Trips – Page 3 – Dan Leeth

Heading Home

Dianne wanted to spend extra time with her parents, so I drove home solo. I enjoyed two days on the road alone, covering around 800 miles and not once hearing about what I was doing wrong.

[Correction: At one point, I did drive across a parking lot without fastening my seat belt and like a good wife, the Subie warning buzzer screamed at me.]

When I booked a motel for the drive, I found it was far cheaper to book a room in Wells, Nevada, off I-80 rather than a room in Ely along U.S. 40, my preferred route.

Advertised as the California Trail, I-80 is fast (75-80 mph) and offers lots of rest areas, but the scenery is only slightly less boring than driving across Kansas.

It’s largely mountain-studded, empty desert covered with sagebrush (Nevada state tree). I had an ex-girlfriend who loved this terrain. It didn’t take long for her to become an EX-girlfriend.

I was making good time across the state and it looked as if I’d arrive at the motel way ahead of normal check in time. I studied at my trusty AAA map for options and found a backroad south of Battle Mountain, Nevada, that supposedly led to two ghost towns. The Subaru was eager to get off the highway, so I decided to check them out.

We didn’t find the alleged ghost towns, but we did find some pretty hillsides and the Subie was thrilled to get to wear…

…a fresh coating of desert dirt.

I bunked for the night in a Super 8 motel, and for breakfast, I headed over to what passes in America as a Tim Hortons. [If you’ve been to Canada, you know what I’m talking about.] I bought coffee and fruit (yes, an apple fritter is fruit) for breakfast.

Subie and I entered Utah, drove past the Bonneville Salt Flats…

…and worked our way through Salt Lake City during Sunday, bumper-to-bumper, rush hour traffic. We were eventually on our way south to Green River, where, of course, I stopped for lunch at Ray’s Tavern.

Ninety miles later, I arrived at our home in Fruita and unloaded.

In all, we drove over 4,300 miles through nine states and two provinces [or ten states and no provinces for you MAGA believers]. It cost a few coins, but as my friend Don points out, nobody has ever seen an armored car following a hearse. We had a good time, saw some interesting territory and now have 22 bottles of prime Canadian wine to savor over the long, hot Grand Valley summer.

Unfortunately, I suspect Dianne will want the car washed.

Off to Utah

We’re off on a Colorado Mountain Club (CMC) trip to the slickrock country around Escalante, Utah.

The trip began with a three-night stay at the James M. Robb Colorado River State Park in Fruita where we dewinterized the trailer and did a few necessary repairs. From there, we headed 90 miles west to Green River, Utah, where we spent the night at our favorite site in Green River State Park.

Of course, we headed to Ray’s for burgers and brews that evening.

From there, it was off to Escalante on a route that took us over the mountains…

…and into canyon country.

Our campsite for five nights is in the new, full-hookup loop at Escalante Petrified Forest State Park. We have a nice pull-through site across from Wide Hollow Reservoir.

As it was in Arizona, the winds blew. Instead of enduring the night bunked out in a tent, here we remained snug and warm inside our trailer. Tomorrow we will head out for the first of three days of hiking with the CMC through Utah’s slickrock country.

Up the River

Our first day’s hike was up the Escalante River to the creatively named Escalante Natural Bridge and Escalante Arch. Our hike began where Utah Highway 12 crosses the river north of town.

A sign at the trailhead issued an ominous warning.

I guess that’s fair. Choose the wrong path and a three-mile walk to the arch could be a 70-mile endurance run to Powell Reservoir. Cheating death, we took the route to the right.

The trail to the natural bridge and arch required wading across the Escalante River several times. The first crossing came just a couple hundred yards from the trailhead.

Back in the old days, we wore army-surplus Vietnam-era jungle boots (“Cong Stompers”) when hiking down canyon rivers. They had lug soles and screen-covered openings in the bottom to let water out.

(Still available for $151.96 from McRae Footwear)

Here, we had to resort to old, ratty pairs of sand-collecting tennie-runners.

After a few more river crossings…

…we reached the natural bridge. Blending into the cliffs behind, it was a bit hard to spot from a distance…

…but was spectacular when viewed up close.

Farther up the canyon, we spotted some ancient Anasazi granaries high on a cliff…

…with Indian rock art gracing the cliffs below.

A short distance beyond stood Escalante Arch, our turnaround point.

Returning to the trailhead, we took a short hike up the nearby cliffs to more ancient Indian rock art. At the first site, someone had apparently tried to cut out and remove a section of the artwork.

Fortunately, the 100 hands pictograph panel (no, I didn’t count them) located a short distance away remained intact…

…as did the petroglyph panel that stood beyond.

Then it was back to the trailhead parking lot for the drive back to camp.

Cosmic Ashtray

The next day would offer a return trip to the Cosmic Ashtray, a feature we had first visited two years ago. On that trip, we only saw it from the cliffs looking down. This time, we would view it from the bottom up.

Getting to the ashtray requires driving down a few miles of semi-graded road to a trailhead.

From there, it’s four miles of hiking through deep sand and up and down sandstone ridges (and more sandstone ridges).

The trail was marked with cairns, making it semi-easy to follow…

…and the views across miles of emptiness were stunning.

It took three hours for us to cover four miles…

…but we finally arrived at the lip of the Cosmic Ashtray — a huge, circular depression in the sandstone that has become partially filled with sand.

The pit, we discovered, is guarded by this cosmic figure.

Since we are the Colorado Mountain Club, our leader brought along 50 meters of climbing rope to belay us into the depths of the tray. Anne, our Western Slope group leader, was the first to descend…

…down the moki steps some past visitor cut into the rock. While they may look big, they’re not.

Looking down on our leader at the bottom, one can appreciate the size of this ashtray.

One by one, most of us made it to the bottom, including my lovely wife.

From the bottom, one realizes that the floor of the crater is actually just one big sand dune and with the wind blowing, it was a gritty experience.

All too soon, it was time to head back, reversing our route over hill and sand. Remarkably, the trail to and from the ashtray proved to be uphill both ways. Although the route proved to be a bit arduous, one member of the group observed that the hike to and from the ashtray was still more fun than a colonoscopy.

Back in town, Dianne and I went straight to Escalante Outfitters for pizza and beer.

Definitely better than a colonoscopy.

Boulder Mail Trail

Our last CMC hike in Grand Staircase-Escalanate National Monument was down the upper end of the Boulder Mail Trail.

The trailhead lies just around the corner from the Boulder Airport and UFO Landing Site.

Fortunately, no 747s were landing on the runway when we passed by.

Our hike began with a bit over a mile of nice flat terrain…

…before dipping into the canyons below.

Dianne’s body was hurting, so while the rest of the group descended onward…

…we decided we would stay up topside and spend the morning taking photographs of the Zion-like countryside.

Then it was time to head back to our trailer for a brew and dinner.

Dinner in Hell

While most of the CMC group departed on Sunday, we still had one more day to spend in the Escalante area. After a lazy morning in camp, we chose to head back up the hill and spend a little time in Boulder. Our first stop was the Anasazi State Park Museum.

Outside the main building lay the excavated ruins of an Anasazi pueblo…

…and the reconstructed version of what it might have once looked like.

From there we celebrated Dianne’s upcoming birthday with dinner at the famous Hell’s Backbone Grill.

I ordered a bison steak…

…and Dianne had Goose Egg Carbonara.

We enjoyed all with an exquisite bottle of wine from the Douro Valley of Portugal.

The meal was a bit pricey, but the food was delicious, the service impeccable and we don’t have any kids to leave our money to anyway.

Almost Home

We had two choices for the trip home. We could go all the way back to Fruita, a journey of about 360 miles using the U.S. 89 and I-70 route, or we could stop for the night midway and break up the drive into two parts. We chose the latter, reserving a night’s stay at the KOA in Green River, Utah, 90 miles from home.

It’s a nice enough RV park, but it is an RV park. We had an acceptable site with full hookups and a lot of empty space around.

A nice thing about the Green River KOA is that it sits next to a restaurant named for a loathsome, difficult to kill, invasive riverside weed. In spite of its disgusting name, we enjoyed a breakfast there that started with hot chocolate, coffee and a giant cinnamon roll.

Eggs and omelette followed.

Fruita to Blanding

Dianne and I each have our personal list of things to bring for a four-week camping trip to southern Arizona. Combined, we pack food, tent, food, air mattress, food, hiking boots, food, packs, food, cameras, food, clothes, food, laptops and more food.

Did I mention food?

My favorite wife grew up at the base of Donner Pass and was greatly influenced by the tragedy that ensued there. She always packs enough food to make sure that we don’t end up like those pioneers who in 1846 found themselves trapped in the mountains with only each other to eat.

Instead of resorting to cannibalism as they did, Dianne always packs enough sustenance to survive weeks away from a Kroger’s. We had two 30-liter food crates and a pair of ultra-light coolers stuffed with edibles in boxes, cans, bottles and plastic wrap.

There was no way we could carry all that and still have room for our beer and wine supplies.

We spent all Sunday morning and half the afternoon whittling stuff down until it would finally fit into the space available. Around mid-afternoon, we were off, motoring down I-70 and into Utah.

As always, we stopped at one of our favorite rest areas just east of Crescent Junction. As I backed out of our parking space, I heard an ugly grinding sound coming from under the truck.

I stopped, took a look and discovered there was a large protective piece of the truck dangling down, scraping along the pavement. It was a plastic cover that bolts beneath the transmission and transfer case. Along with new blinker fluid, I had just had the transmission and transfer case oil changed at the local Nissan dealership. I guess the high school dropout who did the work didn’t tighten the bolts when he replaced the cover.

I hope he remembered to put in the oil.

Rather than trying to crawl under the truck in the rest area parking lot, I figured we’d just continue on. If it was still attached when we got to Blanding, we’d deal with it there.

The plastic part was still dangling when we got to our lodging in Blanding. Tomorrow, while I was researching a story about Edge of the Cedars State Park, Dianne would find a mechanic to either take the dangling cover off or bolt it back on.

Blanding to Bluff

Monday morning, we drove to Edge of the Cedars State Park where I would research a story for Utah Life Magazine.

The park consists of some small ruins and a fabulous museum of Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloan) artifacts. Here are a few photos of what’s there.

While I was interviewing folks at the museum, Dianne found a mechanic who put the truck up on a lift, removed the dangling plastic, and tightened up some other bolts that were loose.

Our business in Blanding completed, we headed on to Bluff where we had Navajo tacos at the Twin Rocks Trading Post…

…and spent the night at the Recapture Lodge where one fellow guest was a Tesla owner who is apparently not too happy with Musk.

Dead Horse Ranch

From Bluff, we headed across the Navajo Nation to the Verde Valley of Arizona, stopping along the way for more Navajo tacos at the Cameron Trading Post.

Our destination for the next four nights is Dead Horse Ranch State Park. It offers some nice campsites for RVs, which we enjoyed on a previous trip with our old A-frame trailer.

This time, we were tent camping, so we chose the Blackhawk “rustic” loop. And rustic it was.

The campsite loop has only two water spigots, both of which are inaccessibly located behind other campers’ sites. To fill our seven-gallon jug, we have to find an empty RV site with a water hookup in another loop and fill up there. And the only restrooms for all of us tent campers are down in a neighboring RV loop, several hundred yards away. Bio-breaks require advance planning.

The sites have canopies over the tent platforms, but no shade over the picnic tables and no windbreaks. We set up our tent in a gusting breeze, which allowed me a chance to use numerous expletives.

For two days, we hiked around the park, and one night drove into town for dinner at a winery famous for their wines named after a mythical vampire creature that sucks blood out of livestock.

Taking a break from treading trails, one day Dianne and I drove up to Crown King – an old mining camp high in the Bradshaw Mountains. Decades ago, a neighbor friend of my Dad’s had a cabin up there, and during hunting season, they would load up guns, beer and whiskey and head up there to hunt deer. No animal was ever harmed.

I occasionally got to up with them. Every night, we’d head for the Crown King Saloon for burgers. While the adults enjoyed even more adult beverages, I wandered around the place, carefully studying the saloon’s artwork.

Among other things hanging on the wall of the saloon back then was a life-size, self-painted portrait of an attractive lady, naked from the waist up. I was maybe a dozen years old back then, so naturally this caught my interest.

Now, 60+ years later, the painting no longer hangs inside the saloon, but they do still serve a pretty good burger.