I couldn't blog yesterday because we didn't have any cell and the Seminole Canyon wifi was down. We were the only people using the campground. That was a little disconcerting because we were about 1 mile from the Rio Grande and the damn Mexicans haven't built the wall yet. The pics below were taken at the GMNP. I didnt take any pics yesterday. I think we'll be here until the 2nd or 3rd.
Just a quick post from the visitors center. Today is Saturday and the tent campground is full. I don't think I've ever seen that before. The RV campground is empty except for us. Its still early so we might have some company later. We will fiddle around the park for a few hours and maybe do a short hike after dinner. Tomorrow will be Seminole Canyon SP for 1 night. Should be in SA on the 30th.
We are in the center of the state near the small town of Carrizozo. The campground is located on the edge of a 127 sq. mile lava flow. It is 44 miles long, 5 miles wide and averages 45 feet deep. When we got here the weather was looking scary. We poked around a bit but then ducked in the MP to avoid getting wet. Turns out we just got sprinkled on. The weather has settled down so we'll eat an early dinner and do the trail. We'll move again tomorrow and probably stay a night in the Guadalupe Mountains NP parking lot/campground.
Our big adventure today was a visit and tour of Chimney Rock National Monument. It's an Anasazi Indian ruin. It is considered an outlier of The Chaco Canyon ruins. What that means is that it was sort of a suburb. The style of the architecture is the same and the artifacts discovered in and around the ruins were similar to Chaco. The ruins are built in an unusual and difficult place. There is a celestial event that only occurs every 18.6 years that is called "The Northern Major Lunar Standstill". (Seriously, it's a thing) If you were to be standing in the middle of the ruins kiva, you could observe that event between those two chimney rocks when it occurs. The sky was very important to those folks. After that, we had lunch at a local dive and then played 18 holes of disk golf. Tomorrow we move but we don't know where.
We decided to get some elevation and some cooler temperatures. The town is at 7100 feet and it is really nice. Mid seventies. The MP is parked outside of town with no cell service so we are sitting in the car in town. The San Juan river flows through town and about a dozen hot springs empty into it. There are 3 resorts that cater to hot spring enthusiasts. We were a little gun shy when we started the drive out of Moab this morning. We were expecting something to explode or shatter or break or fly off or something. Nothing happened. My duct tape is still holding the wheel well together. Please, no applause yet. We might stay here 2 nights just to enjoy the cool. This pic was taken by Jenny at sunrise this morning. She was pretty brave because she went outside in her pajamas to take it.
Had a superfantastic bike ride this morning. We went somewhere I've never been. The group consisted of 4 clients and we were all experienced, so the guide took us on some trails he wanted to ride and that he thought we could handle. We did a short diversion to look at some dinosaur tracks.I rented and rode the bike that I will be getting at the end of the season. I said yesterday that I had bought a bike. That was not technically true. What I did was put some money down toward the purchase of one of their rentals that will be shipped to me at the end of the season. We are headed south tomorrow. We are not going to hurry but Moab has always been our last planned stop. We are headed home with a short layover in San Antonio.
Are we having fun yet? Today has been dedicated to getting new MP tires. There are 2 tire stores in town, only 1 of them had 6 tires in the size we needed. That store was slammed with business. A good portion of our effort today was dedicated to wasting time while waiting for our turn. We drove around. I bought a new bike and booked a bike tour for tomorrow. Jenny bought me a birthday present. We visited the state run liquor store. There was chai tea and a smoothie. A 30 mile drive for lunch at a resort on the Colorado river and a wine tasting. It's 2:20 and we are back in the waiting "lounge" of the tire store. The tires are installed but they promised to look at the wheel well damage. They forgot and that is being looked at now. Epilogue: The fix I made with zip ties has now been reinforced with wire. The hole in the wall of the MP has been filled with copious amounts of foam and bubble wrap and sealed with yards of gorilla duct tape. Driving in the rain will be the the ultimate test of my Rube Goldberg fix. If it fails, water will spray off the tires and into the livingroom. We are here 1 more day.
Jenny drove me 10 miles out of town to a trailhead that I've used before. Part of the trail was over slickrock and the route is marked with a brown line. I was really pumped when I started because slickrock is exactly what a full suspension bike is good at. The only problem was it was hot as hell, the elevation is 4000 feet and I'm 66. After 2 hours I was pretty much wasted. I finally got off the trail and began my 10 mile ride back to the MP. I have been pretty apathetic all afternoon. Tomorrow we will start trying to get the old lady ready for the 2000 mile drive to Beaufort.
Well, we made it but the trip was not without incident. While cruising down I 70, minding our own business, the inboard rear tire on the right side blew out. A better description would be "exploded". It let go with such force that it blew a hole in the wall of the MP. (see pic below) We were pretty much, no where, when it happened. We called the motorhome version of AAA and after about an hour a guy arrived and put on the spare. There are a bunch of things bent and broken in the wheel well. Using zip ties I was able to hold the broken parts away from the tires so we could drive. The tires are worn but far from worn out. I'm going to buy 4 new tires for the rear axle before we continue our trip. Zip ties aren't going to cut it either. The last pic is symbolic of the MPs status when we return to Beaufort.
There are no long hikes in this park. You can tie a few together and do a few miles. The park has published a series of guides to help visitors find the rock art. It's kind of like a scavenger hunt. We think we found most of them. It's Moab tomorrow.
We only drove 30 minutes to get to this place. Consequently, we arrived early and had most of the day to get acquainted. This park has an unusual beginning. We are right next to I 70. When they built that highway they needed a lot of fill dirt. The plan was to literally, dig up a hill and use the dirt to build the roadway. As they started digging they began to discover artifacts. Turns out that hill was the site of the largest Fremont Indian village ever discovered. Can't stop progress. The hill and the village are toast. The artifacts that were discovered are housed in a museum at the park Hq. There is a lot of rock art that we are in the process of trying to find. We're here for 2 nights.
We are back in one piece. We got the door latch installed and it didn't take too long and it didn't cost too much. We are now headed south. Our camp on Antelope island was our most northern destination. I didn't mention this earlier but we lost a hubcap in New Mexico. The MP looks a little skanky on that side. I've ordered a new one and we will catch up with it when we will pass through San Antonio later this month. We are only here overnight. Tomorrow we move to a state park near here. There are some random pics below.
The Great Salt Lake is 75 miles long and 28 miles wide. The average depth is about 30 feet. Antelope Island is 15 miles long and 4.5 miles wide, encompassing 28,000 acres. Today we drove up the East side of the island and visited some historical ranches and homesteads. At the end of the road we did a 6 mile (3 hour) hike which carried us up and over the spine of the island. At one point we had a view of both sides of the lake. We were on the trail by ourselves probably because the climb was grueling and it was 100 degrees. The part we need to fix our door arrived today. We'll pick it up tomorrow as we leave. We are actually not sure where we are going. We are changing our plans on the fly.
I have been wanting to visit this island ever since I lived here in the late 60s. There is a 7 mile elevated road that takes you here from the mainland. We drove into Kaysville to await the arrival of the part I ordered last week. Turns out it was delivered and signed for by Jeff at 10:15. There is no one named Jeff at The Camping World store in Kaysville. I made a few calls and found out it was delivered to a Camping World store in California. Sounds like one of those Rick Perry Oops! moments. We said "the hell with it" and left. We are keeping the door held shut with bungee cords. That's Aggie engineering baby. It's pretty frigging hot here. We are sitting outside, under the awning, in front of a fan set to high. We'll crank up the generator in a few minutes and get the AC going for a few hours before dinner. The door part is going to be overnighted to, hopefully, the correct location tomorrow. We'll pick it up in a couple of days on our way out. Of course by then it will be lost in the Camping World parts warehouse.
We spent 2 nights at a working cattle ranch that is also a B & B and a campground. 9 mile canyon is at least 30 miles long and it's jam packed with Fremont Indian petroglyphs. We hired one of the ranch owners daughters to give us a tour. We were out 5 1/2 hours and it would be an understatement to say we saw some petroglyphs. A few of the pics I took are below. We are currently in a RV resort in Heber City. The MP has thrown us another spit ball and the part to fix it will (supposedly) be delivered to a Camping World in Kaysville around 10 AM tomorrow. Stay tuned.
We were going to leave today but that was way too optimistic. We had laundry, and groceries and we were both tired so we slipped our departure. The float trip started after a 3 hour bus ride. We had 2 stops, the first was at a liquor store in Colorado. They have different laws. The Gates of Lodore was named by John Wesley Powell when he floated through it in 1869. There was a poem written about a river in Scotland that Powell thought described that stretch of the Green. Only 4 trips a day are allowed to begin at The Gates. 2 commercial and 2 private. The campsites are assigned by the Park Service because the entire route flows through Dinosaur NM. We had 6 boats, 6 guides and 25 clients. We would paddle a while and stop for lunch. Lunch was easy to eat, you could generally hold it in your hand or eat out of a small bowl. Dinners were more elaborate. There was salmon and steak and something else that for some reason neither one of us can remember. I paddled one day in a single inflatable kayak and 1/2 day on an inflatable paddleboard. Jenny and I spent 1/2 day paddling a double inflatable kayak. The guides wouldn't let the clients paddle through any class 3 rapids but there were plenty of ones and twos. It was pretty hairy in places. It was a great trip. The guides were fantastic and the clients all got along. Tomorrow we move to Nine Mile Canyon. I suggest you Google it to see why.
It's been a busy day. The RV repair place could not duplicate our problem. It sat there for 2 days, plugged in, and when they unplugged it, everything switched over to 12 volt. The tech tried everything he could to cause it to fail and he couldn't. The trip was awesome. I'll discuss that in the next few days. The pics should speak for themselves.
It's a 3 hour bus ride to the put-in. We are getting an early start. Be back in a few days.
This morning we drove into Dinosaur NM. Its about 15 miles. We explored the quarry and then did a short hike to see some more fossils. Underneath the glass quarry roof is a sloped wall of partially excavated dinosaur bones. The whole thing was very well done and worth the visit. The rest of the day has been spent readying ourselves for the 4 day paddle raft trip through "The Gates of Ladore" on the Green River. WE WILL BE OUT OF TOUCH! We will be back in civilization Wednesday night. The guides have a satellite phone but it's only for calling out. You can call the tour company (O.A.R.S) at 800-346-6277. We will drop the MP off at an RV place before we leave tomorrow morning. They said they would look at it next week and drive it back to the KOA when it's fixed. Uh huh! I almost laughed when he told me that. Stranger things have happened but that scenario seems unlikely. I'll be trying to document our journey as we paddle but it's going to be awhile before it gets posted.
As some of you might be aware the MP occasionally throws a wrench into our plans. She threw one this morning. We have been boondocking in Capital Reef. We would run our generator for a while every afternoon but generally we were on battery power. It was fine, it ran the fans, gave us light and operated the water pump. That system has failed. If the generator is running or if we are hooked up to city power everything works. If we have no AC power, nothing works. We found a place in Vernal that might be able to fix it. We're going to leave it with him while we're on the river rafting trip. I'm pessimistic, but I'm always pessimistic. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. The pics were taken on different days. One in the morning and one in the afternoon.
On today's agenda was a 120 mile scenic drive. The route included 40 miles of washboard dirt. The switchback pic is on a road called 'The Burr Trail'. That route was originally made so that cattleman could get their cows up top during the summer. It's a pretty hairy 1/2 mile. We are actually still on the drive, 40 more miles. We stopped for lunch in the small town of Boulder and the restaurant has such good wifi I decided to post this now. As an aside, Boulder is on the edge of The Escalante Grand Staircase NM. The current administration is trying to shrink its size significantly. The citizens of Boulder are up in arms. We wish them luck. Our drive has been magnificent so far and it would be a shame to take paradise and put up a parking lot. We move to Vernal UT tomorrow to get into position to begin our guided raft trip on the Green River.
I have wanted to hike an out of the way trail here since the last time we visited in 2014. The trial follows a canyon bottom as it meanders around and eventually empties into the Fremont river. Jenny wasn't too enthusiastic about accompanying me partly because the trail head is nowhere near the finish, it's 10 miles long, and you have to ford the river at the end. She volunteered to be my shuttle driver. I felt special. I can check that one off my list. I took some pics. We are here for one more day.
