kids

Thanksgiving Road Trip, Part I: Mesa Verde National Park

Posted on November 28, 2023 by Debora

A few months after we moved to Colorado in 2020, one of Luke’s coworkers at the time sold him an elderly Saturn for cheap so he wouldn’t have to keep riding a bicycle to work. It was an “as-is” cash deal for a car with over 200k miles on it, sold for the express purpose of keeping Luke showing up to work on time as the weather got colder.

Regardless, the first time Luke got a few days off work in a row he drove out alone into a February snowstorm, heading north through Wyoming with the rather nebulous goal of seeing Seattle. The Saturn took him as far as Oregon before its battery died forever at a rest stop in Weatherby. Luke had it towed to a garage near the Idaho border, where they put a new battery in and sent him on his way. Newly cautious, he gave up on Seattle and came home via Utah. Thank goodness for cell phones and the Internet; without them I would have had to sit at home wondering if he was still alive instead of getting to enjoy his philosophical ramblings on Messenger as he formed snapshot impressions of blue-collar industrial cities like Boise Idaho and the ubiquitous Mormon presence in Utah.

He sold the Saturn to one of those cash-for-junkers companies the following May, when it started overheating due to a leaking gasket, and bought an old Camry that had over 220k miles on it. Once again, the first chance he got he took off alone to try his luck on the open road.

When most people talk about “seeing the country,” they usually mean visiting its iconic cities and landmarks. Luke uses the phrase in a more literal sense: he wants to see what America looks like. The empty stretches and the tiny small-town museums and the winding mountain roads and the mills and factories with their busy smokestacks. He wants to see what it’s all about. On this second adventure he headed west, dropped by Anza to see his dad, then drove up the coast. This time he made it to Seattle, and came home via Montana and Wyoming. He’s done a few more solo road trips since then. His current adventuremobile is a late-90’s Toyota pickup that handles rough conditions better than the Camry can.

The idea of doing road trips the way Luke does them gives me the shivers. Just picking a compass point or a region of the country, finding a road that goes in that general direction and taking off in a cloud of adventurous optimism…that is not my way. I spent literally months planning every last detail of our 2022 Pacific Northwest road trip, just to make sure we didn’t miss anything good or fall behind schedule or end up in unnecessary danger. I am not as reckless as I used to be.

A few weeks ago, Luke realized he would have a four-day Thanksgiving weekend. For him that meant one thing: he got to do another road trip. He bounced around a few different ideas and then decided on a smallish loop that would take him through Steamboat Springs Colorado,  Salt Lake City Utah and Horseshoe Bend in Arizona.

As it happens, Horseshoe Bend and the Great Salt Lake were on my bucket list. And seeing them sounded like more fun than cooking a turkey for just myself and Elizabeth. Luke was fine with me joining him. Of course I immediately started checking out the route, and pointed out that Zion National Park was not too far out of the way. Well, that was on Elizabeth’s bucket list, and so was nearby Bryce Canyon National Park. Luke said fine, we could all go together, but if we were visiting Zion and Bryce, then he wanted to see Mesa Verde. By this point we had realized that four days wasn’t going to be enough, so we used PTO to take off an extra two.

After some discussion, we decided to reverse the order of the stops and do Mesa Verde first instead of last. We left home Wednesday night at midnight to beat the holiday traffic, and rolled past the Mesa Verde park sign around 7:45 the next morning.

We had planned to buy an America the Beautiful annual pass at the entry kiosk, but the park was a ghost town. We did not see a single worker the entire time we were there. Presumably they were all home with their families for Thanksgiving.

Luke needed to sleep, so we pulled into an out-of-the-way parking spot inside the park and took a long nap. This turned out to be the best sleep we got on the entire trip. More on that later.

After our nap, we checked out the Park Point Fire Lookout.

This is the highest point in the park. From here you can see all the way to the southern edge of the San Juan Mountain range.

I haven’t yet replaced the camera that was drowned on the PNW trip, so all of the pics from this trip were taken with either the fisheye lens of my GoPro or the noisy camera of my phone. Hard to mess up the subject matter, though.

You can’t go into the cliff dwellings except on an official tour, and tour season is over for this year, so we were only able to view them from a distance. Still very cool, though.

The canyons themselves are as impressive as the dwellings. Phenomenal views.

Adventuremobile barely visible in background:

Some of the old ruins are protected from the elements inside large sheds.

This one is in the open at the top of a cliff.

It reminded me a little of some of the older Spanish missions in San Antonio.

We had a great time exploring. Still no one at the kiosk when we left the park. I would have felt guiltier about the “free” visit if we hadn’t bought the annual pass at the next park anyway.

From Mesa Verde we drove southwest to Horseshoe Bend in Glen Canyon Recreation Area. The entry gate is closed after hours, so we spent the night in the quiet corner of a Walmart parking lot in nearby Page.

Up till now I thought I’d gotten the best sleeping arrangements of our trio. The pickup has a camper shell (missing a back window, but one makes do), and we had put our old futon mattress into the bed. Pure luxury, especially since I had it all to myself. Luke slept on the front bench seat and Elizabeth slept on the rear bench seat.

So it turns out that on cold nights, the futon mattress basically fills up with cold air and just sucks all the heat out of your body. You cannot warm it up. I had to use one of my blankets as an insulating layer between me and the mattress, and then I didn’t have enough blankets on top. No more comfy nights for me until I got back home.

Worth it though! Who needs sleep anyway?

To be continued!

 

 

 

Categories: A Plethora of Parks, environment, Family, Holidays, kids, Life, Road trip, Travel, Weather | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Pura Vida

Posted on October 24, 2022 by Debora

A few weeks after we got back from the road trip, we took our new raft out on her first river trip. We had bought the raft in early spring, christened her Pura Vida, and made plans for multiple outings over the summer. Alas, the combination of dry winter and warm dry spring meant that the rafting season on the Upper Colorado, which usually peaks in August, was mostly over by the end of June. We only got the one trip in this summer and the water was pretty low.

We eventually want to raft as much of the Colorado River as our little 12-foot raft can handle. So for our first run we put in at the Pumphouse Recreation Area, just downstream of the scary Class IV rapids of Gore Canyon, which is basically the first raftable stretch of the Colorado. Below Gore Canyon it’s an easy run; the biggest obstacle comes right near the beginning where a big boulder in the middle of the river creates a four-foot drop as you go past it (not pictured; we were holding onto oars, not cameras).

The weather was gorgeous. The water wasn’t nearly as cold as we thought it would be.

There were a few rapids here and there, but this run at this water level is mostly about the scenery.

Saw a pair of bald eagles and really wished I had a better camera!

Pura Vida is a self-bailing raft with a drop-stitched floor, ridiculously buoyant and easy to steer. We hardly got splashed at all, even in the rapids.

Just a lovely day.

A railroad runs along the river for most of the way, so we got to enjoy seeing the trains roll by.

From Pumphouse to Rancho del Rio is nine miles of river, theoretically a five-hour run. There’s a stretch of slack water at the end, right before you get to Rancho, and we were warned that in the afternoons a strong headwind picks up and makes it hard to cross. Luke and I had gotten a small taste of that on Pura Vida’s maiden voyage. We had taken her to Cherry Creek Reservoir in early June to get used to handling her, and ended up fighting an exhausting battle back across the lake against strong afternoon winds. We weren’t looking to repeat that experience, so we got a bit overenthusiastic with the paddling and did the Pumphouse-Rancho run in less than three hours. No problem with headwinds.

We had lunch at the little outdoor BBQ place at Rancho, and then packed up the raft and headed home.

This winter is predicted to be cold and wet, so hopefully next year’s rafting season will be longer. Looking forward to future runs!

Categories: environment, Family, kids, Life, Pura Vida | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

Road Trip 2022, Part XI: Crossing the Desert

Posted on September 5, 2022 by Debora

We left Sequoia National Park and started looking for someplace to stop for lunch. Every eatery we passed was overcrowded with cars and people, so we kept driving until we came to a picturesque but oddly empty Mexican restaurant. As we pulled into the parking lot we made a few jokes about how terrible the food must be if no one wanted to eat there. Turns out the joke was on us. The food was…subpar, to put it kindly. Luke ordered a chocolate shake with his meal, and the waitress apparently misheard him, because she brought him a slice of chocolate cake. Luke accepted the cake, but asked her to box it up to go. Later that day, many miles down the road, we pulled out the cake only to discover that it was riddled with mold. Luke is still salty about the whole experience.

In Keene we detoured off the highway to visit the grave of a personal hero of mine, Cesar Chavez. The gravesite is a National Monument at Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz, where the United Farm Workers of America is headquartered. The visitor center was closed, but the graves and memorial gardens were accessible.

A heady mix of jasmine, mock orange, roses and other fragrant blossoms rolled over us like a warm wave as soon as we opened the car doors in the parking lot. Most of the garden plants must have been chosen for their scent, because the place smelled amazing.

“It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life.”

There’s also a desert garden here, a tribute to Chavez’s birthplace in Arizona.

After we’d paid our respects, we returned to the highway and continued southeast. We passed a rusty old boat with “SS Minnow” painted on the side…

…and crossed another segment of the Pacific Crest Trail. That was satisfying, like a bookend. And then, rather suddenly, we were out of the foothills and into the Mojave Desert.

I can neither explain nor fully describe the stupefying effect this desert had on us. Luke and I took turns driving in short shifts of an hour or two at a time, because that was all we could manage without dozing off at the wheel. Our Fellowship of the Rings audiobook, that had entertained us through a few tedious miles earlier in the trip, now required more concentration than we could muster. Fast music was an annoyance, slow music was a sedative. We drove in silence, two of us sleeping while the third struggled to keep their eyes open enough to stay on the road. It was like that field of cursed poppies in “The Wizard of Oz.” After everything we’d seen and done in our travels, the Mojave Desert nearly defeated us.

We were briefly roused by a middle-of-nowhere travel stop called the Cima Mining Co., that lured us in with promises of exotic jerked meats (Alligator! Elk! Buffalo!) and fresh date shakes. Alas, most of the jerkies were too caliente for our taste. But we did find some really good maple-wild-boar jerky, and the date shakes were great. That kept us mostly awake for the rest of the way to Las Vegas.

We had planned to walk around Vegas a bit, but the combination of lingering desert grogginess and Memorial Day Weekend crowds squelched our enthusiasm for sightseeing. We settled for driving down the Strip instead of bypassing it completely.

We pulled into a small truck stop to spend the night, but the whole parking lot was flooded with lamplight. As tired as we were, we couldn’t sleep there, so we dragged on to another, more vagabond-friendly travel stop.

We woke up the next morning with a single goal: make it home that day. There was nothing left on our to-do list, no more sights we wanted to see. Or so we thought!

I was not prepared for the beauty of central Utah. Here among the plateaus and canyons, our sense of urgency faded and we stopped often along the highway to get out and admire the views.

I had finally traded in my marino wool top, jeans and leggings for tee shirts and shorts back in Sequoia. Now the air was chilly again as we climbed back up into the higher elevations.

 

As we crossed back into Colorado, the weather was almost identical to what it had been when we left: lowering skies, raining off and on.

As eager as we were to get back to our own beds, we made one more stop on the way: we picked up dinner to go from our favorite local Chinese restaurant. Colorado has a reputation for lacking diversity, but if you know where to look you can find really wonderful authentic food from all over the world.

It felt nice to be back. It felt like coming home.

Categories: A Plethora of Parks, Death, environment, Family, food, Holidays, kids, Life, Road trip, Travel | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Road Trip 2022, Part X: Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks

Posted on August 28, 2022 by Debora

From San Francisco we drove east to Manteca, then southeast through Modesto down to Fresno, and then east again into the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Around 5:30 pm, we arrived at the Big Stump entrance to Kings Canyon National Park.

A longish line of cars slowed our entry into the park, which reminded us that it was now Friday afternoon of Memorial Day Weekend.

Inside the park we stopped for a nice dinner at the Grant Grove Village Restaurant, peeked through the windows of the closed Visitor Center, and then continued up to Grant Grove itself. We walked the General Grant Tree Trail, a short loop that features an old cabin and some of the world’s largest living trees.

Like the coastal redwoods, the mountain sequoias don’t translate well into photographs. In person they are massive and imposing and majestic, in photos they are just trees.

This is where my pics start to get blurry. Afternoon was turning into evening, and my GoPro doesn’t handle low light well at all.

I will say that I like the sequoia forests better than the primeval jungles of coastal redwoods. They just seem friendlier. Maybe it’s because I feel at home in California mountains in general, so the Sierra Nevadas did not make me feel like a stranger in an alien landscape.

The trees here still show the scars of the big KNP Complex fire that tore through Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks last fall, the fire that provided the final motivation for this road trip.

Unlike the coastal forests, the sequoias seem to avoid touching one another at all. They are not as tall as the coastal redwoods, but their thicker bases make them larger by volume. The redwood trunks are straight poles, the sequoia trunks taper as they go up.

 

Campsites at Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks can’t be reserved more than 30 days in advance, and after that they go fast, especially on a holiday weekend. The campsite I’d been able to get reservations for wasn’t my first, second or third choice, but by the time I’d secured an available site I was just thankful to have found one at all. It’s a bit of a drive to Princess Campground, but the views are nice on the way up.

The campground was more crowded and noisy than we had experienced so far on the trip, but that was to be expected on a holiday weekend. The real surprise came when we left camp the next morning: the park had filled to the brim with people. Cars and crowds everywhere.

Back at the visitor center, which was now open, we secured the first and only park stamp that we managed to get on the entire trip.

We had a full day’s itinerary planned, and we didn’t get to do any of it. The parks were just too crowded, the lines too long, the parking lots too full. We drove the Generals Highway from Kings Canyon to Sequoia National Park, past vast stretches of burned landscape.

A prescribed burn was smoking in the distance, so I don’t know how much of the damage we saw was from last year’s KNP Complex Fire and how much was controlled burn-off.

Still a pretty drive. There were places the fire hadn’t touched, and places where the beauty of the mountains shone through the burn scars.

Scorched giant, stranger for scale.

We stopped to splash around in the Marble Fork Kaweah River. This is the river that feeds Tokopah Falls, which we had planned to hike to. We weren’t far from the trailhead at that point, but the crowds and overflowing parking lots were more of a barrier than we wanted to deal with.

So we mostly stayed in our car and enjoyed what views we could see from the highway.

We did stop at a relatively uncrowded picnic area, where we saw our very first bears in the wild.

A mama and her cub, presumably in search of pic-a-nic baskets.

I was willing to brave the throngs to hike the Moro Rock Trail, but we never saw the sign for the trailhead. By the time we realized that we must have passed it, none of us wanted to turned around and go back.

The crowds thinned as we left the big Instagram-worthy attractions behind. We began to have less competition for the mountain view overlooks, so we stopped to enjoy them whenever we came to a turnout.

We descended below the Sequoias, and the landscape changed around us through the different elevations.

By the time we got to the lower borders of the park, we were back in the “golden hills” that I associate with California.

Park sign, stranger for…well, mostly because this was the least crowded pic I managed to get.

We exited the park via the Ash Mountain Entrance, and beginning at the entrance station we drove past a loooooooong line of vehicles trying to get into the park. Miles and miles of cars and trucks lined up down the road.

We saw another young bear, this one trying to get across the road and completely stressed out by all the vehicles.

Poor little guy.

So we didn’t get to see the mighty General Sherman tree or do the other things we had planned in those parks, but we did get to marvel at some really big Sequoias, appreciate the majesty of the Sierra Nevadas and finally see some bears in the wild. We were satisfied.

More to come!

Categories: A Plethora of Parks, Animals, environment, Family, food, Holidays, kids, Life, Road trip, Travel, trees, Wildlife | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Road Trip 2022, Part IX: More Redwoods, and the City by the Bay

Posted on July 31, 2022 by Debora

Directly across the highway from Trees of Mystery sits the Forest Cafe, a whimsical little restaurant with a woodland theme. Our seating area had been arranged to create the illusion of being at the bottom of a pond.

Of course we had to drive the Elantra through a giant tree at some point. We chose the one in Klamath.

Just past Klamath we left the highway for the Newton B Drury Scenic Parkway, stopping here and there to admire the massive trees.

Stranger for scale:

We detoured out to the Lady Bird Johnson Grove Trailhead near Orick in Redwood National Park, walked as far as the big pedestrian bridge, and realized that none of us were feeling another hike. We were already behind schedule as it was. We had planned to spend Thursday night on the other side of San Francisco, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. We aborted the Lady Bird Grove hike and continued on.

Still in dinosaur country.

We made a brief return to the highway…

…before turning onto the Avenue of the Giants, a long scenic byway that winds through Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

Day 8 for that wool top, btw. Any doubts I had about merino’s famed ability to stay clean and fresh over long periods of use were laid to rest on this trip. The hype is true!

Fallen tree, Elizabeth for scale:

There are a lot of touristy novelty stops along Avenue of the Giants, but nearly all of them were closed when we came through.

We made it almost, but not quite, to San Francisco that day. We spent the night at some unmemorable chain hotel in Santa Rosa whose name I don’t recall, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge around 10am the next morning.

I liked San Francisco a little better than I’d liked Seattle. They both struck me as once-beautiful cities in lovely settings that had been mercilessly hijacked by the corporate economy. And granted, I saw very little of either city. But the impression I got of Seattle was that everyone but the wealthy had been chased out, whereas in San Francisco I at least saw normal-looking people out doing normal-person things.

Oh…Elizabeth says it was the Rodeway Inn in Santa Rosa.  She forgets nothing.

Anyway, we began our brief tour of SanFran at Ghirardelli Square, a historical bayside chocolate factory that has been mostly repurposed as a shopping center. It reminded me of the Pearl Brewery in San Antonio, but with chocolate instead of beer.

We had some amaaaaaazing ice cream sundaes at the Ghirardelli Chocolate Experience, and watched some of the old chocolate-making equipment do its thing.

Looked around the Square a bit more, and then walked out to the municipal pier for a better view of the bay.

if you want to see a stark example of the social inequality built into the modern corporate economy, look no further than San Francisco’s public pier. Set against a backdrop of immense wealth…

…the municipal pier is literally rotting away for lack of funds to maintain it.

Alcatraz Island in the near background:

Private wealth, public poverty.

We returned to the car and drove down via Lombard St…

…to a beach parking lot so we could walk out to see the Wave Organ.

The tide was too low to reach the concrete pipes that play the organ, but the structure itself is fascinating.

About that time we all decided that we had seen enough of San Francisco and were ready to move on. Alas, moving on was easier said than done in the thickening afternoon traffic. We spent hours struggling free of the city before we finally escaped into the foothills.

And just like that, I felt like I was finally back in my home state. It even smelled like California, that familiar dusty scent of tall dry grass and coastal sunshine. We rolled down the windows and let the breeze blow through the car, and nostalgia for a California that no longer exists ached in my chest.

To be continued!

Categories: A Plethora of Parks, Animals, environment, Family, food, Holidays, kids, Life, Road trip, Travel, trees | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blog at WordPress.com.