The Best of the West

Here are some memorable aspects of our winter in the Southwest: the superlatives.

First a couple disappointments:

No cactus blooming.  I guess winter is not the right time, and we kept moving north as the southern deserts moved into spring. 

Environmental concerns: Smog from Los Angeles reaching all the way to Death Valley and the Grand Canyon.

The worst thing, of course, was rolling into Quartzsite, literally.  I never for one second thought we should give up this lifestyle after the accident.  I couldn’t wait for new wheels and to get back on the road.  But it was actually harder than I expected.  I am still tense driving mountains, especially going down.  I get little flashbacks whenever I have to move over for a vehicle parked on the side of the road, because that is what caused the fish-tail and roll-over.  The new rig is solid, the truck stable—we love both, but I am still a bit edgy driving.

Now in no particular order, here are the best.

THE BRIGHTEST STARRY SKIES  Big Bend National Park in Texas.  I haven’t seen the Milky Way light up the sky like that since I was a kid—and even then not as bold and bright as this.

THE MOST AWESOME DUNES  White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.  They are eerily beautiful.

THE BEST VOLUNTEER JOB   Habitat for Humanity in Las Cruces, NM,  It was so organized; we felt productive; and we met the greatest people there. 

THE BEST HAPPY HOURS  Gathering in the camper lot at Las Cruces, sharing the Habitat work of the day, ideas of where to go next, people’s favorite munchies (we still had Wisconsin cheese then) and Habitat memories of former builds with people who had worked in the same places with the same people.

THE BEST MOUNTAIN REFUGE  Chiracahua National Monument in southeastern Arizona where Cochise wandered with the Apache.

THE COOLEST OLD WEST TOWN  Tombstone, Arizona.  It was so much fun to see the Birdcage Theater and Boothill and get the flavor of Wyatt Earp and all the rest.

THE BEST CAMPGROUND  I asked Don, knowing the answer:  Tucson Mountain Park with saguaro in our campsite, coyotes barking at night, biking around the backroads, “purple mountains’ majesty” sunsets, the Desert Museum and Saguaro National Park just up the road.

MOST UNUSUAL CAMPGROUND  Estrella Mountain Park near Phoenix where we parked next to the vacant rodeo arena and plugged our cord into an electric box near the public bathroom.

THE BEST MUSEUM  Jean:  Arizona State Museum on the U of A campus in Tucson with its soul-searching look at Native American life.   Don:  The Birdcage Theater in Tombstone because everything was original and still there untouched, even the eight-year-long poker game.

THE BEST ANGEL OF MERCY  The steamroller Roy who helped us so much right after the accident with everything.  I like to be in control, not steamrolled, but Roy was a Godsend in getting us settled.  He was a sweetheart.

THE FAVORITE DESERT PLANT  Hmmm.  Saguaro? Joshua tree? The green palo verde tree?  No, I think it was the pink prickly pear.  Don says the saguaro.

THE BEST NATIVE AMERICAN ANCESTRAL DWELLINGS Jean:  Tuzigoot on a hilltop in central Arizona, a complex built by the Sinagua people.  They also utilized the nearby Montezuma’s Well, a lovely deep spring in the mountains.  Don:  Gila Cliff Dwellings where we actually walked through the walled-in cave rooms high on the mountainside.

FUNNIEST SHOW  Marilyn Monroe in the Las Vegas Legends show where she pulled a random man from the audience whose name turned out to be Dick.  She sat on his lap, running her fingers through his bald spot and called him Dickie.

MOST EXPENSIVE PLACE  Las Vegas—who can afford to spend time there?

BEST BARGAIN  Listening to the time-share presentation for free Cirque du Soleil tickets and a dinner voucher.

THE MOST SNOW  Bryce Canyon

THE MOST GORGEOUS CANYON  Jean:  Bryce.  The colors, the hoodoos, the 100 mile views, the exhilaration of actually hiking at 8,000-9,000 feet.  Don:  Canyonlands where we could see snow-covered mountaintops and deep cuts down to the rivers.

MOST AMAZING NATURAL WONDER  Don:  Landmark Arch, 306 feet long in Arches National Park.  Jean:  the salt flat in Death Valley.

THE ONLY PLACE WHERE WE DIDN’T SAY, “IT IS NICE TO VISIT, BUT I WOULD NOT WANT TO LIVE THERE.”  Sedona, Arizona, for the hikes, the red rocks, the trees, just the wildness of it.  Of course, we would never be able to afford to live there; it is expensive.  But it is really a gorgeous place.

THE BEST SCENIC DRIVE  The Apache Trail to Tortilla Flat in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona was beautiful, thrilling and just plain fun.  All the national parks had wonderful scenic drives—Big Bend, White Sands, Chiracahua, Saguaro, Joshua Tree, Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Zion, Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands.

THE LOVELIEST SUNSET  There were so many.  It takes some clouds, some mountains and the desert.

THE BEST HIKE  I can’t really answer that with just one.  There were so many times I said, “What a fabulous hike!”  Sedona’s Cibola Pass, the Catwalk in the Gila Wilderness with cousin Gord, White Sands, Chiracahua, Superstition Mountains, Bryce, the salt flat in Death Valley.

THE BEST WEEK OF THE WINTER  Our time with Marie and Gord.  It was so great to spend time with them.

AND FINALLY—Don has been saying we should make a list of the times that we were protected from danger, that things worked out just too well for coincidence, that God was watching out for us despite the bad things happening.

No one was hurt in our accident despite us rolling the camper across both lanes of I 10

We found the perfect truck with a super-duty factory tow package even though there was only one truck dealer within 90 miles.  This truck even has tow mode which does engine braking!  Wow, is that nice!  Unfortunately, we found today that Don is going to have to move his garage workbench to get this monster in the garage.

We found the majority of our belongings in the wreck.

Our angel of mercy, Roy the Steamroller, appeared like magic the day after the accident to take care of us.

When loose wires caused brake malfunction on the new rig, it happened only in out of the way places where we could not get hit even though we drove several hours on I 70 that day in between incidents.

Our second angel of mercy, Jason, appeared like magic at Car Quest to diagnose and fix the brake problem.

We had a sunny day to cross Colorado after truckers had been required to use chains in the morning snow on I 70 over Vail Pass (10,617 feet) and the Eisenhower Tunnel (11,158 feet).

We are home, safe, thanking God for a fabulously beautiful place He has created for humankind.

Eastern Utah

Arches National Park has over 2000 red stone arches, big and small, open to the sky and hidden in stone, some growing more open, some collapsing.  Ancient pockets of salt dissolve with erosion, leaving behind rounded rock formations which often open up as arches here.  We loved this park, coming back a second day to hike further among the surreal red rock fins, straight walls, arches and pinnacles.

The park also has many balanced rocks of harder capstone remaining atop softer sandstone that erodes faster.

Landscape Arch, the longest in the park, has a span of 306 feet and is only five feet thick at the thinnest part since tons of rock fell off its underside in 1991.

Canyonlands National Park is also near Moab, Utah.  We have been to a number of canyons, but they are each a bit different, each unique in some way.  Here we wandered around the Island in the Sky, a plateau nearly 2000 feet above the Colorado River that runs through the park.  Far below on the White Rim, a 4 wheel drive only dirt road wound for miles, luring intrepid bikers and the occasional truck (not mine though).

Upheaval Dome is really a depression, perhaps caused by dissolving salt deposits below it.  I discount the meteor theory, having seen Meteor Crater in Arizona which is round and uniform.  This is not a crater.

Look how deep the river has cut into the flats.

Dead Horse Point State Park features another point reached by a narrow neck of land just wide enough for the road.  Cowboys used to trap wild horses on this point to capture the best ones.  Some died on the point far above the river and the water they needed.

Indian Petroglyphs

Suddenly another problem surfaced--something in the trailer brakes malfunctioned, causing the camper brakes to seize up and buck the whole rig like a bronco.  An RV repair guy was sure it was the truck trailer brake controller.  The Ford garage was sure it was in the trailer brake system.  And we were panicked at having another problem that could have killed us.  The brakes seizing happened in out-of-the-way places where we would not get hit, but they worked on I 70 where it would have been disastrous.  Sunday after church in Moab where the entire congregation of 15 people prayed for us, God sent us an angel.  He was grease stained as mechanics sometimes are and had only one hand, but he diagnosed the problem as trailer power cord shorting out.  He fixed it, checked the wheels and greased them, and charged us only $50, on a Sunday no less.  We paid him $75, of course, and told him he was our angel of mercy.   God has truly been protecting us this trip.

Zion and Bryce Canyons

We had planned to visit the Utah canyons in April, but we decided to shorten the trip a bit and arrived March 21.  We should have waited, because they still have winter here.  This is in Bryce Canyon National Park.

Zion National Park was named by Mormon pioneers who saw its beauty and its fertile valley as a new promised land.

They said it was like a cathedral; one could worship God here as well as in any church building.  Many formations have Biblical names.  These three are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Dripping Rock where water seeps out of the rock and drips down like rain.

The red mud behind the falls was not easy to clean off our shoes.

The road on the east side of the park has switchbacks up the mountain leading to a 1.1 mile tunnel blasted through the rock in the late 1920’s, a marvel of engineering. 

 On the east side, the mountains are solid rock, but somehow bushes and trees manage to grow. 

The Checkerboard has the usual horizontal layers of rock, but also more rare vertical lines eroded into the mountainside to create a checkerboard pattern.

Bryce Canyon National Park was named for a rancher, Ebeneezer Bryce, who farmed below the rock formations in the 1870’s and said, “It is a hell of a place to lose a cow.”  

The Paiute legend is more poetic in explaining the hoodoos (the strange pillars of rock). “Before there were any Indians, the Legend People lived in that place. There were many of them. They were of many kinds—birds, animals, lizards, and such things—but they looked like people. They were not people; they had power to make themselves look that way. For some reason the Legend People in that place were bad. Because they were bad, Coyote turned them all into rocks. You can see them in that place now, all turned into rocks; some standing in rows, some sitting down, some holding onto others. You can see their faces, with paint on them just as they were before they became rocks.  This is the story the people tell.”

Elevation is 8,000 to 9,000 feet; our hikes made me breathless, especially the steep one to Inspiration Point that was snow-covered.

People have told us that Bryce is the most beautiful canyon they have ever seen.  I would have to agree.  However, technically, it is not a canyon (which means rivers have cut away rock along its route over time).  Bryce is really half bowls or amphitheaters in the side of the Colorado Plateau that have been eroded by rain and alternate freezing and thawing, which happens about 200 days a year.  The fins and hoodoos are rock formations that have stood against the erosion, filling the bowls on the side of the cliffs.