Travels – Page 7 – State of Wilderness

GC3B: Potters Pond

There’s a little place in Utah that we’ve been talking about for a while. To tell the truth, it is a little bit of a sore spot for us, but it’s a beautiful sore spot. Even though we’ve had some heated discussion about what went down at Potter’s Pond back in 2010, what happened actually represents the good in us, the complementary nature of our relationship. As in, I am the risk taker, and he is the cautious one. I push him to explore areas past his comfort zone, and he reins me in when I am going too far with it.

We still haven’t established who was in the right back in 2010, in my opinion. All I know is, he strongly insisted we not pursue finding the grandfather cache hidden there, in light of certain danger. This is what the area looked like when we got to it that June, over four years ago now:

The cache seemed to be at the top of that peak, and there was a snow “storm” coming in. Also, from the angle we approached it, it appeared that the only way to get there was to cross a creek, which was raging with cold water this time of year. I am still pretty certain I could have walked over this fallen log and made it across the creek, then up and back down this “mountain” before the snow came in, but Jason didn’t think we should take any chances. There had to be an easier way, I thought, but this was kind of before we were caching with smart phones, and I hadn’t really looked all the way through the previous logs to see if that was true or not. We tried walking parallel to the creek, but we never did find a place where it seemed like you could cross.

Anyways, fast forward to this past July, just about two months ago. We were back, and I was on a mission. My, what a difference a month makes around here, as well! This time, we could not have picked a prettier day to make the hour or two drive out of Salt Lake City, to the mountain area southwest of Price. I was ecstatic about the weather, the beautiful wildflowers, the prospect of finally finding this cache. I had done some research this time, and knew there was an easier way across the creek, where all we had to do is get the tips of our shoes wet in the crossing.

After this, the going was fairly easy for a little bit, but then the trail got a little more dodgy. It really was a horse trail, like they mention in the logs, and there were fallen logs about. I still can’t believe I tripped over one of them, falling flat on my face right when some boy scouts were coming down the trail ahead of me. Duh! As I dusted myself off, they asked if we were geocachers. I wonder, how did my clumsiness identify us as such? They told us the cache was just a little ahead, as were some others, even though they had not logged it themselves. They also warned us about the mosquitos, and we should have heeded their warning a little more seriously, as in put on some bug spray. We got swarmed so bad that it really took the joy out of actually making the find. We were in a darn hurry to just sign that log and get out of dodge at that point!

Now this is where the story leads us to our latest bone of contention. Jason insisted since we were up here, that we should find the geocache called Mountain Ninja that was also nearby. Well, Mountain Ninja is named that because you have to have a certain amount of agility to make the find and get back out. It is hidden in an area covered with downed trees. Now, back in 2010, I would have been loving this, but since I had that terrible leg injury with its long series of complications, including a very recent stint involving more physical therapy in which we were JUST working back up to my being able to balance on one leg, I was not a very happy camper about this situation. I grumbled, a LOT, to the point that it was making Jason nuts, and now he tells everyone we know that he finally took me up that darn mountain, and I could not get off of it fast enough. It was just this particularly challenging terrain I was unhappy about, though. That, and we kind of lost the trail on our way back down, so it was a bit of a bushwack downhill. I was so happy to finally find that darn little creek again.

The flowers and birds were incredible, though, and on our way out, we saw a shape running through the fields. I got a close up look with the binoculars at a badger turning his face towards my view for a second before scurrying faster. The drive in and out is a series of dirt roads that eventually lead to bigger roads that eventually lead back to the highway. We came in and out of the area through Fairview, where we stopped for a burger afterwards at a dive/gas station area that advertised the best burgers, and pretty much they were. We had an interesting talk with some retired older man and a couple of cowboys, one of whom turned out to be from the Tomball area, which was crazy.
And I don’t know who is more glad to get that stinking cache off our list: me, who wanted it so bad, or Jason, who was so tired of hearing about it.

Bryce Canyon National Park: Submission or Serendipity?

By the time we got to Bryce Canyon that Sunday night in July, I was really darn sick. We were also extremely hungry. We had driven pretty hard to try to make it to our place to sleep for the night, and hadn’t time to stop for food. We had driven past a Subway in some little town which my son pointed out longingly, but we assured him we would be able to eat once we arrived at Bryce.

We had food in the cooler, but it all involved cooking on the camp stove, which was more time consuming than just buying food. I thought when we checked in at the Ruby’s Inn Campground, where we had a tipi reserved for the night, we could just cook on the picnic table in front. It just kept getting later, though, so late that the campground office was closed for the night. I could see people inside, and knocked at the door. The two female clerks shook their heads in annoyance as they counted the day’s income, but the manager did come out to give me the slip for which tipi to go to and how to check in the morning.

Now there was the issue of food. I was probably too sick to prepare our food over the camp stove, we decided. We drove back up the road a few miles, where we had seen a restaurant with people inside it, but as I walked to the door, they told me they were closed. Never mind the people inside playing pool…but I am guessing at this time of night, the place turned into a bar instead of a restaurant. The Subway over here had just closed down as well. The restaurant attached to Ruby’s Inn…also with people inside…also turned us away. Ridiculous.

We went inside the store at Ruby’s Inn, but hordes of people were coming out at the same time, saying the store was closing as well. However, one mentioned to us that if you were quick about it, you might be able to grab something and get in line before the registers shut down. We were literally the last people paying that night, buying packaged sandwiches and chips that we ate sitting around the picnic table by the tipi that now Jason decided we should not stay in. He was concerned about how sick I was, and about the tipi having an open roof and a door that had stayed pinned open, letting who knows what in. He was on the phone instead calling hotels seeing if there were any rooms left instead. There was no luck with any of the hotels close by, but he did find a lady who offered her last room at her hotel at a decent rate back behind us about nine miles back down the road.

So here we were, at the America’s Best Value Inn in Tropic instead of having the tipi adventure I had planned for us. However, the beds were pretty darn comfortable and apparently we all needed to recharge our electronics AND ourselves. Jason also kept insisting that this worked out for the best, because there was a laundromat attached to the hotel and we had needed to wash all our clothes. I kept trying to tell him Ruby’s Inn also had a laundromat, BUT we did get vouchers for a free breakfast at Clark’s next door, so there was that.

In the end, though, I think we spent a little bit too long eating, washing clothes, and packing back up, because we ended up being just like ten minutes too late for the earliest time to rent ATVs to take a ride into Bryce. The next time slot was full, but they were able to take us at one pm.

This was a hard choice, because the kids really wanted to do the ATV ride, but I knew if we chose to take the slot, we would end up sacrificing the hike in Zion that I had been looking forward to so much. We even had spent the money ahead of time to buy the equipment that we needed to do the Narrows hike in Zion, but when I put it to a vote, everyone else in our family was willing to sacrifice the Narrows to ride ATVs. I guess I could have thrown a fit about it or insisted that we follow my agenda, because I was the one who planned the vacation AROUND this hike and wanted to do it so bad, but I was really too sick to even think about going against the flow. Plus, I was thinking about a discussion Jason and I had about that hike, in which he had questioned my actual ability to do that hike, considering that it is supposed to be hard on the ankles and mine wasn’t quite 100% still. I still had the want-to, but I might not have had the able-to to go along with this idea.

So I let go, but we still had a little time to kill until the ride started, so we drove into the park and stopped at a few overlooks. This is the part where later I realized just how sick I was, because I didn’t even think about geocaching. If I had just thought about it, I would have realized that there were some very easy virtuals we could have gotten, but they were all at the different overlooks than the ones we stopped at. Kaleb expressed an interest in hiking down among the hoodoos, which I was surprised to hear coming from him, but we didn’t have time for any such thing this visit. Maybe next time. Here is the view from the overlooks:

Then it was time to go for our ride. We bought some bandanas to cover our faces to keep from eating so much dust. However, because we were on the four seater ATV, we had to ride in the very back of the line, so there was a lot of dust being kicked up ahead of us. One thing I am never doing again, ever – going on an ATV ride in the desert when I had a chest cold. Despite the bandana, my lungs felt like they were full of chalk after this.

Everyone did had a good time, though, and we saw some parts of the park and Dixie National Forest that we would not have seen otherwise. We saw some deer. We had to “rescue” the guide’s dog, who had jumped off his cart after something and then was trying to run to catch up when we got him on ours. After this, though, we had a scary moment where the ATV shut down on us, with the rest of the pack too far ahead to notice we were not moving, and we got left out there in the middle of the wilderness. I was beginning to think we would have to walk back to the headquarters, which I was not looking forward to in the heat of the day feeling like I did. Eventually, the guide figured out to come back for us, and we got the machine going again and made it back okay.

We were all so covered in dust afterwards, and I guess the vehicle repair shop next door is used to this; they allow the guests to come over and blow themselves off in their air hose. Even so, we were still dusty for the rest of the day.

So, after this, we stopped at the Subway just outside the park, and paid ridiculous prices (it was something close to $50 for the four of us to eat!) and had terrible service by two poor foreign girls who had no idea how to make the food on the menu. I am not usually one to complain, but it was bad.

After this, we tried to make it to Zion. I still had a hope that we might be able to make it to the park in time to at least try to do a small amount of the hike I wanted to do, at least get into the Virgin River and get some of this dirt off of us, or see the park from the shuttle bus…something. We were following the GPS directions from our vehicle’s map, and it seemed like we might barely have enough time…until we got to the point where our GPS told us we had arrived…and we had not. We couldn’t figure out what happened at first, but then we understood. We were technically in Zion National Park, but it was a northwest portion of the park called Kolob Canyons. The name “Kolob” came from Mormon scriptures, meaning “the heavenly place nearest the residence of God”. We decided since we were here to go ahead and drive through. It seemed we did not have time to make it the forty miles further south to the actual park, especially since we were supposed to meeting the kids’ dad near Salt Lake City, and it seemed from his messages he was already or almost there. We had to go. We didn’t even really have the time or inclination to hike around some of the trails, go see some of the natural arches or find the earthcache there. We had just enough time to drive around the rim and take these photos.

Maybe it was one of those things that worked out for the best: getting a good night sleep in a hotel room instead of the tipi (which probably helped me get better sooner), or having the ATV ride be one of the kids best memories of our vacation. Maybe the Narrows hike would have just been frustrating or disappointing in some way. Or maybe I am just trying to convince myself of this to be able to let go of the regret of giving up something that I wanted.

The real comfort, I guess, should be that most of my family (excluding Kaleb, who still would rather go to Wyoming) got excited about Utah and want to go back again. AJ loved all of it and is willing to give up another intended vacation destination to come back here instead. Jason got this idea about renting a boat to explore the Lake Powell/Glen Canyon area and he still has not seen the Grand Canyon, so doing the “Grand Circle” might be a trip in our future, and at that time, I can plan to do The Narrows Hike again.

Lower Calf Creek Falls

Location: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Boulder UT

Details: moderate hike, 5-7 miles round trip, takes average of 3-4 hours for most people to complete. Park at the Calf Creek Campground and follow the signs. $3 use fee required.

Highlight: you can swim in the water when you get there. It’s cold, though!

We got to the trail head for this hike around 4 in the afternoon in the middle of the summer, which is not when I would ideally recommend starting this hike. It was hot, over a hundred degrees, and there is very little shade along the hike.

We also brought 16 oz of water per person, plus an extra 16 oz bottle, but we probably should have/would recommend bringing more.

The trail is sandy a good bit of the way, and on the way back, we probably all did at least the first mile without shoes. Here are the boys feeling particularly chummy on the way back:

I was busy looking at birds on the way back. I kept seeing a kind of bird I had never seen before, and it took me a little while to see it clearly enough to identify it as the Spotted Towhee. We also saw White Throated Swifts flying up and down the canyons, Pinyon Jays, Mountain Bluebirds, and Townsend’s Solitaire.

I have to admit that even though this hike was my idea, I wasn’t having that much fun doing it, especially towards the end. I am pretty sure there was some cussing going on under my breath. My broken leg of last year plus some ongoing issues with my tendons have kept me from hiking more than short distances in the past year or so. We haven’t hiked over five miles since February. I think it was March when I ended up having to go back to re-start physical therapy. I had just been cleared to start trying more difficult terrain again, and some parts of this trail were a challenge: the sand, and some rocky areas that involved having to climb up or down or hold your balance on one leg. Plus, it was hot. Also, the skorts I was wearing seemed like a good idea because of their quick-drying capacity, but after I had gotten them wet and sandy, they were quite uncomfortable on the way back. Another thing slowing me down was the fact that I was at this point coming down with that nasty cold that my son and then Jason had. Lastly, I was concerned about time. No one else had as good of a sense as I did about how long it was going to take to get to our next destination, and I knew this was going to put us way behind schedule.

People watching experiences from the trail that we still talk about: seeing two girls running to the falls on our way back. We were about halfway back to the parking lot from the falls, and they were coming back as we were loading up, which means they did like four miles of a run in the time it took us to go a mile or two. Plus they had time in there to take a dip in the water. Even more impressive was their shoewear; they were wearing barely-there sandals made up of just a strip of leather covering their soles, fastened with two ropes across the top of their feet. We talked to them as they loaded up, remarking at how impressed we were with their speed, and they shrugged it off, saying it was just due to them being acclimated. That’s not acclimation, that’s incredible fitness!
There was also a couple who showed up at the falls shortly after we did; young, fit, good looking, and in love. They took their clothes off and were swimming in their underwear, and the girl was wearing clothes skimpy enough to be a bit of a distraction for everyone. They seemed like they kept looking for a place to sneak away together, and there was a lot of public displays of affection. I wonder how my boys were processing that information. My youngest was super into the waterfall and swimming, and so I am not sure he noticed them much. My other son is a teenager, though, so I am sure he noticed that the girl was not wearing a bra underneath her wet, clingy shirt. Wouldn’t it be nice to be young again? Sometimes all we can do is miss our youth and sigh. Maybe someday she will have that same experience, and I wonder if she would be pleased or mortified to remember herself as a youthful, half-dressed waterfall beauty.

Am I glad we did it? In the end, yes. It was totally worth it. Even though I didn’t have a great time doing it, I would actually do it again. I would just prepare a little bit better – leave in the morning, pack more water, be in better health condition, and maybe not have such time pressure on my mind next time.

Goodbye Moab, Hello Scenic Byway 12: Utah Adventures

At the last minute of our vacation planning this summer, we had switched which hotel we were going to stay at in Moab, on the basis of dog friendliness. The hotel we chose, the Kokopelli Lodge, I would recommend as a motel with character and friendly owners. It also boasted a small garden area, where dogs were allowed to romp and guests were allowed to use the BBQ grills to cook their dinner, which we took advantage of to grill some hot dogs and vegetables.
After our visit to Arches and a stop at the Moab Rock Shop (most awesome for little rock lovers like mine), I took a late stroll out to this garden. I was about to sit down on the bench when I noticed something moving in front of me. It was dark out, so I had a hard time identifying what I was looking at until it held still for a minute, and then I caught my breath and my heart kinda jumped as I realized that what was standing still about a foot in front of me was the upraised tail of a skunk. What do you do?
My mind raced with coming up with a plan as we stood frozen in a stand-off position. Finally I decided to just back away slowly and talk in a low voice, saying “go away, skunk”. As I was backing away, though, I heard a noise behind me, and another one came running along from my right! By this time, though, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness a little better, and I could make out that they were young skunks, and they seemed to be trying to avoid me by this point, so I just kept talking and slowly lowered myself to the bench as they started to make their way to the edge of the garden. Right as they were about to squeeze out of the fence, a woman came walking by the sidewalk nearby, and I felt like I should warn her. It turns out she lived right next door, and was quite familiar with the antics of these little skunks. As we discussed this, it occurred to me that where the baby skunks were, there was sure to be a momma, and sure enough, I did see their mom on the way back to my room. She was exploring the area around the hotel trash cans. I thought about getting a better look at her, but then…I decided not to. I had no idea how to de-skunk a human being, so better safe than sorry.

In the morning, we ate cold cereal in our room (this motel doesn’t offer free meals, but we had plenty of our own we needed to eat), and then set out for Scenic Byway 12, the slow route to Bryce Canyon National Park. We choose this route because it offered us a chance to drive through more National Park and National Monument areas on the way there.

I had literally spent quite a bit of time mapping out the possibilities along this route, but I am not sure what happened to my hand-drawn map with notes. We all know from experience though that it is one thing to dream a thing, and quite another to actually experience it live. There were also so many choices of what to do that I had decided to not get too attached to any of them, and just see where the day took us. In a way, I regret this mindset, because I feel like it played a role in getting us to certain destinations later than I intended, but we did have fun exploring. Here is a short summary of stops we did make, and stops I wish we had made.

En Route: we could have stopped at Green River and Goblin Valley State Park, but we didn’t feel like making those side trips. We did, however, stop for a while at a cache called Desert Sentinels, which gave my older son a chance to explore rock formations unhindered, and was a highlight of this day for him.
We also drove past some alien-looking rock areas where there have been numerous UFO sightings reported. This area near Hanksville is so other-wordly that the Mars Society actually has a Mars Desert Research Station out here for research crews to simulate living on a Mars environment.

Capitol Reef National Park: there were a lot of stops we could have made for at least taking some pictures of the scenery, but Jason didn’t feel inclined and we were making good time. I wanted to stop at the Fruita orchards, where allegedly there is always fruit in season that visitors can pick on a pay-what-you-take basis. The youngest got his heart set on this idea so intently that when we did make a stop to see some petroglyphs, he cried the whole way along the boardwalk to them, and then refused to look at them. I tried to explain that this stop didn’t RULE OUT stopping at the orchards, but then he was being such a brat about it that we didn’t want to reward his behavior, and plus, I never saw an entrance to Fruita or an orchard that wasn’t fenced off. Next time we go, I am going to have to research the locations more exactly. We saw a deer grazing near the petroglyphs, and I am amazed that the ancient people who carved these were able to reach the rock face like that, and wonder what kind of message they were leaving on the rock walls.

We could have taken a mile long hike out to the Hickman Bridge, an interesting natural formation in the park, but again, we were making good time and did not feel inclined to stop long yet.
However, it was getting close to lunch time, and I wanted to stop at a place I had read about in my Road Food book, the Capitol Reef Inn and Cafe. It was an interesting place, and the food was all right, but now I wish we had waited it out and stopped instead at the Hell’s Backbone Grill, which I have heard from a couple people now is *the best* place to stop for food in these parts. Also, we wasted too much time both at the restaurant and putzing around Torrey. We were moving slow at this point. We did find a particularly fun geocache, though, that was outside a local coffeehouse. The cache was called Robbers Roost, and it was a handmade treasure box filled with fun stuff located inside a shady, grassy yard that was filled with birds, as the property owner has many bird feeders out to draw them to her place. This one earned a favorite point from us.
We stopped another time at a lookout point to find an ammo can cache and take some pictures. Here is my youngest at that stop

Anasazi State Park Museum: I wasn’t sure if we were going to stop here, but I am glad we did. We took the little walk around the back and explored the kind of shelters the Anasazis lived in. We also found a fun ammo can cache back there. The Anasazis were thought to have lived in this area from about AD 1050 to 1200, and then they just took off. My youngest said he learned that their gods told them to leave, from reading the exhibit signs. I am glad to know he learns independently. Here is my oldest by one of the shelters:

After this, we did stop to take a hike: the hike to Lower Calf Creek Falls that I posted a couple of pictures of on Facebook. That hike was so epic that it deserves its own post, so we will leave you, the reader, here for now.