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Southwest
Well since it’s been over a month, I guess its time for some new posts. While we’ve been procrastinating on doing any writings here, we have done quite a bit of moving around. We’ve mostly kept the photo gallery up to date so if you’ve been checking the site you’ve probably seen plenty of pics. We spent some time in the southwest, mostly exploring southern Utah and Northern Arizona. Then we drove all the way back across Texas (800 miles!) to New Orleans for Jazzfest. From NOLA we returned home for about a week to regroup and say goodbye to family and friends. Then on May 13th we took off for 6 weeks in Hawaii (life is tough sometimes). Anyway, thought I’d share some of the highlights from the past month:
New Mexico
Spent Kelly’s birthday at White Sands National Monument. Very cool place where we did a loop hike through the dunes. The trail was marked with plastic stick markers that obviously we’re adjusted frequently due to the shifting nature of the dunes. The sand is made up mostly of gypsum (think drywall) and is blindingly white. I did most of the hike barefoot and ended up with blisters on my feet. Taking pictures here was tough, especially during the early afternoon when we did most of our hiking. As the day wore on and shadows became more pronounced, the scenery became much more dramatic. The park seems to be a popular local hangout spot. I guess this is about as close as people from New Mexico get to a day at the beach. That night we camped at a KOA in Northern New Mexico. It got down to 24 degrees. We were not prepared for this. Apparently, it gets cold in the desert at night. Who knew? FYI, no stores in New Mexico or Utah sell long underwear after March, this is a fact that we learned the hard way. We did have wireless internet in our tent though.
Southern Utah
In all of my travels (although not nearly as extensive as some I know), I have not come across a place more dramatic and varied as Southern Utah. While we plan to cover many more miles over the next several months and see many more beautiful places, this area is home to some of the most consistently jaw dropping landscapes in the world. The entire area is basically one big canyon with a few snow capped mountain ranges and the occasional river thrown in.
We drove through the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona en route to Utah. Very strange place. We stopped briefly at Canyon de Chelly on our way through, a beautiful canyon, with ancient puebloan ruins, that is still used by Native Americans for farming and grazing. The surrounding area however, was quite depressing. Lots of trash, loose livestock, and some very erratic driving behavior. From the Reservation we headed north through Monument Valley into Utah up rt.191 toward Moab and Canyonlands National Park. This is a truly spectacular drive.
We didn’t spend a great deal of time at Canyonlands. Mostly because the park is vast and it is probably best explored via 4WD vehicle. There are miles and miles of unpaved backcountry roads to be explored, in some of the most remote wilderness in the lower 48. We covered all of the paved roads and accessible trails in the northern (island in the sky) and south eastern (needles) sections of the park pretty quickly. The south western portion of the park is entirely unpaved backcountry. This is definitely a place to come back to for an extended 4WD backcountry excursion. We did find a pretty sweet free campsite just outside the Needles area.
From there we headed to Capital Reef National Park, driving through our first sand storm to get there. Apparently the winds can get pretty crazy in the spring. Cool drive getting to the park, very badlandesque. Lots of unusual colors in the rock formations. Camped at a little oasis in Escalante where we got pizza, beer, and a campsite.
We then backtracked 30 miles to the town of Boulder where Laurie lives, population 180. When Laurie told us she worked in a restaurant in Boulder, we didn’t realize it was the ONLY restaurant in Boulder. Hell’s Backbone Grill turned out to be an awesome place to eat so we had breakfast and dinner there our first day in town. All of the food was incredible, bread made in the restaurant, eggs from their farm, sweet sweet bacon, mmmmmmmmmmmm. Stayed for a couple days in the house for the restaurant and farm employees. As Laurie put it, it’s kind of like the Real World, but everyone gets along. I think the highlight of our visit was perusing Laurie’s weaponry catalog our first night there, you would have to see the catalog to understand. A close second was our venture to Peek-a-boo and Spooky canyons. It was a long, dusty drive but more than worth it to see these amazing slot canyons. Definitely two of the coolest places we have been.
From Boulder, we headed to Zion National Park where we scored another McFabulous free campsite just south of the park. We still weren’t overly impressed with Zion. We thought our last trip there was tainted by the over 100 degree temperature, but it turns out we’re just not in love with this place. Seems like the real adventure here is to hike the Narrows, but they were closed due to high water while we were here.
Our last real destination in the Southwest was hiking to Havasu Falls. After hiking 8 miles through dry canyon, we arrived in the town of Havasupai. The only way in is to hike or ride a horse. What we didn’t realize was that most of the people visiting Havasu Falls have a mule carry all of their gear down and they hike comfortably carrying only their water. We were amazed when we hiked the additional two miles to the campground and found people sleeping under massive tents and eating tasty meals from their coolers. Our amazement, however, did not impede our sleeping for almost 15 hours after our hike in.
Overall, this place is pretty f-in sweet. Bright blue green water running through a red rock canyon, can’t beat it. The only thing that tainted this trip was the squirrel that chewed a hole through John’s pack and ate our breakfast.
More to come….
Whelp, I’ve got your site in my reader, so I see when new posts have been made, but not when new photos have been added. For whatever reason, the Gallery feed’s not cooperating w/my reader, either. Help a brotha out w/a short “photos added” post, would ya?