Tag: USA

Sometimes it feels like we’re just trucking around ticking off the national parks, skipping things in between, missing out on wilderness and hidden gems, as though we were on a short package tour. Today we went straight from Bryce Canyon to Zion Canyon National Park – another crowded spot, particularly as it’s the long Labor Day weekend here in the US. But we are in Utah, where 65% of the state is federally owned land, much of which is national park. And the parks here really are different from each other, even though it’s almost all rock of some sort or another. I have managed to learn a bit about the history of the area, about the Indian tribes and early settlers. There’s not a huge amount of information about though; the exhibits in the visitor centres go a small way but are naturally conservative, having to avoid offending anyone. I’ve a good list of recommended books to stock up the boat library, and now that we’ve seen a bunch of places they should make good reading over the winter.

Zion Canyon appears out of nowhere, after a couple of hours’ mediocre drive from Bryce (mediocre compared to the rest of Utah at least). The park road starts winding through tight, steep gorges flanked by monster slabs of pale sandstone, the surface of the stone all creased up like an old mountain man’s face. Then you’re plunged into a dark, long, twisting tunnel, bored through solid rock. Every few hundred yards there’s a small viewing hole, where you can see glimpses of a vast empty space, and lots of red rock. After a mile or so you burst out into the sunlight, onto the side of a monster canyon, the road dropping away to the right down tight switchbacks. The view really is impressive – made better by the fact that you don’t know what’s coming until it’s suddenly there in all its massiveness – and this isn’t even the main canyon. Definitely the best way to enter this park.

Saturday on a bank holiday weekend was always going to be busy, so we were pushing our luck a bit trying to find a free camp spot. Luckily the first place we tried, just outside the park on the western side in Springdale, had a cancellation just as we were about to leave. We set up camp, then walked into the park via a coffee stop. You can’t actually drive up into Zion Canyon itself – back in 1997 the park decided that lots of car traffic was going to kill the experience, so they introduced a free shuttle service to take visitors to all the spots in the park. Getting on the bus makes it feel a bit like Disneyland or Alton Towers, but there’s a good commentary, and not driving meant I could soak it all in. We got off and headed out for a hike to Emerald Pools, thinking that getting off the main track would provide some solitude from the crowds. Nope, just as busy out on the trails. And the pools were more like disappointing puddles, hardly shimmering emerald lakes. Maybe a bit of the scenery desensitisation creeping into our attitudes again here, exaggerated by the hordes of people… While we were in the valley we decided to wander up to the most well-known hike in the area – The Narrows – which runs along and through the river at the bottom of a tight slot canyon for perhaps 20 miles. Again, SO many people! Looks like this is definitely the Thing To Do when you come to this park. A local business was doing well renting out river shoes and walking sticks… we explored the first mile or two in bare feet, and then called it a day.

Horse riding into the depths of the “canyon” this morning. I think the last time I rode a horse was when I was about seven! This little trip was easy as we were all following-the-leader along a single file trail, and the horses were all on autopilot. I’ve always found horse riding a little strange, mainly because it’s been an activity done in the English countryside where I’d always rather be mountain biking or walking – so not something I’d ever pay to do as a “punter”. Here, too, it felt a bit strange to be a “tourist” on a packaged trip – but it did make me think it would be interesting to do a multi-day backcountry trip where having horses meant you could carry a lot more than if you were just backpacking. Maybe somewhere in South America, into the Andes. With llamas.

 

To get to Zion early enough to find a camp spot, we decided to spend a second night in Bryce and leave sharpish in the morning. Even though we’d not been into the southern end of the park, we all felt a bit overwhelmed by loads of people, and wanted some down-time not driving around or sightseeing, so we spent the rest of the day relaxing in camp, then headed into Bryce Canyon City for a cheap, quick and dirty meal at a diner, and a wander around the rock shop.

Rock shops eh. These places are crazy – selling every kind of rock you can imagine, in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Some are “raw” that you get cut open for you once you’ve bought them, a bit like a scratch card – not knowing what’s going to be inside. What do you do with a 10 kilo lump of rock? Some of them are decorative and I could see them perhaps being a tourist’s souvenir, but many are really just lumps of rock. If you’re a rock collector, would you buy your collection bit by bit in places like this? Maybe, since it’s so arid round here, people don’t have plant gardens, they just have rock gardens? So a rock shop is a bit like a garden centre. In amongst all the glitter there were some pretty cool sandblasted shapes made from an Arizona sandstone, but I’ve never really been into rock buying so they stayed on the shelf.

It’s quick and easy, but breakfast in camp every day doesn’t really give us the experience of seeing local places. So today we stopped at Duke’s Slickrock Grill in the small town of Hanksville, deep in the middle of Utah for a classic American breakfast – pancakes, eggs, maple syrup … the works.

Not much further down the road is Capitol Reef National Park – running north/south along a geological formation called the “waterpocket fold”. More impressive from the air than from the road, it’s still pretty awesome. So many different colours of rock and sand in one place.

We headed down the short 20 mile scenic drive which dead-ends at a dirt track in Capitol Gorge (pic by Jon).

Back on the main road just outside the park, we grabbed some lunch and did a round of laundry in Torrey, before heading south and up into the hills. Trees! We haven’t seen trees for days… “Scenic Highway 12” winds along through aspen and pine forests, ending up in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument – a huge expanse of rock, canyons and more Utah epic-ness – but that’s tomorrow’s drive. We pitched camp in the Dixie National Forest, Singletree campground, at about 9000 feet, and got down to “craft night”. Rose had found some instructions for making some dream catchers, and we’d bought thread, wire and beads in Denver.

As the sun went down, so did the temperature. We talked late into the night, huddled round the camp fire under a cold, clear, starry sky, dream catchers hanging in the trees, protecting us from those nasty dreams…

Canyonlands. Wow. I’m running out of ways to describe yet more amazing scenery. The view stretches for miles and miles and miles – from the overlook on the end of the mesa above the confluence of the Green River and the Colorado River. Each geological layer is clearly visible, and a 100 mile 4WD track called white rim trail runs all the way around the park – it looks tempting – the van can handle a lot of off road stuff, but we’ve not got the 3 days it would take, and we probably would get stuck. We’re not set up for real off roading. A trip to save for the bucket list.

Starting to feel a little jaded by endless expanses of rock and huge views, we didn’t spend long in the park … and with a fair bit of distance to go to the next stop, we headed off early afternoon. After a long drive around the top of the Canyonlands, we turned off the desolate, empty highway to Goblin Sate Park just in time to avoid a monster thunderstorm. Pulled over on the side of the road, we watched the lightning sizzling into the ground no more than a mile away.

Goblin Valley; hat a crazy place. Day after day we’re coming across rock and sand formations like nothing we’ve ever seen before – this place is definitely the most bizarre yet. The soft sandstone has eroded into lumps, pillars and hoodoos that really do look like goblins. When the rain stopped, we walked a mile and a half from camp along a muddy ravine to the Goblin Valley, where we spent a couple of hours exploring the weird landscape.

 

This campground has a little cabin for each site – protection from both sun and rain. More RVs than tents, which meant people with noisy generators, including our neighbours who spent the evening watching a movie with theirs running until late in the night. Still a pretty awesome site, surrounded by crumbling sandstone cliffs and buttresses, a bit like being in a huge inside-out gothic cathedral.

Excited to check out the rocks in the dawn light, I got up early and explored while others slept. The sandstone is perfect for scrambling around on – in bare feet it’s got almost limitless friction, and you can get up high onto outcrops and into arches all over the place.

Before it got too hot, we all walked the Devils Garden loop – a 6 mile hike/scramble through yet more mind blowing scenery just to the north of the campground. I was surprised at how technical and sometimes exposed the trail was. Normally Americans put barriers and signs up all over the place, but out here it’s just a few cairns marking the trail along thin arêtes, down steep sandstone faces and along precipitous edges.

Everyone has to come here at some point in their life. It’s incredible.

Starving after our expedition, we rustled up a gourmet egg muffin lunch at the picnic site, trying to tuck under the shade of a tree in the baking heat. Then back into Moab for fuel, and onwards to Canyonlands!

We found a peaceful camp spot at Horsethief campground, just before the entrance to the park, set up the tarp as an awning, chilled out for the afternoon and then wandered off into the desert for an incredible sunset. A couple of photos from Jon:

 

Helen wasn’t feeling so good, so we left her and Jon at camp while Rose and I explored the cliff dwellings of the park – Long House in the morning, Balcony House in the pouring rain, then in the evening, as we were the only two people, with our very own guide we explored Cliff Palace. Wandering around these ruins was much like the experience in the Mexican ruins a few years back. Clearly there has been a lot of “restoration”, since early photos show many of the sites as piles of rubble – which makes it feel a bit like you’re walking around a prepared, packaged exhibition rather than an original, ancient site. But without restoration, you wouldn’t get the same idea of what the villages used to be like, and tourism probably wouldn’t even be possible. Impressive, nonetheless. Yet another unique experience!

We picked up Jon & Helen and trucked on towards Utah. We’d not had an American diner meal together, so we stopped off for dinner at Denny’s in Cortez where we met a friendly local called Steve, who lives on a small ranch nearby with his wife – having moved from Boston seeking the simple life. Another late night drive – we’ve hardly done any driving after dark in months – took us over the border into Utah. It’s very, very dark at night out here. No street lights, and pretty poor van lights means that we only get to see a small patch of yellow tarmac for a few hours – with a huge flash of lightning every now and then in the distance. We’ve been able to see thunderstorms somewhere on the horizon pretty much every day. So we turned up at a campsite a 6 miles down a small side road, in the dark. With my powerful bike light we could just make out the huge, red rocks looming over us. What’s it going to look like in the morning?