Lucy of Arabia

October 29, 2012

We spent a few hours with Alexis and her boys in the morning before leaving for New Mexico. The boys made sure Lucy was included in all the fun.

Lucy's cootie

Lucy and friends

Neither Chan or I have been to the southern part of the US east of Arizona, except for Florida, so we’ll be traveling through new territory for a while, which is exciting.

Chandler and I had two goals for the day. Find good Mexican food and get to White Sands National Monument.

We have noticed that the crappier a place looks, the better the Mexican food. The place we found in Las Cruces was no exception to the rule. The only thing on the menu was gordita, which for the uninitiated are pita-like pockets of fried cornmeal stuffed with typical Mexican things. We each had three, they were incredible.

On the way out of town, Chandler noticed a display on the side of the road. We knew that White Sands is occasionally closed due to missile testing, so we weren’t too surprised to see one on display. This was the Nike Hercules missile, an anti-aircraft/anti-ballistic missile from the Cold War era. There is an old Nike station outside of Anchorage, on top of a mountain near a local ski area so it was interesting to see a full sized missile up close.

Nike missile

We made it to White Sands about an hour before sunset and met the grumpiest park ranger ever. After Surly Sally (name changed to protect the grumpy) informed us we had to have our tent set up before the sun went down, we had to hustle to get going. In our haste, we didn’t think about how cold the desert is at night. We grabbed our summer sleeping bags and Chan decided to not bring a sleeping pad since sand is so soft.

The hike to our designated camp site fun. We walked up and down sand dunes as the sun set. We joked about mining spice, sandworms and the interesting looking plants growing out of the dunes.

Sunset

Dr Suess plant

Moon rise

After setting up camp it began to get a little cooler. Chan experimented with taking long exposure photos and it got colder. Soon it was cold enough to want to just hang out in the sleeping bags and work on the blog for a bit. The sand on the dunes was super fine and dry which made it feel very soft like fresh powder snow. The sand around our campsite was down in a valley below the dune peaks, and lots of concentrated foot traffic packed the sand like concrete. Sleeping was difficult with our thin bags. At one point, Chan asked if we could share my sleeping pad because he was so cold. I gave him the dog instead as sharing didn’t work so well. I think we each got about 2 hours of sleep total and were happy when the alarm went off at 6am.

We bolted the mile back to the car in the dawn light and blasted the heater. The thermometer read 26F. We were experiencing the true extremes of the desert climate first hand, and we didn’t like it. After an inadvertent tour of Alamogordo in search of coffee (failure) we climbed one of the largest hills in a while to the town of Cloudcroft.

Bear mountain

Nov3

October 26 – 28, 2012

After leaving the frigid Grand Canyon, we drove straight down to Sedona. Once we descended into Oak Creek Canyon we gained about 40 degrees in air temp. Sedona scenery is spectacular, but the town is a bit busy and full of grouchy retirees. We set up camp in the desert on a forest road south of the Sedona scene. We went back up to town for dinner and had a surprisingly fantastic pizza at “A Pizza Heaven”. After surviving a mild sandstorm at our camp site, Tayler and I looked like extras from Mad Max.

The next day we woke up early to beat the heat and headed to Bear Mountain west of Sedona. The trail was pretty straight up, climbing 2,000 in two and a half miles.

We were glad that we brought lots of water as it got over 80F before we made it to the top.

Luckily, Tayler brought a little bottle of Gatorade:

And was nice enough to share:

We went through two different geologic regions, starting in the dark red rock at the bottom, then about 1,000 feet up the rock switched to yellowish sandstone. I’m not sure what the geology story was.

Red sandstone

Yellow sandstone

The view from the ridgeline to the summit was of the sandstone formations around Sedona and the wide open plains to the west.

View towards Sedona

Looking west

At Walmart, Tayler found the perfect recovery food, hot dog flavored chips. Don’t worry, no hot dogs were harmed in the manufacture of these chips – they were 100% artificially flavored!

hot dog chips are cheap in Arizona!

That night we slept at Lake Pleasant which is a misnomer if there ever was one. It turns out that it is the meeting place of all idiots and teenagers with 4x4s within a 100 mile radius. We had the luxury of paying $10 to camp in what amounted to a pullout while people wizzed around us in trucks, presumably completely hammered, until the sun was nearly up again. This is the stuff memories are made of.

After Tayler fulfilled his life long dream of camping at Lake Pleasant Arizona, he figured there wasn’t much else to look forward to seeing in the southwest, so he got on the first flight back to Vermont from Phoenix. He just made out home before the whole country’s air traffic got screwed up by hurricane Sandy.

Later that day we did a much needed load of laundry in Tucson. Then, we visited Jenny’s high school friend Alexis, her husband and three boys that night. We carved pumpkins for Halloween, which was super fun. Jenny and I chose the cat bat, which is pretty scary. Also featured was the guy with scary teeth, the grim reaper and the traditional jack-o-lantern guy.

We considered dipping into Mexico since we were only a half hour away, but chickened out after hearing stories about what goes on right on the other side of the border. If we had more time I think it would have been fun to have driven deeper into Mexico where things are a little less crazy.

Dam boys

Oct31

October 24 – 25, 2012

The next stop on our tour of the southwest was going to be the Grand Canyon. Originally we planned on going to the North Rim, but we found out that it was probably closed so we had to change our plans slightly. On the way to the South Rim we stopped at the Glen Canyon Dam near Page Arizona.

The Glen Canyon Dam is the next dam upstream of the Hoover Dam, with the Grand Canyon in between. The 4th tallest dam in the US is a concrete gravity arch dam like Hoover, but it is considerably thicker. Like Hoover it’s primary purpose is to impound water for release to water owners below with power generation being a bonus.

The crest of the dam serves as a parking lot for power plant employees – traffic is routed over the steel ~~Navajo~~ Glen Canyon Bridge just downstream of the dam.

My brother and I went on the tour of the dam which allowed us to get out on the crest and ride the elevator through the dam to the power house. The tour was a little underwhelming and rushed with the tour guide regurgitating facts about the dam without a particular interest in discussing the dam’s more technical details. It was too bad because it turned out that there was an engineer in all four groups of people on the tour, one each from Italy, Germany, Canada and the US. As the enginering representative from the USA I was particularly proud that I looked like I had just stepped out of Phish concert after several days of hiking and being on the road without the benefit of a shower.

One of the unique aspects of this dam was a large field of grass that sat between the toe of the dam and the power house. We saw a guy 600 something feet down there on a riding mower right when we got there. It turns out that the grass was planted to keep several hundred feet of soil placed from blowing away. The soil was placed to dampen the vibrations of the pipes which lead to the turbines in the power house.

Obligatory generator picture

High Voltage

We made it to the Grand Canyon right before sunset. It was cold there, in the low 40s or so. The park had a surprisingly well stocked and inexpensive grocery store with a stellar beer section. We bought ingredients for burritos, and made them on the tailgate. After dark Tayler and I wandered through the woods toward the canyon attempting to use the stars to guide us north. We couldn’t find the big dipper, the little dipper or orion because of the trees. After exhausting our celestial navigation skills we stumbled around until we came across a major road with signs pointing to a paved hiking trail along the rim. A true backcountry experience.

I tried to make some long exposure images at night, but with no tripod or shutter remote and a steady breeze, they didn’t turn out great.

Turns out it is easier to photograph the Grand Canyon during the day.

When we woke up we saw our car thermometer had gone down to 26 during the night. After indulging in hot pay showers we chowed on breakfast burritos and decided to head south to warmer weather.

Zion

Oct29

October 23 – 24, 2012

We woke up early in the Walmart parking lot and headed to Doggy Dude Ranch outside of Zion. The weather in Zion was cooler than down in Vegas but it was still too hot for Lucy to hang out in the truck while we hiked in the park. After depositing Lucy we found a campsite and drove around the park a little.

Dramatic sandstone canyon walls and formations carved by water are what define Zion. The region was once a massive sand dune desert similar to the current Sahara. The sand dunes transformed into sandstone and were then eroded by streams over time. The canyon walls are often over 2,000 feet of nearly vertical yellowish to red rock winding along stream valleys. The canyons are not barren desert landscapes though- precipitation slowly filtering through the porous sandstone produce consistent springs that feed lush cottonwood forests in the valley bottoms. The springs also feed small patches of vegetation called “hanging gardens” which cling to ledges high on the canyon walls.

Chandler had done a little research beforehand and read about Angel’s Landing which is a classic park day hike. The first 2.2 miles were on a paved trail which was relatively easy but steep, the last half mile was another story. There were chains bolted to the rocks leading the way up to the summit because there were cliffs which dropped off 1,400 feet on either side. This resulted in single file lines of ascenders or desenders clinging to the chains with white knuckles. It was a little scary at times.

When we finally got to the top it was time for a snack. Apparently we weren’t the only ones thinking that as we were quickly surrounded by 5 or 6 rock squirrels. These little guys had no fear as one crawled under my leg and another actually pulled Chan’s finger, who was too startled to respond.

Another memorable moment was when a woman called Chandler and I gals, not once but twice! (Chandler’s edit: in my defense she also misidentified a bumblebee as a fly in the same breath.)

Originally, we had planned to head to Buckskin Canyon which is a slot canyon down the road a bit, but with Doggy Dude Ranch nearby and more to explore, we decided to stay another day and hike The Narrows.

This was a hike unlike any of us had ever done before. Instead of climbing for a view, we waded up the Virgin River through a canyon. The canyon got narrower as we headed upstream until we turned around at a point where it was about 20-30 feet wide.

The water wasn’t too bad but it got colder the further up river we traveled. We saw a lot of people wearing dry suit pants which would have been warmer, but we were fine in our shorts. The deepest water we had to wade was between knee and waist deep.

The day ended well with a meal of Trader Joe’s gnocchi, pesto pasta and a few beverages around the fire at the campground.

Like a virgin

Oct27

October 22, 2012

On Monday morning Tayler, Chandler and I went mountain biking at Bootleg Canyon outside of Boulder City, NV. It was rocky, hot and challenging for me, but very fun. I left an hour early to take Lucy to the Vet for a vaccine so she can go to doggy dude ranch outside of Zion National Park tomorrow. The boys kept biking.

That night we couldn’t find a campground because the state parks in Utah close the entrance gates at 9pm, not sure how people get back in if they leave. So we ended up camping like real Americans in the Walmart parking lot in Virgin, UT!!!

Cons: Windy, bright
Pros: Instant access to cheetos

A Few Days Off

the things that we do

Author Archives: cjengel