Catching after days without wifi

Friday

Green River!  We are ready for breakfast after a dinner of beer, popcorn, and NCAA basketball.  We overnighted in Robbers Roost Motel, free wifi, tv, and pets allowed and no smoking in all rooms.  With taxes, $45 and with the military discount (military? yes, no AARP or AAA but David had been in the military so they gave it to us.)

Breakfast in Wild Winds restaurant served by Dawna who has worried at this place for more than 25 years.  One of the best wait persons we've ever had.  

View of the Arches Campground from the trail.

Now in Arches.  The drive down again wonderful, the campground is at the far end of the park, 18 miles in!  We learned that all of these campsites are reservable and we had no reservation, however we were in luck and the volunteer gave us a site in which both of us could get our campers.  Total fee for the four of us was $10.  Tomorrow am we will see if there are any available sites so we can stay here at least another day. Folks do pack up an leave because it is windy and there is a lot of sand that gets blown around, Robbie the volunteer told us, folks get tired of eating sand salted food.

The campground is the most unusual of all we have stayed in.  Only the photo will illustrate it properly.  There are speedy little chipmunks running around and a blue jay that is new to us.

Paul surveys the landscape

We have also gotten in our first hike trekking through the red sand to see the Tapestry Arch and Broken Arch.  The Skyline Arch is just behind the campground's amphitheater. 

Just before 5 pm it started to rain, then it turned to sleet, then snow and is now just drizzling.

Saturday am

We could only get one more night in Arches so have decided to move on to Canyonlands where all campgrounds are first come first served.  We will see what kind of luck we will have getting in there.  It is spring break...and a weekend.

Arrived at Canyonlands to find that they too were filled.  We do know that there are at least 21 sites to open up tomorrow, so we shall be at the gate at 9!  For tonight we are camping in a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) primitive campground near the NP.  It is very interesting and a wonderful setting.  The winds are picking up and it does look like rain again, but we will cook outside and we will do our smores over the leftover cooking coals.  Ah, such a life we live and yes, it did rain.

BLM lands are interesting options if you are either self-contained or prepared to rough it.  The advantage is that they are free!  Our campground last night had pit toilets so we paid $3 as our fee.

Sunday am

The view from our campground in Canyonlands!

How to play vulture.  This is the game you must play to get a site on a first-come, first-served basis when there are only a few campsites.  Supposedly there were to be 21 of 28 sites open up.  Checkout is 10 so we were cruising the campground for openings at 9:00.  Even at that hour others had already grabbed good sites.  We took possession of one site and then looks for others.  Although there were supposed to be 21 sites quite a few seemed to be extending their stay. In the end we got a great site having earned our vulture wings merit badge

We got in one really wonderful hike by doing the Slickrock Foot trail which had us scrambling over the limestone following cairns as the trail markers.  The overlooks were spectacular and we could see down into two different canyons, Little Spring and Big Spring.  We were once again really amazed at the beauty of the landscape around us.

We attended a ranger program in the evening on the night sky.  This park is among a growing number of parks becoming "dark sky" places.  This means minimal lighting, all low and facing down, no street lights and pleas bring your flashlight to the bathroom because it won't be lighted!  The end result is being able to see many more stars in the sky overhead.   We like this!

Monday

One really nice hike today, five miles of moderate difficulty over limestone, and other rock sometimes scrambling needing both hands other times an easy ascent or descent on the Elephant Hill to Squaw Flat trail.  There are many trails here most of which are much longer than what we normally do, if we were ever to get an early enough start we could manage an eight to ten miler.

We scrambled up this!

The interesting thing about hiking here in Utah is that the geology is so fascinating. Each layer of rock, often sandstone, is of a different color...white, gray, red, orange, purple, and yellows.  These rocks breakdown and create sand and soil and support some interesting plants one of which is the Bristlecone Pine.  These are some of the oldest trees in the world and may be as old 4000 years.  Their survival is astounding, as often they seem to have grown out from between rocks with nothing to sustain their growth.  Their trunks and roots are gnarly and twisted and we wonder if this twisting is a adaptive effect that strengthens the tree allowing them to withstand the winds experienced out in the open. There are also lots of little lizards, often brown or light tan and they sudden across you path right in front of you or you will see them on the rocks.  There are beautiful ravens here too along with a blue jay unlike the variety get in the east.  The color is more florescent blue and the bird more streamlined with a longer tail.

David on the trail, walking on slickrock.

Tuesday

Outside temp is 31 and I suspect that inside our campers might have been about the same.  Both cats crawled inside the sleeping bag with us for warmth!

Nice hike again today, we walked up the Colorado River Overlook road.  First we drove a out three miles then, because the road needed more than just a four-wheel drive, but one with very high clearance we parked Paul's truck and headed out on foot.  The road alternates between hard sand, loose sand, slickrock, and other very hard rock all of which would come together in a challenge for the folks driving.  We were amazed that we didn't see car parts along the road due to the conditions.  Our goal was the overlook for the Colorado River which eluded us.  After walking for 2.5 hours we decided to turn around as we didn't see that we were any closer to finding the overlook!  All-in-all we probably hiked about eight miles.


View across the canyon to the buttes.



View across the tops of mushrooms looking at the Needles.

Wednesday

Packing up now and will soon head to Moab for laundry, shopping, post office, and information and wifi so we can catch up with email and the blog.  We were fortunate that at Big Bend we had wifi and at Guadalupe too.  I. Zio. it was in the village only a mile or so away.  Here in Canyonlands we are in the middle of nowhere with the closest wifi well over 50 miles away, hence no recent posts!  We are talking about staying in the Arches area only 3-4 more nights before heading out which means we will be home before the 13th of April and will also (at least the Thorntons) will be stopping in VA).

Cattle guards keep the critters within the open range areas, metal rods stretched the road approximately five feet wide.

The wind both creates and destroys the arches and formations we see.  Modern sculpture and ancient ruins stand side-by-side, stimulating our imaginations and creative naming of formations-toy soldier, baboon, sphinx, man with big lips, and mushroom field.