On our first full day at Lost Dutchman State Park, we and our camping buddies from Colorado began our search for the lost mine of Jacob Waltz, the Dutchman. We figured ol’ Jake would have dug his mine along a trail named for him, so we began our search with a hike down Jacob’s Crosscut Trail.
Beginning off the park’s Siphon Draw trail, the Crosscut Trail parallels the face of Superstition Mountain for about five miles. The trail is relatively level and the views are stupendous with a shag carpet of brittlebush in bloom.
Finding no veins of gold, our friends turned around at the 3½-mile point. Dianne and I continued another 1½ miles to where the trail ends at some homes on Broadway Lane.
These domiciles, I suspect, cost far more than the value of all of the gold the Dutchman dug from the ground.
Here we met the Lost Mine Trail, which no doubt goes directly to Jake’s lost diggings. It’s hard to believe the mine is still lost if there’s a trail going straight to it.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have time today to hike up and recover any of that lost gold, so we turned around and headed back to our campsite. Today’s golden treasure will come in cans.
We’ve been here over a week now, and we still have not found the famous Lost Dutchman Mine. Instead of striking gold, we’ve found lots of striking reptiles.
On Saturday, we searched for the Dutchman’s lost treasure on the Treasure Loop Trail in Lost Dutchman State Park. Instead of gold, we met a fellow hiker who told us there was an obstinate buzz-worm on the trail ahead. The thing refused to move, even though they were throwing rocks at it. We wisely took another route.
On Sunday, one of the campground wallys scraped up the remains of a buzz-worm that had been run over on the pavement. The little buzzers like to warm themselves on the pavement at night, which as this one found out, can be detrimental to a snake’s health.
Monday, I took a short battery-charging drive in the Titan. When I got back to camp, I found a small buzz-worm squished on our campsite drive. I must have backed over it when I departed the campsite. I’ll look more carefully next time I walk up to the truck.
That night, we attended the Picture Perfect Wine Tasting in the park. It featured good food, ample quantities of wine that didn’t come straight from a three-liter box and raffles that we didn’t win. Walking back to our camp, we were sure to carry a flashlight and look for slithering reptiles warming themselves on the pavement.
On Tuesday, we did a pleasant 9½-mile search for the missing mine from the First Water Trailhead. The ranger there didn’t give us any clues as to the mine’s whereabouts, but he did warn us to be on the lookout for buzzers.
“They’re hungry, horny and aggressive,” he advised. “Don’t go walking through the grass.”
We only found one, maybe a 2½-footer, and it was slowly slithering off the trail looking for some shade. I don’t know if this guy was another d-back or one of the more toxic green mojaves. It may have been hungry or horny, but it sure wasn’t aggressive.
They say the Dutchman was a beer drinker, so on Wednesday, we headed into town for a few research brews (and pizza) at my favorite Apache Junction bar – Fry’s grocery store. I sure wish Kroger would build one of these super stores with an in-market bar somewhere in Grand Junction. It gives us guys something to do while our wives are maxing out the MasterCard on food purchases.
Today’s mine search was a short 5½-mile romp past an old windmill and corral.
From there, we continued up First Water Creek to Hackberry Springs. Most of the route followed the creek bed, which featured inviting pools of water along the way.
Around midway to the spring, we ran into a small diamondback right on the path. It was coiled with its head up, but it rudely didn’t offer a welcoming buzz.
Our return to the First Water Trailhead took us through Garden Valley – one of my wife’s favorite spots in the area. When we were last here, the place was truly a garden, and Dianne was eager to show it to our hiking buddies.
Unfortunately, a series of wildfires sparked by lightning and/or Jewish space lasers changed the looks of the place.
Our friends may not have been treated to a delightful garden, but at least they’ll get to say they met an Arizona buzz-worm.
“Why don’t you post pictures of pretty desert flowers instead?” she asked my lovely wife.
Well, it hasn’t been a good flower year down here, but here are shots of a few pretty desert flowers we’ve passed by on our elusive search for the Dutchman’s lost gold mine.
Our search for the Dutchman’s lost mine continues.
We figured our hunt for this lost ledge of gold might go better with a map, so we stopped down at the Superstition Mountain Museum on Friday to see what was available. This one, would probably work as well as any.
That night, all six members of our search party attended the Old Time Rock ‘N’ Roll show at Barleens Dinner Theater in Apache Junction. A fun evening of golden oldies might be as close as we’ll get to the precious metal on this trip.
The next day, we all went our separate ways in search of the lost mine. Thinking that the Dutchman might have left a clue in the rocks, Dianne and I chose to explore the petroglyphs surrounding the springs off the Hieroglyphic Trail.
We were amazed that in a location this popular, the ancient petroglyphs were little marred by modern-day graffiti. As far as we could see, the Dutchman etched no clues to his mine’s location here.
On Sunday morning, we headed up the Apache Trail to Tortilla Flat, which once served as a stagecoach stop back when the Roosevelt Dam was being built in the early 1900s. Fortunately, new restrooms have been built since then.
These days, it’s a popular tourist trap that serves great food. Not one member of our search party finished his or her breakfast.
Monday morning, we hiked up Peralta Canyon, named for the Mexican family who supposedly once mined gold in this area.
We stopped atop Fremont Saddle. Below us stood Weaver’s Needle, long a center of attention for Dutch hunters.
In East Boulder Creek Canyon below the Needle, well-armed, rival groups led by Celeste Jones and Ed Piper both searched for the Dutchman’s, Peralta’s or Jesuit’s lost gold. Fortunately, we did not have to fight any of our fellow hikers over the golden views.
It’s Tuesday morning, and our two-week stay at Lost Dutchman State Park is rolling to a close. Today is pack-up and drain the tanks day. Tomorrow, we hitch up and tow our home back to Colorado where the weather reports say it’s currently snowing.
Our ongoing search for the Dutchman’s Lost Mine will continue with a return trip sometime in the future. After all, that mine has to be around here somewhere, and we intend to find it.
It seems like every year, I get email promotions from Xanterra offering discount prices for winter stays at their Zion Park Lodge property. This year was no exception. “Wanna take a getaway trip to Zion National Park?” I asked my wife of 40 years.
“Does that mean we wouldn’t get to stay huddled up in this cold, damp trailer for a week?” she responded.
“Does that mean I wouldn’t get to cook, clean or go shopping for a week?
“Does that mean that we’d have to look at towering cliffs out our windows instead of the neighbors’ trailers?
“Let me think about it.”
Not wanting her to blow a fuse in her thinking equipment, I went ahead and booked a five-night stay in one of the Zion Park cabins for a Monday-Friday stay in January.
Even though Zion is an easy day’s drive from our new hometown of Fruita, I reserved a night at a Super 8 for the drive down. That would give us time on our departure day to “winterize” the trailer.
Our first day’s drive was from Fruita, Colorado, to Richfield, Utah, on Interstate 70. It’s a route we’ve taken numerous times over the 38 years we’ve lived in Colorado. The day was sunny, the roads were dry and the speed limit once we reached the Utah border (19 miles from home) was 80 mph.
The stretch through the San Rafael Swell west of Green River is one of the prettiest stretches of interstate highway in the West.
We spent the night in Richfield at one of the nicer Super 8 motels around. After the typical Super 8 waffle breakfast the next morning, we hit the road.
There are two ways to get to Zion from here. One is to continue down I-70 to I-15 and enter the park from the west. The other is to take the more scenic U.S. Highway 89 route and enter the park from the east.
We opted for the scenic alternative, with a stop at Butch Cassidy’s boyhood home along the way. Lunch was going to be at the Thunderbird Lodge in Mt. Carmel Junction, famous for their Ho-made pies, but they were closed along with most other places in town.
We backtracked a few miles to Archies Food to Die For, an off-the-road food trailer that featured delicious but artery-clogging Utah Philly sandwiches.
Returning to Mt. Carmel Junction, we turned onto Utah Highway 9. Thirteen miles later, we reached the park boundary.
The drive through this part of the park was breathtaking. The sky was blue, the air clear and snow still garnished the sandstone.
With traffic light, we stopped for photos at virtually every turnout on the route, most of which we had entirely to ourselves.
A few hundred images later, we went through the mile-long Zion tunnel, twisted down the switchbacks to river level and turned up the Virgin River Canyon toward Zion Park Lodge.
Our cabin was part of a fourplex, one of the deluxe cabins back when they were built in the 1920s. It had two double beds, a writing desk, a couple of chairs and a gas-log insert in the formerly wood-burning fireplace. Flames were already blazing when we entered.
Our first night’s dinner was at the lodge’s Red Rocks Grill. Because of Covid, masks are required to enter all federal buildings, which includes the lodge. The menu was short, and all orders were taken and paid for downstairs. We were given a number card to display on our table in the upstairs dining room. The system was efficient, but we missed the personal interaction one gets when dealing with a conventional waitstaff.
Back in the room, we retired by the fire with glasses of wine, which we personally imported from Colorado. With no TV, no cell coverage and no internet, we would have time to rest, relax and just sit back and read. Scrolling through my Kindle, I decided this would be a perfect time to once again reread “Desert Solitaire” by Ed Abbey.
One of the things I wanted to do on this trip to Zion was to revisit the Kolob Section of the park. Many decades ago, a friend from Reno and I came down here for a Thanksgiving weekend backpacking trip to Kolob Arch. It was snowy and I don’t think we actually made it all the way there. This visit would be strictly a drive-through on pavement.
The Kolob section lies northwest of the main part of Zion National Park, and getting there requires a 40-mile drive from Zion Canyon. There are no restaurants, no gift shops and even in the summertime, far fewer visitors out here.
A five-mile, dead-end drive from the park entrance provides views of the canyon. Like the main part of Zion, the landscape here consists of towering cliffs, bluffs, canyons and mesas.
As we did coming into Zion, we stopped at virtually every pull-off on the road, shooting countless megapixels of images.
“We should come back and explore this country with backpacks!” Dianne enthusiastically suggested at one of our stops.
I’m game. Maybe on dry ground, we can actually make it all the way to Kolob Arch.
For those of us longing to ogle Mother Nature in the nude, there are few places better than Zion in the wintertime. Limbs of the cottonwood trees, which come fully clothed with leaves come summertime, now stand buck naked.
Beyond tower the canyon walls with sandstone cliffs bare as a pole dancer in a Texas strip club. Fortunately, a lap dance in this au naturel environment can be had by simply lacing up the hiking boots and setting off down a trail.
The premiere hike in Zion Canyon is up Angels’ Landing. It’s a steep, twisty climb up to a saddle followed by a walk up a death-defying narrow ridge to the top of a cliff overlooking the Virgin River Canyon.
Even though the Park Service has installed chains for folks to use as handholds, some still manage to fall to their deaths. “Scariest hike in America,” one YouTube video touts.
We did that hike ten years ago when we came to Zion to celebrate the New Year weekend. After 38 years living and climbing in Colorado, the hike for us was a piece of cake.
This year, the route up to Angels’ Landing was snow-covered and icy, we were told. While we did have traction cleats we could strap on, Dianne and I decided to skip the crowds and explore some of the other trails. One of them was to the Emerald Pools.
There are actually three Emerald Pools. Lower Emerald Pool has a nice waterfall feeding it.
That waterfall is fed from the Middle Emerald Pool, which has its own tiny waterfall.
Upper Emerald Pool is fed by a towering waterfall dropping from a notch in the box canyon cliffs. In summertime, this place would be swarming with people. We shared it with maybe a half-dozen fellow hikers and a Park Service volunteer.
Another hike took us up the Sand Bench Trail, which offered lofty views down the canyon toward the tourist trap of Springdale and up Pine Creek Canyon toward the switchbacks and tunnel. We only met one other hiker on the route.
Late on our final afternoon, we walked the paved Riverside Trail up through the lower end of the Zion Narrows where decades ago, we led a Sierra Club group down from the top.
On this walk, we watched an avalanche of ice break off from the cliffs and land on the trail below. A half mile beyond, the route begins to hug the near vertical cliffs. To prevent an ice fall from bonking hikers on the head out here, Park Service has wisely closed the trail beyond.
Maybe it’s a symptom of being a travel journalist for over half my adult life, but I have this psychological need to rank things – best this, favorite that. I repeatedly found myself doing that on this journey to Zion.
How does Zion National Park compare with the other members of Utah’s “Mighty Five?”
When it comes to just plain scenic grandeur, I put Zion right at the top. The cliffs and canyons here are absolutely awe inspiring. Only Capitol Reef comes close. At Bryce, non-hiking visitors look down on the scenery. One must drop below the rim to feel engulfed by the environment. It’s much the same for Arches and Canyonlands.
While Zion may offer the grandest grandeur, it’s in fourth out of the five when I rank my favorite Utah national park to visit. Only Arches, in my book, comes in lower. That’s because I hate crowds.
Zion gets around 4.5 million visitors each year, making it the third most popular national park in terms of visitation. Only the Great Smokeys and Yellowstone see more visitors.
Zion is way too small to handle that many people. Cars line up for blocks at the entrance stations waiting to get in. Campsites and lodge rooms are tough to find. Visitors cram into shuttle buses to get into the Virgin River Canyon. Trails and sites are crowded. We’ve been told that folks sometimes need to wait hours in line to complete the ascent of Angels’ Landing.
Arches has the same problem. As Ed Abbey warned in “Desert Solitaire,” it’s industrial tourism at its worst.
Fortunately, winter at Zion offers nature lovers like me a chance to get away from the madding crowds. When we checked in, there were still rooms available for drop-in guests at Zion Park Lodge, and there were many empty spots at the park’s Watchman Campground. We had no trouble finding parking spots at trailheads, roadside pullouts or in the neighboring tourist trap of Springdale.
The downside of winter visits, of course, is the weather. It’s cold and snow is always possible. Trails, especially those on higher or shaded ground can be covered with snow, ice or thick, gooey mud.
While the visitor center was open, most of the park’s museums were not open. In town, we found many restaurants and other businesses closed for the season, making it harder to find $30 souvenir t-shirts for sale.
Personally, I’ll give all that up for the opportunity to see a place this beautiful in the raw. Besides, I already own one of those $30 t-shirts.
Coming back into Denver from our Canyon Country trip last May, we became stuck in stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper traffic on the interstate as we tried to make it through Denver. My lovely wife studied the situation and announced in no uncertain terms, “That’s it. We’re moving to Grand Junction!”
[Dianne insists that she merely “suggested” we move to Grand Junction, but after 40 years of marriage, I know it’s best to take her suggestions as commands.]
Grand Junction is a place we’ve long longed to live. We checked it out years ago when Dianne was still working as a nurse, and I was still shooting photos on film. She’d have to start at a new hospital, and I’d have to find a suitable photo lab. I’d also have to get from the Junction to Denver to fly anywhere. We chose not to do it at that time.
A week after Dianne’s edict/suggestion, we went for a hike in Staunton State Park, which lies in the foothills west of Denver. There, we chatted with a volunteer couple who lived in a patio home nearby and loved it. With everything taken care of by the homeowners’ association, they could leave anytime they wanted and be gone as long as they wanted. The patio home idea sounded perfect.
The next day, I Googled “patio homes” in Grand Junction. Mixed in with all the conventional homes for sale that had patios, I found a link to a patio home community for folks over 55. A few days later, we drove over the hill to check it out. The quiet, cleanliness and friendliness of the community impressed us, so put our names on the wait list for a future home. It was a long wait list, we were told.
Maybe next year we’ll get the call, we hoped as we planned our summer travels.
Two weeks later, we got an email asking if we would be interested in one of the units currently under construction. We drove back over the hill to check it out. These patio homes are front and rear duplexes, with a pair of duplexes sharing a common driveway. Ours would be a rear unit at the edge of what will be a grassy cul-de-sac. We agreed to buy it.
Even though our new home would not be done for months (only the foundation had been poured), we decided to take advantage of a hot sellers’ market in Denver and immediately put our house up for sale. We contacted a few realtors, chose Pamela Meyer, whom we had contacted a decade or two ago when we first thought about moving to Grand Junction, and signed all the necessary forms.
Our summer trip to the Left Coast would have to wait. Paraphrasing Admiral Farragut, it was “damn the deadlines, full speed ahead” time.
We had a few weeks to box up and remove 37-years of accumulated belongings from our house. Friends gave us some boxes to use, and we bought many, many more. We visited Lowe’s so often, they gave us our own reserved parking spot.
To hold everything before we could move into the new place, we rented a 10×15-foot, climate-controlled storage unit. We figured that would be more than enough room to store our belongings. Eleventy-seven truckloads later, it was filled wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. We rented another.
We rented a third storage unit, this one 10×20-feet, for just our furniture and hired a five-man moving crew to haul everything out there, including our 300-pound log table. With the furniture gone, we spent a week sleeping atop a leaky air mattress on the bedroom floor. It was like camping, but without any of the pleasures of camping.
Deadlines approached. We had a cleaning crew scheduled for September 1st and needed to get everything out of the house so they could do their thing. We moved into our trailer and began camping out on our driveway.
On September 2nd, the staging furniture arrived, turning our now empty house into something resembling a model home. It looked so pretty, we considered rebuying the house from ourselves and moving back in.
On September 3rd, the photographer was scheduled to shoot a portfolio of images for the online listing. Before he arrived, we hooked up the trailer, drove over the hill and bunked down in a state park campground in the Grand Junction area. Finally, we were really camping.
We had two offers for the house even before it officially went up for sale on the 7th. A slew of showings were scheduled over the weekend. By Monday morning, we had more offers, one of which we accepted. Pamela was able to get us $36,000 over our asking price, more than enough to cover all of the commissions and title fees. It was time to sign more forms and wait for the closing date to arrive, hoping nothing happened to derail the sale.
