Arches Epic and New Friends

Arches National Park, May 27, 2007

We were at the park visitors center at 6:30am to make sure we got one of the few remaining campground sites. There were seven available, and we were number three. We drove to the end and picked the site we wanted, it was still occupied by three people in two tents. Their car looked nearly loaded, so we parked to wait for them to leave, not wanting to hurry them. After a few minutes we walked to the site to put our daily reservation on the post, so someone else wouldn’t get the really spectacular view site. We talked to the people there, who turned out to be from the south of France. They had arrived at 2am and slept in their rental car (filled with camping gear and food) They were very disappointed to learn of the system, and that they would loose their site. We offered to share our site with them, and enjoyed talking to them both days they were with us. They tried to share the cost of the site, but we refused; we have been on the receiving end of the kindness of strangers (sometimes very poor strangers who didn’t speak our language and we had been told wanted to kill us) that we could not take money from them. They have nearly a month in the States, and are going to see more of the West than most Americans will ever see. Their English is fantastic, and we had some interesting political and social discussions. They like Americans despite the anti French press they have been hearing the past few years. One thing we all agreed on was that people who travel are much less likely to harbor hate for other peoples and cultures; once you have looked in a stranger’s eyes, and broken bread with him/her, it’s hard to hate him or his kind.

Nancy, Pasqual and Daniele (forgive our spelling)

We had a long and enjoyable visit with the campground hosts, Gary and Francoise who are looking to move out of Phoenix; she has asthma and can’t take the air anymore. I can relate, and attest to Tucson’s clean air. They had heard about Far Horizons, and we gave them our pitch. I think they will visit in the fall and maybe move there. They would be a great addition to the park; they are full of energy and social.

Our first day in Arches we took a short hike, enjoying at least one, new to us, arch and the beautiful wildflowers and cactus arrayed against the coral pink sand. Sunday we took, what we thought would be a moderately strenuous mountain bike ride of about 30 miles. The first seven miles were easy, showing us lots of different wildflowers and only a few corrugations. Then the ---- hit the fan. First it got steep, then the steep turned to sand. We thought we might have a couple of miles of pushing our bikes, but it turned out to be an epic of seven plus miles of deep sand and hills.

A bicycle is an awful burden to push through sand, and we couldn't even pedal the downhills the sand was so deep. Good thing the flowers were blooming.

We ran out of water and food near the end and felt the big bonk: To bonk is to run out of glycogen in one’s muscles from exertion and not have food to replace it. It is very unpleasant, particularly when you do not have any choice except push on. Each step is a struggle to force your muscle to do work it is really incapable of doing, and every muscle in your body makes you pay in pain for making it move when it only wants rest and food. We finally made it out of the sand and to a motorhome parked in an unusual place. The very pleasant young man from California, was the “mo ho” (California speak for motorhome) manager for a company that supports film and still photo shoots. The photographer, assistants and model were off doing their shoot. He gave us water and that made a big difference; we only had to push our muscles without food for another nine miles. The photo shoot was for French Vogue magazine and the model was wearing Pocahontas, and other Native American inspired dresses. Claire thought they came to the red rocks of Arches, and not the more famous Monument Valley because of the fake Indian theme. I can imagine the Navajo would not be angry, but only too glad to take their money, and laugh at their absurd vision of Native Americans.

The light was lovely at sunset and we clambered over the slickrock taking pictures and enjoying the truly spectacular location. Arches never disappoints, though this time we could have done without the epic part of our mountain ride!

Claire against the sky long after sunset

Dino Tracks to Moab

Looking into Arches NP

Dino tracks and New Balance size 7

Friday May 25: Back in the Moab library working all day again today. Yesterday we took a moderate mountain bike ride to the edge of Arches National Park. We added a few dinosaur track pictures to our growing collection; there will be a story in that someday, and we’ll be able to provide the illustrations. We’re out here farming, harvesting photos that may someday be useful for Claire’s (and my) magazine writing. We met two couples, one young from California, and the other older from Ontario, Canada. Both were interested in talking about our lifestyle, and how we manage it. Both had more money than we do, but considerable less time, and both wanted more time to explore together. Today I sent out query letters to a hundred or so literary agents for a book proposal we have tentatively set at It’s A Wonderful Life. We think there is a market for it, we just have to convince an agent and then a publisher. We have been working on one chapter and a tentative chapter list, but we’ll have a lot more work to do if we get a request for a full-blown proposal. Don’t know how we’ll do that on the road, but we’d find a way.

Growth is a big deal in Moab. Claire wrote a story about our mountain bike tour of the White Rim for the Zephyr, a local monthly and she got paid with a five-year subscription. Jim Stiles, the editor is very against change, and fighting a loosing battle, but there seems to be positive change coming with the growth. There is now a nice trail system all over town for walkers and bikers, and there are bike racks full of bikes everywhere. I understand Jim wanting to close the door behind him after he got here, but it’s a lost cause; best to focus on directing the growth than blindly fighting it. From the looks of the new library we have been using for the past week, there are a lot of progressive folks here willing to pay for infrastructure. The library has tables with plugs for laptops everywhere and free wi fi; we can even pick it up in Turtle across the street. We find the people very friendly, though they might be a little tired of tourists come October. This corner of the country, SE Utah, N. Arizona, SW Colorado and NW New Mexico is the best of the U.S. for beauty and variety, and SE Utah is the best of the best. But, Shhhh

Hollywood Jack and his driver.

Needles Overlook and Windwhistle Rock: It's A Wonderful Life

Prince's Plume and wind.

May 20: After a night in Blanding (because we had a cell signal for the first time in several days) we drove to the Needles Overlook on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land between Monticello and Moab, a place we had never been. On the drive out, our well-trained bush camp eyes saw what looked a likely spot near the overlook. At the overlook we reminisced about our White Rim bicycle tour, and a wonderful hike with Jack and Mary Lange in Needles District of Canyonlands, and a two day stay in the Maze District of Canyonlands; we could see them all from the overlook. Then we drove a few hundred metres down back down the road, plunged onto a bush track with our amazingly off-road-capable View and found another cliff-top bush camp for the night. The weather put on a show for us, varying light for the junipers and spring flowers, yet giving passable long distance views over our canyon country. We keep coming back here. It remains among the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, place in the world, or at least the world as we have seen it, and that’s a fair bit. We sat up, as usual so we could have a reasonable chance of driving off quickly during the night, if need arise; though the drop-off to the cliff was pretty close, Turtle has a good turning radius. Darkness arrived with the fading of the rainbow; the wind is up and the lightning announced the odd thunderstorm somewhere to the South. We could get more weather during the night; if it clears we’ll have stars since the moon is still a sliver. Another billion-dollar view bought with the price of a little adventure. It’s a wonderful life. May 21: Drove to Wind Whistle Rock and struggled along a double sandy track to find a bush camp with beautiful view of La Salle Mountains and red sandstone capped with white Navajo sandstone and vast expanses of grass, sagebrush and Utah juniper. We were expecting (courtesy our weather radio) high winds and perhaps rain in the afternoon, so we hunkered down, only to find reasonable, if breezy weather. We hiked around Wind Whistle Rock instead, of the planned mountain bike. Our walk gave us a close up reminder of what is so special about this part of America; you can be within a mile of a road, and never see or hear another human all day. We threaded slickrock, and drainages to avoid damaging cryptobiotic soil, saw several delicate spring flowers and a new (to us) blooming cactus. We went in and out of sun and cloud shade, napped on a rock ledge and came back to Turtle for a warm shower. Then we took a walk, had a-little-something under a juniper, and came back to Turtle for another short nap. Dinner was pasta with garlic, olive oil, onions, yellow and zucchini squash, and the second half of a bottle of Chilean Cab/Sav/Merlot (better after some mellowing). Evening is coming slowly under high thin clouds and the breeze is dying, unlike last night when Turtle shook until after midnight, unsettling when parked on the edge of a cliff. Tonight there is no cliff, and no wind and the temperature should be cool. Had someone suggested to me when I was 25, that life could be so good past 60, I would have thought they were crazy. No more. It’s a wonderful life.

Sego Lilly

Monument Valley: Spectacular

Three photo panorama from our campsite.

P-bear taking in the view

Local resident

Prickly Pear

Claire deciding which monument she wants carved in her profile

Monument Valley May 17. We spent a night at Canyon de Chelly, but eschewed the minimum $100 required guide fee for a tour of the valley. It is our third time here and we can’t bring ourselves to pay such a large fee to fully appreciate a national park. We did the one free hike possible several years ago, but think the fees are unreasonable. Something needs to be worked out with the tribe to allow gringos who are not rich to visit, or turn it back to the tribe. It never has seemed right that there is not a way for self-guided visits to the valley. May 18. Monument Valley is a tribal park, and more reasonable with a $5 per person entry and $5 to dry camp in a spectacular spot. Our late today we hiked the one trail open to unguided hikes, 3.5 miles around one of the Mitten buttes and arrived back at Turtle just before sunset. Took much of a 512 card of photos, and will probably do it again tomorrow when we bike the 18 mile loop tomorrow. With this park, it at least is fully within the control of the Dine; at least we are allowed to bike the same loop the guided tourists take. We got a fantastic place to park Turtle (check the photo) though I had to make him/her act like a 4 wheel drive to get there and out, the sunset view was worth it. Had one of us been prone to sleepwalking, it would have been about a dozen steps to the edge. May 19 Bicycling Monument Valley. Great ride on a good dirt road today through some wonderful scenery. We left at sunrise and managed to do the loop at an easy pace, with lots of photo stops, and finish just as the loads of tourists began the loop, so we had no dust and we could hear the birds and smell the vegetation.

bob

Los Burros

Our first night out of Tucson we parked in a dirt lot next to the Apache Gold Casino and had a quiet, if somewhat warm night with a good NPR signal. We cooked a pork roast in our combo microwave/convection oven, along with a big, yam and a glass of Chilean red. Life on the road is tough. Our second night we drove about eight miles back in the woods from McNary to the Los Burros campground on the Coconino National Forest. We read about it in Matt Nelson’s column in the Desert Leaf. We wanted to try some of the great mountain biking he described.

Around dark we heard the loudest commotion not far back in the ponderosas; it morphed into a chorus of howls the likes I have never heard. I would swear they were wolves, but I’m not sure the relocated Mexican Wolves are this far west. Maybe they are migrating this way because of all the New Mexicans shooting them. A few minutes later we heard the usual yips and yaps and sing song of a pack of coyotes. Nice go-to-bed sounds. We love looking at the stars through our 16 x 24 inch (approximate) skylight above our little nest/bed. I was wondering at some very unusual low lying black as ink clouds, silhouetted against the starfield, when a huge shooting start burned out from behind the biggest cloud, fading out the stars for a couple of seconds. It was then I finally realized the black clouds were not clouds, but big ponderosa pines leaning in over our Turtle. We are so unused to tall trees in the desert that I had been fooled. I love it! The trails were indeed wonderful, snaking through aspens and ponderosa in the cool 8,000ft. sunny mountain air. We hadn’t ridden trails for yonks and the first few miles were challenging until we got our looseness back, and then it was a hoot. However, the blue sky turned black, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed, and we had to turn tail back to Turtle before we were ready to be done. Still a fine day, particularly the cool air after experiencing 100 degrees or more several days before leaving Tucson. We now know why so many Tucsonans come here for the summer; it’s an easy day drive and 30 degrees cooler.

We are sitting in the parking lot at the Hon Dah Casino, getting wi-fi from the casio RV park. This works!

Of Life and Risk and Fun Too

May 11. We rode seventy-one miles and around 7,000 feet of climbing today on our single bikes. We were doing a Greater Arizona Bicycling Association annual event. We are finally getting some fitness, not bad considering how little we rode this winter. Claire decided to adopt a young guy who was attempting his first ascent of the mountain, and she paced him all the way up. (she equals me in climbing this year)

I sometimes rode ahead of them, but it was the not-getting-dropped-by-a-(43 year old) woman, that kept him going. He was full of appreciation for her for getting him to do something he thought he couldn’t do. Jack has a six year old, and a two and a half year old, and a job, and his wife works too, so the fact that he gets any riding in at all is amazing to us. Go Jack! You were great! If we do the ride next year, he’ll drop both of us easily.

Descending Mount Lemmon was fun as usual. I intended to take it easy today. A week ago I maintained 48 miles an hour for a mile or so through several curves, leaned way the heck over, using most of my lane. After the thrill wore off I realized just how much it would hurt to crash at that speed. Talk die. The fastest crash I ever had was probably 20 miles an hour, and I hurt for a very long time, and that was 20 years ago. The boy is still inside me, egging me on. I tell Claire (she hates it when I ride no hands for miles down the mountain) she shouldn’t complain about my testosterone levels remaining high; testosterone has some positive uses too! However, today Claire was feeling frisky and I just had to pass her on the fastest part of curvy downhill. She was going 42, (go Claire!), and I, using the magic of superior gravity (I outweigh her by 40 pounds) passed her in the middle of a curve doing 47. Since I only had half a lane I had to put a lot of pressure on the front wheel to keep it from drifting over the center-line. I later noticed that I had a wobbling front wheel; I had broken a spoke with the pressure. It would take two or three spokes to cause a wheel to totally collapse, but the thought certainly gave me pause.

I’ll moderate my speed. Next time. Honest. Really. I will. I promise.

That brings up a curiosity I have increasing puzzled about as I go through life. Why are young people (sometimes) fearless, when they have so many years to lose if they die doing something risky, and older people (usually) so timid, when they have relatively few years left? I am not sure it applies to me fully, but I do think about consequences more than I did when I was climbing outrageous ice climbs in the Alps 30 years ago. I do take risks most people considerably younger are unwilling to attempt, but I am somewhat more cautious now. Perhaps it is because I have someone else to think about, Claire (no timid one she), and I appreciate each day more as I grow older. The dilemma is this: if I become more cautious, I take less from life, that most limited of resources, but if I continue to take risks, I might suffer consequences that would limit my ability to enjoy what is left of life. Such is life, from first consciousness to final thought; choice. Perhaps it is choice that most fully defines our humanity.

The choices never end. Until we do. Take a risk today, even if it is just a brave thought. You’ll feel more alive for it.

(The photo is one I took for a Sweat article of Claire's. The young woman is Sam. She was so cute! And a good climber. The highway below is part of the Mount Lemmon highway we rode Friday; the view is from near Windy Point on the road.)

All the best, Bob

A Norman Rockwell Kind of Place

May 9. A friend had just finished reading my last blog about Greenburg and our soda jerk Dick Huckriede, when she saw him being interviewed on television. She said he looked fine and promised to open the soda fountain again. What a relief. Looks like we’ll have to find our way back to Greenburg in a couple of years: I think I’ll have a plain chocolate soda with vanilla ice cream, and take another picture of Dick. I’ll be sure and print up the pictures of the old place for him. I’m not one of those people who would want to rebuild in Greenburg or New Orleans. The world is full of places I could be happy. The idea you can recreate a way of life seems overly optimistic to me. Perhaps people want to rebuild because the idea of starting anew, among strangers, is even more daunting. I’m not sure I understand their pride in the big hole in the ground they call their tourist attraction. We leaned Zippy against the big well, looked past the protective mesh, saw a glint of light from the sky, and … that was it, a big round hole in the ground.

Now Dick’s soda fountain was a worthy attraction, a Norman Rockwell tableau where kids stopped in after school to order a suicide, dangle their legs off the stool, maybe stick their worn out chewing gum under the bar.

Greenburg Kansas Connection

May 5, 2007 We are still in Southeast Arizona, but our hearts are in Greenburg, Kansas today. Several years ago, Claire and I took a Zippy tour (our tandem) of Southern Kansas, seeking out traditional drug store soda fountains: you gotta have some kind of excuse to take a bicycle loaded with 80 pounds of gear and ride in an obscure corner of the great plains. One afternoon, we leaned Zippy against the window of Hunter Drug in Greenburg, drawn by rumor of a great old-fashioned soda fountain. What we found was our favorite of the scores of traditional fountains we visited across Mid America. All the fixtures were original, the cabinets all had original rippled glass, the booths backed by rippled mirrors, and the soda jerk could make every possible ice cream and soda delight popular over the past 50 years or more.

Hunter Drug, 121 S Main St., Greenburg, Kansas, Summer 2003

Dick Huckriede had been the soda jerk at Hunter Drug for 50 years. That’s right 50 years. We felt honored just to be served by him. He shared secrets of a great Green River and the proper wrist action to “jerk” the soda handle, just right, into the tapered glasses. We spend an hour or so with Dick. He was a quiet man, but his eyes twinkled, and a smile found the corner of his mouth, when he figured out that our interest was genuine, our enthusiasm real. We rode off, full bellies, heads filled with new soda jerk knowledge and our love of soda fountains deepened. Claire has published several stories on soda fountains and several of them have used one of my photos of Dick. May 6. I guess Greenburg was 95% destroyed. We have been trying to call Hunter Drug for two days; got a busy signal all day yesterday, it rang today, but no answer or machine. Who knows? Those soda fountain pictures might be precious to that town one of these days. If anyone can help me get through the chaos, I’d appreciate it. I think they might like copies one of these days. bob

Saguaro Blossom Time in Arizona

We seldom seem to be able to get out of Southeast Arizona before the saguaro bloom. Afternoon temps are passing 90; can 100 be far behind? The tops of the saguaro are crowded with dozens of buds, a month’s worth of blooming, white trumpets beckoning to doves, bats and bees. The green ribbed stems and arms, reach ten metres or more against the blue desert sky crowned with a ring of fat green buds and white blossoms. By mid April the prickly pear buds swell, turn a soft peach, open and slowly turn lemon yellow. The mix of colors on the green (or purple) thorny pads is a joy. By now, early May, the cholla begin to bloom; my favorite combo is one with burgundy arms and bright bronze blossoms Our bicycle rides already begin early, to beat the heat and the afternoon spring winds. Still, the nights are in the 50’s and evenings are just right: the scent of orange blossoms and barbeque mix. Gambels quail couples, he with the outrageous topknot, scurry across streets, surrounded by peeps about the size of your thumb, organized chaos, they manage to follow their parents soft exclamations. When they reach the opposite curb, the fun begins: the little balls of fluff throw themselves at the top of the curb, three times their stature, some make it the first time, most bounce off, some more than once, and finally arrive; no time to celebrate though, mom and dad are off into a patch of desert, looking for food, and a place to hide the night away from hungry coyotes, hawks and owls, all plentiful in the city of Tucson’s washes. I’m always amazed when people seem to think that the Southwest deserts don’t have seasons. I don’t think we have been anywhere in the world that doesn’t have distinct seasons. It’s just that you have to spend a couple of years in a place to fully perceive and appreciate the seasons on offer. We bicycled past snowy patches on our weekly Mount Lemmon ride in late April, at between 7,000 and 8,000 feet about 20 miles from Tucson; we descended into high 80’s on our way home: vertical seasons are always available where there are mountains. Got work to do. We are getting our park model ready to rent next winter season while we are in South America. Bob brogers644@yahoo.com

To the Edge of the Universe With VERITAS

High-energy particle scientists traveled from all over the world to a tiny cluster of buildings, and four unusual telescopes, on the lower slopes of Mount Hopkins in Southeast Arizona. April 27th and 28th, they came to celebrate first light for VERITAS, leading edge technology in the quest to understand the universe through the interaction of high energy particles with our atmosphere. Of course any get-together of scientists is an excuse for a day of one-upmanship presentations on their own projects; funding is a dog-eat-dog deal among this group! Trevor Weekes parked his pickup truck near this spot forty years ago. He unloaded a couple of surplus searchlights, aimed them at the dark clear Arizona sky, and launched an influential branch of science. Trevor has skillfully moved his observations from those surplus searchlights to a bank of four state of the art telescopes that could just possibly be the instruments that answers the all important question: just what is the stuff that makes up the majority our universe? Claire was invited as independent journalist representative of Smithsonian Magazine. She has been following closely the progress of VERITAS for more than two years, and each visit to the site, about an hour south of Tucson, I have taken photographs to support the article. The Smithsonian has made no promises to publish what Claire writes; Smithsonian supports so many scientific projects that they can’t publish something on each, without boring their readership. We think VERITAS is special, and have reason to believe that important findings will be announced this summer. The scientists were amazingly patient with us in explaining the basics of high energy astrophysics, and the role VERITAS plays in it. It’s heady stuff, having the leaders in an increasingly important branch of science, explain to you personally concepts of universal (literally) import. Our two day stay at Veritas was made more comfortable by taking our motorhome, Turtle (there was a Turtle 1) and parking in the Forest Service parking lot just outside the gates to the Whipple Observatory Visitor’s Center (the Whipple complex is about 6,000 feet above us, and another story). We were so knackered Saturday night; our heads were bursting with heavy ideas, and the celebratory margaritas. What a treat it was to walk a hundred metres to our own bed and sleep under the quiet dark skies that VERITAS will help us understand ever more deeply. Congratulations VERITAS!