Our Dumb Blog

Virgin River Canyon, UT–Death Valley, CA

We stopped by the Hoover Dam today. What a zoo! There were as many people there as at Disney World. And you have to go through a police checkpoint now to drive across it. The policeman was basically just waving everybody through, I suppose looking to see if you were white first. The last time I saw the dam I think there was only one other family there.

Before that, we drove though Las Vegas, stopping at an In-N-Out Burger for breakfast. In-N-Outs are only in the California area. They have six items on the menu: burgers, cheese burgers, double cheese burgers, fries, milkshakes, and drinks. There are no sizes. It’s a very simple menu and quite cheap. They use all fresh ingredients. Their fries are made from potatoes peeled that morning. Their buns have no preservatives. They’re a family owned business that has refused to franchise. The bottom of their cups say, “John 3:16.” We got two double cheese burgers “animal style,” which isn’t on the menu. We’re not really sure what that means, but Brandon Downey told us to order them that way. Berck thinks it means they sautee the onions in mustard. I think it means they put Thousand Island dressing on them.

Now we’re heading up the pass of death toward Death Valley. Berck is running the AC like an idiot. It’s funny; we left snow and below-freezing temperatures last night, and today we’re in the Nevada/California desert, and it’s HOT.

Well, we made it up the first hill okay. We filled up with gas before leaving NV to make sure we could make it through Death Valley. $2.08 for regular unleaded! The credit card wouldn’t let us use pay-at-the-pump. Apparently, it’s nearly impossible to use a credit card for anything in Nevada; the cards are summarily flagged as possibly stolen.

We made it as far as the Nevada/Utah border last night and broke down and settled for a room at a casino for $24. Sheets! A hot shower! Of course, even though the motel was huge, the floors creaked, and we could hear every movement of the family upstairs, especially their kids and dog. For some reason they had to get up at 4:30 and jump up and down.

We drove I-15 through the Virgin River Canyon last night, a road under construction and so tight that over-sized vehicles are prohibited. It took all of Berck’s skill as an X-Wing pilot to navagate the narrow canyon. The scenery was probably beautiful, but it was dark, so who knows. But there was too much snow to camp in the middle of Utah, so we had to keep going.

Bryce Canyon, UT–Southeast Utah

It’s Sunday morning and all the Mormons are in church.

Yesterday we did Bryce Canyon, then camped in the Kodachrome Basin State Park, only a few miles away but two to three thousand feet lower in elevation. Which is good, because Bryce Canyon National Park was covered in a couple feet of snow.

Bryce Canyon is known for its brightly colored, dramatic spires of rock that point into the sky in row after row. They’re called hoodoos, and they’re caused when the bottom layer of sandstone is softer than the top layer of rock.

Our campsite was virtually free of snow. It was in a basin of brown dust filled with chimney spires of rock. It cost $14, but included “hot” showers. Berck and I used the men’s room this morning because we have to share a towel. And we were the only people camping. It was pretty cold. Ice crystals formed in my wet hair, making attempting to brush it fairly futile.

Well, we weren’t completely alone in the campground. It was full of cottontails, jackrabbits, western bluebirds, Steller’s jays, and these weird little birds which are apparently only indigenous to the area. They look like a cross between quail and puffins, and they make quite a racket, at times like high-pitched chickens, other times crows.

Firewood gathering was prohibited, but there was a whole bunch of sawed 1x6s for treefiddy an armful. So I loaded Berck up with a tall stack of lumber. He made it as far as a picnic table before it started becoming unbalanced. Then I carried it to the edge of our campsite before letting it drop. But we had quite a fire!

It made up for the night before. Zion prohibits gathering wood too (but there’s a ton of dead wood lying all over the place). So to heat up our supper, Berck took eight charcoal briquettes, doused them with lighter fluid, turned them over and doused them again, then lit them, and placed two cans of soup resting on four pieces of charcoal each. It’s not much of a fire, but having a warm supper is nice.

Today we drove over snow covered mountains, white aspens sticking out of them. Then we went along a road that traveled along the spine of a ridge with, literally, enough space on top for the road. It was called Hell’s Backbone. Then we descended to drive through Capital Reef National Park. It’s a pretty impressive wall of bright red rock that rises out of the ground. On the other side of it is canyons of rock and badlands, a desert quite in contrast to the picturesque mountains we’d passed through earlier. Now we’re heading down into the southeast corner of Utah where, apparently, there are no gas stations. Berck is driving slowly, worried that we’re not going to make it to the next town, 50 miles away. We’re having to bypass Natural Bridges National Monument to even hope to make it. The way seems to be mostly downhill. We stopped at a lodge that had gas pumps, but they were closed for the season.

There may not be any gas, but southern Utah has amazing landscapes. The landscape is chiseled out of rock and sand. It’s mostly desert, and even in the winter, the sun beating through my window makes me hot. I’m glad we came in the February.

Well, we made it to a gas station and put 10.6 gallons in the tank. Berck has put 11 gallons in it before. It holds 11.9, but he doesn’t know if all that is usable. It turned out to the be the cheapest gas in town. It was also only one of three things open. I wonder if we’ll be able to buy soup for tonight’s meal anywhere. It’s a Sunday in Utah.

I’m sipping “Frambozen”, a Raspberry Brown Ale produced by the New Belgium Brewing Co. in Fort Collins, CO. They’re best known for Fat Tire, a long time favourite of mine. Normally we haven’t been buying things like beer, trying to live off as little money as possible, but we decided to splurge after viewing the extensive beer selection at the Bashas’ grocery in Page, AZ. This beer is quite good, I’ve not had anything like it. For those of you who have had Lindeman’s Frambose Lambic, a sweet raspberry beer, this is not anywhere near as sweet but just as raspberry. It tastes very much like beer with a strong, fruity, raspberry flavor. Joanna and I both like it.

We spent a long time dawdling yesterday, it seems. We slept in a bit, showered, and ended up getting out of the RV park around 10am. Then we drove backwards 10 miles to Page and stopped at the Walmart where we purchased film and some flannel pants for me to sleep in. We looked for some snow chains, but they didn’t have any. We then went to the grocery store and got supplies. We’ve been eating Cambell’s Select soups when we can build a fire, and cheese, crackers, summer sausage or salami when we can’t. We’ve also got some bread and peanut butter to add variety. (Either peanut butter crackers or salami sandwiches.) Fitting any amount of food in this car with the gear we’ve already got is difficult, but we’ve been managing so far.

We left Page and got to Zion NP in Utah a few hours later. After setting up the tent, we set off to go hike a trail that started near the campground and pay for the campsite. It turns out that it costs $16/night to camp here, which is stupid expensive for a campsite. Campsites are usually around $5/night, $10 in expensive national parks. Zion is expensive– the entrance fee is $20. Fortunately for us it was free, since the Kaspryzak family gave us a National Park Pass. (At $50, it’s paid for itself by now…) I think that part of the reason it’s so expensive is because of the shuttle system here. In the summer, there are only about 450 parking spaces for about 5,000 per day. As a solution they’ve set up a shuttle system. It costs nothing to ride and stops at all the trails and apparently runs often. I suspect that this is an expensive system. It sounds like it works well, but it only runs from April-October. In the winter, the park is relatively quiet. Even so, there have been more people here than anywhere we’ve been so far, except perhaps Big Bend in the middle of the weekend.

After deciding to go ahead and pay for two nights, we set off for the Watchman Trail. It was 2.7 miles round trip and climbed about 400 feet. It was a nice little trail, and we were back around sunset.

The weather forecast in the visitor center indicated that the lows last night would be in the low 20s, and boy was it cold. We had the presence of mind to put the remaining beers inside the tent so they wouldn’t freeze. Last night was the first night I was at all cold, mostly because I wasn’t wearing any socks, and a t-shirt instead of a long sleeve shirt. I wasn’t very cold, just a little bit, and only near morning. Joanna says she wasn’t cold at all, which is good, but then she sleeps in long underwear, pants, three shirts and a sweatshirt.

But, it was quite cold. If we encounter weather much colder, I don’t think we’ll be happy. Our bottle of water froze quite solidly, and there was a fair amount of frost inside the tent even though the moisture vent was open.

This morning, we drove down to the end of the canyon and followed the 2 mile path by the river into the narrower part of the canyon. If it’s warm, or you’ve got the right gear, you can hike much farther provided you don’t mind walking in up to 4 feet of water. Since Joanna picked that trail, I got to pick the next one. There are quite a few trails, and after reading the description of all of them, I decided on one that was listed as “Strenuous,” and “Not for people afraid of heights,” and so on. It’s supposedly 5 miles round trip but climbs 1500ft.

It was beautiful and exhausting. My feet and ankles are especially tender. The first mile or so was easy, but the further we went, the steeper the climb. The trail is a fairly impressive bit of engineering itself, since it appears to have been carved into a relatively unyielding rock face. It’s roughly paved which made footing easy. As we got higher, though, we worked our way around to the shaded side of the mountain and encountered what had been snow but was now hard packed ice. The first little bit was easy enough, there were clean rocks to climb on or snow that wasn’t yet fully packed. As we got further though, it started looking like a bad idea. When a slip in the wrong place could mean literally falling off the mountain, I told Joanna I thought we ought to go back. She didn’t want to and eventually convinced me to go on ahead. The climb up involved carefully planting each foot, testing it and applying weight slowly. I fell twice, fortunately not badly. Some areas were okay, others seemed entirely devoid of appropriate footing. After finally reaching what looked like the top, we realized that the trail we were on continued another half mile up a trail only recognizable by the fact that there was a chain installed. The trail looked as though it would be extremely difficult in the summer and impossible in the winter. No one else appeared crazy enough, either. We sat at the edge of a thousand foot cliff and ate lunch, then started back down. Getting down the iced sections was more difficult. In some places, the only way we managed was to slide on our butts. While actually rather fun to go sliding down the switchbacks, our bottoms got rather cold and and wet.

On the way down, we passed all sorts of people who appeared far more adept at such things than us. An older man, who looked to be well over 60, wearing spandex passed us going up as we were heading down. Shortly thereafter, he passed us going down, apparently turning around where the ice got bad. Not too long after that, he passed us AGAIN, this time headed back up the hill. He said he was doing some sort of fitness training. I think he was crazy. And he wasn’t the only one. We spotted another guy heading back up the hill who had passed us coming down on our way up. Hiking is fun and all, but this masochistic yo-yo routine is beyond me.

We probably had enough time to hike another trail, but there was no way we could manage. We also could have packed up the tent and gone to the next park, but since we already paid for 2 nights, the obvious choice of sitting and doing nothing has been a much needed change.