ResQgeek

The trip has been over for almost a week, but there are still a few thoughts and observations floating around in my head. They didn't fit well in my other posts, or didn't occur to me until later, so I thought I'd just put them all in a single post. So, here they are, in no particular order:

-Speed limits: There were two stretches of I-15 where the speed limit was set at 80 mph (that's about 135 km/hr for my metric oriented friends)! The signs indicated that it was a test or demonstration program, so I can't say whether they will be permanent or not, but you should can cover distance in a hurry at those speeds. Of course, with the flat, straight highways out there, combined with the relatively low traffic volume, I can't say that such speeds are unreasonable. On the other hand, it would be highly dangerous to try that here in the more densely populated East.

-Air pollution: As we approached Salt Lake City from the Provo area, I was surprised by the cloud of smog obscuring the city. We couldn't see the downtown Salt Lake City until we were almost in it. The entire city was covered by a ugly brown cloud that day. Once we got into the city and started walking around, we really didn't notice it, but it was quite noticeable from the freeway coming into the city. In contrast, I didn't notice any air quality issues at all in Albuquerque. The skies there were gorgeous blue, with miles of clear visibility. I'm sure that part of the difference is the geography: Albuquerque is flat and open, with wind blowing across the desert to clear the air, while Salt Lake City sits down in a basin, which would trap the pollution. Even so, the differences was remarkable.

-Insane bicyclists: As we descended from Teton Pass into Jackson Hole, WY, I was stunned to see a number of individual bicyclists working their way up toward the pass. According to the signs, this road is an 8 mile long, 10% grade! Talk about a workout. Couple that climb with the altitude (8,431 feet/2570 m at the top of the pass), and it would probably kill me. Anyone who can ride up that grade and make it look as routine as they did has my respect!

-Desert rain: We tend to think of deserts as places where it never rains. Yet, we saw afternoon rainstorms almost every day while we were in the arid areas. In fact, the few days we didn't see any rain were those days when we were NOT in the desert. However, the storms we saw were small and localized, providing moisture for only a small patch of the desert. The truly impressive thing about these storms was the distance from which you could observe them. Much of the desert is so flat that you could see three or four thunderstorms, in different directions, each of them 10 or 15 (or more) miles away. When you did drive through one, the transition from dry to wet was VERY abrupt. The pavement would be dry one second, and you'd drive through a wall of rain into a downpour the next. Three miles later, the exit from the storm was just as abrupt.

-Junior Ranger programs: Our daughters completed Junior Ranger programs at most of the parks we visited (including the State Park we visited in Utah). These programs typically provide an activity booklet, and the kids have to complete a number of activities (the number and difficulty change depending on age). When they finish, the present the package to a ranger station, where a ranger reviews the work and presents the kids with a certificate and a badge or patch (which is customized for the park). The great thing about this program is that it encourages the kids to interact with the park. Instead of just looking at the views, they have to think about what they're seeing, to learn something about the history or science of the place. I think our daughters learned a great deal more from this trip because of these programs.

The first half of today was spent driving. We left our hotel in Montana and set out eastbound on I-90, past Billings and down into Wyoming. We were most of the way to the South Dakota state line when we reached our first stop, Devils Tower National Monument. As we drove around the base of this monolith, I kept hearing a specific five note musical sequence repeating in my head. Thank you very much for the earworm, Mr. Spielberg. :o)

There isn't a great deal to do at Devils Tower, unless you are a technical climber (and according to the park ranger we spoke to, there were about 30 on the rock today), so we admired the view, ate a picnic lunch and moved on.

We crossed into South Dakota, and headed for the Black Hills. We arrived at Mt. Rushmore early in the evening, and admired the views, just as the sun began to set. We decided to eat dinner in the cafeteria at the monument, so we could see the monument lit up for the night. At 9:00 a video program began in the amphitheater at the base of the monument, highlighting the role of each of the four presidents in American history. At the end of the program, the lights came up on the monument. The night view of the monument is dramatic and worth the wait.

Tuesday was largely devoted to driving north out of Utah. However, we did make a slight detour to the west in Idaho, to visit the Craters of the Moon National Monument.

This area encompasses a series of volcanic cinder cones that stretch out along a fissure, as well as extensive lava flows. The last eruption in this area is estimated to have been about 2,000 years ago, so the lack of vegetation suggests that this area has been largely arid over that period. Our visit was short, and we didn't do much walking on the trails because it was raining, and there was lightning flashing in the distance, but it was still a remarkable place to visit. In the seven mile drive through the park, we saw more volcanic features than we had during our visit to Hawaii. For people who are interested in volcanoes and lava flows, this would be a fascinating place to visit and explore.

After leaving the park, we turned around and headed east towards Jackson, Wyoming, where we were to spend the night. Most of this trip was pretty flat, and we drove through a second heavy rainstorm, but the last hour was a climb up and over Teton Pass into Jackson Hole. As we climbed the steep switchback road to the pass, we passed a number of bicyclist cruising down from the pass. We also saw a couple of them climbing the steep 10% grade up to the pass on the other side! Talk about a workout! We were delayed briefly outside of Jackson while crews removed the wreckage from an auto accident, but otherwise had an uneventful drive.

Sunday morning, we made the short drive up to Zion National Park from Hurricane, UT (why is there a town named “Hurricane” in Utah??). When we neared the park, the signs warned that the parking lots at the park were full, and suggested using the free shuttle to reach the park. So we pulled into the first park-and-ride lot we saw and caught the shuttle. It turns out that we had selected to lot furthest from the Visitor Center, and it took about 15 minutes to travel through town to the park entrance.

Once we made it into the park, we caught the park bus for the ride up into Zion Canyon. This canyon was explored by the Mormon pioneers, and they left their legacy in the names the chose for this remarkable place. There are places like the Court of the Patriarchs, which offers views of rock formations named Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or the formation named Angel’s Landing.

We attended a ranger talk about the geology of Zion, where we learned that the Navajo Sandstone that makes up the spectacular sheer cliffs of the canyon represents an ancient desert of sand dunes that may have been as much as 3,000 feet (1,000 meters) deep! This desert was later submerged under a sea, which provided the minerals that bonded the sand together into the sandstone layer we see today. The most remarkable thing about this sandstone is the source of all that sand. It had started out at the rocks of the Appalachian Mountains, back east. These mountains were once taller than the Himalayas, but were eroded down by rivers running to the west. The sediment collected north of what is now Utah, and prevailing winds drifted it into dunes over what is now the Colorado Plateau. It was amazing to look at all that rock and realize that it had once towered over what is now the East Coast.

The sheer walls of the canyon were gorgeous in their colors and staggering in their heights (nearly 3,000 feet in some places). We saw a couple of climbers working their way up one sheer cliff, which had to be hot work with the hot summer sun reflecting of the rock face. Another feature here are the seep springs at the bottom of the sandstone layer. The sandstone is porous, and the water that falls on the mesa tops soaks in and filters through this layer. At the bottom of the sandstone is a layer of much less permeable stone, and when the water reaches it, it moves laterally, seeping out of the canyon walls at this boundary between layers. At one point, called Weeping Rock, the water falls from the cliff face like a rainfall, fostering a vibrant green hanging garden that was quite remarkable to see.

Eventually, we took the bus back to the visitor’s center at the mouth of the canyon, and headed to the car. We then drove past the canyon and through the park from west to east, passing through a mile long tunnel that was bored through the mountain in the 1920’s. Along the way, there were many spectacular views of the sandstone cliffs and the slipstone formations as we climbed higher on the plateau. Soon we left the park, and continued toward our next destination, Bryce Canyon.

Today's primary destination was the Petrified Forest National Park. We entered the park from the north entrance off of I-40 and drove through and out the south gate to US-180. The north portion of the park skirts the edges of the Painted Desert, a gorgeous badland region carved by the Little Colorado River. The colorful canyons and formations almost look like more like a painting than reality. It was tempting to stop at every pull-out and take pictures, but we needed to move on to the main attraction. About halfway through the park, we started encountering the petrified wood samples. By the end of the drive, the fossilized wood was almost literally everywhere, in whole logs and in smaller pieces. The colors, which reflect the mineral content, make these fossils some of the most attractive I've ever seen. The petrified wood lay scattered over huge portions of desert floor, where they fell after being exposed during the erosion of the sandstone that it had been embedded in. These fossils are the remains of trees that lived aprox. 225 million years ago, just as the dinosaurs were starting to arrive on the scene.

After we finished our visit here, we continued west towards our evening accommodations in Williams, Arizona. Along the way, we pulled off for a brief detour to the Sunset Crater National Monument, located north of Flagstarr. The Sunset Crater is a cinder cone volcano that formed about 800-1000 years ago. The landscape around the volcano is covered with volcanic cinder and lava flows, still visible in this arid region some 800 years after the last eruption. This was our daughters' first encounter with a volcano and they loved hiking on the lava flow trail, and seeing the lava flows up close. I wanted to get a late evening photo of the mountain, but a huge cloud moved over the sun just before I got into position, stealing most of the dramatic impact of the photo.

We're now settling in for the night in Williams, Arizona, before heading north to battle the traffic congestion along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

After leaving Mesa Verde National Park, we dashed across the state line into Utah and up to Arches National Park. We arrived about 6:30, just as the red evening light was starting to enhance the red sandstone of the parks rock formations. We raced against the approaching darkness to see as much of the park as we could. The views were spectacular, especially in the low light of the sunset. It was worth the effort to make it across in time for an evening visit. It is difficult to find words to adequately describe how beautiful the scenery was.

However, because of the rapidly approaching darkness, we couldn't hike many of the trails and explore some of the more remote rock formations. I'm sure that many of them would have been stunning, but it wasn't worth getting lost on the trails in the dark. Someday, we'll have to come back to explore this wonderful place more completely.

This morning started with a two and a half hour drive to the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. We couldn't find any accommodations closer than that, and as we drove, we saw why. The drive was almost entirely through empty desert, which was beautiful, but extremely isolated. The final leg of the journey took us off of the US-550 highway and onto a county road. Within five miles, the pavement ended, and the final 15 miles to the park entrance was unpaved. The gravel road had long stretches of washboard that rattled the van and its occupants, even at walking speeds!

Once we safely made it into the park, we got ourselves oriented at the visitor's center and headed out to look at the ruins. Our first stop, at the recommendation of the ranger we talked to was Casa Rinconada and its Great Kiva. This area included a number of smaller structures, which were clustered around the Great Kiva. The Kiva and three of the smaller structures were excavated, but many others remained buried beneath the desert.

After finishing our self-guided tour of that site, we made our way back around the park's loop drive to Pueblo Bonito, a 700 room great house. We arrived just in time for a guided tour with a park ranger. It was fascinating to learn about the culture of the ancestral pueblo people who built these amazing structures, but it was clear that there was much that was still unknown about these structures, their uses and the people who built and used them. Pueblo Bonito was immense, with a maze of rooms that would be easy to get lost in. These are some of the oldest Pueblo structures known, and there are a number of indicators of some relationship with the Mezo-americans in Central America.

It wasn't easy to get to, but the experience was well worth the effort.

After our visit to the International UFO Museum, we struck out across the desert towards White Sands, NM. Along the way, we stopped at a little shop for a pistachio farm and winery. They had samples of both their nuts and their wine available, and both were delightful. We bought a couple of bags of roasted pistachios to munch on for the rest of the trip, snapped a picture of ourselves in front of their giant pistachio, and then finished making our way to the White Sands National Monument.

White Sands is a unique geological phenomenon. There are only three locations in the world where white gypsum sand dunes form, and the two others are each less than 10 square miles. Contrast that with the 275 square miles of dunes here in southern New Mexico. It is also a young feature, geologically, having only formed in the last 17,000 years or so.

Situated in a basin surrounded by mountains, the gypsum in the mountains is dissolved by water, which collects in a shallow playa or lake. The water evaporates, leaving the gypsum to form selenite crystals. Over time, the crystals erode into a white sand that blows across the arid basin floor, forming dunes.

Driving through the dunes was very surreal. For all visual appearances, it looked like the aftermath of a tremendous snow storm. They even have to plow the road to keep it clear of drifting sand, so that the roads are bordered by sandbanks that resemble plowed snow. Its only when you step out of the air conditioned car that you remember that it is summer, with daytime temperatures near 100F!

The visitor center sold sleds to use in the dunes, so we bought one and spent the better part of an hour sledding in the sand. It was the first time I've ever gone sledding in shorts! We also took a self-guided nature tour that explained the unique ecosystem of the sand dunes, and the evolutionary changes the dunes are creating in the plants and animals of the region. It was both a fun and educational visit, unlike anything I could have expected. Definitely recommended.

I last visited Carlsbad Caverns almost 30 years ago, so my memory of what the caves looked like was a bit faded, to say the least. We arrived at the visitor's center about 10 am, and got our entrance tickets. We had hoped to be able to get tickets for at least one of the guided tours, but they were all sold out for the day, so we only had the two self-guided tours available. This turned out to be a good thing, as a guided tour probably would have been too much of a good thing, especially for my MIL.

The first of the self-guided tour is a walk down into the cavern through the natural entrance. This route include a vertical drop of 750 feet, with a number of steep descents. It took us until almost noon to reach the "Big Room" area of the cavern, winding our way ever downward through the maze of passages. Once we reached the main portion of the cavern, we paused for a quick rest, and then proceeded on the 1.5 mile walk around the Big Room. I can't say that Carlsbad has the most impressive formations I've ever seen (I'd have to give Luray Caverns, in Virginia, that title), but the Big Room lives up to its name, with soaring ceilings and huge chambers that are truly awe inspiring. It took us over two hours to make the circuit of the tour, partly because we stopped frequently to enjoy the views, and partly so I could repeatedly set up my tripod for long exposure photos. I took a lot of photos, but I wish I had brought my better (albeit heavier) tripod with me, as the lighter one wasn't really stable enough, and many of my shots ended up blurred.

After finishing the tour, we caught the elevator to ascend the 75 stories to the surface, where we ate a light picnic lunch before driving north to Roswell, NM.

Thursday was set aside for my wife and MIL to visit with the extended family in central Oklahoma. We started the day with a visit to my wife’s uncle in a local nursing home. His face lit up when we walked in the room, and my wife and MIL had a lovely chat with him. Unfortunately, he tires quickly, and our visit ended far sooner than they would have liked.

Later, we met a group from the extended family at a local restaurant for lunch. There were three Aunts, one Uncle and several cousins present, and we spend almost two hours in the restaurant, sharing stories and catching up on family news.

I was struck by the contrasts in the town. Driving down the main business street, it appeared that at least half of the buildings were vacant. This is clearly a town that is in decline, and has been for a long time. Even the businesses that remain look run-down and ill-maintained. Many of the homes we saw in and around town also appear to be vacant. Yet in spite of all this, there were a surprisingly large number of vehicles parked along the business district during the day. Something draws people to this town, but I’m not quite sure where all the people were. It was a little strange.

In the evening, one of my wife’s cousins picked us up and drove us around the surrounding area, showing us the locations from their family history. We saw the locations of the various farms the family had owned and worked, as well as some of the school houses they had attended. Most of what we saw is now overgrown fields, with little remaining evidence of the homes that once stood there. One yard was clearly marked out by the trees at it periphery, but there was no sign of any remaining structures. It is humbling to see how quickly evidence of human occupation can be erased.

Near the end of the drive, we stopped by a field that was scattered with blocks of sandstone and limestone. A number of the sandstone blocks had been broken open, revealing fossilized mussels embedded inside. The girls were fascinated by them, and we found a few small chucks with good fossils for them to bring home.

It was a late night, but everyone was reluctant to say good-bye, but eventually we needed to get some sleep before we head out for the next leg of the trip.