We had planned a camping trip to Arizona, but alas, a certain nasty virus got in the way. While camping might be a good way to practice social distancing, getting there and back would involve a fair amount of social interaction. While our intended campground remains open, there’s no telling when state-wide or national quarantines might drop into place.
Problem is, by staying home we have no excuse not to finally get around to cleaning 35 years accumulation of crap out of the laundry room.
I’m a planner. When it comes to activities, I’ve always liked to plan ahead.
As a hiker/climber/backpacking tent-camper, I’d sit down in the spring and map out every weekend and vacation adventure through the end of autumn and beyond. The need for preplanning got worse when Dianne and I bought a trailer.
In the old days, any place we could park our truck became a potential campsite. Other than an occasional national park stay, we had no need to bunk in formal campgrounds. That’s tougher with the trailer.
These days, we need a nice flat spot to park our motel on wheels, ideally with water spigot nearby. With solar panels and/or a generator, we can go without a power hookup, but a dump station for draining the holding tanks is a handy amenity if we’re staying more than a few days.
We’re not big fans of RV parks where “campers” are parked elbow-to-elbow like cars in a Costco parking lot. We prefer state parks, where sites are typically spaced farther apart and often cloaked in vegetation. For most state parks, ensuring a site requires making a reservation sometimes up to a year in advance.
The problem with planning one’s life that far ahead is that as Forest Gump pointed out, sometimes “stuff happens.” Take the latest pandemic, for example. By the end of 2019, I had our camping for 2020 totally scheduled, with campsites reserved through late September.
We’re now rebooking things. We had a long-planned trip with friends to an Arizona state park in April, timed so that we would be there for their annual wine and food tasting event. We had to cancel one week before departure when Colorado was put on a shelter-in-place lockdown. We rescheduled our reservations for October.
This week, another trip bit the dust. We were planning to meet some friends at a trailer rally in South Dakota in mid-June with stops at a Nebraska state park on the way up and a week-long retreat in the Black Hills on our way back. That trip will now be held next year, virus-permitting. Instead of South Dakota, we found a site still open at a Colorado state park and booked it for the same time period.
A late-May trip to Robb State Park in Grand Junction, Colorado, is still on our calendar at this point, although the scope of the trip has changed. As baseball fans, we originally planned to attend a few games of the Junior College World Series while we were there, but that event has, of course, been cancelled. If the campground reopens, we’ll still go and just do a lot of hiking instead.
Beyond that, we still have campsites reserved for July in Colorado. In mid-August, we have reservations for a six-week swing down the Left Coast with stops at state parks in Oregon and California with a couple of weeks camped in the redwoods before continuing on for our rescheduled Arizona trip.
While we may not be camping in the trailer, I am taking the time to “improve” our motel-on-wheels. In the next few weeks, I’ll be installing an upgraded toilet, reinforcing the bumper, moving the spare tire to below the frame and bolting on a receiver for a bike rack. I’ll probably be replacing the refrigerator thermistor with an adjustable version, installing a pair of solar panel inputs at the rear of the trailer and adding a sliding silverware drawer.
I’m also thinking about spending our covid-incentive on upgrading my factory power center converter/charger with a Progressive Dynamics unit and replacing a pair of anemic, lead-acid batteries with a 200-amp lithium-ion unit. That will allow us to boonie-camp for longer periods without needing to pull out the solar panels or fire up the generator.
Now, if we could just solve the need for a dump station, but unfortunately, Dianne is too excited about using that new, upgraded toilet for that ever to happen.
We’re off on what should be our final journey in our A-frame trailer.
Our first stop is in Chama, New Mexico, where we will be photographing the Cumbres & Toltec Railroad trains in brilliant fall color. Then it’s off to Homolovi State Park, Arizona, which lies near Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert.
From there, we head north to Capitol Reef National Park, Utah. After a few pies there, we’ll be off to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon with a two-night stopover at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park on the way.
From the Rim, it’s south to Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Arizona’s Verde Valley. After that, we head for two weeks at our favorite Arizona state park, Lost Dutchman, near Apache Junction.
Then it’s home by way of my favorite KOA in Bernalillo, New Mexico, which has a brew pub next door.
When we get back home, we’ll have a new Flagstaff Micro Lite box trailer waiting for us. Unlike our A-frame, it will have a big refrigerator/freezer, a bathroom with a Motel 6-worthy corner shower and holding tanks for wastewater. No more camping! We’ll become members of the mobile-motel crowd.
Dianne says no, we will still be “camping.” She just won’t have to crawl on the floor to get into the refrigerator and I won’t have to crawl over her comatose body to get out bed in the middle of the night.
One thing for sure – unlike other members of the mobile-motel crowd, we won’t be walking poodles and we won’t be sitting in front of a TV at night!
So, you might wonder, after six seasons and 400 nights spent camping in our trusty A-frame trailer, why will we soon be swapping it for a conventional box trailer. Let me explain.
It’s all my wife’s fault. Because the trailer folds down, the refrigerator is only of half height. And Dianne has bad knees. She can’t kneel. To get anything out of the fridge (like fetching another beer for her loving husband), she has to drop to her knees and crawl to the refrigerator door. “That’s getting old”, she says.
Then there’s the bed. It goes crossways across the back of the A-frame trailer. To get up in the middle of the night, he who sleeps on the back side has to crawl over she who sleeps on the front. “That, too, is getting old”, she says.
And then there’s the time it takes to get moving in the morning and setting up in the afternoon. Erecting the top takes 90 seconds. Moving boxes of food and luggage around (and everything else that is required to set things up) takes Dianne an hour or more. “That’s fine if we’re staying in one place for a longer period. It’s not great, however, for traveling when we’re staying in one spot for only a night” she says.
Yes, we might claim it’s because we need more room and storage space for our travels, but when all is said and done, the truth is that my loving wife just wants a new trailer.
We’ve spent the last week photographing the steam trains of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad out of Chama, New Mexico, for an upcoming Colorado Life Magazine story. Today our photos went fowl as we began shooting recently arrived Galloping Goose Number 5.
For folks not aware of these birds on rails, let me explain. The Galloping Goose is a car-on-rails contraption cobbled together in the 1930s. It and a half-dozen of its nest mates kept the Rio Grande Southern Railroad (RGS) in business during the Great Depression and beyond.
Running from Durango to Ridgway, the RGS served the mining communities of Rico, Ophir and Telluride. The railroad was the most effective way to get mail, cargo and people to those remote communities, but with the economy sputtering, the cost of running steam locomotives over the mountains often exceeded income earned.
RGS employees in Ridgway came to the rescue. They converted an old car body into a rail-mobile sporting an auto frontend and a truck bed in back. Burning cheap gasoline and needing only one person to operate, their Frankensteinish creation immediately proved profitable. Six more were soon hatched.
Waddling down the tracks with engine covers flapping and horns sounding like goose toots, the machines quickly garnered their waterfowl nickname.
The galloping flock kept profits aloft for two decades. While other railroads experimented with gasoline-powered rail cars, none ever served so long in revenue service.
When the RGS finally lost their mail contract in 1949, they tried to operate as a scenic passenger line. The plan failed. The railroad folded and the Geese flew the coop.
Surprisingly, all but Goose #1 (which was scrapped in the ‘30s) remain today. Goose #4 rests in downtown Telluride and Goose #3 winged its way west to Knott’s Berry Farm in California. Geese #2, #6 and #7 all nest at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, and a faithful recreation of Goose #1 now occupies the Ridgway Railroad Museum.
Goose #5 resides at the Rio Grande Southern Railroad Museum in Dolores when it’s not on the road. For the rest of this week, it will be plying the Cumbres & Toltec tracks. Our ride, which will mark the third time we’ve ridden the Goose, comes tomorrow.
Galloping through glades of golden aspen should be pretty spectacular.
We just completed a dozen nights in Chama, New Mexico, doing research and taking photos of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad for an upcoming Colorado Life Magazine feature.
Lesser known than its Durango & Silverton counterpart, the Cumbres & Toltec runs on 64 miles of narrow-gauge tracks between Chama, New Mexico, and Antonito, Colorado. From Chama where we camped, the first part of the route ascends a four-percent grade to the top of Cumbres Pass. From there, it’s a long descent through Toltec Canyon to the San Luis Valley and on to Antonito.
Where the D&S traverses a wilderness canyon, the C&T stays high, offering panoramic views of aspen-cloaked hillsides studded in brilliant gold at this time of year. It rivals the best fall color we’ve ever seen in the Rockies.
The train ride takes 6+ hours to ride from end to end, with an hour-long bus ride to the starting or from the ending point. A full lunch is provided at Osier, an old station house located in the backcountry. Best of all, beer is available for purchase onboard.
We spent several days chasing the train, taking photos from sites we could reach by car or short hikes. We then enjoyed two days riding the train from end to end and one day riding Galloping Goose #5 from end to end. Our final day was on a Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec photo-shoot featuring freight-train cars being pulled by a steam locomotive still bearing the old Denver & Rio Grande Western name.
We just celebrated our 365th night of camping in our trusty Rockwood A-frame camper. That’s over six seasons. Not bad when you consider that over the first year and a half, my wife, Dianne, was still afflicted with the curse of full-time employment.
Here’s a breakdown of the types of spots we parked for the night:
We’re outdoors people, so spending a third of our camping nights in state parks was not surprising, nor was the number of nights spent in national parks/monuments.
What was sobering were how many nights we overnighted in commercial RV parks. They’re not our first choice of places to camp, but some have been quite nice. We just spent a very pleasant dozen nights at the Rio Chama RV Park (see photo) in Chama, New Mexico, and in the springtime enjoyed a five-night stay at the View RV Park and Campground near Dolores, Colorado. A pair we stayed at in Canada were formerly wooded city park campgrounds.
And then there’s our favorite KOA in Bernalillo, New Mexico, which lies adjacent to a nice little brew pub. We’ll hit that again on the way home from this trip.
After a dozen nights camped in Chama, New Mexico, it was time to head west to Homolovi Ruins State Park near Winslow, Arizona, where we’ll be camped for a week.
The park houses the remains of some Hopi settlements dating back to the 14th century, only a few walls of which have been reconstructed and stabilized. Beyond that, there’s little more than a handful of interprettive signs telling us what once stood there.
The most surprising thing about the site were the number of pottery sherds littering the ground. While it’s illegal to remove them, people (who must believe the rules do not apply to them) still do so. I’m sure the best pieces are long gone, but there’s still plenty of sherds left on the ground for us non-thieves to admire.
The main reason we’re camped at Homolovi (pronounced ho-MOLE-lo-vee) is because it’s the closest public campground to Petrified Forest National Park. The park houses not only thousands of acres studded with petrified tree trunks, but it also contains some of the most colorful Chinle “badland” slopes around. Some of these barren hillsides form what Arizona tourism folks have dubbed the Painted Desert. We were eager to get there and photograph both petrified wood and painted wonderland.
After enduring 2½ days of rain in camp, we finally made it to the rocky forest. The first day, we stopped at nearly every one of the park’s slew of scenic overlooks and hiked nearly every one of its tourist trails, the longest of which was a whopping mile in length. The following day, after strolling the final tourist trails, we set out on a three-mile, off-the-grid hike through the backcountry.
One big difference between our cross-country hike versus the tourist trails soon became apparent. Our backcountry route was rife with small pieces of petrified wood. It would have been so easy to pick one up and take it home as a souvenir. (We absolutely did not do so.) Virtually none of those pocketsize pieces can be found beside the tourist trails these days.
It’s a pity, but beside the park’s popular pathways, petite pieces of the petrified plants have apparently been previously pilfered.
After leaving Homolovi Ruins State Park, we headed north to Bluff, my favorite town in southeast Utah. We had planned to camp at a BLM campground on the banks of the San Juan River, but rain, rain and more rain had turned the site into a quagmire of mud and muck. So instead of cheap, off-the-grid camping we ended up at the Cottonwood RV Park in downtown Bluff.
Being in Bluff meant that dinner would have to be Navajo tacos, which consist of beans, salad fixings and cheese atop a fry bread bed. There are two places in the neighborhood to get decent Navajo tacos. The closest choice, the restaurant at the Twin Rocks Trading Post, was closed. There was a big Navajo event in Shiprock, so the owner gave his Indian staff the day off so they could attend.
That meant we would have to drive 20+ miles down to Mexican Hat and get dinner at the Olde Bridge Grille located in the San Juan Inn. The commute gave us the opportunity to photograph the cliffs and clouds as the storm broke.
The next morning, as research for a Utah Life story, we talked to and bought a t-shirt from the folks about the Bears Ears National Monument at the Friends of Cedar Mesa information center.
From there we headed north for a four-night stay in Capitol Reef, my favorite Utah national park. I needed to do some final research about the pies the Natural History Association sells for an upcoming Utah Life story about the park. Eating pies for as story research is tough work, but I do it because my readers need to know.
Besides pigging out on pies, we had hoped to drive south along the length of the Waterpocket Fold through the park, but the road is dirt and the rangers advised us that it would not be a good thing to do after the rain. So we stayed in the main Fruita area and squeezed in a few short hikes.
Our next destination is the Grand Canyon North Rim where we have a premium, rim-side campsite for four nights. On the way there, we stopped for two nights at Utah’s Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. I envisioned a nice, quiet state park formed to protect the sand dunes. That’s not what we got. Ninety percent of the park is open to ATVs, and they were out buzzing around the dunes like a swarm of locusts devouring a wheat field.
To escape the dune drivers, we fled to Zion National Park and hiked a few miles up the East Rim Trail where we saw only a handful of fellow trail traipsers. It was then back to camp where we followed dinner up with yet another Capitol Reef pie we brought out with us, all in the name of research.
