Monument Valley

Nov. 9 & 10, 2014

For about 4 or 5 days, at our Goosenecks camp site, we'd been seeing the spires of Monument Valley peaking up above the horizon:

Monument Valley spires on the horizon

So one morning we had breakfast in Bluff, Utah at the Twin Peaks Trading Post...

Good food in Bluff, Utah

...and headed for Monument Valley:

Approaching Monument Valley

Monument Valley belongs to the Navajo Nation, and they've built an extensive Visitors' Center with gift shop, restaurant, and headquarters for several types of tours. We could have chosen a guided tour of the 17-mile loop through the Park, but you pay quite a bit of money to sit in a covered, but open-sided jeep or flatbed truck with 10 or 12 others, while the Navajo guide drives the truck and narrates through speakers. Now, this sounds OK, but the road is dirt, and the tours leave every 5 minutes or so, which means each truckload of tourists eats the dust of the truck in front--for the entire hour-long drive. Of course, they also see the sights through the same dust. The Navajo guide, by the way, sits in the cab of the truck--with windows up. Quite a few tourists in one truck had bandanas tied around their faces; they looked like bandits or terrorists. 

Instead of the tour (or driving ourselves, another option), we decided to do the 3 1/2 mile hike around Mitten Butte. It was as empty as the drive was crowded--and no dust. On the way to the trailhead, though, I spotted a few Navajo hogans that were open and wandered inside. I expected nothing much; after all, these were basically mud structures. However, once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I was surprised by the beauty in the roof supports:

Logs woven together to provide support for the roof

I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that this 'woven logs' technique is the same roof support structure that the Anasazi used in the great Kivas at Chaco Canyon and elsewhere 1000 years ago.

On to the Mitten Butte hike:

Note sliver of sky upper right center; looks like a knife or scimitar.

Almost all the way around Mitten Butte

John Wayne is out there somewhere...

By the time we finished the hike it was nearly dark: too late for the loop drive. However, there was still time to set up the tripod alongside the other 30 photographers and shoot Monument Valley at sunset:

We drove back the next day to take the tour, but decided the guided tour was not for us. Instead, we paid the $20 to drive our truck along the same loop. It was magnificent. And even though we had the windows up and the air on "recirculate", we still got dusty. We can't imagine what torture those tourists on the guided tours must have endured! Wait! Actually, we can: we were caught outside in a dust storm so bad that all I saw when I looked at Leah, whom I was touching, was a brown shape. (My hair actually changed color--from white to a kind of sandstone. Stayed that way, too, until I washed it.) Here's a photo of the petering-out dust storm, taken after we scrambled back inside the truck:

Tail end of dust storm, Monument Valley

Clearing a bit...

In tact,  but a bit dusty.

Hope all is well with you...

More from Goosenecks...

Here are some photos from the Goosenecks Park area, but not from the Goosenecks, themselves. Forgot to put them in last time:

Liked the patterns and colours in the rocks

...a closer look a little later.

That's all from Goosenecks. Definitely a place we'll return.

Goosenecks of the San Juan State Park

Nov. 4-10, 2014

Moab and Ken's Lake were wonderful: We hiked and explored the town and La Sal Mountain Loop, had great food, and got a trailer part replaced (the electric tongue jack failed). But we began suffering from 'hitch itch'--the urge to see what's over the next hill--so hit the road for Goosenecks of the San Juan State Park, Utah, where we'd heard from many that the sites were ''really nice".

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We agree. View from our site at Goosenecks. 

Not far from our site. It's easy to see that the San Juan river has carved a series of 'goosenecks' because we're camped on a cliff 1500 ft above it.

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Reading in the morning. Quiet...very few other campers here, even though the cost is a reasonable $10/night. Our site, though, is beyond the state park boundary, on BLM land, and so was free.

What's not to like!

Our routine: Get up, have coffee, maybe read, then walk...or maybe run back along the approach road:
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Morning walk on approaching Goosenecks State Park

Next, maybe another walk, this time along the rim:

Our site in the upper right corner

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Long way down. Looks like we're right on the edge, but we're really about 20 feet back.

Sometimes, after walking/running and maybe some photography, we'd drive the 10 miles into Bluff, Utah for breakfast or brunch at Twin Rocks Trading Post:

Pretty good restaurant, especially for a town of only about 260.

On the second day at Goosenecks we noticed a small class B/C motorhome, a Phoenix--one you never see, and one with a superb reputation for build quality. Anyway, we ended up meeting its owner, Gail, a new full-timer, and recently retired air traffic controller. She showed us her rig and she's really done a good job of customizing the interior. I had 'rig envy'.

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Inspecting Gail's rig

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Gail and Leah, in front of Gail's Phoenix. Note flexible solar panels leaning on rig, far right.

But then she saw my camera and asked what it was. "A Nikon D7100", I answered. She allowed that she would love one like it, as it was light and capable. "Oh", I said, "What camera do you have?" "A D810"! (This is Nikon's latest and greatest, a 36 megapixel full-frame DSLR.  Now I had camera envy, as well. She not only has a good camera, she takes fantastic photos, too. Turns out we have quite a bit in common. She also follows several bloggers, just as I do. And one of them is Tioga George, now retired from full-time RVing, but the inspiration for many new full-timers. She said she read his blog from the beginning to the end, a total of nearly 10 years of daily blog entries! I did the same, but started following him when he began blogging, in 2003 or so. If you follow the link above, you'll see his most recent post. However, the interesting stuff begins in 2003, so click on 'Archives", and navigate to 2003. Start there.

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View of our camp site from Gail's

On our walks along the rim, we noticed that other campers had created various types of rock art and rock structures, perhaps inspired by the Anasazi rock art (petroglyphs and pictographs) on rock walls all over the 4 corners area.

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A spiral or maze, very well done, at our camp site on the rim at Goosenecks...

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...perhaps inspired by spirals like this one, chipped into the rock near Bluff, Utah, about 1000 years ago. 

Spirals, we later learned, are among the most common types of rock art in Southwest, and are thought by some to symbolize migration or abandonment of one place for another.

On one side of our camp, the spiral...

...on the other a large stone fire pit...

...which we put to good use at the end of the day.

Colorado National Monument

Colorado National Monument,  Oct. 19-29, 2014

Sylvan Lake Park was getting too cold to stay, so we headed on down I-70 about 2 hours to Colorado National Monument. We had visited here as a family (I think) many years ago, but couldn't stay long as it was summer and we were all on vacation. Naturally, we felt we needed to cram in as much as we could in the 2 months. And Levi and I biked here maybe 8 years ago, but only stayed a couple of days. Again, not enough time to get to know the place. Now, however, we're not on vacation; rather, this is our life, so we can relax and spend as much time as we want in one place. As we pulled into Saddlehorn campground, we found a spot with a view and settled in. (Unfortunately, the photos of the campsite were taken on my phone, and were lost to a micro-SD card failure). For the next week or so, we walked along the rim in the morning, hiked the valley, and bicycled the rim road. Weather was just fine: high 70, low 40.

Walking along the rim:

Double click on any photo to see it larger

Double click on any photo to see it larger

Below: Hiking the valley (6 miles--surprisingly taxing...the sun, we think). Also, the trail began at the top, dropping down steeply to the valley, which meant that several hours later, we had to climb back up to the truck.

Double click on any photo to see it larger

Double click on any photo to see it larger

Beautiful colours and patterns in the rocks

Dead Horse Point State Park, Oct. 29-31, 2014

We left Colorado National Monument after about a week, heading for...well, generally southwest, but no definite plan. We kind of thought we'd head for Goosenecks of the San Juan State Park, which we'd heard a lot about, so off we drove, in that general direction. However, on the way through Moab, we saw a turnoff for Dead Horse Point State Park, a campground at the end of a one-way road that stops at Dead Horse Point--a colorful name with a sad story behind it. Legend has it that in the early 1900s cowboys herded wild mustangs out onto this 30-yard wide neck of land with 2000 foot drops on all sides. They then fenced off the narrow neck behind the horses. Once the horses were thus corralled, the cowboys chose the horses they wanted, and left the rest trapped. The horses eventually died of thirst--in sight of the Colorado River, 2000 ft. below.

On a whim, we called Dead Horse Point Park, and, yes, there was just one site left, right out on the Point--someone had just cancelled. We sped for half an hour to get there before it was taken. Arrived just in time, but alas, found the site too small for our trailer. Drat! A few miles back inland, though, we found a quiet site at Horse Thief BLM Campground $7.50 per night.

Our site at Horse Thief BLM campground

Leah is training binoculars on that thread of a dirt road in the upper middle of the photo. That's the Shafer Trail, a jeep road that switchbacks down that distant cliff, following the Colorado River into Moab. We drove that road in the van a couple of years ago. One of the most spectacular roads we've ever driven.

The next day, we drove out to the Point, and walked around for 3 hours watching the light change. From many of the viewpoints, we could see the Shafer Trail. We met an older German guy who said he'd driven that road in a Buick Super (the model with the 3 portholes on the side)! That would be about 1960! The road would have been a lot rougher back then.

 I wouldn't want to be stranded out here in the heat of summer, like those poor horses. What were those cowboys thinking?!

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Shafer Trail visible in center.

...more of the Shafer Trail running horizontally, lower left of photo.

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You can just see a small section of the Colorado river, upper left.

A kind lady took our picture at Dead Horse Point

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Last sunlight of the day... 

Moab and Ken's Lake, Oct. 30- Nov. 4, 2014

Horse Thief was a lovely campground, but aside from Dead Horse Point and some hiking, there wasn't much to do. We found ourselves wanting a bit of civilization: restaurants, showers, propane, dump site, thrift Stores, etc. Time to head for Moab.

Delicious breakfast at Eklectica Cafe:

Good breakfast of Huevos Rancheros, as well as tables that doubled as display cases for local craftspeople, including jewelry makers. Leah bought a turquoise neckless!

Excellent Huevos. The green chili was delicious! Sorry for the shadow thrown by the lens when the flash went off. Note the jewelry under the glass that forms the table.

Our site at Ken's Lake, a BLM campground 8 miles outside Moab--$7.50 per night with Senior Access Pass:

Nice site in the open, few neighbours, quiet, surrounded by cliffs and mountains, close enough to town.

We met the campground host, who has lived for 13 years on-site in an airstream with a wood stove in it. When he needs to move, the chimney collapses, and he can seal the hole in the roof. He mentioned off-hand that this year the campground had "a mountain lion problem". Intrigued, we asked what he meant. He said he'd recently found fresh deer kill with lots of lion tracks at a nearby waterfall frequented by hikers. Usually, you'd never see any sign of lions this close to a populated area, but this lion was different. The host was concerned enough that he invited a ranger out to investigate, and she advised that lions like this watch an area--like the waterfall--and look for patterns of behaviour in their prey. This allows them to set up a more effective ambush. She advised the host not go up to the falls alone, especially at dawn or dusk. We were forewarned...so we hiked up there mid-morning:

Our trailer is in a tiny cluster of RVs middle right of photo, up against the tan boulder on extreme right

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Part way up to the falls; campground barely visible directly right of Leah. Ken's Lake just beyond.

Rushing water downstream of waterfall. Thankfully, no sign of lion kill.

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Leah was happy about that.

Full size of waterfall. A big deal so near Moab, which only gets 5-10 inches of rain per year. This was only a trickle a couple of years ago.

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On the way back to camp. A splash of Fall colour just left of middle.

One of the reasons we saw a waterfall and a rushing river in such a dry place was that we'd been pounded by heavy rain and 50 mph winds for 2 days. Our trailer was situated side-on to the wind, so we were definitely rockin' and rollin' all night long.

After the storm, a double rainbow:

After the hike, we decided to follow an interesting looking road, the La Sal Loop road. It started down in the valley where we were camped, but ascended to a nearby mountain top, before twisting back down to Moab. A nice afternoon drive:

We interrupted this guy's browsing

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Near the top, we were in the snow. We saw only a lone snowplow coming the other way.

Coming down the other side

Almost down...

Near near river level.

All the way down, driving along the river toward Moab. Nice drive.

Hope you're all well.