Headed to Kanab--April 7

Here is the link to the woman climbing Fisher Towers while we were there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIhMq4gqTyA&feature=g-upl&context=G254b1e4AUAAAAAAABAA

***MAP UPDATED---PHOTOS ADDED SINCE April 2 through today****

I thought I would warm up once we ate dinner and went to bed, but... NO!  It was the coldest night we have had so far.....there was ice in our water jug when we got up this morning (and a little bit of frost on the inside of the windshield!)

We said "Goodbye" to Zion this morning and headed to Kanab, Utah to try for a permit to hike to The Wave (a cool sand/rock formation out in the desert that they only issue 20 permits per day for hiking).  The office that issues permits isn't open on the weekends (of course not), so that plan was out for now.  Instead, we saw Pipe Springs National Monument was only about 20 miles away, so we headed out there to look around this afternoon.

It is an actual spring in the middle of the desert that was originally used by the Utah Paiute Indians and then taken over from them by the Mormon settlers, who built a fort complex over the spring and used the location to hide their plural wives and children from the authorities so the husbands wouldn't be arrested.  In time, the location (40 acres of land) was designated as a U.S. national monument (the Mormons had already sold it to an individual) and the surrounding 120 square miles or so was designated as a Paiute Indian Reservation.

It wasn't what we were expecting to see, but it was very interesting anyway.  We took the tour of the main fort house/buildings and then walked around the rest of the grounds.  I learned some historical things that I had never heard about before, which is always fun.

We are staying in a hotel (using free points again) tonight.  We did all of our laundry since we left home almost a month ago and are now completely up to date with the blog again-----INCLUDING PHOTOS!
Not sure where we will head tomorrow, but I wish everyone a Happy Easter and we'll write again as soon as we can.

The Narrows--Zion Page 3

The sun was shining and the winds were calm when we got up this morning, so we headed into Springdale to get wetsuit packages so we can hike the Narrows in Zion.  We got a great deal on the rentals ($50 total for both of us) and headed into the park.

I have to admit---I was pretty anxious about doing this hike.  The trail literally is the riverbed of the Virgin River that flows through Zion Park.  The water temperature was about 40 degrees and we had seen some people the day before hit some areas of the river where the water was above their waists.  I had also spoken to part of a Boy Scout troop that had completed the hike and a couple of their group fell completely into some deep holes in the river.  I'm not that great of a swimmer and I really didn't want to take a big dunk in that cold water.

The hike follows the river up the canyon about 2 miles, until the canyon narrows to about 20 feet wide or less in spots.  With the tall canyon walls on both sides, it showed how it got its name--The Narrows.  The hike entailed making at least 20 river crossings and several spots where there were only the rock walls along the water....you literally walk up the river.

After the first 3 or 4 successful crossings, my confidence level rose and I really enjoyed this hike.  The scenery was absolutely beautiful and we were some of the very few visitors to Zion that actually get to see it because taking this hike is the only way to get to it.  We got some really cool photos, so check out the map!

We spent almost 5 hours hiking up and back out to the trailhead.  I was pretty cold when we got out, but I have to admit that those wetsuits are pretty amazing at keeping out part of the coldness.  (They also have special water shoes that prevent your feet from feeling the sharpness of the many rocks.)  However, once we got out of the water, I got really cold.  We headed to set up the van for the night and I tucked in early.  Hopefully, a good night's sleep will warm me up.

Zion Park--Day 2

This morning after eating breakfast, we stopped at a couple of outfitters in the small town of Springdale (at the entrance to the park) to check pricing on wetsuits and water shoes (water temperature is about 40 degrees) for one of the signature hikes in Zion--The Narrows.  This hike begins at the end of one of the hikes we did yesterday (Riverside Walk) and follows the Virgin River up into the canyon until it is only about 20-30 feet wide (The Narrows--get it?).  We decided not to buy the packages at the outfitter and, instead, bought some water shoes, got our walking sticks, and rode the tram to the trail.  However, after watching several other people head up the riverbed (geared up in the wetsuits) and seeing that at the second river crossing, several people went in at least butt-deep, we gave up on that idea and decided to do a different hike today.  We are going to get the wetsuits tomorrow and take the hike then.

We went back to the campsite (we got one inside the park for tonight because it is supposed to be windy), ate some lunch, ditched the poles, and went back into the canyon via tram to hike the Hidden Canyon trail.  This trail goes 850 feet up the canyon wall in about 1.2 miles (meaning....steep!).  We got through the switchbacks and headed up some rock stairs built along the cliff wall (not so bad....) and then reached a section of slickrock that had a chain to hold while you climb (a little worse.....) and, then, at the top of the climb, the trail turned a corner and there was no more chain to hold!  That's right, the trail was just a rock ledge that went along the canyon wall until it turned again out of sight.  We decided that this Hidden Canyon could just stay hidden, turned around, and came back down.  I think it was a great decision, since not long after that, the winds picked up to 40-50 mph and I really would have had a bad time if we had been on that ledge when the winds came.

We took another short hike (about a mile) on the way back to the campground and cooked dinner.  While we were eating, we had two different people stop by wanting to see our little camping bus/van and talk to Chris about how he had fixed it up for camping.  I was already proud of the work he did (it really is great), but now other people were getting to see it and be impressed also......really great!

The winds seem to have died down, so I hope we have a nice calm night and the weather is good tomorrow.  Look out, Narrows, here we come!

Zion Park--Day 1

We packed up the bus after breakfast and drove into Zion National Park.  Because of the large crowds, they have implemented a mandatory tram system (you must park at the Visitor Center, campground, or outside the park and ride the trams to all of the various locations in the park.  (It really is easy and is completely free.)  The bad part is that I can't imagine how crowded this place is in the summer, as several of our tram rides have been standing-room-only and it's only the first week of April!  (Lots and lots of foreign visitors--along the trails we've heard some Aussies, French, German, Spanish, either Japanese or Chinese--maybe both, and a couple that I didn't recognize.)

Before we left on the trip, we saw a hike on one of the travel videos that we wanted to do here at Zion, so we headed for that trailhead first.  It's called Angels Landing, as it is a high pinnacle standing by itself out in the canyon that the Methodist ministor who named it thought looked like a place for the angels to land when they came down to meet on Earth.  Well, we made it to the lookout at the top (about 1300 feet up and 4 miles long) and took a look at the last section of the trail.  However, after looking at the narrow (2-3 feet wide), completely exposed (1400-foot dropoff on both sides), and no railings or handholds, we both decided that the view could not be worth the risk.  A lot of people didn't try it either, and a lot who did venture out, thought better of it, turned around, and came back down.  We did, however, get the same great view by hiking up another trail that branched off from the viewpoint, so I think we got all of the advantages without any of the life-and-death needless risks.  (I don't need the bragging rights that badly...**smiles**).
After that long, steep hike, we got some lunch at the Zion Lodge and went to do some smaller hikes in the park.  We went on the Riverside Walk (a nice 2-mile roundtrip along the Virgin River).  This fairly flat walk was a nice break from the steep hike in the morning.

We took the hike up another section of the canyon to see all 3 of the Emerald Pools.  The actual pools weren't really green (kind of brown), but they all had small waterfalls which formed them and it was fun to see them (except for the really beautiful Upper Pool, which had about 75 people standing all around it when we got there).  It was even hard to get a picture of it without somebody being in it, but I think Chris was successful.

The last hike for the day was a short (one-half mile total) walk to the Weeping Rock.  This section of the canyon wall has a spring in it where the water literally drips out of it year-round and ferns, flowers, and vines grow out of the cliff, making the Hanging Gardens.  It was really different than most of the rest of the park, as Zion only gets an average of 15 inches of precipitation per year and is extremely arid.

What a day--a total of 11 miles hikes and a lot of it steep vertical mileage!  We headed back to our free BLM campsite down the road from the park and settled in to get some sleep before heading in for more hiking tomorrow.  You can't see it all in a day, no matter what!

Bryce Canyon--April 3

We woke up during the night last night extremely cold, so we used our little propane heater, Mr. Buddy, for the first time in our van.  It was working very well until it ran out of propane, so....we tried to get some more sleep and woke up extremely cold in the  morning.

We left the state park and headed for Bryce Canyon.  It was still windy and kind of chilly when we got there, so we ate our lunch in the van and then headed out for the signature hike at the park--Queen's Garden, combined with the Navajo Trail.  This trail is about 3 miles long, but drops very steeply off the canyon rim down into the hoodoos (about 700 feet, I think).  The hoodoos are rock spires that have been formed by the wind erosion out of the orange and white striped sandstone in the area.  In some places, the trail winds through small openings in the wall, like little doorways, and in others, there are small rock bridges that are above your head as you walk along.  After the hike, we drove partway out on the scenic drive along the rim and stopped at a couple of scenic overlooks.  One of them, Bryce Point (named for the person who promoted the park for national park status), projects out into the area and you can see off 3 sides of the point at the hoodoos, the cliff walls, and the mountains across the valley in the distance.  It's really a beautiful place.

Because it was so windy and cool (and was supposed to get very cold that night), we left Bryce Canyon and drove to Zion National Park.  When you enter the park from the east side, your first view is of this massive rock mountain that is called "Checkerboard Mesa."  Seriously, it looks like a giant white checkerboard....the sand was laid down in large layers before it became rock, so there are huge horizontal cracks there, and then the water and snow have run down the rock vertically, forming cracks that way.  I've never seen anything like it at any of the other parks we have gone to.

The other fun thing on the drive into the park is the huge tunnel they built through one of the mountains...it is 1.1 miles long and was built by the CCC during 30's.  Because it was built back then, there are a lot of vehicles that won't fit through the tunnel and a lot that take up the whole tunnel when they come through.  We had a short wait on our side while a big truck and a big RV came through from the other side, but it wasn't bad.  The campground in the park was full by the time we arrived in the evening, but we found a free spot on the BLM land.  We ate some dinner, had a little campfire, and played a game of Trivial Pursuit cards in the van before we went to bed.  Tomorrow, we get to check out Zion and I can't wait!

April 2 -- Highway 12

When we got up this morning, it had cleared off, but hadn't really warmed up very much.  We didn't hurry getting out the door and it was about 10:30 when we finally checked out and got on the road.  We drove back into Capitol Reef Park and stopped at the restored Mormon homestead there which has a small store selling all kinds of homemade canned goods (jam, pickles, etc), as well as individual fruit pies.  We got an apple pie and shared it right there in the park.  I'm not sure it was as good as my Grandma Summers' pies, but it was really delicious!

We continued down scenic Highway 12 on our way to Bryce Canyon National Park.  The highway goes about 150 miles through the Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument.  The highway goes through some truly beautiful forests and over a couple of big mountain passes.  There was still quite a bit of snow up in the mountains and all of the campgrounds there were still closed for the season.  We stopped at a lot of scenic viewpoints and took several pictures along the way.  We made it to the Visitor's Center for the Monument about 30 minutes before it closed and checked on the weather and camping for that night.
The ranger was very helpful and said that there was a beautiful state park about 8 miles down the road that had camping.  He even called them to see if they had any sites left and they did, so off we went.  The state park was called Kodachrome Basin (yes, named after the camera film because a National Geographic expedition that was working there used that film to capture the bright colors in the park area).
It was really so windy that the hiking we did after we got there was not very enjoyable at all, which makes my impression of the park a bit negative, probably unfairly so.  However, we hiked a trail named "Panorama Point," so you would think it would be extremely lovely.  Not so...it was also a horse trail and was covered in horse poop and didn't do anything very interesting, because it had to accommodate horses on it.  The actual Panorama Point was nice (no horses allowed up that steep, winding part of the trail), but the wind almost knocked us off the point!  We took some pictures and headed back to set up the van and get some sleep.

Again...hoping the weather settles down and gets better tomorrow.  We are headed for Bryce Canyon National Park and I really want some good hiking weather!

The Great Gallery

This morning, we woke up early, made breakfast, packed up the van, and hit the trail to the Great Gallery.  We were on the trail by 8:30 and didn't see anyone else all the way down, which was a real treat.  The only bad part was that the winds had not completely gone away, but they had subsided a lot, which was a big relief!

The trail went down the canyon wall pretty easily (a little steep, but no ledges or ladders).  Once we reached the bottom of the canyon, the trail followed the wash (creek bed), which had a lot of sand and wasn't very easy to walk in.  After a short distance, the wash had a small amount of water in it, so the sand around it was damp and packed down.  The walking was much easier in those areas.

We saw three smaller walls with Indian rock art on them on our way to the Great Gallery.  One of the areas is called the Alcove, and is basically a natural amphitheater in the canyon wall.  Voices and sounds were really amplified even if you were out in the creek bed facing the alcove (you didn't have to be standing up in it to get the effect).  Pretty neat.

At the end of the 7-mile trail, we reached the Great Gallery and were still the only people there.  It was even more amazing than I had hoped!  The panel is very large (containing a lot of different figures and animals), as well as having very large paintings.  The largest figure is 8 feet tall, and many of them were around 4-5 feet tall. This made these figures life-sized for the Indian groups that would have been painting them, which is very unusual in itself.

What truly makes this panel of art unusual is the subjects of the paintings.....not scenes of everyday life (like hunting, etc.).  One of the figures is called "the Holy Ghost," many of them appear to be some type of celestial or alien beings.  They have no feet or hands, and the bottoms of the figures kind of trail off, like some type of ghost.  A few of them have odd-shaped heads, with large round eyes (kind of like the 50's alien pictures).  One lone figure off to the side actually looks like a large angel, with wings at the shoulders.  Of course, nobody knows for sure what this panel of art means, but it really seemed to have a special meaning to the people who made it and it made me feel as if I was kind of intruding into something private (like walking into a church).

We stopped for a picnic lunch on the hike out and made it back to our van about 1:30 p.m. and headed out of Horseshoe Canyon.  The winds had picked back up and more sand and dust was blowing around today than there was yesterday.  Those 32 miles seemed just as long going out as they had coming in the day before.  I was really glad to get out of there.

We continued west to Capitol Reef National Park, which has some interesting rock formations, as well as a large area of fruit orchards (which are still maintained), as well as some preserved Mormon settlement buildings (blacksmith, school, etc.)  We were planning to camp near there, but a storm was blowing in when we arrived (down below freezing and 40% chance of snow before midnight), so we decided to backtrack a few miles to a nice little Rodeway Inn and hole up for the night.

Hopefully, the weather will improve for tomorrow (it's supposed to) and we are planning to head south where I'm counting on it being warmer as we go......fingers crossed (again)!!
 

Horseshoe Canyon (Canyonlands)

We left the greatest campsite ever this morning and headed for the north end of Lake Powell (Hite Marina).  We were going to put in the canoe and paddle up into the Colorado River, but the winds were coming up and the waves were too high.  We drove across the bridge to the other side, but the winds just kept getting stronger.  We decided to forget the lake for today and drive on up to the last area of Canyonlands that we wanted to see--Horseshoe Canyon on the west side.  This area is where the Great Gallery of Indian rock art is located--walls of life-sized paintings, some that are supposed to resemble alien-like creatures.

Well, to get to Horseshoe Canyon, you have to take 32 miles of dirt road.  This would be an adventure on a normal day, but add in the major wind (45-mph gusts) and blowing sand from the dunes along the way, and it was more work than enjoyment getting here.  The ranger on duty when we arrived, said that it was 750 feet of vertical and went "straight down over the side" of the canyon.  Because of the high winds, I chickened out on taking the hike because we only had about 3-1/2 hours of daylight left for the 7-mile round-trip hike (the ranger had also said to allow 4-6 hours for the hike).

So, we decided to hole up in the van to stay out of the blowing sand and eat some dinner.  After we ate, we decided to just go check out the first part of the trail so that we would get at least a little bit of exercise for the day.  We walked about 50 minutes (no, the wind didn't let up) and then got back in the van for the night.  The winds did start to let up as the sun went down, so maybe we will have a calm day to enjoy the hike tomorrow.  Keep your fingers crossed!

Natural Bridges Monument--March 30th

We decided to leave Canyonlands and head for Natural Bridges National Monument.  Along the way, we saw a sign for some Indian ruins that weren't marked on the map, so, of course, we stopped to check them out.  There was a one-mile trail to the overlook for the ruins, so off we went!  The overlook was at a point across the canyon from the ruins on the other side, but there were several of them built into alcoves in the cliff (similar to Mesa Verde) so it was kind of neat that they were just sitting there, that close to the highway.
A few miles down the road, was another spot marked for some ruins, but these were re-constructed (cemented back together), so you could walk right up to them and even around some of them.  There was a residential building, a kiva (round ceremonial room built in the ground), and part of a tower.  They speculate that the tower was two stories originally and might have been used as either a lookout tower or to communicate with another community about a mile away.  I had never seen one of the towers before, so that was interesting to see.

We got to Natural Bridges Monument in the early afternoon.  There are 3 of the 5 largest natural bridges in the world located here along a 9-mile drive (Sipapu Bridge, Kachina Bridge, and Owachomo Bridge).  We decided to take the hike down to the canyon floor under Sipapu (the 2nd biggest bridge in the world), which went 500 feet down into the canyon.  You had to negotiate one staircase and 3 log ladders along the trail to reach the creek and stand under the arch.  The arch was impressive, but the view under it just wasn't the same as looking at it from the big viewing ledge right across the canyon.  The trail, however, was really something!  I'm glad I did it, but I'm not sure I would do it again (ladders aren't really my thing...)

We looked at Kachina Bridge from the overlook (we didn't take that hike), but when we got to Owachomo, we decided to hike down under it.  This bridge is the oldest of the 3 in the park and the hike was not nearly as long or difficult as the others.  Of course, the campground here was full, so the rangers directed us to a BLM camping area right outside of the Monument that had free camping.

We found the most awesome campsite ever (and not just because we were the only ones there).  It was in a forest area of 10-foot trees (I think they were junipers).  We had no wind, so we could build a great campfire in the big rock firepit and roast hotdogs for dinner.  It was peaceful and absolutely beautiful!  What a great end to a really nice day!

Day 2 Needles - March 29th

Today, when we got up, the wind was gone and the sun was up!  Time to hit the trail (all 11 miles of it)!  The Chesler Park Loop and the Joint Trail is the signature trail for the Needles section, as it winds through Elephant Canyon and into deep fractures in the rocks.  The large cracks give the appearance that you are in a slot canyon, but, technically it is just a place where the rock cliffs have cracked all the way through to the ground.  If you have seen the movie "127 Hours," then that gives you an idea of what the Joint Trail area looks like.

There is really no way to describe the trail or the great views along the way (please check out the photos and videos when we get the map updated--it's a fantastic place).  It made the eleven miles up and down rock walls all worth it--even the tiny slip I had which gave me a bruised knee and slightly jammed finger.  I'd do it all again in a heartbeat, believe me!  When we got back to our "bus", we had drunk almost all of our water and were pretty much spent.  Luckily, we followed the direction on the route that the ranger had marked on the map for us, and had hiked the loop with the big climbs in the morning and had the easier walking at the end.  We went back out to the BLM area, cooked some delicious Mexican Chicken & Rice for dinner, and got some sleep before deciding what to do on Friday.

Needles--March 28th

We left Moab and headed for the Needles area of Canyonlands National Park.  It was really windy and cloudy when we got there, but we took a few short hikes anyway.  The first hike was the Slickrock Trail which had four different viewpoint overlooks of the area:  the La Sal Mountains, the Colorado River basin, two buttes (Sixshooter and Molly's Nipple--we don't name them, we just list them), and the Needles.

The second hike was Pothole Point, which walks through an area covered with "potholes" in the rocks where rainwater collects and lots of different plants and animals live, even though the environment around is so arid--pretty interesting.  We then took the 2 shortest hikes, but they were 2 of the most interesting:  Roadside Ruins and Cave Spring.  Roadside Ruins led to an Indian ruin of a granary up under a rock ledge, where the farming tribes stored their corn, and squash seeds.  Cave Spring led to a dripping spring in a small cave, which ancient Indians and, later, cowboys used as a water source.  In other parts of this trail, we saw the remains of one of the real cowboy camps (used until 1975) and some Indian art painted on a rock wall in another location.  Really cool trail--we had to climb a ladder in one spot to get up the rock wall!

Since the campground in Canyonlands was full, we drove out to a BLM campsite (free camping), and settled in.  Hopefully, the wind will not be as strong in the morning and we will hike the big trail:  Chesler Park and the Joint Trail.