the Final Stretch

After I last posted, Logan and I headed to Phoenix for what we thought would be just a short visit with his relatives, but ended up taking a different turn. During the hour we were having lunch with Logan's 89 year old great aunt, she fell and broke her hip! She didn't have other family in the area, so we stayed with her (and her kitty) through 2 weeks of many ups and downs including a stroke and finding her a new home. It was great to get to know her, but sad too, given the circumstances. She is out of the hospital, but is no longer able to remain fully independent.  Her friends are continuing to visit her at her new group home.

To keep to our schedule of getting back to Seattle to see Logan's uncle and family before Christmas, we headed out towards California and took a quick trip through Joshua Tree National Park.

Joshua trees are unusual looking, as are the rock formations, which are formed in place as softer rock is worn away.

The desert has a lonely and vast beauty. Closer inspection uncovers life that has adapted to survive in unique ways.

These cacti are called Teddybear Cholla... Hmm... I'm not sure about that name... 

Here is a close up of the Teddybear Cholla. Don't you just want to cuddle that?

From there, we visited many friends along the Pacific Coast as we traveled back to Seattle. It was great to reconnect with some of the folks that we met before we lived in New Haven and to see what they've been up to (which was a lot!). We enjoyed thinking about the possibility of relocating to many of these places and Logan also benefited from learning about forestry work in the various regions. That said, we still haven't made up our minds just yet where we will head next, but at least we have some better ideas... I'll post more on our next move in the new year. 

Taking the goats for a walk/forage in the southern California mountains 

Our friends took me and Logan to visit this gorgeous beach near Charleston, OR

 I hope your 2015 has also been full of joy, exploration, and happiness! Love and Peace to you all.

Escalante Grand Staircase and Beyond

We made it back to Utah to do the hike that we skipped last month and it was spectacular! Best hike so far!

It's hard to show the beauty and specialness of this place in photos, but here are a few reasons that I felt like it was the best yet: 1) We were practically all alone out there.  We saw other people there only on the main hike near the trailhead and still only a very few. 2) This place has it all! There were arches, natural bridges, petrified sand dunes, lush river areas, slot canyons, grottos, 150' overhangs, cliffs that offer expansive views, rock jumbles for scrambling over, and abundant fresh water springs 3) Logan has been coming here for over a decade and with all his hiking experience, it's still his favorite hike 4) There isn't a lot of identified trail - with the river always between floods - areas wash out and a lot of the time we were just finding our own way along the river. When we crossed the rock mesa, we were totally on our own - no trails, no tracks - just distant landmarks, a map, and a compass to help us find our way.

What a beautiful landscape! Rocks as old as the dinosaurs, but always in a state of change.

This was one of my favorite spots! I loved seeing the whole river rush through this little space - shaping the rock.

The river travels (as we did) under this huge natural bridge with desert varnish. 

This natural arch reminded me of an elephant trunk. I love looking for faces and shapes in the rock. 

Waterfalls and hanging gardens (in the alcove behind me) make this landscape a fun place to explore and play.

We climbed up to see the Escalante River, the Coyote Gulch and this lovely arch from up high.

I love going through the tight canyon walls. Feels like a hug after walking through the big ones.

The rain joined us again on this trip, but this tremendous alcove provided us shelter and a view for 2 nights - cliff dwellers! 

To my right, you can see how the desert varnish creates a beautiful painted desert landscape.

Filled our water at this spring and also experienced a somewhat
violent shower. Put the rain gear to the test and passed! 

Another great lunch location! 360 views.

We hiked across the petrified sand dune mesa to get a view of yet another canyon. It felt so vast out there - so much fun.

     Crossing all those dunes, it was fun to imagine when it was all blowing sand. Right: Logan calls this rock Jabba the Hut...

Traveling across the petrified sand dune mesa. See Jabba's Palace in the background?

Loving those stones! We'll be back.

After our Escalante hike, we visited Zion National Park and then the Grand Canyon.  They are two of the most popular and spectacular parks in the country, so they seemed worthy of a stop by :) We only spent about a half a day driving in Zion and did a little mini day hike along the river. At the Grand Canyon, we decided to do an overnight hike down to the bottom and then back up the next morning. We had perfect weather for fast hiking (mild and sunny on the way down and rainy and then snowy on the way up). It only took us 4 hours to go down and 4.5 to go up (unusually fast ascent, but hey - it was cold!) I was dreading the ascent - I imagined 9.5 miles of climbing a mountain with no reprieve, but it wasn't as bad as I thought - guess we are in better shape than we realized :)

Zion National Park is characterized by steep red cliffs. Much of the drive was near them, making them seem even larger.

The Grand Canyon is about 10 miles wide, so it was hard to ever see all the canyon walls at once. They descend in spurts.

The Colorado River and a suspension bridge at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. This canyon runs for about 250 miles!

A view on the Grand Canyon when the rain cleared (before the snow started) as we ascended the South Rim.

Now, we are again looking to head further south for warmer temperatures.  Phoenix/Tucson up next! :)

Colorado and Four Corners

While visiting my sister, I got a call from a good friend who read my blog and realized that per chance we were both in the same area on hiking adventures. So, we went out to Rocky Mountain National Park for a couple of days with Hale and Franklin.  How fortuitous to be able to hang out with them and lucky for us our desert hiking gear held up just fine in the unexpected snows we came across! No one (including the park ranger) seemed to know that there was about 8 inches of snow where we were planning to camp on our second night... but that was ok - it was my very first time camping on snow! It is surprisingly cushy and warmer than you might expect.

See Logan? The Rockies are beautiful.

At one point, the snow was up to my knees!

Our camp was up above this lake... a beautiful place.

This trip had the most snow I've ever hiked in. Fun... maybe snowshoes next time.

Thanks Hale for giving us the opportunity to hang out and visit the Rockies! We had a blast.

After that little excursion, we decided to make our way down through southern Colorado to the four corners region.

On our way, we visited Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (a place we'd never heard of in Colorado). It was really beautiful! An incredibly tall canyon (over 2,000 ft deep) and very narrow across.

Looking across and into the canyon

That river looks small, but it is powerful!

In the Four Corners area, we visited a large variety of Native American ruins, petroglyphs (as much as 2,500 years old!), and museums about the people and culture of those eras. The sites ranged from 1 AD to 1350 AD and were truly spectacular. Having studied some natural building techniques, it was really impressive to see how talented these ancient people were and that their ruins are still standing is a true testament to the quality of that type of work and materials.  

We have been very busy driving and seeing these amazing sites. We visited Mesa Verde National Park, the Anasazi Heritage Center and its Lowry Pueblo site, Hovenweep National Monument, Natural Bridges National Monument, and Capitol Reef National Park.

Spruce Tree House at Mesa Verde National Park

Spruce Tree House: they shaped the sandstone into bricks and mortared them together with clay/sand/water

Hovenweep: these Ancestral Puebloan towers are the finest masonry in N. America from that era

We drove a scenic road in Southern Utah called "Valley of the Gods" with many cool buttes and spires. Nice place to camp..

We drove to a place called Muley Point down some long windy dirt roads - WORTH IT!

Logan looking out over Muley Point. Perhaps our favorite overlook of the trip...

Natural Bridges National Monument - this bridge is in its final stage - it might break soon or hold up for a few centuries!

How crazy to see rock surrounding by sky on two sides!

Driving by Glen Canyon National Recreation Area - everything down here feels like a playground!

Looking west to some petrified sand dunes in Capitol Reef National Park. Each park has different rock forms.

Driving in Capitol Reef National Park was interesting! 

Does the road just run into the rock up there? 

Logan found his spot at Capitol Reef National Park.

My first slot canyon! on Burr Trail Road. So small across. Just a little light and lots of echoes!

One final sunset shot from the car.  We did a lot of driving, but hardly any of it wasn't gorgeous. 

Another direction...

After waiting a couple of days in Utah and realizing that we had a few more days before the storm would pass, we decided to take a trip east to visit my sister and her family outside of Denver, CO. We stopped by Arches National Park on the way and traveled some very scenic highways. Ironically, we seem to have brought the rain with us - Colorado doesn't see many fully rainy days, but it rained almost the whole trip over and the rain arrived at our destination at the same time we did (and hasn't stopped since!) oops. Still, it has been great to visit my sister and nephews! Certainly a better place to wait :) We'll be off again in a couple of days.

The sandstone at this Park is susceptible to eroding away to form arches.  They were everywhere!

This is one of the most famous arches.  You can walk up and stand under it.

Another famous arch.

The scenery was again pretty spectacular.

I liked seeing the arches and landscape from afar more than up close.

Henry mountains and Capital Reef - photo taken from 9,000 ft in the Dixie National Forest

Just as we were leaving Utah, we were admiring the rocks when a double rainbow popped up. We were quite close to the end of the rainbow!

My nephews think the car bed is pretty comfy!