was in an oxbow of the Snake River, pretty far from the road, but very picturesque. We'll see lots more in Canada and Alaska no doubt. And the single elk we saw was along the highway coming home, a doe grazing on a bluff overlooking the Snake River. So now we've seen quite the variety of wildlife here in Jackson Hole - tons of Bison, several Pronghorn, Trumpeter Swans and a Sandhill Crane and Canada Geese on the Elk Refuge, and the singles: bear, moose and elk.

While we were up at Coulter Bay, we stopped at the store to get a few things and Devin found the book he had read years ago while staying at a friend's cabin in Kelly's Camp in Glacier National Park. His friend gave him "Night of the Grizzlies" to read, about two separate Grizzly Bear maulings and killings that happened on the same night in Glacier in 1967. Some friend, huh? Ha. Devin said he was already nervous about bears, and then he couldn't put that book down, and it all happened right near where he was sleeping outside - I bet he didn't sleep at all! I figured I should read it, too, since he has talked about it and we are heading up into Grizzly country (there are Grizzlies here, too - some areas were closed due to bear danger). So we bought it, and like Devin, I wasn't able to put it down until I had read the whole thing. It read like a Jon Krakauer book - giving lots of background details, and painting the larger picture of the setting of the park itself, the bears, and the park service mission, as well as observations of folks with cabins in Kelly's Camp, with folks new to the park like the manager of Granite Chalet (who fed the bears nightly), and other campers. It is so easy to see how the NPS was complacent about the danger of bears - no one had ever been killed by a Grizzly in the park up to that time, and there were lots of people-bear interactions. It was at the end of the open dump era, but some places still had no other options and the bears ate their garbage nightly. It was a tragic tale, not just for the two young women, both park concession employees, who were killed, but for the bears themselves. In the end, I ended up crying for the loss of wildness that dead Grizzlies represent as much as for the tragic loss of lives, and the horrible guilt and second guessing that plagued the survivors and would-be rescuers. I am glad there are still Grizzlies in a few places in the lower 48 - a few places wild enough to still contain them.

My friend Shelton Johnson, a Yosemite Ranger, has used Faust as a metaphor for Grizzlies - replacing hell with wilderness and the devil with the bears - "Where I am, there is wilderness, and where there is wilderness, there I am." In an equally spiritual metaphor, Aldo Leopold, famous naturalist and author of A Sand County Almanac, stated, "There seems to be a tacit assumption that if grizzlies survive in Canada and Alaska, that is good enough. It is not good enough for me. Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness to heaven; one may never get there." Heaven or hell, wilderness is a necessity to our spirit. Wallace Stegner said,

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of wild species into zoos or extinction; if we pollute the last clean air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will [we] be free from noise, the exhuasts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. for it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."

And back to Aldo Leopold, who said, "The richest values of the wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future."

What will we do to keep the remaining bits wild? Is it possible? I hope so.

Lander and Shoshone National Forest

2007-06-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

As we approached Lander, we first saw the "Sleeping Bear Ranch" RV Park, with a relocated ghost town, in the countryside about 8 miles south of Lander. It looked nice, but we decided we'd try the one in Lander first, and missed it on our first pass, so we ended up doing a little tour. Lander is a neat little town! I think the very large presence of the NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) headquarters has injected the town with some youthful culture. A restaurant called Cowfish was packed, and there were neat looking coffee shops and bookstores. We turned around and went into the Sleeping Bear RV Park.

We chose the Sleeping Bear because Devin is active on a forum for our new 2007 JK model Jeep (JK-forum.com), and the owner of this park, who goes by "Papa Bear" on the forum, is a Jeep nut, er, afficionado ;-p, and one of the moderators as well. When Devin posted that we were traveling through the west with our Jeep and asked for suggestions on where to go, he had invited us to stay at his RV Park and said he would take us out and show us some trails near Lander. We didn't really know what to expect, but we were immediately welcomed as long-lost friends and part of the Sleeping Bear Family. Dave (Papa Bear's real name) has a new 2007 JK Wrangler Rubicon, and has already done quite a few "mods" on it (Jeeper word for modifications). It has huge 35 inch wheels with bead locks (extra bolts that lock the bead of the tire down so that when you air it down for rock crawling, the tire won't flex so much it pops off the rim). He had it re-geared to go with the larger wheels. It had a lift kit which made it even higher, he had a swing-away spare tire holder on the aftermarket rear bumper, and he was waiting for his new front bumper. He had all four doors off, and I have to admit, it looked pretty sweet. Devin had Jeep Envy. Ours looks a little wimpy next to it. But Devin (and I) would have trouble getting into and out of one lifted so high, and we probably won't need all the extra features on that one. It's a Jeep that could do just about anything, though.

The RV Park is nice - up on a hill overlooking Lander with trees and an irrigation ditch of water running behind it. It is convenient for both town and back road explorations of the beautiful areas around Lander, which include the Wind River Range, many lakes and rivers, Red Canyon Wildlife Refuge, The Sinks, and more. The best part, though, were Dave and Chris, the owners, who are genuinely warm and friendly folks, and love sharing their considerable knowledge of the area with others.

Dave was excited to meet us in person, and immediately treated us like old buddies. He was going to take a couple, Scott and Marcy from Michigan, up to a trailhead for a backbacking trip the next day, and invited us to tag along, and we could do some exploring on the way back in our Jeeps.

We had a great day driving around up in the mountains, saw the backpackers off at the trailhead up in the Shoshone National Forest, and came back past numerous streams, lakes, meadows and great campsites, through Red Canyon, which is quite beautiful and is now an Elk refuge owned by the Nature Conservancy. Below is a slideshow of our day:

Dave apparently knows everyone in Wyoming! He's the kind of guy that's so friendly and nice, he'd probably literally give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. He also obviously really cares about this place - he has an attitude of stewardship about these back road areas and will stop to pick up trash or let people know if they are not behaving properly (driving too fast, for example). As we drove along following him, he would stop and talk to several of the people we passed, and we got out and met the local off-road ranger, who was an old friend of his. It was surprising to us how heavily used this area was - there aren't that many towns nearby, yet the Shoshone National Forest/Bridger-Teton National Forest area of the Wind Rivers was being enjoyed by scores of campers, anglers, ATVers, hikers, backpackers, boaters and just sight-seers like us. It had more recreational use than the Sierra National Forest, where I used to live and work, and that is near several major cities and has many beautiful, accessible places to camp, hike, fish, and explore as well.

After a fun day out exploring, we came back to the RV Park and their evening barbecue and campfire, and hung around and swapped stories and enjoyed the beautiful sunset until quite late. Dave and Chris are creating a neat community of campers at their park, getting folks out of their RVs and around the campfire, which makes it more like camping used to be. We would definitely recommend a stay at their park if you are going through Lander!

See more photos of our Lander explorations - click here

Wyoming Ho!

2007-06-22T14:26:00.000-07:00

We giddyup on to Wyoming

The clouds become such a palpable part of the landscape in Wyoming - mountains of cumulus piled up over the glorious rolling prairie. This land soothes my soul and makes my eyes seek the far horizons.

As we were driving through the prairie today, Devin said, "I like this lifestyle." He was thinking about how we could keep doing it - find ways to make money from the road and just keep living in our rolling home. It is wonderful. We both love it, and I hope we can figure something out to keep doing it indefinitely. I'll have to buy lots more Terra-Passes, but if we are doing this indefinitely, we won't travel quite so much - staying put as long as we like, and probably traveling shorter distances between stops. We do feel a slight sense of pressure knowing that we are only going to do this a year, more or less, as circumstances allow, and that we want to get to Alaska by August at the latest. So we are speeding through some areas that could stand more exploring, and if we had all the time in the world, we would come back and stay longer.

Where the deer and the antelope play...

We started seeing pronghorn before Wyoming, in fact, just outside of Craig, Colorado, was our first. I saw a pronghorn and a deer having a staredown across a pasture! I think they were saying, "what are you lookin' at?" "what are yewww lookin' at?" etc. They were both still as statues and completely alert and focused on each other. I got the feeling that at any minute, they would charge each other like rams in rut! that would have been almost as cool as a mountain lion fighting a bear. That is the quintessential kid question about wildlife - "if a mountain lion and a bear got into a fight, which one would win?" Now, every time we see an inaccessible cave on a cliff side, we say that's where they have the mountain lion-bear fights. It's like Fight Club for animals.

True West

Wyoming really feels like the true west. It's another case of a state having a distinct identity, like I talked about when crossing into Arizona. Colorado has its western side, too - west of the Rockies mostly feels very western. And by western, I mean cowboy. Real cowboys that smell like horses and have dusty boots and sweaty hats. And actually herd cattle.

We passed a marker for the Overland Trail today - it is easy to imagine wagon trains crossing this landscape. It really feels like the old west here, even though there are gas and oil wells dotting the landscape - I guess that's western, too.

As we cross the prairie in our modern Conestoga, I wonder if gusty winds were as hard on the Prairie Schooners as they are in a motorhome... The sky has lowered down to the horizon to the north - the direction we are driving, so there may be a bumpy ride ahead! Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts and remain seated as we pass through some turbulence ahead...

Crossing the Great Divide

We crossed the Continental Divide four times today alone - not so much because we are wandering all over the place, but the divide does as well. That imaginary, yet very real division, that watershed roofline that tells a drop of water to go to the Pacific or Atlantic (via the Gulf of Mexico). It's not so obvious as you might think - not a great crest of a mountain range so often as it is the rounded top of a low rolling hill. But just as surely, water falling on one side will go to a different creek, different river, and utlimately a different ocean, than water falling on the other.

It makes me think of the divides, real and imaginary, that separate one kind of person from another. What watershed moments in our lives have directed us to where we are now, and to where we will ultimately end up. My wanderlust and love of the open road is easy to trace back directly to my parents, who also wandered North America in an RV, and before that they took me camping all over the west, and on long road trips on Route 66 "back east" to Missouri, where they both came from. And what watershed brought them to California from Missouri? That would be World War II, I suppose - many veterans found a new lease on life in the prosperity of the 1950's in southern California. Devin's wanderlust could perhaps be traced to his cousin Dave, who he looked up to as a child and has been a gypsy soul travelling the west in his truck camper with his dog for as long as Devin has known him. And what watershed divide directed the pioneers and settlers west in their wagon trains, and looking further back, what forces were at work on our country's first European settlers that they crossed an ocean to a new world? Of course, there are the easy explanations of history, but those same larger, historical forces were at work on entire populations, and most of them didn't go, so what was in the peculiar make-ups of our forbears that caused them to wander?

Divides, continental and personal, watershed events, make us who we are and direct our lives. But who can say when they are happening what effect they will have? They are more likely to be low rolling hills in the landscape of our lives than crested mountain ranges.

Split Rock

We stopped at Split Rock, and as if to answer my musing questions above, the interpretive signs listed all the reasons why the travellers on these westward trails passed this way. Trappers sought furs, prospectors wanted gold, Mormons sought their promised land, pony express riders, adventure, perhaps. But those are just reasons, and what I am more interested in goes beyond reason. Why, for instance, would a young man answer the call to become a Pony Express Rider when the ads said he would risk his life daily, and they preferred orphans? Is it because he valued his life so little? Or perhaps, and I think this more likely, that he valued Life so greatly? Life with a capitol L - Living Large - is what most adventurers, explorers and pioneers seek, I think. What could be larger for a religious person than their very own Promised Land? And for the Pioneers in the covered wagons, their very own quarter section to make into productive farmland, or for a miner, his very own grubstake. Their own. Finding a life that was theirs alone, and living it to the hilt. I guess that's what we seek as well.

Here's to you, fellow travelers!

Doobie Brothers and Beer

I've come this way before - over 30 years ago, my best friend, Lana, and I hitchiked across the country together. We got a ride up to Dubois, Wyoming, in a pickup truck, and it was one of the more memorable rides for me. I rode in the back, and they passed back a boombox with a Doobie Brothers tape playing "Old Black Water" and the rest of that album, and handed back some beer. Now I've never been a big drinker - I joke that my Indian name is "Maggie One Beer" - but man that beer was wonderful, as the plains and prairies flew away from the pickup and we floated along in that wonderful sky-prairie landscape, pronghorns leaping away in herds, like parting waters, as we passed.

Wyoming, to me, will always be a drunken ride on the prairie.

See more photos of southern Wyoming

Colorado One Night Stands: Steamboat Springs

2007-06-21T20:19:00.000-07:00

After Leadville, we headed out to the north, over three passes, to Steamboat Springs. Along the way, we passed some major mining operations. Leadville was, of course, a mining town, as was Coaldale (guess what they mined there?) Today, there is still mining - a huge Molybdenum mine is near the summit of one of the passes. They seem to be taking the mountain down - it appears quite destructive compared to other mining operations in the area. And there are large toxic looking lakes as well as tailings.

When we got down to I-70, there was a Starbuck's! So we got coffee and lunch. We headed east on I-70 through several large ski towns that were very developed, then turned north again and were in the country. We saw lots of rivers today - the Blue River, Colorado River, and Yampa River are three large ones.

When we got up to 40, we headed back west over Rabbit Ears Pass and crossed the Continental Divide again and descended into the Yampa Valley where Steamboat Springs town and ski area are. We got the last spot at Steamboat Campground (or maybe just the last spot they deemed big enough for us). It was a pretty nice place - the ONLY place in Steamboat - full hookups, cable, WiFi, laundry, store, and the Yampa River runs right through campground!

We ate dinner at an Italian place in town with a porch. The food was okay, but we enjoyed sitting on the porch overlooking the river and train tracks. We watched a coal train that went by forever and thought about mining and energy - where did the coal come from and where was it going? I once read that 70% of the electricity in this country comes from oil and coal burning power plants! Coming from California, where the perception is that much of our energy comes from hydroelectric dams, this was surprising to me. But we also get power from the Navajo Coal power plant that is dirtying the air at the Grand Canyon, among other fossil fuel burning power plants around the state.

We are really glad we have solar panels on our RV, and when we move into a "stick house" again, we would love to go solar! We are also glad we bought Terra Passes (we bought 3) to offset our carbon emissions and have done what we can, such as adding the Banks Power Pack Exhaust System, watching our speed/acceleration, and keeping our tires inflated with our SmarTire Tire Pressure Monitoring System and our Air Lift Heavy-Duty Air Compressor to increase our gas mileage (even though we have those primarily for safety). Even in a rolling house towing our Jeep, we get better gas mileage than a Hummer (H1, anyway). Of course that's not saying much! I guess we are using up all the "credit" we earned from walking or, in Devin's case, gliding (on his Segway) to work for years. We hope to have a low impact lifestyle after this adventure, but we are glad we are doing this while we still can.

See more photos of Leadville to Steamboat

Colorado One Night Stands: Leadville

2007-06-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

Today we left Ouray with stops in Montrose for gas and groceries. East from Montrose, the scenery turns pastoral - farms and ranches with mountains on the horizon. The highway heads east through Gunnison, past Blue Mesa reservoir, the turnoff for Lake City, and over Monarch Pass - elevation 11,312 feet - and that is in the RV!! We towed the Jeep part way up Monarch Pass, but even with our Banks PowerPack the motorhome was gasping for air at that elevation and so we pulled over and un-hooked the Jeep for the last 1/3 of the climb - a steady 7% grade for several miles. On the way down the other side, we tested the Jeep's tow braking system on the long downgrade, too! Monarch Pass is the kind of summit you expect when crossing the "Great Divide."

Before the pass, there were several miles of road construction, and the pilot car got away from us. It was all gravel, and there was quite a bit of heavy equipment working that we had to drive right along side of. The speed limit was 35, but we couldn't go that fast as they stopped us at the bottom of a hill - I've never seen a pilot car that lost its trailing cars before! We did the best we could, but before the end of the construction zone we had our windshield cracked by a rock, even going as slow as we did. People always worry about cracking their windshields when they go to Alaska, but more people crack them in the lower 48, I think! Well, we got it done early, so now we don't have to worry about doing it in Alaska - ha.

The crack didn't show up right away, so we didn't know we had it until we got into Buena Vista, when it all of a sudden showed up about a foot and a half long. Buena Vista is a nice town, alongside the Arkansas River, where there is quite a bit of rafting, and surrounded by all the "college" peaks - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.

Leadville is really a neat little town! We only stayed one night, but someday we'll come back and do some more exploring in that area. We stayed at the Sugar Loafin' RV Park just outside of town. They were having an ice cream social when we pulled up! It was a nice place and the sunset was incredible. Leadville is over 10,000 feet in elevation, and so we had the alpine Belding's Ground Squirrels popping their little heads up all over, driving all the poodles mad. Well, one dog walker I met was having a hard time getting her pooch to get "down to business" on their walks because all it could think about was chasing those squirrels - ha. The vegetation, cool air, and scenery made Devin ask, "Where are we? Is this Alaska?"

Not yet!

See more photos of Ouray to Leadville

Engineer Pass/Cinnamon Pass/Animas Forks

2007-06-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

This was another great day of Jeep adventures!

We took more wedding photos at Oh! Point (above Engineer Pass, which is 12,800 feet in elevation) - there were some other people there to help this time, so they came out a bit better. I thought Devin looked a bit like a marmot in the photos from yesterday!!

We had been up over Engineer Pass before, the last time we were in Colorado, and it was a definite highlight, so we enjoyed going up again earlier in the year, when the snow was still all around. This time we didn't go all the way to Lake City on the other side, but went another way and explored Animas Forks, a very well-preserved ghost mining town, and Cinnamon Pass. We drove a ways down the other side of Cinnamon Pass in search of Handes, Sunshine, and Red Cloud Peaks, where I had been 30 years ago on a College trip! I climbed several "fourteeners" on that trip, and one of them was Handes Peak. It was impressive looking up at them from below - I think I found which ones they were from the pass, but since we were low on gas, we didn't drive all the way down to the trailhead area.

At the end of a spectacular day high in the San Juans, we descended into Silverton and a band was playing for us in the street! Well, they weren't really playing for us, but it sort of felt like it.

Rather than try to describe this day, below is a slide show, or go to our Picasa Web Album at picasaweb.google.com/devinandmaggie/EngineerPassToSilverton

Wedding Day - June 15, 2007

2007-06-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

First, a little background: Devin proposed to me at the Grand Canyon in November of 2005. It was a beautiful snowy day, and we saw a Condor right after I said "yes"! We meant to get married sooner than this - we kept coming up with ideas about when and where, we have friends and family who wanted to play guitar or do photography at our wedding, we even scouted out some places around southern California, like Table Mountain campground where our friends Loren and Michelle got married up by Wrightwood, and parks around Pasadena, like Descanso Gardens, the Arboretum, etc. Timing and planning never came together, though (in other words, the "wedding fairies" never showed up and made it happen for us - ha) and so we just haven't gotten around to it! Occasionally Devin would say something like - "there's something missing - oh yeah, my wedding ring!" or "Did you know we aren't married yet?" We started joking about "common law in-laws" and such, and it would have been easy to just forget we weren't really married yet. We even got a marriage license from LA County Courthouse and had it for the 90 days - a day or two before it expired, we were in the area (Norwalk) getting work done on the RV (new tires, tune up) and thought about just getting married at the courthouse, but when we drove by, the long lines and setting were rather uninspiring, so we went to Jack in the Box for lunch, instead - ha. We decided we would look for a neat little county courthouse somewhere on our trip and get married there, taking our "reception" on the road.

When we found the Ouray County Courthouse, we knew we'd found the place. Built in 1888, this historic wood and brick building is very picturesque in its setting on a quiet side street of Ouray, with the San Juan mountains rising up behind it majestically. Not only that, but in Colorado, you don't need an officiant or even a witness to get married! You can marry yourselves. And it only costs $10 for the license! Not only is it beautiful, it's also easy, AND cheap!! What more could you ask for? Well, to suddenly materialize all our families and friends would be nice, but they will all be happy enough that we finally did it, even if they couldn't be there.

There was no waiting, the clerk was really nice and helpful, we filled out the paperwork, she hand-wrote out the old-fashioned certificate, and we were married! Here's our wedding announcement: my395.com/devinandmaggie/wedding.html

Then we remembered we didn't have rings, so she recommended a jewelry store in town, where we went and picked out simple gold bands for our wedding rings. Then we took the Jeep and drove up Corkscrew Gulch and up to a pass (probably about 12,000 feet) to take "wedding pictures"!

It was a lovely day, the snow still deep in places and clear in others. We crossed a creek, climbed up to the pass and found the roads were blocked by snow the rest of the way, so we took photos and came "home" to the RV as Mr. and Mrs. Riley!

We officially announced our marriage to Devin's dad on Father's Day, as we thought a fitting Father's Day gift would be a new daughter :-) He was ecstatic and so are we!

Click Here for more photos of Corkscrew Gulch Jeep Trail, Ouray, and our wedding day!

We Interrupt this Blog for a Special Announcement!

2007-06-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

From Engineer Pass to Silverton

On Friday, June 15th, 2007, in Ouray, Colorado, Devin made Maggie an honest woman!
Yep - we got married!!

There will be more photos and details when we reach the Colorado section of the blog!

(But for now, I'm back to editing the hundreds of photos of beautiful southern Utah. Originally posted 6/18/07)

Colorado

2007-06-12T14:20:00.000-07:00

We left Moab and drove up the Colorado River on a back road to Colorado. At Grand Junction, we decided to get our tires balanced to see if that would fix our 40mph shudder, so we found a Big O Tire store that could do it, and they found that one of our front wheels was out of true. That could be the problem! By the time they had finished with the tires, a storm had caught up with us and we had a downpour and thunder and lightning excitement! The back door of the Big O Tires suddenly turned into a waterfall, as water poured off the roof and into the store! This is why awnings or porches are nice! We had the Jeep tires rotated and alignment checked at the same time, and the guy drove the Jeep around front close to the door so I wouldn't have to get drenched. They were very nice and inexpensive, too - I'd recommend them if you are going through Grand Junction.

Now we had to find a place that sold propane, as we were pretty much out and heading up to the mountains where we expected cold nights. The helpful folks at Big O spent some time looking up propane places in their phone book and we found one place that was open still (it was after 5pm at this point) at the Junction RV Park. We got there just as the storm let up - perfect timing! Again, people were very helpful and friendly, and it was a nice park, but we had reservations at another RV Park up in Ouray, so we didn't stay. I found a postcard with a poem there, though, that summed up some of my good feelings about the region and the people:

Out Where the West Begins

Out where the handclasp's a little stronger,
Out where the smile dwells a little longer,
That's where the West begins;

Out where the sun is a little brighter,
Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter,
Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter,
That's where the West begins.

Out where the skies are a trifle bluer,
Out where the friendship's a little truer,
That's where the West begins;

Out where a fresher breeze is blowing,
Where there's laughter in every streamlet flowing,
Where there's more of reaping and less of sowing,
That's where the West begins.

Out where the world is in the making,
Where fewer hearts with despair are aching,
That's where the West begins;

Where there's more of singing and less of signing,
Where there's more of giving and less of buying,
And a man makes friends without half trying,
That's where the West begins.

--Arthur Chapman

Isn't that nice?

After the storm, everything was gorgeous with parting clouds and evening light. Delta and Montrose looked like great places to live, and Ridgway was spectacular. We continued up the Uncompahgre River valley, past lovely rural scenery of farms and ranches to Ouray, which feels like the gateway to the Rockies.

Ouray is called "The Switzerland of America" for good reason - it is a lovely little historic town nestled in a valley surrounded by waterfalls and snow-capped peaks. The thing that "saves" Ouray is that it doesn't have a ski area, so it retains its old-timey flavor without pretension. It has a wonderful public hot springs pool, and as we drove in at dusk in the light rain, it looked very inviting with the steam rising up. We turned off of the main street to a dirt side road and 4J+1+1 RV Park, right in town, and right on the river.

Everything smelled wonderful and the air was crisp and clean after the rain. The sound of the rushing river right next to us ensured a good night's sleep here in the mountains. I had to go out for a walk! I walked into town, found a New Orleans restaurant that sold beignets right around the corner - oh boy, can't wait for breakfast! Also found a variety store that sold everything under the sun, and lots of other neat shops. I wandered up to the community center and the courthouse, built in the 1800's. Great views of mountains, waterfalls, and the river. Ouray is quite wonderful!

The next morning, after a peaceful night's sleep, I walked over to Papillon, the "N'Awlins" style home cookin' restaurant, and picked up some beignets and bread pudding, and coffee with chickory, and brought them back to Devin. OMG. This place is a real treasure! We had to stop there for lunch before going out to do some exploring - crawfish enchiladas and a muffaletta sandwich - yum!!

We decided to explore some of the surrounding communities before going up in the mountains further, and went back to Montrose to drive around the neighborhoods and check out the town. It has a neat historic main street section, some nice neighborhoods, and lots of surrounding farmlands and horse and cattle ranches. Some of the new development we saw looked pretty nice, too - not just slapped together strip mall style, but it seemed more like planned and zoned growth. We decided we should add Montrose to our list of potential places to settle, someday. The growth predictions are huge - so investing in real estate there would probably be a good idea either way - if it stayed the kind of town you'd want to live in, or if it grew too much and prices skyrocketed. It's also close to the San Juans (Southwest Rockies), and not too far from Moab and all that southern Utah country we love so much.

Montrose is the "gateway to the Black Canyon" which is a national park. The Gunnison River cuts right through a mesa and has created the Black Canyon - you drive up to the mesa top and it's just gently rolling countryside and all of a sudden, this huge gash is opened in the earth - must have been shocking for early explorers and quite a barrier! We drove around and took some photos from various viewpoints along the south/west rim of the canyon and headed back up into the mountains.

That night I decided to make beef stroganoff for Devin, since he had mentioned he liked it. I've never made it before, like most things, so I searched online for recipes, and once I figured out the basic principles, got down to business with what I had on hand. Here's my recipe:

Recipe - Black Toad Beef Stroganoff!
Basic ingredients, in whatever proportions suit you (all the recipes I checked first had portions for 4 or 8, so I cut down and just guestimated what would be enough for two): Beef, Onions, Mushrooms, Noodles, (Light) Sour Cream, and ingredients for sauce - butter/olive oil, flour, broth, sherry/wine/beer, seasonings.
Sautee onion and mushrooms in olive oil/butter
take out of pan and add meat - brown in more oil/butter and remove
add flour and brown and mix well with oil in pan to make roux
add broth and beer or wine, cook down to half
correct seasonings - most original recipes call for sweet sherry, so since I used Black Toad Beer, which is a bitter dark ale, I added a little raw sugar to get that slightly sweet flavor. I also added salt, pepper, a dash of worcestershire sauce, a dash of apple cider vinegar and a little balsamic vinegar to get that nice sweet-n-sour balance that makes beef stroganoff tasty. Also a little rosemary and thyme.
Cook the noodles (wide egg noodles)
add the meat and onions/mushrooms back into the sauce and cover, simmering on med-low for about 5 minutes
turn off heat and let it stop simmering before folding in sour cream - if it's too hot, it will curdle.
Serve over noodles!
HINTS: if you end up with a slightly lumpy sauce like I did, I used our Bamix Hand Blender with the whisk blade attached to smooth it out while it was cooking down - worked great! Also, obviously, beef broth would be the best broth choice, but I used chicken broth and a little "better than bullion" added in to give it more body. The beef you use should be super tender - I used stir fry beef, which was a little tough, but okay since it was in small pieces. Vegetarians could use Tempeh or Saitan (or even firm tofu, just braise it nicely). If you don't like the taste with wine or sherry or beer, just use broth, but I think that slight alcohol flavor adds to the stroganoff. I think it might be nice with red wine, too. You can use green onions or shallots, or yellow onions, if you prefer. You can add finely minced garlic, or other seasonings, to your taste.

This was my first time making stroganoff - I made it because Devin mentioned it the other day, so I thought I'd try it. He loved it! My sauce was a little thinner than I've had, but it was so tasty nobody cared. The only negative was the tough stir fry meat, so next time I'll get some tender cut and slice it thin. Not too hard to make in an RV as it only used 2 pans - one for the noodles and one for everything else.

See more photos of these places in our web albums - click here

Elephant Hill

2007-06-10T15:19:00.000-07:00

Our work on the inverter done, Devin all better, and having spent almost two weeks in Moab and hardly been out exploring, Devin chose us a Jeep trail to increase our level of adventure. He he.

Elephant Hill is rated as the most difficult trail in our book on 4WD Trails: Southeast Utah, which is a book for SUV's and stock 4WD vehicles, so we knew our stock Jeep Wrangler JK could do it, but also knew it would likely be challenging. Oh yeah. It's amazing what our Jeep can do, is all I can say! And, of course, its driver :-)

First we had to drive south of Moab to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park - quite a beautiful drive, which took us past great views of the La Sal Mountains and redrock mesas, Wilson Arch, "Hole-N-the-Rock," ranches in beautiful valleys surrounded by red cliffs, and Newspaper Rock on our way to the National Park.

The trail takes off from a road that starts in a campground and is a 2WD dirt road to the Elephant Hill picnic area. The Jeep trail starts with a clear indication that this is a serious 4WD road! The climb is immediate and extreme over slickrock, some of which has been cemented in the gaps by the NPS. The first switchback is so sharp there is a turnaround for it, as you are climbing straight up the side of the cliff, it seems. Over a few more large and steep and rocky obstacles, and you are at the top of Elephant Hill, rewarded with great views, and an easy drive across the mesa to the other side, which, of course, you have to descend. Gulp.

The downhill part is even steeper (and longer) than going up was, and we have to come back UP this hill! I scouted ahead (which is really my excuse for being too chicken to be inside the Jeep when it feels like it's going to tip over - ha!) I could barely hang onto the "road" in my Chacos, which are pretty sticky on slickrock, generally. Wow. And around each bend it seemed to get even steeper and more crazy! But I had faith in our Jeep and in Devin's driving skill, and we also had, at that time, one of the few other vehicles we would see on this trail, pass us and head down the trail. It was an older Pathfinder driven by some Europeans, I think. French or Italian was my guess - we saw them at Newspaper Rock and I thought they were speaking French, or possibly Italian. Anyway, all three passengers got out to take photos while the driver careened down the hill, bottoming out and scraping at several points, apparently not caring - maybe it was a rental - ha! After that demo, we (and by we I mean Devin) finessed our way down the hill with grace, not scraping a bit. One part of the trail is a steep switchback with no turnaround, and a sign saying to "pull in and back up" - Devin had to back down part of this hill! Fortunately, it was only a short section, to the next "back in and drive forward" sign. Then we were down and the drive was a "normal" 4WD road through sandy washes, slickrock, rocky trails, and incredible scenery, wildflowers, rock formations, caves and crevices.

Devin said something very telling while we were out there playing - "I don't want to do anything to risk our lives or risk damaging the Jeep, but I want to everything right up to that point!" OMG. I laughed pretty hard - I mean, how do you know you've reached "that point"? I've certainly been nervous out on some of these trails, but never felt like we were truly risking our lives, and I do trust Devin - with my life apparently!

Our next challenge was the infamous "Squeezeplay." I had talked to a woman at the RV park in Moab who told me about how they took their H2 on Elephant Hill and had mere millimeters on both sides in the Squeezeplay, with both mirrors pulled in, and the passengers still had to haul big rocks to the road to make the bottom even (since it was such a tight fit, being even slightly off-camber made it a getting stuck situation). I can't believe they got a big Hummer through there! It was really no problem with the Jeep, even though the JK's are a little wider than older Jeeps, they are still narrower than most SUV's.

More beautiful scenery, past backcountry campgrounds (another time!), redrock towers, formations that looked like mushrooms and UFOs, neat caves and windows in the cliffs. The next challenge was the "Silver Stairs" which was again, no problem, but we took them slow and easy. And by "we" again I mean Devin, as I was again out "scouting." Actually, I was helping, since when you are going down a steep hill in the Jeep, you can't see what is below you well enough to pick out the best line always, so we used our two-way radios and I guided Devin down some of the steeper sections. It was nice to be out walking, anyway.

We then came to a junction to a side road that lead to an overlook of the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers. We thought that would be neat, but on the map, it looked like there was a trail at the end of the road, so maybe Devin wouldn't be able to see it, and it looked like a long enough trail that I wouldn't necessarily have time to hike it while Devin waited, either. It would be a 6 mile round trip, on a slow 4WD road, and it was late in the afternoon and we had a 60 mile plus drive home to Moab after we got off of the Elephant Hill trail, so we decided not to take it. Later we talked to some guys in the picnic area who we had seen coming back from the Confluence Overlook at the junction, and they said it was a very short trail to the viewpoint. I looked it up on Google Maps using the satellite view and it looks neat, but it would have meant getting back so much later, we really couldn't do it. Our constant battle is to leave earlier in the day for our adventures, but we both like relaxing mornings too much (especially me, ahem).

The return trip up and over Elephant Hill was exciting - the book we used really warned people to consider that they'd have to come back up before deciding to go down, with good reason! The Jeep gave us a scare on a steep incline near the bottom, and stalled for no apparent reason, just as Devin was getting his foot aligned over the brake, "just in case." Just in case came a little soon, and we slipped back a few feet - really scary with the drop off!! It was probably only a few inches, but it felt much farther! No further problems with that, but it was disconcerting to say the least. Devin thinks we just bumped so much on the rocky trail it stalled, and we had the stereo blasting at the time so we didn't hear when it stalled, making it worse. Needless to say, we turned the stereo off after that! I don't know how the hill could have felt steeper going up, but it did! I "scouted" the whole way, talking Devin up hills where he couldn't see anything but hood and sky.

The last obstacle we faced was the first hill we had climbed, and for some reason, THAT one was steeper going down than up! I scouted and guided Devin down parts where he couldn't see the trail at all because of the steep drops, and again, we made it no problem.

Back through the Canyonlands National Park, with views of neat formations like "Wooden Shoe Arch" and all the beautiful country we had passed through on the way here, which in the late afternoon light, it made for some great "drive by shooting" style photography!

Another fun Jeep adventure!

Inverting Excitement

2007-06-09T15:18:00.000-07:00

Inverter

Another "exciting" thing that happened to us in Moab, is our inverter blew. The inverter is what takes the 12 volt DC power from the batteries and makes it into 110 AC power that we can use for charging laptops, phones, running small appliances like the toaster, Bamix mixer, and coffee grinder, watching TV and DVDs, etc, and it does all this when we are NOT plugged in, like out at the north rim, for example. It is also a battery charger, and will charge our batteries when we ARE plugged in, if we aren't getting enough charge from the solar panels (which would only be on occasion, if our site is very shady, or if the weather is very dark and cloudy).

When our inverter, which came with the RV and was probably 8 years old, went out, it took our ability to use "shore power" with it. Shore power is what RVers call plugging in to the 30 or 50 amp power in RV parks (we use 30 amp, but the big monster diesel RVs generally use 50 amp). Devin checked with forum members on RV.net, a source of infinite wisdom, advice, humor, and great stories, and decided it would be okay to bypass our dead inverter and wire the incoming AC wires directly to the outgoing AC wires that normally go through the inverter. When he did this, we could use shore power again, and, hallelujah, turn our air conditioner back on! Fortunately, through all this, we still had 12 volt because of our solar panels, which is all our lights and ceiling fans - which can keep the RV reasonably comfortable - but 95 degree heat and full sun is hard to fight without air conditioning. And for air conditioning, we needed shore power.

So now we at least had 110 and could keep cool, watch Cable TV and movies, use the microwave, air conditioner, charge our laptops, use appliances, etc. But we still had a fried inverter. When it went, there was a thud, and a smell, and when I opened the compartment, smoke came out! No fire, thank goodness, but that unmistakable smell of burnt electrical equipment lingered in the compartment. Devin researched online, and we found a great deal on a new, true sine wave inverter. Our old one was 2500 watts, which is much bigger than we should have needed, and the new one came in 2000 or 3000 watts.

After much research and discussion, we decided on the Xantrex RS-2000 watt inverter/charger model. True sine wave means it is safe for use with fancy electronics - our old one was modified sine wave, and killed the battery charger on Devin's DeWalt cordless drill. (My Makita seemed to do fine with it, though). My laptop is also having power issues, and I think using the modified sine wave inverter probably killed its battery as well. (Or more likely it was leaving it plugged in all the time.) Now I can't use it unless it is plugged in. Anyway...

We found the best deal and ordered the new inverter from DonRowe.com and it got there in two days, with free shipping (thank goodness, since the package weighed over 80 pounds!)

Devin decided to install it himself (a sure sign he is all better), and I helped. We ran RJ11 ("ethernet") cable up through the floor and behind the fridge to wire in the new monitor, figured out how to fit the new, larger inverter in the old one's spot, and got it all hooked up. We spent one afternoon installing it, and upon the moment of truth, discovered that it worked - sort of! We hadn't realized that the huge slow burn fuse ("Class T") had gone out with the old inverter. These types of fuses are used primarily with solar power systems and inverters, and also with car audio for those "hiking boot in a dryer" sound systems we all know and hate. So we again had shore power, but couldn't invert or charge. It was a great learning experience, actually, and now we both know much more and understand more about how our RV's electrical systems work.

The next day, Devin decided that we should have taken out the old charger that was just taking up space in the back of the cabinet where we installed the new inverter. Since our inverter is also a charger, and the old charger was unplugged anyway, we didn't need it, and had never used it. We guess the previous owners used it as a back up, if the inverter went out, they could still charge their batteries. We don't need it for that since we installed solar panels and our batteries get charged from the sun (yay!). And besides, in doing research on the rv.net forum on whether or not it should go, the most common suggestion of what to do with the old converter was "trash it!" So we spent another afternoon unhooking and taking the new inverter back out (remember it weighs about 70 pounds!), unhooking and taking out the charger, and hooking up and re-installing the inverter - this time much farther into the compartment, making it easier to reach the fuses that are on the side of the same shelf. It was, all in all, in spite of the fuse problem, a satisfying job well done!

More on the inverter later, when we got the fuse shipped to us in Ouray, Colorado! To be continued...

Gemini Bridges - Shafer Trail

2007-06-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

Gemini Bridges (or "Jiminy Britches" as Devin called them ;-)

This Jeep trail starts north of Moab just south of the turnoff for Canyonlands. It starts out going along a ledge on the side of a cliff, offering nice views of the surrounding countryside. Moab area certainly is beautiful, and quite varied, with different types of sandstone/limestone formations, cliffs, mesas, spires, hoodoos, and the La Sal Mountains towering in the distance, their cool green slopes and snowy caps contrasting with the reds, yellows and creams of the desert below - add to this the Colorado and Green Rivers, with their corridors of shimmering green Cottonwoods meandering through the redrock desert. Again, Utah lives up to its reputation as a "promised land" - in natural beauty, anyway.

The valley on the other side of the "entry cliff" was lovely, and had a cool rock formation called "Goonie Bird Rock" near the end, when we climbed up another mesa and continued along the top. One thing I really like about this type of landscape is the changes between valley, cliff/canyon, and mesa top. It is like three different worlds, all around one mesa. The mesa top gives a feeling of wide open spaces, like the prairie, with long views, while the valleys are more homey, wide, yet enclosed by encircling cliffs, while the canyons and cliffs are wild, with views and close ups of rock formations, sometimes narrow and dark, sometimes with rivers or creeks along the bottom and surprising oases of cottonwoods at hidden springs - secret worlds in which you never know what to expect around the next turn.

On the top of this mesa was a side road that led to a trail we wouldn't be taking today - "Metal Masher"! Lots of Moab Jeep trails which are designed for folks wanting to test the limits of their machines have names like "Cliffhanger," "Widowmaker," "Metal Masher" and the like. We avoided those trails, as we were more interested in getting to scenic spots than trying to see if we could tip the Jeep over. To each his own!

When we got out to the Gemini Bridges turnoff, most people were parking and walking out, so Devin parked and I started walking, carrying a radio. When I realized it would be too far for Devin to walk, and also when I saw the route painted on the slickrock (a white dotted line marked the trail), I radioed him and told him he could make it and drive out. I walked, and helped him scout the route, and it was again no problem for Devin and the Jeep. We could drive right up to the Gemini Bridges viewing area, close enough for Devin to walk right out to the edge!

Apparently, that wasn't close enough for some people, because I found a plaque dedicated to Beau James Daley, who died there. I later Googled him, and he had driven off of one of the bridges trying to drive his Jeep across it. I was nervous enough just walking across! We were at the level of the tops of the bridges, and it was a long way down to the bottom. What an awful thing.

A young family walked out at the same time as we did, and the woman was so terribly acrophobic, she couldn't stand to see her husband and son sitting on one of the bridges, far from the edge, and being quite safe. Poor thing was practically in tears, and her husband and son were so patient with her. It reminded me of my mom and dad - my mom was always cringing and saying "Ge-eene!" when we drove on roads with drop offs and got too close to the edge at viewpoints. Somehow I managed not to pick up the irrational part of that fear, but I am very rationally nervous about getting too close the the edge when the edge is sloped, or gravelly, like it was in places near the Bridges.

While we were there, a group of kids on mountain bikes came riding up - they were all pre-teen boys, and I was SO grateful when one of their chaperones made them get off their bikes and didn't let them ride out onto the bridges!! Of course, they wanted to, boys that age being little daredevils with absolutely no sense of their own mortality. I didn't want to see a horrible accident! This viewpoint was busier than I would have expected, especially for a Thursday, but it is a popular place, and we saw more Jeeps, and highly modified ones, in Moab than anywhere else we've been.

I met a couple out there who we had passed on the road on the way out, who turned out to be a brother and sister from near Park City: Cynthia and Kent Dinsdale. They were great - she was a retired teacher and he was a retired school bus driver, bless their hearts!! After my year of teaching middle school, I bow down before teachers who go the distance - she went over 30 years!! We got into teacher talk and she understood everything I talked about immediately, and had experienced much of it herself. Not that encouraging to think about getting back into the classroom when a 30+ year veteran had the same misgivings about the profession. People really have NO idea how hard teachers work, and how hard their jobs are. People talk about summer vacation, but that is necessary recovery time for a punishing workload the rest of the year. Anyway, boy did we talk! Funny to get into that sort of animated conversation out in the middle of nowhere off 4WD roads at some natural bridges in the Utah desert, but we definitely connected. They were both really nice and I wish I'd gotten more information from them - she said she had a blog, and I thought I'd be able to find it, but I haven't.

It was difficult to get a photo showing the two bridges, since they were so close together, but I tried from a few different angles.

On the way back out, some people took a picture of us in the Jeep as we crawled up the rocks back to the main road - I guess we may be in someone else's blog now - ha.

Shafer Trail

Next we drove out through Canyonlands National Park to the Shafer Trail, which leads down the cliff face in a series of many steep switchbacks to the White Rim Trail. I kept wondering why this road was built, and it turns out it was for a uranium mining haul road. It's hard to imagine that it would be easier to haul ore up to the top than down along the river, but I guess it was. Before it was a haul road, it was a cattle trail - Mr. Shafer wintered his herd in the basin below and drove them to the mesa top for the summer. I suppose the pre-existing cattle trail made it easier to create a road. The top part along the rim and going down the switchbacks was spectacular, and it only got better and better. This is some of the most beautiful country on Earth! I actually asked Devin if he could drive closer to the edge going down the switchbacks, so I could shoot down - that's how steep it was - and how scenic.

When we reached the bottom of the cliff, we were on the level of the White Rim trail, which follows a rim of white sandstone around for miles and miles. We had hoped to do a multi-day trip on the White Rim trail in the Jeep, but it was a bit hot for that, and also you couldn't complete the loop as there was a slide near the end. We had seen the White Rim trail from Grandview Point in Canyonlands the last time we were here, and now we have to come back again to do the whole trail. And again and again and again to explore this incredible area deeper and deeper. There are so many neat "backcountry" campsites maintained by the BLM in the area, it would be wonderful to someday just go out and stay out for longer periods. But today was not that day, and we turned off of the White Rim trail and took the Potash Road back toward Moab instead.

Immediately the road dropped below the white rim and the landscape changed again. Rocks that looked like crops of white capped mushrooms rose up from the valley floor and canyon walls. A Campground was near the junction, with no one in it. We continued down an arroyo until the canyon walls rose higher and we found ourselves overlooking the Colorado River, in a huge gooseneck far below. We saw kayaks far away on an island in the river, and saw a jetboat turning around near there.

At the gooseneck overlook, we met Ray, who was very friendly and very happy to be discovering the desert and life in an RV - he had a 4WD truck camper and was recently retired form Denver. We got the feeling that exploring this country had given him a new lease on life. We told him about Baja California, gave him a whole bunch of useful links and told him about some other desert places to explore and he ate up this information. It's nice to be on the giving end of advice and information when we've learned so much from others to prepare for and plan this trip!

After we left the river, the scenery changed again and widened so much I got the theme from "Big Valley" going through my head! It was just classic western scenery, and I half expected to see circling wagons, attacking Comanches, and John Wayne riding up. I guess this was Butch Cassidy / Hole in the Wall Gang territory. At least back in Capitol Reef, there was a "Cassidy Arch" and more than a few formations out here are named for them.

Some of my favorite formations were a perfect square pyramid with a lone Juniper on top, a mesa that was a curved amphitheater, various pinnacles and spires, and a rock that looked like the Mount Rushmore of funny cartoon old men!

"Thelma and Louise Point" is out there somewhere - pretty near to where we were, but we didn't drive out there. Another reason to go back.

Soon we came to Potash, and the evaporating ponds where potassium salts are dried. "Moab Salt, LLC" is one of the largest employers in Moab, and one of the main sources of potassium in the country. The evaporating ponds were bright blue, perfect reflections of the bright blue sky, and looked unearthly against the backdrop of redrock mesas and the La Sal Mountains.

We hit pavement soon after, and then the Colorado River. Moab Salt maintains a river put-in open to the public on their river access, and we drove the Jeep down to wet its tires - ha. The road followed the river all the way back to Moab, with the afternoon light putting a magical glow on the cliffs, petrogylphs, arches and climbers, this little byway was much more scenic in itself than we had expected and we would recommend anyone drive out that way as a worthy side trip. Of course, for anyone with a 4WD vehicle, we'd recommend the entire Gemini Bridges/Canyonlands/Shafer Trail/Potash Road loop we took today, as it was incredibly scenic and varied!

Another day in Paradise!

Moab

2007-06-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

Moab is a neat little town - gateway to two National Parks (Arches and Canyonlands) and a State Park (Deadhorse Point), and lots of open BLM and Forest lands to explore. With the La Sal Mountains to the southeast, rising in green and snowy contrast to the red rock cliffs around the town, and the Colorado River and Kane Creek running around the outskirts with their corridors of Cottonwoods and Willows, it has enough contrast of warm and cool, wet and dry to make it interesting. It's a major recreation town - of course mountain biking is big, Jeepin' (as they say) is very big, rafting, jet boat tours, canoeing and kayaking on the River are all very big in summer, rock climbing, hiking, backpacking, and of course camping. And "canyoneering" in narrow slot canyons (like the guy that had to cut off his own arm to escape). And photography and general sight-seeing, too. It's a regular recreational Mecca! And the town is nice, too - we found a couple of great restaurants - Miguel's Baja Grill was incredible, and we also loved the Moab Diner.

We stayed in an RV Park that was a bit off the highway with a view of the "portal" where the Colorado River goes through the cliffs, hence the name, Portal RV Park. I saw a beaver out in back of the park, where they have ponds and irrigation ditches! Of course, I didn't have my camera, but it just sat there and munched on bark while I watched and listened! We liked Moab. But back to the reason we left Capitol Reef early to come here...

The hospital in Moab is very small, but quite nice. There was a sign outside the Emergency Room entrance that said "Harley Parking Only, all others will be crushed" but a BMW bike was parked there - obviously some staff having some fun with each other. There was no real wait, and the doctor that examined Devin was wearing jeans and hiking boots under his scrub top. They started Devin on a cocktail of two different antibiotics for a shotgun approach, and when the results of the culture came back in two days, we would see which (if any) of them was working on the infection.

After waiting at the hospital that morning, I had a horrible Jones for a breakfast burrito, and we went out on a "quest for fire" (or at least a fiery hot sauce - ha). We found it at the Moab Diner, which advertises "the Best Green Chile in Utah" and it seemd to be pretty true. I got two to go and we went home and enjoyed the spoils of our hunt.Then we settled into RV park life and watched Cable TV, enjoyed the comforts of Air Conditioning ("No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater... than central air" - Jason Lee, as the Demon Azrael in Dogma), and the convenience of take-out food in a small city.

I now know how to do everything from driving the RV to dumping the tanks to changing fuses - I already knew how to hook up the Jeep for towing as that is mainly "my" job, but Devin has been our driver and our sanitation maintenance man, as well as main repairman/electrician so far. Another thing I've been learning is cooking - watch for a separate blog post on cooking and recipes that I worked on during this time.

Fortunately, both new antibiotics worked great and Devin was much improved in a couple of days. Hooray for modern medicine!

Kane Creek
When Devin first started feeling up to getting out and around, we drove out Kane Creek Road and toward Hoorah Pass and Chicken Corners, but I was actually not feeling all that great and all the bumping was making it worse, so we turned around after a while, but it was beautiful and there were lots of interesting formations, and wide vistas. It was stormy that day, and when we were driving out, the Colorado River had big waves and whitecaps, going UPriver! Rain was blowing sideways! We drove right through it, enjoying the excitement.

Earlier, some big winds that came through the RV Park ripped three different people's awnings right off their RVs! Ours was out, too, and I got out there and took it down very quickly, but I was afraid we would lose ours, too. In fact, the wind was blowing so hard at first, I couldn't hold the door, so I waited a few seconds before going out. Then I actually crouched inside, waiting for the tornado to take us to Oz... but it died down almost as quickly as it came. In the 95 degree heat here, those winds sure felt great, though!

It calmed down a bit on our way back, and we explored a side trail and found a really cool yellow beetle - I've never seen anything like it, so I took pictures. It made a nice contrast against the red sand.

Capitol Reef and Fruita - Paradise Found

2007-05-29T15:13:00.000-07:00

Capitol Reef is a little known National Park that is so wonderful we should keep it a secret!! It reminds me of Zion before it got so crowded and popular they had to limit traffic and bus people in. We were very lucky to get one of the last 2 campsites available at the Fruita Campground just before the start of Memorial Day weekend, right across from the super friendly, enthusiastic and helpful camp hosts, who told us all about some of the campsite's best features: HOMEMADE PIE!!!

Right next to us was a beautiful historic pasture, farmhouse and barn, the Gifford House. Fresh homemade pies are sold at the Gifford Farmhouse!! Wow. We were in heaven. Deer filled up the orchards and pasture every evening, Black-chinned Hummingbirds fought over our feeder in exciting aerial battles, we listened to Robins singing their hearts out every morning and evening, along with Northern Orioles (Bullock's), Cassin's Kingbirds, and what I'm pretty sure may have been Willow Flycatchers. The Fremont River flowed just a few yards away through its willowy riparian corridor, and the hugest Cottonwoods I've ever seen were right around the corner. A trailhead for Cohab Canyon was right across the street, and the Scenic Drive was just out the entrance - what a great location! We lounged in the shade of old orchard trees and cottonwoods, looking up at the massive red cliffs that surrounded us, contrasting sharply with the cool green of the grassy campground and pastures.

We could have done this a long, long time.

We walked over to the home of pie the next morning, got a couple of apple pies, and decided to eat them (they were individual sized) out on the picnic table in front of the old homestead. We sat on the same side of the picnic table and... well, maybe we shouldn't be having pie at all!! We tipped over in a very amusing fashion, if anyone had been watching, that is. I don't know if it's fortunate or unfortunate that no one was. We recovered, assumed a more balanced table arrangement, and ate our pies, which had been spared disaster in the upheaval, thank goodness!

One day, at Devin's urging, I took a hike to Cohab Canyon while he relaxed at our campsite - what a wonderful day! I left one of the two-way radios we have with Devin and was able to check in and let him know when I was at the rim at an overlook - he walked out to where I told him he could see me, a little closer to the river, and I described where I was and waved my jacket over my head - he finally saw me and was amazed at how far away I was - he could only just barely see me because of my waving jacket. It wasn't that far in miles, but it was quite a bit UP! According to the Park's website, "tradition records that Mormon polygamists found refuge in these cliffs during the Federal government's active enforcement of the anti-polygamy statutes in the 1880s." The cliffs are full of holes and caves, and the "Canyon in the Sky" which is Cohab Canyon has numerous narrow slot canyons off to the sides - it would be a great place to hide. I sat in a shallow cave for quite some time just watching and listening to a Canyon Wren, as it sent its lovely descending trill echoing up and down the canyon walls. More interesting rock formations, neat plants, birds, the side trip to the viewpoints, side canyons, and a lot of photos made for a pretty full and enjoyable day. The only hard part was coming back down the switchbacks to the campground - my knees don't do downhill so well, and for some stupid reason I didn't bring my trekking poles on this trip, which would have helped, so that part was slow and painful. The views made it well worth it, though!

A few days into our stay, poor Devin began to not feel well - a return of a kidney infection he'd had before we left southern California, apparently. He stayed in bed and took the Cipro the doctor had prescribed, and waited to get better. We read books and watched movies (all three Lord of the Rings movies over two days) waiting for him to get better. The campsites had no hookups, so we had to go dump our tanks one day, and refill with water, but our electricity was powered by the sun. Our solar panels work wonderfully, and our inverter allowed us 110 AC power to watch movies, which was really nice. Even though he was ill, Devin enjoyed the view out our windows. I went and got pie for us, and reported to him on the campground gossip - it was interesting being across from the host site, as any problems or issues were discussed right outside our door. Mostly it was just poor souls who hadn't gotten there early enough and needed to find a place to camp over the busy weekend.

While parking the Jeep after moving the RV (to dump the waste tanks) one day, another "Jeeper" came by and admired it - I invited her over to take a closer look, and she did. She was really nice - her name was Darcy and she was part of a much larger group that came to Capitol Reef from Orem every year. She loaned me some books on trails and Jeep trails, and even invited me along on a hike with them. I didn't go mainly because I was a little worried about Devin, as he didn't seem to be getting better, and in fact was starting to seem a little worse.

We stayed a couple more days, hoping the antibiotics would kick in finally and he would improve, so we could explore some of the many great trails and scenic drives in the area, but finally had to admit that we needed to get to a doctor. We called his doctor on the payphone (there was no cell service there) and that is what he recommended - it seems the Cipro may not have been the right antibiotic this time around. That sometimes happens, when you take antibiotics, if there are any organisms left that haven't been killed, they are probably resistant to the antibiotic, so they can grow their population undeterred until you find an antibiotic that works on them.

So we packed up and drove to Moab, where there is a hospital and emergency room. Devin came out of the bedroom and sat in the passenger seat while I drove - my first big drive in the Moho, and my first time pulling the Jeep! At first, I was pretty nervous on the narrow winding road that went through the Park, but when we turned north to go to Interstate 70 it got easier, and by the time we got on the interstate, I was an old hand. We cruised up and down Moab's Main street (Highway 191) looking for the best RV park, and found a nice one very close to the hospital with full hookups, Cable TV, and High Speed Internet - just what Devin needed to aid in his recovery!

Farewell to Paradise

Drive through Escalante, Boulder, to Capitol Reef - spectacular Highway 12

2007-05-24T15:09:00.000-07:00

Even though Highway 12 has some 8 and 10 percent grades (!), we are glad we took it - wow, what beautiful scenery!! You can tell when you climb the last "step" of the Grand Staircase and then descend to the Escalante part of the monument - miles of smooth pale rock formations - like swells and waves on a stormy sea - it reminded me of the Yosemite high country, only in sandstone instead of granite. The Escalante River is the shaper of this section, as it meanders through canyons and oxbows. We crossed the Escalante in a deep, cottonwood filled canyon and climbed back up, then back down to where Calf Creek Campground is - we were tempted to stop there, but were headed to Fruita because Memorial Day weekend was approaching and we were worried about being pushed out of someplace that took reservations. We would like to go back and further explore that region someday, though!

We made a stop in the town of Escalante and visited a neat little mountain shop (Utah Canyons). They sold a book I had seen at the visitor center in Kanab, With a Measure of Grace, The Story and Recipes of a Small Town Restaurant, which is from the Hell's Backbone Grill in Boulder, Utah. I asked them about it and they said it was amazing, and some people plan their vacations around it, it is so good. Hmmmm.... it's almost lunchtime... let's go for it! So we headed from Escalante to Boulder, through more amazing scenery, and found the Hell's Backbone Grill right by the Burr Road turnoff (next to the Burr Road Grill, which is also supposed to be good, but just not amazing). It sure looked great on the outside, but sadly, it isn't open for lunch. (Moment of silence here to mourn loss of potential gourmet experience... we'll just have to come back!) We were starving by this time, and drove up to the next pullout and made lunch. It was pretty good, too! It turns out it was a really good thing the Hell's Backbone Grill wasn't open for lunch, because when we got to Capitol Reef, we got one of the very last campsites - but a little more about getting there first.

Boulder was a beautiful "town" - it's mostly an area of houses - and one of the most isolated places in the US. It was the very last town in the country to have mail delivered by truck - it was delivered by mule train up until the 40's! Its green pastoral scenes make a lovely contrast with the bare rock formations all around. After Boulder, the highway begins climbing up Boulder Mountain, abruptly leaving the slickrock and sandstone for basalt, pines, aspens and meadows! And from the viewpoints, we could look back on everywhere we'd been, and on the other side, where we were going. Capitol Reef is the eastern part of the "Circle Cliffs" and we could see it from Boulder Mountain.

At Capitol Reef, there were these rounded black boulders scattered across the red sandstone - they came from Boulder Mountain! Geologists think that it was from debris flows and as erosion has carved down the sandstone and limestone and shale, the boulders remain. Fascinating.

Capitol Reef is named that because there are light Navajo Sandstone domes that reminded people of the Capitol Building, and "reef" because it was a giant obstacle to crossing the desert, like a large reef might be to ships at sea.

Our ship ran aground at Capitol Reef and we foundered there happily for a week!

Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bryce

2007-05-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

We did some exploring in Kodachrome Basin and learned a little bit about the crazy rock formations - apparently these sandstone towers, called sand pipes, were springs - probably geysers! Here's what the website says:

Geologists believe Kodachrome Basin State Park was once similar to Yellowstone National Park with hot springs and geysers, which eventually filled up with sediment and solidified. Through time, the Entrada sandstone surrounding the solidified geysers eroded, leaving large sand pipes. Sixty-seven sand pipes ranging from two to 52 meters have been identified in the park. Massive sandstone chimneys, change from gray and white to shades of red depending on the day's mood. Numerous rocks and coves offer solitude, quiet and unique desert beauty.

Basically, this was Yellowstone! Later, when we went to the Canyon Visitor Education Center in Yellowstone, we learned that the North American tectonic plate has moved over the hotspot that produces the thermal activity (and created the huge super-volcano caldera) and it used to be under Kodachrome basin, among other places - that is so cool! Yellowstone may look like this one day... The sand pipes are "petrified geysers"!

We then ventured into Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on the Cottonwood Road to Grosvenor Arch (pronounced "grow'-ven-er"). It was a beautiful day with storm clouds approaching - great for photos! The arch is spectacular - it is a double, golden arch... hmmmmm... made us hungry. Ha.

We explored a side road and got a glimpse of the cockscomb and just miles and miles of beautiful open space, before we decided to turn around and go see Bryce Canyon as well. We had a bit of rain on the way back, but the stream crossing was fine. Apparently several cars were stuck on the lower end of Cottonwood Road, though, making an effective roadblock, so it was good that we didn't continue on that way.

We stopped at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Visitor Center in Canonville - they have four award-winning visitor's centers, and we enjoyed the one in Kanab, so we thought we'd check this one out as well. Neat displays on the people who had loved and cared for this land - the Paiutes and the Mormon settlers, comparing and contrasting their approaches. Southern Utah is so beautiful - it definitely feels like someone's "Promised Land."

Bryce Canyon is quite beautiful and I'll let the photos tell the story. You would think from the name that it is down in a canyon, but it is actually on the top of a mountain, and you have views down into the side canyons with the fantastic hoodoo erosion features that are eating into the high Paunsaugunt Plateau that the National Park sits upon. We went to a couple of viewpoints and then headed back for dinner.

More Bryce and other Photos

On the way past Bryce the day before on Highway 12, we had seen a restaurant with a huge banner claiming "HOME OF HOMEMADE SOUP AND PIE" and thought we might give it a try! Their soup was quite delicious - they ran out of the bean soup during our order and I got tomato. I thought tomato didn't sound too exciting, but it was the best tomato soup I've ever eaten! Yum. Homemade IS better. And of course, pie!!

Back to our "home" in Kodachrome Basin to watch the rabbits play and chase each other all over our campsite.

And Harold.

That's what we named the MOUSE that somehow got into our motorhome - it was a very cute, large and healthy Deer Mouse with large round ears, long whiskers, a long fluffy tail... in fact, it could have been a very small packrat. It was about the size of a Kangaroo Rat, but didn't jump like one. Whatever kind he was, I was too busy keeping an eye on where he went and trying to "herd" him back outside to get a picture - have you ever tried to herd a mouse? Doesn't work. I first saw him on top of our stove (ewww) and he walked (not ran) across the dinette and over to the dash. Oh no.

Oh yes. Though we kept watch, sat up quite late and kept the door open watching for him, we never saw him coming out from under the dash. We even tried smoking him out by burning a sage smudge stick and holding it under the dash. (All our wires and ducts smell nice now.) We finally had to give up, and we went to bed (we had "sealed" the bedroom as soon as we saw him so he wouldn't go back there and wake us up in the middle of the night). We kept a very clean motorhome after that - kept all food in upper cabinets and left out no crumbs for a mouse. No sign of Harold.

We wonder - we hope that he got out somehow without us seeing. But we wonder - did he crawl into an open duct and die in there? Anytime we smell a funny smell (which is fairly often in a motorhome), we think it might be Harold's dead and rotting corpse. Then we realize it's our graywater tank or our black tank, most likely. We hope.

Harold. May he rest in peace - or better yet, may he be still enjoying the leftover Chukar food at Kodachrome Basin and making little Harolds!

Quick Update from Utah

2007-05-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

We are now in Kanab, Utah, headed toward Bryce Canyon, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Kodachrome Basin, and beyond tomorrow. I have blog updates all written for Arizona - here is where we've been until then:

Alamo Lake State Park
Prescott National Forest, Lynx Lake Campground
Dead Horse Ranch State Park, Cottonwood (between Jerome and Sedona) - we did some exploring from there
Flagstaff/Sunset Crater - we visited our friend Graci on our way through
Lee's Ferry (Glen Canyon National Recreation Area) - stayed two nights on the Colorado River at the put-in for Grand Canyon trips, and did the one day float trip from Page (below the Glen Canyon Dam) down the Colorado to here
North Rim, Grand Canyon/Kaibab National Forest - we were here almost a week - camped for free in the National Forest and explored the North Rim.

Lots more details and photos to come!

On to Utah!

2007-05-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

After coming down off the Kaibab Plateau from the North Rim, we descended Highway 89A into Fredonia and Kanab. We decided to forgo a 70 mile 4wd adventure to Tuweep, another Grand Canyon overlook which is more down IN the canyon and which sounds spectacular, for another time. Descending the highway, we could clearly see the "grand staircase" formation with the red cliffs, white cliffs, and pink cliffs rising up one on top of the other, and "Mollie's Nipple" jutting up from the east. Mollie must have been really cold, is all I have to say!!!

We stayed in Kanab and did laundry and grocery shopping, and washed the RV and Jeep. Then we headed out the next day for Kodachrome Basin State Park and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

The drive up 89 was so beautiful! Utah is absolutely gorgeous. We enjoyed the scenery and small towns - many just looked like wonderful places to live, with huge Cottonwoods, meandering streams through meadows and fields, farms and ranches, and neat rock formations and cliffs all around in hues of red and white and gray. Hatch was a very lovely valley with the Sevier River meandering through meadows - looked like great fishing (a tackle shop at a place called "Big Fish" clued us in to that).

Turning on scenic highway 12, we went through Red Canyon, which felt like we were driving through the bottom of Bryce Canyon's hoodoo formations! There is a nice bike trail and also a few nice Forest Service campgrounds in the area. Also the road passes right through some of the formations in small tunnels! We passed the entrance to Bryce, and the area reminded us of many Park gateway communities, but this area has a nice combination of tourism and farming/ranching. Turning off after Canonville toward Kodachrome Basin, we began again to see all the colorful rock formations that give the area its name. Lots of rabbits came out to play around our campground that evening, and we could hear Chukars - they even provide Chukar Food!

We went for a short walk around the campsite and found some VERY interesting rock formations... ha. The evening light looked especially lovely on the rock amphitheater we are camped within. It stays light late here, since Utah is an hour later than Arizona.

More photos - click here

Catching Up

2007-05-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

This concludes the Arizona section of our trip - for now, at least! On to Utah. But we are actually in Colorado right now (written 6/18/07)... At least now I'm only one state behind. Coming up in the Utah portion:

Kanab
Kodachrome Basin, Bryce Canyon and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Capitol Reef National Park
Moab and Canyonlands National Park

That doesn't seem so hard - hopefully I will catch up before we leave Colorado!

Currently, we are in Ouray (rhymes with "hooray" and has "you" in it... hooray, you're in Ouray!) and we've been exploring more Jeep trails in the area and taking care of some business... more on that later - wouldn't want to spoil the surprise!

We'll probably be leaving Ouray tomorrow (or maybe the next day) and we are actually not sure where we are going next. We are still "aiming" to Alaska, but have been enjoying this slower pace so much lately, we wonder if we'll make it!

There is Cottonwood snow outside, and the river keeps flowing, and so should we. Stay tuned!

North Rim, day 4: Grand Canyon Lodge, Bright Angel Point, and Point Sublime

2007-05-19T21:28:00.000-07:00

Grand Canyon Lodge: We started this day by going back into the Park, filling up the Jeep with the cheap gas (they still had last year's gas at last year's prices!), and checking with the visitor center to make sure the road to Point Sublime was open - it is a four-wheel-drive road out to another viewpoint we wanted to visit. Then we went over to the Grand Canyon Lodge to see about dinner reservations and check out the old rustic style building and views. The Lodge is designed so it will be the visitor's first view of the canyon. When you drive to the North Rim, you don't see canyon views like you do at the south rim - they are hidden by trees and the road is in the center of the promontory, not on the rim. The Lodge is at the end of the road, and when you enter it, you are greeted with huge picture windows affording you your first good view of the Grand Canyon. Quite the entrance!! It's a neat old lodge, with many similarities to the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite - dark timbers, stonework, craftsman style lighting, and native-inspired designs. But its grandeur takes a back seat always to the Canyon itself, naturally, and also by architectural design. The huge two-story windows in the sun room and dining room make sure of that! There are two patio areas on either side of the sunroom, and trails below leading to viewpoints, including Bright Angel Point.

Bright Angel Point: Devin waited on the patio while I hiked down to the points below the Lodge and out to Bright Angel Point - lots of neat bonsai'd trees growing in the rocks along the trail caught my admiration. There were lots of people on the trail, yet at the same time, so many less than on the South Rim. There was a certain camaraderie among us - a willingness to chat and laugh with strangers and share admiring comments. I met a French couple and we talked about coffee and travels for a bit, and a couple of guys were sitting on top of boulders out at Bright Angel Point - laughing about how they were having a macho moment after having "conquered" the paved trail out there. On the way back, I caught this couple in a classic "tourist" pose!

Sometimes the people are the best part;
I call this: "Blondie and Dagwood go to the Grand Canyon"
More Lodge and Bright Angel Point Photos

When I got back, it was lunchtime, and we decided to cancel our dinner reservation (the earliest they had was for 8:45, anyway, after dark) and have lunch instead. Typical park food - okay but not great, spotty service, but great views!!! We then had to find ice for the roast turkey sandwiches I'd made us for lunch (since we weren't going to eat them now), and we were off to our Point Sublime adventure.

Point Sublime: The point isn't advertised on signs - the road that leads to it is only marked with "Widforss Trailhead" which leaves from a parking lot about 1/2 mile in. After that, it just says "primitive road" and we didn't expect it to be a real four-wheel drive road. After all, in Joshua Tree, they call the Geology Tour Road a 4wd road, and it really isn't - it's just a dirt road with some bumpy spots. But the Point Sublime Road soon proved itself to be the genuine article, as we maneuvered over large rocks and deep ruts and "whoops" in the road, up and down steep hills, through very fine silt across meadows, and through some lovely scenery in the 18 mile, two hour drive out to the point. About 1/2 way in was a side road to a camp spot and view of the Canyon up a side canyon, and another side road that lead out to Fire Point and Swamp Point - those points have access roads from the National Forest and we could potentially take that road "home" to our campsite in the Forest! But it was going to be too late when we returned, so we'll have to save that exploration for another time.

When you are approaching Point Sublime, it's very obvious as you begin driving out onto a peninsula of rock separated from its neighbors by deepening chasms. At one point, the road passes over a narrow neck with canyon views on both sides before you get to the top of the ridge and drive right out to the point! We didn't see a single car on the way out there - Saturday in late May in a National Park - imagine! But there were two other cars out at the point -- a Hummer and an FJ Cruiser. So we completed the set of major 4WD vehicles with our Jeep Wrangler! The Hummer belonged to a couple from Switzerland who were out on the very point taking photos. The FJ belonged to some apparently anti-social people who really had wanted the place all to themselves, I'm guessing.

The views from the point were incredible, and yes, it lived up to its name. As the sun went lower, the light just kept getting better and better, and it was hard not to keep taking photos of the same things as each time you looked they seemed more beautiful than before. Again, words won't describe it like photos can!

More photos of Point Sublime

On the way back, we came across a flock of wild turkeys in one of the many large meadows! At first we thought they were deer, as from a distance we could see large animals moving through the grass, but they moved funny, and were darker... as we got closer we saw what they were and took photos and a couple of movies, but since it was quite low light, most came out fairly blurry (especially since the turkeys kept moving rather quickly, too). A nice wildlife sighting to end another adventurous day!

North Rim - day 3: East Rim, Point Imperial, Cape Royal and Angel's Window

2007-05-18T07:18:00.000-07:00

East Rim: Starting fresh the next day, we drove the Jeep out of the forest, across the paved road, and back into the forest on the other side to check out the East Rim Viewpoint - that is where the people in the Park Visitor Center had suggested we go. There were LOTS of campsites along this, much shorter, road, and as we got out, even some with views of the canyon! But we weren't going to waste another day moving to a new campsite, and most of these were taken or on roads that the RV wouldn't have made it down. One was definitely a 4wd access road, and had a great campsite at the end with a trail out to a rock overlook of the East Rim - nice!

Point Imperial: Next we drove into the Park and out to Point Imperial - I almost crashed the Jeep when suddenly we had this amazing view open up on the side of the road!! Devin kept saying, "Don't Look!" Ha. At Point Imperial, we realized why this part is a National Park, and the other parts are National Forest. These views are much more spectacular and breath-taking. MUCH more! Most of the Forest views were of side canyons or much farther from the main gorge, and the Park views were like IMAX compared to a home video. Wow!

At Point Imperial, I met a couple and started talking to them about the helicopter we saw in the canyon (no doubt "flightseeing" from the south rim). Turns out the man, Glen, was hiking in the Grand Canyon years ago, doing a long North to South Rim in one day hike, when he came across a man with a helicopter, almost at the bottom. There was a little bit of movie set left, and only this one man, and they'd finished filming for the day, "Brighty of the Grand Canyon"! The man offered Glen a free helicopter ride out of the canyon! He said it was the hardest choice he'd ever made - his heart was set on hiking North to South Rim in a day, but he'd never been on a helicopter before! He chose to complete his hike. Another woman who was listening to the story said he'd made the right choice, because he couldn't do that hike today, but he could take a helicopter ride. He'd just had a hip replacement recently, but I think he may take a few more hikes after it heals. He said his only helicopter ride was in Alaska, going to the Beaufort Sea, flying over pingos (round, ice-heaved hills) - a very surreal landscape. Sounds like he's had an adventurous life, so I suspect there is more adventure to come. But maybe not rim-to-rim hikes.

Angel's Window and Cape Royale: We then drove out to Cape Royale, that has a wheelchair accessible path. I had checked with the visitor center and they said the Segway would be okay to use on this paved path as well. The visitor center loans out wheelchairs for people to take out there if they are not able to walk far, also. Of course, the Segway got a lot of attention, and we spoke to many folks who were very interested in one for themselves or a relative with a disability. We met a woman with Cerebral Palsy out at the main viewpoint who was very interested and Devin even gave her a demo. We seem to be ambassadors for Segway and Jeep wherever we go - ha.

On the way out to the main viewpoint, a wonderful surprise awaited us! There is a narrow promontory of Kaibab Limestone that juts out into the canyon, that has a very large triangular opening in it! It makes a natural bridge, and through the opening, you can see the rose-hued Canyon walls beyond, and in the right viewpoint, the Colorado River. This is Angel's Window, and I'd never heard of it nor seen pictures and it was awe- inspiring! Not only that, but there was a path out onto the top of it, over the bridge and to the very edge! Wow. We decided we had to have a photo of one of us standing out there on it from this viewpoint! But first we went on to the main viewpoint of Cape Royale.

Words can't describe the beauty of these Grand Canyon views, so pictures will have to suffice:

If this slideshow doesn't work for you, or you'd like to see it bigger, you can go to our Picasa Web Albums and view slideshows full screen, too - click here.

North Rim - Days 1 and 2 (May 16-17, 2007)

2007-05-17T17:28:00.000-07:00

Journey to the North Rim: The next day, we rolled in the awning, put away the chairs and battened down the hatches of our rolling home once again to head for the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. At the NPS dump station at Lee's Ferry, we saw a cool Horned Lizard that seemed to live there - watched it eat ants and do threatening push-ups toward us while we dumped our waste tanks and attempted to fill our fresh water tank.

They had a fresh water hose that works with the type of fill valves that open upwards, that you can just pour water into without pressure. Our fill valve opens to the side, and requires a hose with pressure and a threaded fitting. We had purchased a device called a "Water Thief" for just this sort of situation - it has a rubber sleeve to fit over non-threaded faucets on one side and a threaded hose fitting on the other. This was our first time trying it, and we discovered it can't take much pressure!! The NPS water valve was a lever that was either all the way on, or off, unless you held it manually somewhere in between. After a few attempts and Maggie getting thoroughly wet as the hoses burst apart and whipped wildly around, we learned that we need a hose clamp to make it work well at pressure! We finally figured that if one of us held the hose thief on with both hands (the type of clamps we had didn't work) and the other held the pressure just right, it wouldn't burst open and we could, slowly but surely, fill our tank. This was important as we expected to be dry camping for the next week! Before we were done, Devin looked like he was on the losing end of a water balloon fight - yay! Thank goodness it was hot there and that made it refreshing.

The drive past the Vermillion Cliffs and up the Kaibab Plateau was beautiful, and a study in life zones as we passed from desert scrub to pinyon-juniper woodlands to mixed conifer yellow pine and oak to fir and aspen forests and meadows at the top.

Arriving at the North Rim - hopeful expectations and sad realizations: Opening day was yesterday, May 15th - the road from Jacob Lake to the North Rim is closed until then, and the park doesn't open until the road opens officially. We knew the campground in the Park was full, because we had checked online where you have to reserve now, and there has been nothing for a while. A day here and day there, but no two days in a row anywhere. I wish they set aside a certain percentage of their sites for first come, first served, but now all the National Parks are on this ReserveAmerica or Recreation.gov sites, and you can reserve your campsites a year in advance - and it's specific by campsite, too!! So the few sites that are right on the rim with views are all booked up early, of course. Even so, we hoped there may be a cancellation we could capitalize upon. But we weren't counting on it, so we stopped in Jacob Lake at the Kaibab National Forest Visitor Center and got a forest map, found out about dispersed camping in the forest and some suggested sites with canyon views, and headed down the road.

We first went to into the Park and the Visitor Center to check about possible camping cancellations. We got our first peek through the trees of the Grand Canyon from the North Rim here, just walking along the parking lot to the Visitor Center. There we got more information about dispersed camping in the National Forest and some more suggested spots, then went to the campground to talk to the "Rangers in a box" at the entrance. They had just checked 10 minutes before for cancellations for the whole next week, and there were none. But they waxed eloquent about the great free camping on the National Forest with campsites right on the rim, so we headed back out to the forest.

With all this encouragement, and our dream of camping right on the rim of the Grand Canyon, we headed out to either Timp Point or Parissawampitts Point, where there were supposed to be fantastic panoramic views (according to our book of free campgrounds, too) and campsites all along the rim, and the road in was described as a "good gravel road." Okay, don't believe everything you read! It may have been a good gravel road for a car or truck, but for a 9 ton class A RV with 90 psi tires, it was a torture device designed to shake apart our home!! Washboard, even little washboard, is very hard in the RV, and there were some sections of BIG washboard on this road. Devin was driving 5 to 10 mph and having to slow down when we came to potholes and such. Over twenty miles of this was pretty stressful, to say the least. So we unhooked at the junction of Timp and North Timp points and drove down to decide which one.

Well, North Timp had a road that was do-able, but only a couple of appropriate campsites, with only very partial views on one or two, through lots of trees, and they were all taken already! Timp had a road that was NOT doable because of low tree branches and narrow spots, and one pretty nice campsite available, but we couldn't get there. This was very disappointing after being told by everyone that there were lots of places to camp and no one would be there and it was right on the rim. People exaggerate.

We drove back out to the washboarded "main" road we had come down, and went up toward Parissawampitts Point, but decided not to try it tonight, and found a campsite off a side road that wasn't being used, in a clearing that was probably an old "borrow pit" where they got the gravel for the "good gravel roads." It was nice to camp in the forest, with aspens all around, deer wandering through, and all, but it wasn't what we'd hoped for, and we were going to have to move the next day. We had wanted to find our camp site, and stay put for a while, relaxing there and also using it as a base for exploring further.

North Rim day 2 - finding a "real" campsite: The next day we kept the Jeep unhooked and I scouted ahead. We parked the RV again at the turn off to Parissawampitts, and it was about the same. Some nice campsites, but basically all taken, and no really clear views, and the road was much rougher than we wanted to drive down. So we decided to head back out to near the beginning of this forest road and camp closer to the paved road and park, and give up on the idea of a campsite with a view of the Grand Canyon. We found a nice campsite just 2.5 miles from pavement, in our own little clearing on a ridge surrounded by aspens and nice views of the sunset. We have our own herd of deer that seem to use the aspen thicket to bed down in at night, and there are lots of birds singing all the time. So it's a nice spot and a good location to use as a base camp to explore from.

Lesson learned: Next time we hear about great campsites down a dirt road, we'll unhook and check them out with the Jeep first! The Moho is not for driving down dirt or gravel roads - the Moho is our home, and we can park it nearby and explore and have adventures in the Jeep - that's what it's for! "Adventures" in the motorhome are not the kind we really like having... usually involving flat tires and things breaking. The idea of getting stuck way out on these forest roads was really was affecting both of our ability to enjoy being here. So we re-grouped, started over after two days of finding a campsite, and now we are ready to explore the North Rim.

This is really a beautiful forest, with huge meadows, aspens just leafing out, pines and firs, and we've seen lots of deer, Kaibab Squirrels (really cute black squirrels with tasseled ears and a white tail - we both thought it was a skunk when we first saw one!), Chickarees, bunnies, lots of birds, a coyote, and a flock of wild turkeys! We haven't seen any bears yet , or bison, which apparently have wandered up here now from the House Rock Wildlife Station down below the plateau. So now we can appreciate the Kaibab National Forest for what it is, and enjoy the North Rim of the Grand Canyon as well.

Colorado River Float Trip (5/15/07)

2007-05-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

The float trip started at the Glen Canyon Dam - which is now a national security site, so we had to put all our backpacks on a separate truck when we got to the gate, and then our bus took us down through a two mile tunnel through the rocks to the base of the dam. Later, on the river, we could see the adits ("windows") into the tunnel sloping down from the top of the cliff where we started to just above the river. There is no lighting in the tunnel except the adits every so often, which also let in air, and were used to push out the excavated rocks from the tunnel.

When we got to the base, they gave us all hard hats to wear to the rafts, since we were walking under the bridge over the river, and people sometimes through pennies off - 700 feet directly over our heads. While MythBusters recently proved that unlikely to be fatal, I think it would probably hurt, so I didn't mind the hard hat!

There were dinosaur tracks in the rock at the bottom of the ramp, or at least very good replicas - they looked just like the tracks in the stone over at Tuba City. Sort of like giant ostrich tracks with 3 toes.

Our guide's name was Kelli, and she was more into history than natural history, which is okay with me since I know the natural history pretty well, having spent two weeks in a Geology of the Colorado Plateau honors field class, along with all my other geology, botany, ecology, desert ecology, etc classes and all the reading I've done, too! But Kelli focused on John Wesley Powell and his trip down this same river, showed us places where he climbed to the top, or waterpockets where he got fresh water (back then, before the dam, the Colorado was so muddy it was said to be "too thick to drink, too thin to plow"!). We also heard stories of his journey, saw formations he had named from his perspective, like Monk Rock. We stopped at some petroglyphs, went around the famous "Horseshoe Bend," saw nesting herons, ducklings, and white-faced Ibis along the river. Heard Canyon Wrens and Swifts, and in the deep shade of a canyon wall, saw a bat overhead so clearly you could see its "fingers" in its wing!

It was a nice day on the river, but one thing that was too bad is that they wouldn't let us hop on a bus from Lee's Ferry where we were camped and then take the raft back "home," saving us 2 hours of driving. The bus companies are all different contractors, I guess, and they said the one from that morning was full, anyway. So we had to drive into Page, float down the river to Lee's Ferry, get bused back to Page, and drive back to Lee's Ferry. We had dinner at Stromboli's in Page and got back after dark, pretty tired!!

For information on Glen Canyon Colorado River Float Trips, go to www.raftthecanyon.com

Navajo Country and Lee's Ferry (5/14/07)

2007-05-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

Navajo Country

The road north (89) from Flagstaff goes through some beautiful "Indian Country" - interesting rock formations, mesas, badlands of the Painted Desert ("melting" shale hills of the Chinle formation), and small settlements with their hogans. The Navajo people in this area seemed like they may have been fairly well off or at least comfortable. Hogans were next to "regular" houses, and were framed, stuccoed, cement, paneled, or had siding. I think I saw one or two of the more traditional logs and adobe mortar, too, but most were "modern" hogans. Hogans are round or have six sides and the front doors always face east. Navajo culture is very infused with the appreciation of natural beauty, and many of their healing ceremonies are about restoring ones spirit to the path of beauty. The hogan is their traditional dwelling, but I think nowadays may be used more for ceremony and gatherings than day-to-day living. Or maybe it's the "mother-in-law unit" of the Navajo - ha. I kept thinking of how the US "gave" all this "useless" land to the Navajo - and how it is so beautiful and how that beauty is so important to them. The best natural resource of all, I'd say. It made me think of this Navajo Prayer, which I would quote to my groups when I used to lead loop trips through Yosemite's High Sierra. I would read it to them on Sunday morning, as we prepared for a 10 mile day heading down to Merced Lake from Sunrise, after a tough day getting up the "switchbacks from hell" to Sunrise the day before. The prayer has healing powers, I'm sure!

Navajo Prayer
House made of Dawn
House made of Evening Light
House made of Dark Cloud
House made of Male Rain
House made of Dark Mist
House made of Female Rain
House made of Pollen
House made of Grasshoppers

Dark cloud is at the door.
The trail out of it is dark cloud.
The zig-zag lightning stands high upon it.
An offering I make.

Restore my feet for me.
Restore my legs for me.
Restore my body for me.
Restore my mind for me.
Restore my voice for me.
This very day, take out your spell for me.

Happily, I recover.
Happily, my interior becomes cool.
Happily, I go forth.
My interior feeling cool, may I walk.
No longer sore, may I walk.
Impervious to pain, may I walk.
With lively feelings, may I walk.
As it used to be long ago, may I walk.

Happily may I walk.
Happily, with abundant dark clouds, may I walk.
Happily, with abundant showers, may I walk.
Happily, with abundant plants, may I walk.
Happily, on a trail of pollen, may I walk.
Happily may I walk.
Being as it used to be long ago, may I walk.

May it be beautiful before me.
May it be beautiful behind me.
May it be beautiful below me.
May it be beautiful above me.
May it be beautiful all around me.
In beauty it is finished.
In beauty it is finished.

Lee's Ferry

After crossing the Navajo Bridge over the Colorado River, we turned off to check out Lee's Ferry. Lee's Ferry is where the only crossing of the Colorado was for miles and miles for the early settlers, and now it is the put-in for river trips down the Grand Canyon, and the take-out for river trips down what is left of Glen Canyon below the dam in Page. It is a beautiful setting, with the Vermillion Cliffs as a backdrop to the north and west, and other, equally red cliffs to the south and east, with a campground overlooking the Colorado River right above Pariah Riffle. Pariah Riffle is the first rapid that Grand Canyon trips go through, and is formed where the Pariah River enters the Colorado. We had a great campsite with a view of the river and could hear the rapids as we slept. The first night we both laid out in our lounge chairs and stargazed in the warm desert evening. The next night, Devin ended up going out alone and sitting under the stars for an hour or so after midnight. He says it was magical. Warm desert evening with billions of stars and the sound of the river rushing by. We camped there two nights, enjoying the white noise of the rapids, the changing light on the red rocks, and the starry night skies. We went down to the put-in area and watched as the huge pontoon rafts were set up from semi trucks the day before their departure - it was quite the scene! They left the next morning and we could hear the "whoo!" as they went over their first rapid and got a small taste of things to come. We would love to do a Grand Canyon river trip some day!! Of course, you need reservations way in advance, and lots of planning and preparation for those, so we settled on a float trip from Page back to Lee's Ferry the next day.

That night we had a gourmet barbecue feast! We had purchased a "Santa Maria Style" marinated vacuum sealed tri-tip roast from Trader Joe's before leaving, and this was to be its night to be barbecued! So we got out our Weber Baby Q and the grilling supplies, and our new meat thermometer (Christmas Gift from Darby and Jean, making its debut performance) and set to work. Devin enjoyed playing with the Meat Thermometer - it is a remote digital style one, and once he figured it out, it worked great! I got to work making appropriate side dishes - it was hot, so I didn't want to cook inside, so I made some things to share the grill:

Veggie Grill Pockets

This idea came from our friend Anita - she did this out at Coon Hollow last December:

Take whatever veggies you'd like to grill and place them on foil squares - I put Carrots, Brussels Sprouts, and Onions on the bottom, since they can take longer to cook, and broccoli and mushrooms on top.
Sprinkle on whatever seasoning you like with your veggies - I used lemon pepper
Add some dabs of butter
Wrap tightly and place on the grill
Leave it on the grill till it's steaming hot - we just left it on as long as the meat, which was about 45 minutes on low heat to get all the way done - the broccoli was a bit overdone, but the rest was perfect!

Speedy Grilled Potatoes

I thought baked potatoes would be good with the tri-tip, but they take so long, so we did this, instead:

To speed it up, if needed, par boil potatoes
Slice into "Texas Fries" - slice large baking potato in half, then the halves into lengthwise strips. We made each strip about 1/8 of the large baking russet we had, but if you slice them thinner, they'll cook faster, but they may fall through the grill! Also, if you have a short potato, you can skip cutting it in half. Another way to speed up the cooking is to par boil them all cut up, which is what I did.
Take potatoes out of water when you can stick a cooking fork in a little easier, and let them drain or pat dry on paper towels (the whole par-boiling can be skipped and then you go directly to the next step)
Toss potatoes in a bit of olive oil and seasonings - I used Rosemary, Balsamic Vinegar, and some of Trader Joe's "21 Seasoning Salute."
Place directly on grill!
Turn over after they start to get grill marks on one side

The only problem with these is that it takes a while to turn them all over individually - if you have a larger grill, you could put them in a grilling basket and turn them all at once. Keeping the lid of the 'cue open longer made the meat take longer to cook - but that was okay, because it gave more time for the side dishes! These were DELICIOUS!!!

Blackwater, Bakery, and Bonito (5/13/07)

2007-05-13T23:55:00.000-07:00

Dump Station Event

When we left Dead Horse Ranch State Park, we went to their dump station to dump our wastewater tanks, as usual, and had an "event" - no, it was nothing like Robin Williams in "RV"! But sort of funny in a gross way... While we were there, another RV pulled up in the next lane (there were two sewage drains in the same concrete pad) and started getting their hoses set up to dump their tanks, too. Now, dumping isn't really all that bad, for those of you who've never done it out there. There is a procedure - and specialized equipment to make it easier and neater. We use a PVC elbow to connect the flexible hose to the drain hole in the ground. Another important piece of specialized equipment is "the rock." There is always a rock that people place judiciously on their hose-drain connection to make sure the waste goes down the drain! Some drain fittings have threads and we can screw one side of our elbow connector right in so there is no need for a rock, but many don't, so the rock is a bit of insurance to make sure the hose doesn't come out while dumping. Other specialized equipment we use is a small folding chair, hand sanitizer, and oh yeah, common sense!

The pieces of equipment our dump neighbors were lacking were the latter, the elbow connector, and the rock. The man put their hose directly into the hole, and the woman came over to "help" and put her foot on the hose, which popped it back out of the hole and pointed it at us! Neither noticed this before pulling the valve release handle on their RV and sending their blackwater streaming toward us, though I was saying "Oh no! Stop!" Luckily, it didn't come out with the force of a geyser like in the movie, and was mostly clear liquid, and Devin managed to avoid the stream, but it was funny to watch the woman, with her foot on the hose holding it out of the hole, saying "DO SOMETHING!!" to her husband!! Ha. They apologized multiple times and we said, hey, it all smells the same whether it's yours or someone else's, and we ALL sooner or later have "accidents" at dump stations! That's why we are always careful what we touch and use hand sanitizer immediately afterwards.

Some words about waste... when you carry around your own water supply (we have a 75 gallon tank) and your own waste, you become acutely aware of conservation. One thing we find is our grey water (from the sinks and shower) fills much faster than the black water (from the toilet). RV toilets are very water conserving, and ours has a little hose you can use if you need to clean the bowl rather than filling it all the way up with water. We have a system of wash and rinse water for dishes, where we keep both in tubs, and last time's wash water becomes the dirty pre-rinse water of the next set of dishes, and last time's clean rinse water becomes the soapy dishwater. So by the time the water is ready to dump, it's been used to rinse, wash and pre-rinse dishes. We then dump it down the toilet since that tank fills slower. This, along with our solar panel set up, extends our stay when "boondocking" or "dry camping," which is what we did for a week in the Kaibab National Forest.

But I get ahead of myself - back to the journey!

Flagstaff

We arranged to meet our friend Graci for breakfast at Brandy's in East Flagstaff the next day, and had a nice visit, meal, and got some great baked goods for the road. Graci was moving to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon that day, and starting work with the NPS the next day. We caught her between finals and moving!

We stayed that night at Sunset Crater National Monument. The Forest Service Campground, Bonito, just outside the Park is very nice. We learned a valuable lesson the next day - we both thought the other was in a hurry to get to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, so we did not unhook and stay an extra day to explore Sunset Crater :( We both said later that we would have liked to do that. Better communication next time, and we won't miss any more opportunities to explore.

Sedona (5/12/07)

2007-05-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

The next day we drove into Sedona - I was expecting it to be in a deep canyon (Oak Creek Canyon) but it is out in the open with great views of surrounding red rock formations. It's a nice town, and I can see why people like it, but the north part of it before you get to Oak Creek Canyon heading up to Flagstaff is VERY touristy! Tons of Jeep tours of the surrounding red rock areas. Not as many new age crystal healing type places as I had expected to see - I guess that part of the community has been somewhat eclipsed by the tourism part, at least on the surface. After eating breakfast at a nice little cafe in the other part of town (Taste Cafe), we stopped in at the Visitor Center (and got free cookies because it was "Tourist Appreciation Week"! Yay us!) and got some basic information and maps of the Jeep trails we wanted to explore. We would have liked a much better map, but the National Forest map for $10 wasn't all that much better and for one day of exploring, we decided to forgo buying it.

Schnebly Hill: We started with Schnebly Hill Road, and it was quite scenic! The road leads to views of Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon and the surrounding redrock formations from the Mogollon Rim. Not really a Jeep trail, though, since we saw quite a few regular cars - though it was pretty rough for a regular car. On top, we tried the "Hot Loop" trail for a short distance to get to the very top of the mesa. The Jeep does very well! Later we found out that T.C. Schnebly founded Sedona, and the town is named after his wife (after the postmaster general in Washington rejected his other ideas of Oak Creek Crossing and Schnebly Station!)

Broken Arrow: Next we wanted to try the famous "Broken Arrow" trail, which is maintained jointly by the Forest Service and Pink Jeep Tours. Pink Jeep is the largest and most highly regarded of the Jeep tour companies in Sedona, and they have an arrangement that they are the only tour company to use the Broken Arrow trail. The place was crawling, literally, with Pink Jeeps! Ha. On overhearing the guides at the beautiful "Submarine Rock" formation, I was impressed with their knowledge of geology and natural history, and also of their concern for the environment. They obviously talked about staying on the trail, responsible backroad use, preserving native flora and fauna, etc. I saw one guide bending over an Agave by the trail up the rock and talk about how it was getting trashed by people walking on it, or maybe driving over it. It was neat to see that level of caring in a tour guide.

The trail is interesting, in that at the beginning is a roadblock of rocks across the trail, obviously meant to keep out non-high clearance vehicles. There is a parking lot by it so folks can walk or mountain bike into the area, but it is open to private parties in their own or rental off-road vehicles. We saw mostly Jeeps, but one Hummer (which I think would have been too wide to go much farther than where we saw them). We actually scraped a little bit going over the "entrance" rocks - we are basically stock - the slightly larger BF Goodrich off road tires give us only about a half inch lift from stock. Most folks doing these sorts of trails will get a lift kit and lift their Jeeps 2-3 inches, but that would make it a bit hard for Devin to get into and out of, and since it's our only car now, that's not practical. Shortly after entering the trail is your first climb over slickrock, and a sign saying "if you can't make this climb, turn back now" which gives you an idea of more fun to come. We made it no problem, and all the others as well.

Devil's Kitchen: At the first fork in the road, we went right, and accidentally discovered the "Devil's Kitchen" sinkhole. That's where we saw the Hummer. And two people up above the sinkhole preparing to rappel down into it. So we stuck around to get photos! After the man had rappelled down, two pretty large loose rocks fell down from the wall and hit him right on his hardhat! I saw the rocks fall, then heard a loud THWACK! and an equally loud "OUCH!" It's a good thing he was wearing a hardhat and that the rocks hit him there, instead of an arm - I think they would have broken his arm. The woman rappelled down with ease and smiled and waved for the camera, then we left. Hope they made it out okay!

And I hope they didn't disturb any bats, since May is when they start having babies. Their ropes were mostly in the air, and not on the sinkhole walls, so I think they had a good chance of not disturbing baby bats. The sinkhole was fenced off with barbed wire, had "revegetation/restoration area" signs outside it, and there was an interpretive sign in the parking lot on not disturbing the bats, so I had mixed feelings about watching the couple rappel into the sinkhole, but I didn't figure saying anything would help, since none of the signs or fences did, so I just took photos and chatted about climbing.

Submarine Rock: When we went back out to the main trail, we followed a convenient Pink Jeep to another side trip - Submarine Rock. I followed the tour groups up and listened in on the geology schpiel a bit, and took photos. The road up there was a bit exciting - the steepest attempted so far in the Jeep. Oh but there was more to come!

Mushroom Rock and the Road of No Return:

At the next fork, we went right again - with no map to guide us, we weren't sure where this lead, but Devin had seen Jeeps crawling around on the slickrock there, so we went up. First we came to a rock that looked like a giant mushroom, and discovered that the trail went around the rock! Next we went up a very steep hill that Devin wasn't to thrilled about coming back down, so I scouted the trail ahead while he sat up on the slickrock with a great view down to Submarine Rock below. The trail seemed to keep going, and before long, another group of Pink Jeeps came along, so we decided to watch where they went and what they did. They had some fun with their passengers, is what they did!!

There is a loop over the slickrock after the steep grade, and we had a perfect view as Pink Jeep after Pink Jeep toyed with their passengers and we heard screams, squeals and lots of nervous laughter. On driver actually stopped at the steepest part of the descent and handed out brochures - ha!! A couple in a rental Jeep had come up just ahead of the pack of Pink Jeeps and after watching them do the loop, they decided to try it, too. Jeff, the guy, said he was afraid of doing a "Dukes of Hazzard" at the end, but they executed the descent perfectly. They had a hand-drawn map of the trails from their rental company (Farrabee) which was much better than what we had, and they shared it with us - we were considering going back, but this was a one way road! Good thing we looked at the map. They also gave us something to look forward to/dread - at the end of this side-loop were the infamous stairsteps back down to the main trail. Oh boy.

So we continued on, and when we got to the stairsteps, I could NOT believe that this was a road!! We were going straight down!! I thought we were going to flip end over end, and all I could say is "ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod" in a rather shrill voice. Devin was laughing. He's evil! He wanted the camera to get a picture of my face, but the battery died. Finally, when I realized we really weren't going to flip, I got the spare battery in and tried to take some pictures with my sweaty, shaking hands! But the Jeep handled it all with aplomb. Devin also is a very good driver, and knew to keep it slow and controlled, unlike that video we saw online of the Bronco going out of control and flipping over coming down the Lion's Back in Moab. After this, though, the Lion's Back should be no problem for us - ha!

After we got to the bottom we pulled over and just were laughing - so elated to be alive - ha!

We decided not to finish the rest of the trail (we missed Chicken Point and some more views) because it was getting late and we had to drive back to Cottonwood. We did drive up Oak Creek Canyon, past Slide Rock State Park, just to check it out, since we would not be going that way in the Moho to Flagstaff tomorrow. We enjoyed our day of exploring around Sedona, and would recommend Pink Jeep Tours to anyone coming to the area who wants a thrill and a good tour - be sure to take the Broken Arrow trail!

(If this slideshow doesn't work for you, or if you'd like to see it larger, go to our Picasa Web Album (picasaweb.google.com/devinandmaggie/) and click on the Sedona Album and click "View Slideshow" for a fullscreen version.)

Jerome (5/11/07)

2007-05-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

Jerome was really neat! And boy are we glad we didn't drive the Moho through the mountains and Jerome - steep grades, very tight turns, overhanging rocks... it would have been a white knuckle experience for certain. Jerome is an old mining town that is perched precariously on the side of the mountain overlooking Clarkdale and Cottonwood in the valley below. There is a big copper mine next to (and below!) the town, which was mined out and Jerome's population fell drastically when there was no more ore. Typical story, except Jerome is still very much alive - some people do live there, and there are lots of businesses - pretty much all aimed at tourism, but still it feels pretty thriving since it was quite busy on a Friday afternoon in early May.

We stopped and got some ice cream at a little shop there, and saw a cyclist that I recognized from two days before, when we were climbing the biggest grade up to Prescott! I asked, and it turns out he is from Manhattan Beach and is cycling across America, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and raising money for Manhattan Beach Schools! He has a blog on CrazyGuyonaBike.com

After enjoying our ice cream and the view, we explored some more on a dirt road out of town past the "Gold King Mine" which was interesting - it's the place where old trucks go to die, apparently! I think I saw a Herkemer Battle Jitney! Ha. At least an REO Speedwagon or two. It had a sign by the entrance that it was the "friendly ghost town" (I wonder if Caspar lives there?) but belying that statement, later when the gate was closed was a sign that read "if you can read this, you are in range" Ha! They take trespassing after hours pretty seriously here, I guess! We drove past and a ways on the dirt road to Perkinsville, which is on the Verde River, and got some nice views across the valley to the red rocks of Sedona in the late afternoon light. Didn't drive all the way to the river as it was getting late. There is a scenic train ride along the Verde that leaves from Clarkdale, just below Jerome, and it looks quite nice, but we decided to save our money and do more exploring in the Jeep. For more about Jerome, check out this Desert USA article.

That night there was a wonderful campfire program at our State Park - Music from "Harpy Trails," local folk musicians. They had a great song about Jerome sliding down the mountain - we learned about the "travelling jail" and they sang many other new and old songs of the west that put a nice finish on the day.

Arizona - the first few days (5/9-10/07)

2007-05-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

Entering Arizona

First Day: Sense of Place is interesting - you don't expect to see much real difference when crossing a political border like a state line, but the border from California to Arizona at Blythe is different - first, there's the river. Crossing the still wide Colorado (before it empties its last irrigation in the Imperial Valley) and that swath of green lets you know you've crossed a real boundary. Then there is the vegetation - suddenly saguaros! The rocks change gradually to more Arizona style jagged desert peaks and shale "badlands," but you don't see Saguaros in California - Ocotillo, Cholla, Creosote, Prickly Pear, Yucca, but no Saguaros. Shortly after crossing the Colorado River, the first Saguaros show up on the red rocky hillsides, and you know you are in Arizona!

We drove out to Alamo Lake State Park for our first night back on the road. Very hot this time of year, but very nice out there. We enjoyed some of the old tourist signs in towns along the way - cute little motels with funny names, like "Burro Jim's," and a cafe that had a sign out front that said "Hot Beer, Lousy Food, Bad Service - Welcome!"

Prescott: The second night, we made it over some tough grades and windy roads to Prescott. We had internet access in the campground at Lynx Lake, since it wasn't too far from town, and Devin researched roads to avoid burning up the transmission on more roads like that! He discovered the Mountain [Roads] Directory, which has a webpage with the Arizona part free! It lists all of the grades, speed limits, curves, etc, for most mountain roads so you can make informed decisions about whether to drive your rig on them. The route we had been planning to take from Prescott to Sedona (continuing on 89 and 89A) was going to be even worse than yesterday, so we made a slight change in plans. Drive the Moho on the main highway and explore on the Jeep. We liked Prescott, and can see why Janet and Art loved it there and would love to move back someday. The old part of town with Courthouse Square is lovely!

On the way out through Prescott Valley the next day, we stopped at Ace Hardware to get some hose plugs for our water system - it had been leaking very little through the fill valve, and we decided to outfit most of our connections (grey water, tank flush, and fresh fill) with quick connects, so we would plug the other side of the quick connect until we attached a hose. Quick connects are great - we already have them on our water filter/fill system and it makes it so easy to just hook up and fill. Anyway, we had a $20 gift certificate for Ace from Devin's cousin Dave (from two Christmases ago) and we were excited to finally use it! When I went to check out, though, there was a problem. After getting two levels of managers involved and making a call to India, where the customer service for the gift card apparently was, they finally were able to give me credit. They were very nice through all of this, and even though the gift card was apparently "expired" (I thought that was illegal!!) they gave me store credit and we got our quick connect hose plugs and also a couple of bird feeders! I would definitely shop at Ace again - excellent customer service!

We drove that day to Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood, near Sedona. It is a very nice state park along the Verde River - Arizona's only designated Wild and Scenic River (wait, what about the Grand Canyon stretch of the Colorado? Doesn't that count?) Our campsite was up away from the river but had some desert trees around it for a bit of shade. We put out our awning and put out our new bird feeders and made ourselves at home. We saw roadrunners right away, catching lizards, and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds where whirring around as well. After a quick lunch of cold chicken we had gotten in Prescott (what a good idea to have food ready when you pull in after driving!), we headed up to Jerome in the Jeep.

Back in the U.S.A. (backtracking to April...)

2007-05-08T20:59:00.000-07:00

Maybe we ARE trailer park people...
We spent a few weeks in Southern California after the Baja portion of our trip, doctor and dentist appointments (Devin got a root canal - fun, fun, fun!) visiting family and friends, and getting lots of little things taken care of. We spent a week longer than planned because Devin got a kidney infection and his doctor told him to just rest in bed - and stay there! So we watched a lot of movies and did little projects around the Moho. We stayed again at East Shore RV Park in the Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas, and this time we stayed in the upper level in the "preferred" sites - wow. They are really nice! On clear days, that is. Smog ruins everything. But on clear days, or stormy days, both of which we had, the view was fantastic! San Gabriel Mountains looming up and sometimes cloud covered or snow dusted, and Puddingstone Reservoir just below. City lights off to the west and fantastic sunsets. We saw tons of birds there - to name a few:

Ash-throated Flycatchers,
Roadrunner (with a lizard!),
Western Bluebirds,
Western Tanager,
Osprey,
Goshawk (!),
House Finches trying to nest in everyone's RV vents,
Lesser Goldfinches,
Cormorants,
Mallards,
California Towhees,
Black-shouldered Kite,
Turkey Vultures,
Red-tail Hawks,
Cliff Swallows,
Bank Swallows,
Rough-winged Swallows - lots of swallows!

There were more, but I can't think of them now. It's actually a great place - we found out there is a four year waiting list for a permanent space in the "C" Loop where we were. I can see why - you can live in the city and save lots of money on rent (I think the monthly rate there was $600-$700, plus utilities) and live right across the lake from million dollar mansions. If we liked San Dimas more, we'd consider it. So, a change of tune from the last RV Park story - I guess we could live in an RV Park if the conditions are right. The spaces were far apart from each other so each one had a "yard" and space around it for privacy, there were trees and grass, plus the wildlife from the regional park, which the sites bordered. There were trails just behind us down into the California Sage Scrub, with large patches of yellow-blooming Prickly Pear, Laurel Sumac, California Sagebrush, and other native plants. Every night, bunnies would leave little "presents" on our step, too (it's green astro-turf - I think they came up to try out the different grass and were disappointed and pooped on it - ha).

This park is really set up well with many services - they deliver propane right to your site on Fridays, they have various vendors that come in and offer services such as detailing and repair work - we had David Madrid from "Higher Power" Detailing come and wash and detail the RV - he spent almost 5 hours doing a very thorough pressure wash, wax and polish, including the roof, tires/wheels, and awning! The Moho looks really nice. We also had Bob Lodahl (RV service) come out and wire up our house batteries so they will do auxiliary charging of the engine battery, since our LP gas and CO/CO2 alarms are wired to the engine battery, when it gets low, they go off - usually in the middle of the night, which isn't very pleasant. Now, the engine battery will stay charged and that won't happen - yay! But in spite of the convenience, nice environment, wildlife, and views on good days, this is not why we bought our RV, so we were quite glad when we finally got out of there and got back on the road again.

Joshua Tree

We took one break from trailer park life when they were full one weekend and we had to move out - so we went to Joshua Tree. We stayed at Cottonwood and did a little exploring - the Geology Tour Road and Cholla Gardens, and relaxed and remembered why we are really doing this trip!

Family and Friends

San Diego: People we visited while in the area were, first Devin's brother Darby, in San Diego, who took us out to brunch (Mexican Food) our first day back from Mexico - thanks, Darby! Then my niece and her husband, Sam and Paul. We got to see their "new" house (which interestingly is only about a mile from Darby and Jean's house in San Diego!) and they took us out to a delicious Mediterranean/Italian restaurant and we got all caught up - it's been quite a while since we visited with them, and we missed them! Sam loves her job at the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore as the Young Adult Program Coordinator, and Paul recently left the Navy for an ideal job, converting his old plane, the S-3, into a fire-fighting plane. He is an aeronautical engineer, pilot, and flew THAT plane in Afghanistan off of the Aircraft Carrier Stennis (he is even mentioned in a "This American Life" Episode, "Somewhere in the Arabian Sea," by his call sign, "Rainman.") So he is perfect for the job, and he loves it! He gets to work from home, or fly the company plane to work when needed, he gets to be the test pilot and they are sending him to test pilot school, which is what he wanted to do in the Navy but they were jacking him around. So he is excited, and it's so great to see them both following their dreams!

Norco/Whittier: We of course visited Devin's Dad, Kent, and his wonderful "girlfriend" Marge - we are glad we got to see her one more time before she went back to Wisconsin. She's a lovely and fun person! We stayed with them while getting new tires to replace the flat tire from Mexico and the older spare we had, and also to fix a small differential leak. We went down to Norco to visit Devin's sister, Janet and her husband, Art, and we helped them all celebrate April Birthdays - Darby, Jean and Janet - we helped by making a Baja style taco stand - sort of! It rained, so our plan to have it outside fell through, but it all tasted just as good and was a hit. We invited my sister Gloria to the party and she got to meet Devin's family and they got to meet her, which was great! Both sides said they really enjoyed meeting one another and had a great time.

Pasadena: After getting the Moho back and visiting family, we headed for East Shore RV Park, as mentioned previously, and Devin did a couple of weeks of contract/consulting work for the City of Pasadena, helping them with some migration of servers back to City Hall, which has been closed for earthquake retrofit for about a year now. We went to lunch with what was left of his old crew, Nathan, Serjik, and Charles. That was funny, because we were planning to go to a health food cafe and Roundtable Pizza - both so that Serjik, who eats only healthy food, and Charles, who eats only unhealthy foods, could eat together. Ha. But the power was out because of high winds and Roundtable was closed, so we ended up going to IHOP.

Redlands/Yucaipa: After finishing up our stay at San Dimas, we headed out to Camping World in San Bernardino to get a new toilet - big fun! The foot pedal on ours broke. So we ordered one to replace it - but with a hand flush to be easier for Devin, in "parchment" to match our tub and sink. They had one for us, put it in, and when we looked at it, it was a white foot pedal model! They were surprised, because they had marked the correct model, marked the correct box, but the toilet had been boxed/labeled incorrectly and the installer didn't check it against the invoice. They didn't have the correct model in stock, so we went at the last minute to Yucaipa Regional Park and got their last site before they closed - whew!

The next day we visited my sister Gloria for lunch at a nice little Mexican food place near her house, and then had a nice visit with my mom at Somerford Place, the Alzheimer's assisted living facility where she lives in Redlands. They are wonderful there! Gloria lives right across the street and visits almost daily, too, so that is very special. After a day of visits, we drove back to San Bernardino to get our second new toilet installed (they had sent it UPS from another store) and they did it quickly in the parking lot for free. Then we met up with my niece Jenny and her daughter Jessica at Chipotle in Redlands for lunch before heading out, and we hit the road!

Day Twenty Three, Saturday, April 7: San Quintin to San Diego

2007-04-10T21:54:00.002-07:00

Today we decided to make a run for the border, left quite early, and headed north once again. Up to Ensenada we passed through familiar, yet unfamiliar territory. We both only vaguely remembered the scenery, farms, and towns from this section – I think we were both more focused on the white-knuckle driving before! Devin was an old pro at the Baja roads by now, though, and the roads north of San Quintin are definitely better and a bit wider than the ones south. So today went fairly quickly.

San Quintin, apparently, is one of the main flower growing areas in the world - but you won't see open fields of colorful flowers. Instead there are acres and acres of industrial size greenhouses, and they bus workers in from surrounding areas. Not as pretty as fields of flowers, but interesting - next time you get flowers sent to you, remember San Quintin!

One section we both remembered was the beautiful Valley of Santo Tomas. Ejido Uruapan is in this valley, with its camping and swimming resort owned by the ejido, which this time was full and lively, even though the weather was cool and cloudy. There is a winery and beautiful scenery leading both into and out of this valley, and we remembered appreciating it on the way south as well.

Ensenada was in full tilt for the holiday weekend, with horse-drawn carriages mingling with cars, trucks, buses and even ATVs on the main highway, and everyone out on the street shopping.

Once we got through Ensenada, we passed into new territory, following the toll roads to Tijuana rather than back through Tecate the way we came. The beach is full of development and resorts – half-built condos for Anglos – I wonder if the housing bust has had even greater effects down here? In Rosarito, there was a giant plastic Jesus on the hillside, with a light on his head. I thought, when Jesus said he was the way the truth and the light, I don’t think this is what he had in mind!! The beaches were packed with spring break campers from both Mexico and probably the US. More ATVs in the streets, and lots and lots of people.

Coming into Tijuana we saw THE WALL, and the lights, and the cleared area… still, there were loitering people nearby who looked like they wanted to brave it anyway. Tijuana is a huge city, and we just skirted it as we drove along the border, passing the infamous River District, where hundreds perished in floods several years back. The poverty didn't look as severe as it used to - maybe the road is just faster and we didn't get a good look, but in general, there did not seem to be as much desperation in Mexico as I remember from past visits. And there is definitely a growing middle class, as we saw from the families camping on the beaches for vacation during Semana Santa.

As we neared the border crossing and traffic became very dense, a couple of Tijuana policemen motioned us to the side and told us we didn’t use our blinker to change lanes. Bullshit. We are almost 50 feet long when we are towing the Jeep behind the 31' RV - no way is it even possible to change lanes in slow and heavy traffic like this without using our blinkers! This was a setup for “mordida” – they wanted a bribe!! I argued with the guy in Spanglish for a while – I was pissed!! Finally, we gave him our license and asked "what now?" He said he would give us a ticket and we said "OK." Then he said we’d have to go to the police station to pay it, and we said, “Okay!” Suddenly, he changed his tune, lost interest in us, and sent us on our way. No ticket, not even a warning. Apparently the idea of going to the police station scares most Gringos into paying the cop then and there. Hmmph. Tijuana is famous for dirty cops, and I guess with good reason. To my delight, the road, with traffic creeping along at about one mile an hour, circled around to an overpass with a great view of their little “operation”! When we got within view, I got out my camera that has 10x optical zoom and started snapping close-ups of those bastards. Guess what? They had pulled over ANOTHER RV!!! They were targeting RV’s, playing on RVers' fear of driving in Tijuana, on their fear of Mexican jails, perhaps their naivety, and definitely on their cash!! I was so mad, I yelled “MORDIDA!” out the window and Devin about had a heart attack – reminding me we were still in Mexico… oops. I kept taking photos until they BOTH noticed me. They looked pissed. I hope they are really worried!! It warms my heart to look at their faces – he he.

After such a wonderful trip, it’s too bad that our last taste of Mexico was the pit they call Tijuana. Traffic, corrupt cops, and trinkets, churros, and crap!!! Lining the road to the border were all sorts of vendors banging on our window and trying to get us to buy their cheap pieces of crap – I didn’t have a good attitude by that time because of the cops, and I wish I could say I enjoyed the zoo-like carnival, but I was just annoyed. I saw tee shirts that said unspeakable things – well, some were things I wanted to tell those bad cops – ha!

Let me pause here to say that I respect most policemen, and if I get pulled over in the states, it's probably because I was doing something wrong, and I always admit it and apologize. Everybody forgets and speeds once in a while, or forgets to use their blinker, or does something stupid, and I figure if I'm caught, I should admit it and pay the fine. I'm a pretty safe driver, so I haven't been pulled over in a long, long time, but just admitting fault and being polite often takes them by surprise and they just give a warning. The good cops, anyway. I had a housemate in Yosemite who was a law enforcement ranger and he told a story about pulling a guy over, asking if he knew why he was pulled over, and the guy said "because I was going 50 in a 40 zone." My housemate was so taken aback by his candor that he thanked him, and just gave him a warning. It's stupid to argue with cops - they know you know, and you know they know, and it just wastes everyone's time. If you were speeding or otherwise breaking a traffic law, suck it up and pay the fine! But this was a different story - these were NOT good cops, serving the public, keeping the highways safe. They were serving themselves, and keeping their pockets lined with bribe money! Grrrrr!

When we got to the border, we were pulled into secondary, sort of. I guess they usually go through RV’s, and a nice woman came in and took our oranges and avocado, while someone else went through our outside compartments. It only took a few minutes then we were set free – we were back safely in the US!! How will we get used to driving over 40 mph again?

Turns out it’s fairly easy. Devin said he’s already lost his edge, though, and is already using the entire lane. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Tsk tsk. We pulled into Campland on the Bay and got the last campsite that would fit us – this place is way more of a zoo than ANY of the beaches in Baja during Semana Santa! But it’s another kid heaven, and it’s fun to watch the kids enjoying running around. The people across from us seem to live here – they have a golf cart with spinners on it. Ha. It takes all kinds, and we are really not the trailer park kind, but it’s good to have internet access and a place to stop while we get our bearings again, visit with family (yummy brunch with Darby this morning in Old Town, tasty dinner with Sam and Paul the next day), and figure out what to do next.

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Twenty Two, Friday (Good Friday), April 6, Cataviňa to San Quintin

2007-04-10T21:54:00.001-07:00

We woke up and decided that neither of us really felt like a day-long side trip and would rather just head north. Both of us feel quite comfortable with this decision, and it is nice not to feel we have to pack everything into one short trip because we will be doing this for a while, and we treasure our days of just relaxing and reading as much as our days of adventure and discovery, and in fact, both are necessary for appreciation of the other. We will, however, be back to Baja, to explore some areas we liked in much greater depth, and to stay longer so the journey through the peninsula won’t involve so much driving day after day. Of course, we didn’t realize how tiring the driving would be down here, and just how slow we would travel, which makes days of 100 miles about as much as we want to do. That does allow us to get into our campsite early, and enjoy it a bit on travel days, though, so even one night stays at places are a bit more relaxing than the drive all day to get there before dark sort of experiences.

Today we again stopped for lunch in El Rosario at Mama Espinoza’s, a place with a very good vibe, and still got into El Pabellon about 1:30pm. Sadly, Mama's was still out of Lobster, so we didn't get to try the lobster burritos or soup - yet another thing to look forward to for our next trip down here!

We went through another checkpoint today, and this time they wanted to look in our basement storage compartments outside, so I got to get out of the RV to unlock them all. The soldiers all wanted to know about the Jeep, what year it was, how much it cost – they all want one! I asked for a photo and one of the soldiers took a photo of me with another soldier in front of the Jeep. These guys are surprisingly friendly and non-threatening considering many have large automatic weapons casually slung over their shoulders. I think being in the Mexican Army must be a good “job” for many of them, and they seem to like it and take it seriously. The bases and posts are all very well-kept and attractive, and even towns that have a military base seem to be more well-kept than most others. I also think the soldiers have a definite sense that they are part of doing something good for their country, with the “lucha entre las drogas” (war on drugs). We noticed that most of the inspection posts are in places where you can’t see them until you are almost there – over the tops of hills, around corners, etc. We think this is likely on purpose. Some interesting features are the tack strips on ropes – at each end, there is a box with a bunch of large tire-popping devices, attached to a string going to a small booth on the other side of the road – I guess a guy sits in there and if given the order, pulls the rope and the tack strip goes across the road and stops evildoers from getting away. They also have coffee cans full of diesel fuel that they light at night along the road, and all the roads and walkways are lined with whitewashed stones. I also like the hand-painted army guy signs leading up to the inspection posts – each one is different! Most have a flag in one hand, some have a rifle over their shoulder, some hold up a stop sign. We have never had any difficulty at the stops and actually they are kind of fun – an enjoyable diversion and a chance to talk to more locals!

Wow, what a difference in El Pabellon from our first stay here! This is Friday of the biggest holiday weekend in Mexico, and the park is still not full, but has quite a few people – again, lots of families and kids, kites flying, Mexican flags proudly waving over encampments, ATVs with kids in sleds towed behind, kids hanging on to fenders, kids driving barely able to touch the foot pegs and others hanging onto the back for dear life, flying all over the beach, horseback riders in amongst them, their Mexican horses not a bit fazed by all the ruckus. Other families with little kids making sandcastles and forts, digging holes to China, families cooking under huge shade/wind tarps, pickup baseball games happening, kids playing king of the hill and hide and seek in the sand dunes, ice cream truck coming by playing its tune, music playing (but not too loud), and generally a festival atmosphere. It is GOOD to see so many happy Mexican families doing the same things we did growing up – camping in beautiful spots and each enjoying them in our own ways. Devin says this reminds him of Pismo Beach, but with less people. He said there would be way more “sand toys” (ATVs, dune buggies, etc) up there.

Lots of people that looked like they had been settled in for a week were only out for the day, it turns out. Some people on the beach are now packing up tables, tarps, and all sorts of things and loading up their vehicles with improbable numbers of people and heading out. Next to us, a old small pick-up pulled up and over a dozen people piled out!! Little kids ran up the dunes and slid down or rolled down for hours, some went swimming, they got out a bucket of clams after being out at the water and I asked about them, but they had bought them, not dug them. Ha. Getting everyone back in was like putting together a Chinese puzzle and took quite a while, and I got a photo as they drove off, waving happily.

Semana Santa, for us at least, has not turned into the zoo that was predicted by other RVers high-tailing it out of Mexico as we were just coming in. The worst effect of the holiday for us has been increased traffic on the already difficult roads – coming down, the very little traffic really helped make them not as bad, but now, even though traffic is still SO much less than in the states just about anywhere, we have cars meeting and passing us on a fairly regular basis. Still, the passing system down here, though it seemed a bit sketchy when we first learned about it, works so well we will miss it when back in the states!

Dinner at Cielito Lindo again? Or tunafish sandwiches?

Cielito Lindo!! And the Especialidad of "Jaiba a al Cielito Lindo" – cracked crab – the ingredients for the seasonings the waiter told me are:
Butter,
Paprika,
Garlic salt, and
Pimiento.
I think pimiento is probably just chile powder, based on the flavor – it was quite tasty and topped with orange slices. I could definitely taste the paprika, but I thought there might be some secret ingredient like cinnamon or chocolate because it had a somewhat mole-like flavor. Wait, is pimiento black pepper? I guess I’ll have to experiment! During dinner, a random guitarist came in and played “Besame Mucho” for us. Over the extremely loud music that was already playing –ha! There were these three Texans at the bar. No, that’s not the intro to some bad joke – ha. There really were three Texans at the bar – one had a big white duster to match his big cowboy hat. That place is funny – it has an interesting clientele. From “RICARDO” of last time, to RV tourists, to Mexican families on vacation or enjoying a treat… We liked it.

There was a live band playing at another campsite when we returned to El Pabellon – it was in an amphitheater created by 3 or 4 RVs circled like wagons! Worked very nicely to keep the sound away from the campers on the beach – we can hear music, but it’s pleasant and we’ll be able to sleep no problem, old fogeys going to bed early that we are – ha.

Turns out, this was to be our last night in Mexico. Cracked crab and serenades made a nice send off!

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Twenty One, Thursday (Holy Thursday of Semana Santa), April 5: Rancho Santa Inez

2007-04-10T21:53:00.001-07:00

A day of rest, descansando en Rancho Santa Inez, our campground in Cataviňa. Slept in, watched birds out the window – took photos of horned larks, gila woodpeckers, and tried to get the camera to focus on the gnatcatchers, wrote, read, puttered, thought about what to do next, and generally did nothing much! No one here – very empty since everyone else is at or going to the beach. A nice relaxing day.

Devin read me a passage from The Sea of Cortez about some “beetle-like flies” that came out of the mangroves at Bahia Concepcion and liked dark places, so they crawled into the bedding and nibbled on tender places, and left a “fiery burning itch.” Since my bites seemed to have gotten worse, and were keeping me awake at night, I wondered if perhaps it wasn’t San Ignacio mosquitoes or “vampire flies” after all, but bugs from the mangroves near our pretty little heaven (cielito lindo!) of Santispac. So we changed the sheets on the bed and I took out the comforter and cover and hung them out in the sun all day to air out. I also took a shower and did sleep much better that night.

Tomorrow should we drive the Jeep out to the Pacific or Gulf? East Coast or West Coast? Not an option we are used to having! A drive of any kind doesn’t sound too exciting, though. We would like to explore all these neat backroads and side trips, but we’ve already had some wonderful experiences here, and it is now April, and so we feel an urge to move on north, ensuring we reach Alaska by summer, and have time to explore numerous beautiful places in between.

Cataviňa sunsets are worth staying extra days for. And the bats came out at dusk, then the stars... Central Baja desert sunsets and stars are the best!

For more photos of Cataviňa, click here

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Twenty, Wednesday, April 4: Guerrero Negro to Cataviňa

2007-04-10T21:51:00.001-07:00

Heading north again, we crossed the border into Baja California from Baja California Sur. We took a side trip from Villa Jesus Maria, which is the south end of the “gas gap” after filling up both the RV and the Jeep. Our friend Tonya had told us to go out to Morro Santo Domingo, and it was a short and very worthy side-trip. The beach was nice, and we explored up on the morro in the Jeep – lots of little secret coves with great tidepools, photo ops with the old lighthouse, and even a natural arch with Pelicans and Sea Lions all around! Quite beautiful. Found a neat shell in the desert, and hammerhead and other types of shark and ray heads in the “basurero” (dump) the road passed through on the way out. So that’s what that fishy smell was!

A lady from a little store where I bought us some drinking water told me about a baile (dance) that would be out on that beach over the weekend and asked us if we didn’t want to stay. She was really cute, one of those small feisty middle aged Mexican women I just love. I asked her if she was going to dance and she said oh yes and demonstrated with a few little moves :) She told us to drive safely in the extra traffic, and I assured her that we would, and we were on our way. It would have been nice, probably, to stay and enjoy the “ambiante” (atmosphere, I think) of the beach dance, invited as we were by a local, but we seem to have itchy feet these days.

Arrived at our old familiar campsite in Rancho Santa Inez, outside of Cataviňa, and immediately set up camp – rolled out the awning, put out the chairs, served cold beer and smoothies (not at the same time – ha) got out the binos and cameras and books and proceeded to relax after the days harrowing drive. Roads both north and south of Guerrero Negro are some of the worst we’ve encountered – even narrower lanes and no shoulders at all, wavy lines, rough pavement, and add to that this time the additional traffic of Semana Santa holiday goers..Nice to get “home” to Rancho Santa Inez, greeted by the “peso lady” and cattle wandering through the camp.

To see more photos of Morro Santo Domingo, click here

Smoothies
1 banana (or 1/2)
1 small container (or 1/2) of yogurt (any flavor)
Fresh or frozen fruit - whatever you've got
Protein powder (if desired)
Fruit juice or rice milk

Blend in the glass with the Bamix Hand Blender until smooth. Paper umbrella optional.
Enjoy!

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Nineteen, Tuesday, April 3: San Ignacio to Guerrero Negro

2007-04-10T21:46:00.000-07:00

We must have North Fever, since we decided to just head out to Guerrero Negro instead of going on any side trips in San Ignacio.

Soon after leaving town, we came to another inspection station (puesto de control militar) and had a nice young soldier “board” the RV and do a thorough inspection of the refrigerator!! Ha. He didn’t look anywhere else, went straight to the fridge, commented on the tequila and beer, asked what was in the can (club soda – not so interesting) – finally, I asked him if he would like something to drink – perhaps a soda? Or perhaps a beer? He just happened to have a large roomy pocket on the side of his uniform pants that was a perfect fit for the Modelo bottle. I just laughed and laughed. He was more than welcome to the Modelo – we didn’t like it. We had bought 2 of each kind of beer at the market in Loreto to try, and liked the Pacifico and Sol quite well, and I know I like Negro Modelo, but the Modelo tasted like Budweiser and wasn’t very good.

Returning to the Vizcaino desert from the Desierto Central showed us what the Vizcaino is famous for – it is a fog desert. It definitely did not feel as scenic as on the way down with the dramatic clouds and visibility of mountains all around, including the mountains of the Vizcaino Peninsula, which are very dramatic. We were treated to closer beauty this time, as new wildflowers graced the sides of the highway, in purple and yellow as well as the pink and white flowers that had been there on the way down. We also saw a beautiful pair of Harris’ Hawks – beautiful black hawks with wide white bands at the bases of their tails – very striking.

At the turnoff for Vizcaino, I found new combinations of swear words when a scary truck crossed the line on the narrow road at the intersection! Then we came back to the lovely 17 km of good road! – Devin’s heart rate only raised a little by passing trucks on that section. The end of the 17 km was announced by the loud banging when we hit the potholes and rough road again after relaxing to the quiet of a well-paved road

Passed through and near little Ejidos: Emiliano Zapata, Benito Juarez, Vicente Guerrero, Jose Morelos – there must be dozens of each! Mexicans like their heroes. Of course, how many Lincolns and Washingtons do we have in the US, not to mention Jeffersons, and even McKinleys! But it does seem noticeable in a small region with so few people to have several small towns with the same names.

We pulled over for a moment in one of these towns and I spied a group of kids selling helados (ice cream) out of their little carts – they were pushing the carts up a dusty hill, and when they saw me lean out to take a photo, they raced each other to see who could get here first, all competing for my few pesos to buy their helados – coco, pina, yum! Turns out, I couldn’t scrape up enough small change to buy any – I didn’t want any ice cream anyway, but just wanted to see these cute little businesspeople make some money, so I offered them what I had for some photos, and they posed and laughed and grinned for the camera, then raced off to find more customers.

At Guerrero Negro, we pulled into the Malarrimo, where we had stayed on the way down. There were mother and pup street dogs that had been there (all wet in the rain) on the way down that just made themselves at home and laid down in our “yard” – we were the only ones camping there. I enjoyed petting and looking at how relaxed “our” dogs were, until a mean lady came and chased them off with rocks. I guess they probably get into the garbage or such, but I was beginning to have fantasies of adopting them and taking them back with us, they were so cute.

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Eighteen, Monday April 2: San Ignacio Otra Vez

2007-04-10T21:38:00.000-07:00

Heading back north from Playa Santispac, it was a beautiful clear day, and we took more photos of the beautiful Gulf of California. We stopped at Santa Rosalía and just sat in the motorhome for a while parked at the malecon as we were, looking out to sea, watching pelicans, and admiring the day.

I noticed a cute little brown dog outside and talked to it, to which it responded enthusiastically. She looked like she either had pups and was nursing or was going to have pups. She was so excited to see us, and was very thin and seemed starving, so much so that even Devin said we should feed her. We don’t have much meat, so I fed her a can of tuna, which she wolfed down hungrily! She was very well-behaved, didn’t try to come in, but was so eager to get the tuna. After she finished, she looked up and asked for more, like a little Oliver Twist… ah the spell of the Baja dog. She almost was the kind of dog I would keep… but she probably had a home - she was very accustomed to people, and probably worked the Malecon regularly for tasty handouts. Poor thing probably needed de-worming and she would have been quite healthy, I’m sure. I fed her a little bit of evaporated milk in the tuna can, which she lapped up eagerly, and looked up as if to say, “is that all?” So I looked for more, but couldn’t come up with anything, and thought she could need fresh water, so I put water in the tuna can. She took a few sips and when she realized it wasn’t food she stopped and looked up at me, like, ”I didn’t order this!” Ha.

So we unhooked the Jeep as planned, and drove into Santa Rosalía, which was quite busy, found a parking place several blocks from the Panaderia Boleo (World Famous French Bakery!) and I walked down and got us more goodies. Fresh from the oven Pan Dulces in three flavors – one is Pitaya, which is the fruit of one of the cacti down here. There is pitaya and pitaya agria (sour pitaya) which is supposed to be quite delicious also. I also got some of their wonderful giant cookies in oatmeal, sesame and plain sugar cookie flavors. When we got back to the motorhome, our little friend was still there – she had been waiting underneath and came out to welcome us home as if she belonged there. So I searched a little more, and so did Devin. He thought she might eat some bread, and we had some old raisin bread that I tried with her – she gently took the torn piece of bread from my hand like a little lady, and tasted it but then set it down on the grass. I tried another which she ate. She didn’t like it so well, but was willing to eat it. I remembered then that we had too many eggs, so I cracked an egg and put it in her tuna can, and put the uneaten bread pieces in it, and she lapped that up. I gave her one more egg, but then we had to go – as soon as we got in the cars and Devin started the motorhome, she trotted back up the street, knowing her temporary benefactors were leaving, no hard feelings.

We stayed unhooked for a while because we knew that shortly after Santa Rosalía, the “Cuesta del Infierno” began – literally, the grade from hell! We did okay coming down it, but figured it wouldn’t hurt not to have the motorhome towing the Jeep UP the hellish grade since we didn’t have to. It was a lovely day, the Sirius Satellite stereo in the Jeep works great, and I cranked Jack Johnson while driving along the oceanfront highway, listened to the Barenaked Ladies sing “Easy” while watching Pelicans glide easily along the coastline – one of those days where everything seems in time with the music. The Cuesta del Infierno was no problem in the Jeep – and the scenery is spectacular – like the Badlands, Painted Desert, and Saguaro all rolled into one. In fact, almost the entire length of Baja’s Mex. 1 could be a road through a great National Park. It is so much like going back in time – the narrow two lane highway that winds up and down and over and around the terrain instead of slicing through it for greater speed – reminds me of long past family trips across the US on old Route 66. I loved that road as a kid!

After we reached the top I found a place that was safe for the RV to pull over and re-hook up to the Jeep so Devin and I could ride into San Ignacio together. I missed Devin while driving the Jeep, but I missed the Satellite Stereo while riding in the RV! Ha!

In San Ignacio, we decided to stay at Rice and Beans, since it was only for a night and we are both starting to feel the “home to the barn” fever a bit –though, ironically, we don’t have a barn…

At Rice and Beans we met Margie, who was having car trouble and doesn’t speak Spanish. She had been down to San Ignacio Lagoon to see the whales and had kissed a baby whale!! What a character. She is traveling alone from San Francisco – well, not alone since she has her two dogs, Joey, a big chocolate lab, and Sadie, an old, deaf Australian Shepherd mix. I acted as translator between a local mechanic and her – which was difficult because although I do speak simple Spanish, I don’t speak mechanic! But between us, we figured out the problem – she needed a new battery, and she had an unusual style of battery and there were none to be had in San Ignacio. The mecanico could sell her a local battery for 500 pesos, but he would have to cut her cables and wire them to clamps to make them work with the different battery, or someone could go get a battery of her style in a neighboring (relatively – about an hour drive away) community for 1500 pesos! She opted to go with choice A – it was about 1000 pesos better – ha. I hope she makes it home with her jury rigged electrical system – it’s sort of funny, though, and it will probably work just fine, because Mexicans are quite adept at making things work when they break! Maintenance, not so much, but once it breaks, they can fix it!

Dinner at Rice and Beans was good – I asked which seafood was most fresh and our waiter said shrimp, so I ordered shrimp “al mojo de ajo” (which is literally “wet with garlic” but means sautéed in garlic butter) and Devin ordered shrimp burritos. Tonight we’ll take showers and then refill our fresh water tanks and dump our wastewater.

Now to decide what to do tomorrow… drive to Guererro Negro, or stay and try to go out to San Ignacio Lagoon? It’s a LONG and very bumpy ride out to the lagoon – we went part way on that road when we came through here before, and it is very badly washboarded. It’s about 40 miles each way, too. But we found out from Margie that there are little cabanas and tents for rent there, and food available, so we might consider it as a multi-day trip, rather than all in one very tiring day. Resting up tonight will help us decide. It’s very hot here now, and we had such a fantastic experience with the whales at Ojo de Liebre that we didn’t feel the need for further whale adventures – almost like that one was so perfect, anything else would only disappoint, but that probably isn’t true. It’s wonderful being out on the water at any rate.

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Seventeen, Palm Sunday, April 1st: Mulegé/Santispac

2007-04-10T21:37:00.002-07:00

The sea is like glass this morning – we wish we had rented a kayak last night! Ana’s, the restaurant/store on the beach, is in “summer hours” right now, open from 2pm to 10pm, so if you want to kayak in the morning before the wind, you need to rent one the night before. The spell of this place is that once you are here, you don’t want to leave, even for a little while. Vendors come by to sell you what you need, so there is no need to go into town. Obero came by this morning already with his musical horn – I told him we came back because we missed his morning music – ha. We bought some fresh hot tamales for breakfast – yum! We plan to go into Mulegé this morning to explore the town a bit, but it’s so hard to leave here!! We will camp here one more night, then continue north.

Mulegé is the first place we’ve been where we did not feel welcome. We drove out to the lighthouse, and got friendly waves from a bar near the beach, but that was it. Mostly we got no response to smiles and waves, and even got distinctly cold and dirty looks from some. Never mind the hurricane – what too many tourists can do to a town is not always pretty. The Mulegé Mission was pretty, but after the warm, open, welcoming feel of San Javier, with people inside saying prayers even welcoming tourists into their sanctuary, I think we are spoiled.

Back to Santispac where more happy familias are setting up camps – reminds me of when I was a kid and we camped in Yosemite Valley – kid heaven! Lots of other kids, water to play in, rocks to climb, adventures to be had. Kids are everywhere just having a blast! Kids having a blast being kids sounds great in any language.

God knows why, but my friend Jenny Dodge told me I should add recipes to our blog... but I did make a great bean dip today, so here's the recipe! You may notice similarities in the ingredients to the fish marinade... hey, when you've got ingredients that work, stick with them! Ha.

Bamix Bean Dip
1 can Trader Joe's Organic Pinto Beans (or whatever kind you have on hand!)
Grated cheese - I used some soft white cheese from Mexico, enough to get the dip to the right consistency
Cilantro
Onion
Lime Juice to taste and consistency
Serrano chile to taste
Spices: Cumin, Paprika, Chili Powder, Oregano, Pepper, Salt to taste

Mix it all together and blend with the Bamix * Hand Blender (hence the name, Bamix Bean Dip - ha)
Eat with totopos (chips)!

*The Bamix is a powerful Swiss hand blender that I first saw at a county fair years ago and wanted one ever since! Now I finally have one, and use it to make smoothies on a regular basis, and this bean dip was a new, and successful, experiment!

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Sixteen, Saturday, March 31: Loreto back to Santispac

2007-04-10T21:37:00.001-07:00

Today we braved the Semana Santa traffic and returned to “our” beach at Playa Santispac – there was only a little bit more traffic on a Saturday than there was going down on a Wednesday, and the beaches along Bahia Concepcion were not crowded…yet. The weather was clear and beautiful, and we got some nice views of the beaches all along the highway - El Requeson, in particular, looked spectacular, and El Coyote - the smaller camping beach to the south, not the Trailer park, looked nice also. But Santispac still seemed to have the easiest access road for our motorhome, and we enjoyed our stay on the way down so much, it was an easy decision to go back. We even parked in our same "campsite" next to a couple of palapas at the north end of the main beach, with no one else around... again, yet!

To our delight, we could see the sailboats of our new friends Tony and Marquita and Caleb – they had been harboring from the wind here while we were doing the same in Loreto, in a sense. After we set up camp, Tony and Marquita took their little dinghy and motored in to say hi and give us their card with contact information. We had both felt bad that after that nice dinner out on their boat we had not remembered to exchange numbers or emails! We stayed out until sunset then it was time to hurry in before dark. We gave them a “tour” of the motorhome (after they got some ice cream from an ice cream truck, complete with music, which magically appeared on the beach after they arrived!) and they encouraged us to be sure to look them up if we were in the Albuquerque area, where they live in summer – they also have land in southeast Colorado that sounds neat. They are really nice people who seem genuine and fun and very bright – we hope we do see them again! The neat thing about traveling in an RV is that we are more likely to look up people we meet, and extend our network of friends (and “campsites”!) wider and wider! We look forward to this lifestyle, even while we are enjoying it already.

Tony and Marquita introduced us to the saying (printed on their card) that, “A day spent on a sailboat is not deducted from your lifespan” – so, they informed us, our day on their sailboat was a free day in our lives. :) I feel that way when we are traveling in the RV heading out on the road together, toward known and unknown adventures and experiences. In fact, this whole adventure is a bit like sailing - as we pulled up our anchor, we began to slowly drift away from familiar shores. As our old life receded from view, our gaze shifted from backward to forward - out to sea, with the wind in our hair... metaphorically speaking, of course.

When we arrived back at Santispac, we suddenly felt like we were on vacation again. It’s odd – the San Javier day was a wonderful (and a bit exciting at the end) adventure, but yesterday we just hung about the motorhome in the RV park and did some errands in Loreto and updated the blog a bit – not on vacation. Here in Santispac, I’m writing longer and more detailed updates for the blog, Devin is enjoying reading The Log from the Sea of Cortez again, which he says has more meaning read here, looking out at the sea, while we are watching pelicans and osprey and Frigatebirds swoop and dive for fish, herons and egrets wading, gulls begging for scraps, picturesque sailboats moored out in “our” bay between us and “our” island… on the way back we saw the island from farther south and recognized it, and thought how lovely it was to have our own island – ha. Even the sound of the truck Jake brakes echoing in the cove as they descend the hills on the highway above make us feel nostalgic and “home.”

As if to give lie to the thought of this beach being “ours” a very large Mexican family moved in between us and the next campers, started unloading several trucks of gear, stacks of inflated mattresses, set up huge tents in a circle, started cooking and playing – cute young girls with a kite, called a papalote in Spanish, and boys on an ATV – one of the English speaking daughters came over and asked if it was okay if they camped around our RV, and we said yes – this IS Semana Santa, after all – the biggest Mexican holiday, where everyone wants to go camp on the beach with their families – and we are lucky to have a very nice family next to us, I think. No loud music, polite kids, friendly people. They came all the way from Tijuana! I talked to some other folks who came from Ensenada, and I thought that was far! Our new neighbors told me this is their third time here. I think it’s neat we will get a taste of this big family holiday! We already had some quiet time on this beach, now it’s time to have a little fiesta.

Yes, at 9pm all is quiet next door – they had a long drive today! I’m sure they will wake up early tomorrow, so we had better get to bed early ourselves. Here at Santispac, one sleeps to the sound of gentle waves lapping the shore and Jake Brakes blaring from the trucks descending the hills above both sides of the beach! Some are so loud – they seem to echo off the walls of the cove. Luckily there aren’t too many trucks, and especially at night. We were thinking earlier about how rare a place like this is – an idyllic beach you can drive to and camp on – with fishing, swimming, snorkeling, kayaking, birding, etc – and it’s not owned by a big hotel that charges you an arm and a leg just to be here. Or maybe it is, but they haven’t built it yet – we saw a poster of Santispac at the realtor in Loreto with “SOLD” written on it. So the rumors are true… and maybe in a few years there will be a hotel here. In Mexico, all of the beaches up to 50 meters above high tide are public and cannot be owned, but of course, access roads can be owned, and the land above the beach. If they build a hotel, I hope they at least allow beach access for the public, and allow RVs to camp on the beach, and families… it would be una lastima – a shame – if it were closed off to the public.

Devin commented that one of the ways you can still find these types of places is with a boat – little coves that there are no roads, or whose access is private. Maybe someday we’ll get a little sailboat, like Tony and Marquita… even though Devin, as a former boat owner, has acquainted me with the proverb that "the happiest days in a boat owner’s life are the day he buys his boat… and the day he sells it." I think I might like living on a sailboat – at least a nice 34 foot Catalina like the Georges (Tony and Marquita) have! We’ll have to keep playing that lottery!! Ha.

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Fifteen, Friday, March 30: Loreto

2007-04-10T21:36:00.001-07:00

Today was the official beginning of Semana Santa, according to many. It was a stay-at-home day for us – catching up on email, blog, etc.

Like a lot of towns in Baja, Loreto feels like it’s not really up to its potential. Lots of empty or partially built (or ruined) structures on the waterfront, streets being ripped up – but of course, when they are fixed and all look like cobblestone, but smoother, it will be nice. The main historic district was neat, and we enjoyed eating at a sidewalk café off the main plaza (Café Ole).

Our RV park was neat, too. But too many Americans, and something else… not sure. It wasn't too many Americans, because that's who mostly uses RV parks in Baja, but too many Americans living in Loreto, or too many American tourists, and English was spoken everywhere, unlike the parts of Baja we had just been through. There was even a cruise ship in the harbor on one day! Loreto is more accessible - by air and ship, than the areas to the north. Maybe it was just had a little less of the warmth and friendliness we had come to expect in rural Baja. I suppose that is a fact of life in most cities everywhere, even smaller ones like Loreto.

At any rate, we decided to head back north – the feeling we had was that south was going to be more and more tourist-oriented as we got closer to the cape region, and we weren’t really interested in big cities like La Paz, and definitely not interested in Cabo San Lucas. There weren’t too many places in between we felt a burning need to see this time around, and Semana Santa was starting, so we decided to begin our journey back to the US and points north.

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Fourteen: Thursday, March 29: San Javier

2007-04-10T21:35:00.001-07:00

Today we drove out the 35 km on a rough dirt road through the Sierra Gigante mountains to San Javier - such incredibly beautiful desert scenery! With views back to the Sea of Cortez as we climbed, and Rupestran rock art greeting us along the way - several stream crossings, a few small ranchos, palms filling the arroyos and cardon, cholla, Zalate, the native wild figs, and palo blanco hanging off the steep cliffs.

San Javier is a piece of "old Baja" and this small ejido must feel great pride in what they have done - it is so beautiful and clean and well kept - cobblestone streets lead the way to San Javier Mission, which is the second of all the missions in the Californias. It was founded in 1699, and later moved to its current location in 1720 to make room for all the orchards - it is very well-preserved and very old feeling - simple, Moorish architecture that I found more appealing that the ornate decor of some. It was really a gorgeous place, warm friendly people, tidy little homes and businesses, in such a beautiful valley in incredible desert scenery!

The village of San Javier is quite a gem - after the long drive in, you enter through stone gate posts to find cobblestone paved streets, abundant flowers, fruit trees, date and fan palms, and a tidy little village with welcoming locals. As you turn onto the main street, it is a broad avenue leading to the Mission - taking the place of the town square. Everything is neatly swept, and, there are streetlights - what a surprise so far in! There are power lines, though we saw none leading into the village - turns out the big generator we saw on the main street next to the police truck is the source of electricity for the village, and it is the job of the local policeman to turn on and off the generator in the evenings. Here's a link to a blog of someone who spent a few days there - Mellow Velo: Life On Grid's Edge. We saw bicyclists on the road in, who were likely doing the same thing. Maybe we even saw this person! There was a lovely little hostel - "Casa de Ana" where I wished we were staying to enjoy the hospitality of this community a bit longer.

Listening to a local family say prayers inside the old sanctuary, I felt moved, like I should approach the alter on my knees like a penitente. I spoke to one of them as she walked out, and she was very pleased to see how much I appreciated their church – I told her I wanted to get married there, and asked to whom - I pointed to Devin who was sitting on a wall outside and she laughed happily. I wish we could have!! We hope to find a nice little place to get married somewhere on our trip, but of course, San Javier Mission is in Mexico, so there might be a little problem with paperwork.

There were some palapas selling souvenirs across the street from the mission, and we just wanted to spend some money here to support their continued prosperity. While shopping, I had a local dog that really wanted to make friends… a little ~too~ friendly, and I was joking with the young man at the tienda that I thought the dog wanted to “hacer amor” – he laughed and said, well, he’s a Mexican dog, to which I responded, so he’ll make love to ANYone, then? Ha. Laughter all around. I had to break poor Duque’s heart, but I’m sure he’ll find a new amor soon. Ha. I bought a mug, just because we wanted to spend money in their town, because we appreciated what they had done and how lovely it was, and the warmth of the citizens. I’d like to go back and stay at the little hostel in town some time, and maybe continue the trek over the mountains to the Pacific. But it was almost sunset and we wanted to get home before dark, so we headed back west.

On the drive back the Jeep started making a horrible screeching noise - it seems something may have been caught in the wheel well, or was scraping on the metal disk brakes - it was awful and echoed in the canyon as we descended the steep rocky road with hairpin turns - we stopped in the road and Devin crawled under to see if it was something he could knock loose, and couldn't find anything, so we kept going a ways to find a better place to work on it - a relatively flat area with good visibility both directions. As it was getting dark, we jacked it up, and before removing the wheel, Devin did some more diagnostics and was able to pry the metal shield that covers the inside of the wheel away from the disk brakes, where it had been rubbing - probably a big rock got thrown up from the other tire and dented it. No more noise!! And we didn't have to take off the wheel. Yay!! We drove down to Loreto in the dark, seeing the glowing eyeshine of various beasts (mostly cattle and rabbits) along the way, outlines of Cardon (like Giant Saguaro) cacti, and enjoying the desert night as the lights of Loreto approached.

For more photos, see our San Javier Picasa Web Album

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Thirteen: Wednesday, March 28: Santispac to Loreto

2007-04-10T21:33:00.001-07:00

Wind and haze today –air quality affects everything, and we didn’t enjoy the scenery as much today because of it. Baja folks call it fog, but it feels more like a light marine layer with dust – almost SoCal like. We could tell it would be pretty if clear, but didn’t take too many photos and decided to go to an RV park in Loreto with internet access, the Rivera del Mar, for a whopping $14 a night. There were laundry facilities there, and it was clean and nice, and had a café, too. We did 4 loads of laundry and took showers and felt much better!

There were Hooded Orioles and lots of other nice birds at the RV camp, the wind in the palm fronds was very relaxing, and there was a nice sidewalk cafe in the old part of town - Café Olé. We sampled "City Life" in Loreto while resting up from relaxing on the beach. :) Check out the video of the "megaphone car" adding atmosphere to our sidewalk café experience!

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Twelve: Tuesday, March 27: Santispac – Dolphins, rainwater, kayaking around a real desert island, and dinner on a sailboat

2007-04-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

We woke up to see dolphins out in the bay!! And some earlier rising kayakers already out among them. We took photos (too far away to show up well) and watched. Obero came during the dolphins, and since we needed water, I made arrangements for him to return in “about an hour” with barrels of water and a pump to fill our 75 gallon tank which was very low. The dolphins left while we were talking, so no kayaking with dolphins today.

We made coffee and breakfast and said goodbye to Bernardo and Alethea, and about 3 hours later, Obero finally showed up! I think "Baja Time" is a lot like "Indian Time" and "Maggie Time," everything is "mas o menos"! It took a while to fill our tanks with what Obero said was rainwater (!) and our new friends left while we were filling up. But first they got some water from Obero for their neat pressurized solar shower – it was like a black balloon of heavy rubber material, so when it was full, it was round, and gave a nice hot high pressure shower for camping - I've never seen one like it.

After our tank was finally full, we got in the kayak and began to paddle out to the island – the kayak was an Islander sit-on-top tandem, and quite short, even for a regular kayak, so it had horrible tracking across flat water – we zig-zagged across the bay trying to figure out who should do what and when to keep it going in a straight line. It was quite maneuverable when we got to the island, though, and we wove in and out of rocky outcrops and mini-islets all around the shore. We didn't take our camera because we were afraid of dunking it - but wow do I wish we had!

Looking down in the clear water, we could easily see large sting rays gliding along the bottom, and schools of bright yellow and black striped “Sergeant Major” fish that I called “bumblebee fish” along with various others – some dark black or green fish with yellow eyes, a large parrotfish with blue fins and lips, a couple of what looked like dolphinfish, some Jacks, a big Angelfish type thing – and interesting seaweed and rocks they would all dart into and out of.

The most exciting part of the island, however, was the bird life. Brown Pelicans were nesting on ledges and at the top of the island among the giant Cardon cactus – we saw baby pelicans in their nests! They are all white and fluffy, with little pouches under their bills that flutter in and out. Parent Pelicans came back and fed them while we watched! Great armies of Pelicans stood out on the rock shelf at the waterline around the island, and on the little islets, and we guided the kayak quietly between them, passing right next to these huge and strange sentries! It was like being on the Discovery Channel, with 3D surround 360 vision, sound and smell-o-vision! Ha. The smell of guano as we would drift in close was almost overpowering, but worth the views! Overhead Pelicans, Frigatebirds and Turkey Vultures made interesting dance partners as they soared an aerial ballet, joined by an Osprey that landed on a Giant Cardon cactus atop the rim of the island and watched us as we circumnavigated their fortress. We saw American Oystercatchers on the far side, and as we paddled close there, the rocks came alive with hundreds of large, prehistoric looking insects or crustaceans – they looked like giant pill bugs! Like something you’d see in a horror movie!

As we finished circling the island, we encountered two young boys in a kayak who landed and began to fish with a spearfishing device – they were from San Bernardino, and said that they were out of food and their parents didn’t want to do anything, so they had to catch dinner! What an adventure for the mighty hunters that must have been. We zig-zagged our way back as the wind started to pick up, and set to another round of serious relaxing. Sorry, no photos of our island cruise – we were afraid to bring the camera in case of dunking!

That afternoon, Marquita and another sailor, Caleb, came by after a trip to town, and Marquita told us Tony would come and pick us up in the dinghy at 4pm and she was making lasagna for dinner! Right on schedule, Tony picked us up and we motored back out to their sailboat, the “Seaclusion” and they showed us around. She is a beautiful 34 foot Catalina – sailboats are just so much nicer than RVs – solid teak trim and fittings, very neat living area, and of course, the deck! They had an old cranky Siamese cat that lived onboard with them, who I convinced to let me scratch his head for a bit. I took some photos then joined the group on deck and we were entertained by all sorts of sailing stories from them and their friend Caleb from a neighboring boat. Dinner was delicious, we brought Trader Joe’s wine, stories flowed – we stayed out till sunset then Tony brought us home.

That night, as predicted by the ham radio weather forecast we listened to out on the boat, the wind picked up in the middle of the night. We were glad we had put in our “sail” (our awning) and “battened our hatches” in preparation for leaving the next day so we didn’t have to worry about wind blowing anything away. I had dreams that the RV was a sailboat, as it was rocked gently by the wind… I woke up smiling.
It was definitely another “Life is Good” day!

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Eleven: Monday, March 26: Santispac - relaxing on the beach and meeting new friends

2007-04-10T21:31:00.002-07:00

Early (7am) this morning, we awoke to the sound of a horn that played “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” from the musical Oklahoma – a fitting song for Playa Santispac. We had read about vendors selling groceries and other items that came by early, so I quickly got up and dressed to see what they had. Obero was the owner of the truck with the musical horn, and he was really nice – great smile and attitude, and helpful clear Spanish. I like it when people make it easy to communicate! Bought some fresh tortillas from a tortilleria in Mulegé, some limes (limons), garlic, avocado, steaming hot tamales and some empanadas. All was quite good and we were quite happy to no longer have a reason to leave this beautiful beach!

Last night we got some new neighbors in a tent and the palapa next door, Bernardo, from Guadalajara, Mexico, and Alethea (pronounced “Ah-LEE-thuh”) from Alberta, Canada. Alethea had been teaching English in Mexico and she and Bernardo met down here, and now he was traveling with her up to Canada. What a great couple they were! We learned more about Mexico and Mexican culture from Bernardo, who is fluent in three languages and went to high school in England, so speak English with a British accent. We enjoyed chatting with them and ended up deciding to share dinner – there were vendors who drove up to the campsite selling fish, shrimp, scallops, and more. We also arranged to keep the kayak they had rented so we could go out in it the next morning, when they were leaving. The little store/restaurant on the beach was on "summer hours" and didn't open until 2pm, making renting a kayak in the morning difficult!

The Mighty Kayakers Return!

We waded out in the water some- it stays shallow quite far out, collected shells, read, watched birds, took photos, and generally had a lovely day. There are sting rays in the water here, so wading is doing the “Baja Shuffle” to keep from getting stung. Bernardo and Alethea waded out quite far before seeing their first stingray, which made their return wade quite a bit slower! Bernardo then found good sticks to use to test where you would put your foot and brought me one when I was out splashing about. Devin already has one – his cane. The only problem is they get water in them and he has to remember to drain them before bringing them inside – ha. We waded out quite far, looking at the little schools of fish and small crabs that would occasionally startle me by scuttling right across my feet! I think I stepped on one once, because it pinched my toe! Only lightly, but it was still startling.

My mosquito bites were starting to itch fiercely, to the point of madness, and talking with Bernardo and Alethea, we found out about “Vampire Flies” – don’t know their real name, but that’s what they called them, because they act just like vampire bats – injecting some anticoagulant with their bite and then lapping up the blood, rather than sucking the way mosquitoes do. They make a small crater-like wound. Devin had seen one of these on my leg at San Ignacio – maybe I had vampire fly bites!

While we were sitting out on our “patio” watching the Herons, Egrets, Pelicans, Frigatebirds, Ospreys and Vultures, a couple from one of the sailboats motored in close to shore in their dinghy, set anchor and waded up. They introduced themselves and asked if we’d watch their water shoes, after they changed into walking shoes. Tony and Marquita were another wonderful couple, warm, friendly, fun, funny, genuine, and talkative. They had a place in San Carlos in the winter, and lived in Albuquerque in the summer. They said walking was something they didn’t get to do enough of on their sailboat, so they came ashore to go for walks, in addition to going into town for supplies. They went for a walk, came back and got their shoes (we were watching them to make sure no dogs ran off with them, which had happened before, apparently!) and they said we were hired! Ha. Marquita said we’d have to come out and see their sailboat, and we thought that would be great.

It was a great day, and we had a wonderful dinner, too – Alethea and Bernardo made shrimp in garlic sauce and scallops – but they aren’t real scallops, and are quite chewy, though delicious. Alethea was quite embarrassed at their chewy-ness and said they were like bubble gum, but they weren’t ~that~ chewy! They tasted quite good, too! They come from a different creature than what we call scallops. What we call scallops, the Mexicans call “Mane de Leon” (mane of the lion) and they get quite large. What they call scallops come from a spiny large shell that is oblong, and apparently the disks are cut out of a larger organism. They are called Callo de Hacha, and just the adductor muscles are eaten. Atrina maura is the scientific name, as far as I can tell from Google research since then, or Pinna rugosa, or some other species of Pinna or Atrina – sometimes called a Pen Clam or Fan Mussel. I think these type of scallops are meant to be eaten as ceviche, and cured with lime juice rather than cooked, but we didn’t know that then. The next morning, Bernardo fed the leftover scallops to the crabs - he said he heard the crab saying "chewy!" Ha.

We grilled the fish, of unknown variety (just “pescado”) on our Weber Baby Cue, which was the first time we got it out in Mexico. Here’s the marinade, which I got from my former roommate, Tom Wright, who cooked salmon this way – yum!

Recipe for Fish Marinade:
Lime Juice
Soy Sauce
Garlic
Serrano Chiles
Onion (purple is good)
Cilantro

After marinating, wrap fish with some marinade in foil and grill for 10 minutes or until firm and no longer translucent. flake apart and serve with warm tortillas and fresh salsa (tomatoes, onion, cilantro, lime, chiles - basically, the marinade without the soy sauce!)

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Ten: Sunday, March 25: San Ignacio to Bahia Concepcion/Playa Santispac

2007-04-10T21:31:00.001-07:00

Headed to the west coast today – to the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) and the famous beaches along Bahia Concepcion. Leaving San Ignacio, we passed an omen of Semana Santa - a carnival on a truckbed headed for the beaches! We also started seeing some new terrain as we passed the recent volcanism of the Tres Virgenes volcanoes. Where these blocky lava flows crossed the road, large “Palo Blanco” trees grew on them along with a slightly different assemblage of desert plants. After going through this interesting area, we came to the infamous “Cuesta del Infierno,” literally, the Grade from Hell! I thought that was a nickname, but no, there are official Government Highway signs with that name! It descended through neat country, like a cross between the Badlands, the Painted Desert, and the Grand Canyon. The grade was definitely steep – thank goodness we (and by “we” I mean Devin) installed the supplemental tow braking system – we turned up the gain on the Jeep’s brakes so it could help hold us back as we descended to the coast, and got little glimpses of the shining blue Sea of Cortez when we didn’t have our eyes glued to the edge of the cliff – ha. At the bottom, the highway goes right along the coast, and pelicans and other seabirds accompanied us as we drove south.
Old mining equipment and buildings line the highway north of the old mining town of Santa Rosalía, and one guidebook made a comment that Santa Rosalía hadn’t “cleaned up after itself” very well – egad! I hope they don’t! The old mining buildings and equipment were interesting and historical! Sort of like the kind of ruin we love to come across rusting out in the desert in California, that is protected in National Parks like Joshua Tree and Death Valley. There is a mining museum in town, which we didn’t take the time to visit this time, but would like to someday.

We came to the town of Santa Rosalía, and decided to stop along the beachfront and unhook the Jeep so we could explore a bit. There is a church there said to be designed by Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame, and a famous French bakery. The guidebooks didn’t seem to think much of this town, but we really liked it! I think a lot of people come to Baja with preconceptions about what they want to find – idyllic beaches on blue water with palm trees – Hollywood’s cliché of Paradise. Santa Rosalía is a town that was founded by a French copper mining company, and built out of wood – a rare commodity in Baja California. Most buildings down here are made of adobe brick or stone or cement, but the mining company had lumber shipped from the Pacific Northwest to build its little “company town.” I like to think of Santa Rosalía as the “French Quarter” of Baja – all the buildings are two storey and have balconies, most with bougainvillea or other vines decorating them, all painted in bright Mexican colors, and the town is very much alive and vibrant, and not just from a tourist economy. There were many stores and people filled the sidewalks. We wanted to visit the Boleo Panaderia, the French bakery that has been there since the 1800’s. We found delicious treats there and will stop again on the way back north!

As we were re-connecting the Jeep for towing, a car drove by and all I heard, as the driver’s neck snapped around to look, was “…con quarto puertas!” (with four doors). A few minutes later he drove back in the opposite direction and gave the Jeep a good look and us a big smile and thumbs up! It’s fun to have a car that gets noticed – certainly has never happened to me before!

We continued our drive south, passing through Mulegé over the river lined with palms, and down to Playa Santispac, our destination for the night. Okay, so maybe there IS a paradise that looks like you might imagine down here! This beach is off of Bahia Concepcion, and off a small bay (Bahia Coyote) off of that large bay. It’s a sheltered cove, with a wide arc of sandy beach and shallow emerald green waters out to deeper blue depths with islands topped with cactus and circled by pelicans, frigatebirds, and turkey vultures! A few sailboats were anchored out in the bay, clouds reflected in the calm water – what a place!

As we pulled in, no one was at the “oficina” where you paid $7 a night to camp on (and I mean ON) this lovely beach, and a carload of Mexicans leaving told us to just camp and they would find us and collect our fees later. So we found a secluded spot on the beach and angled the RV for maximum views out our windows, put out the awning and slide-out, and started in right away doing some serious relaxing!!

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip