A New and Different Intrepid Adventure

Sam has been on a mission to ride his bike up all the nearby Gaps this summer. He did the Appalachian Gap first, in early August with Carroll, then I joined them for the Lincoln Gap a week later. Sam and I tried to do Middlebury Gap at the end of August, but the road was closed due to flooding. We tackled it again last Sunday, and this time Robin joined us, so it was a family affair.
We did make it to the top


and hiked up around the Snow bowl

and even biked down the other side to see the flood damage at Texas Falls, which was awe-inspiring

We also enjoyed hopping around the rocks at the falls


But of course, the real highlight of the trip was stopping at the Ripton General Store, where they have "penny candy" that actually costs a penny!

We biked a total of 27.8 miles, which Sam calculated meant the we pedalled uphill 13.9 miles, some of which I can testify was STEEP. The cool autumn air was nice for going up, but we FROZE on the way down!

What?! No Pictures??!

My sincere apologies for the tardiness of the previous post, and lack of pictures: I realize that reading my posts without pictures is like being tarred without feathers! But Blogger.com seems to have gone completely off the rails: nothing seems to work. I tried uploading pictures numerous times over a three day period, with no luck. I finally gave up and tried posting w/out pics, which worked, but then I couldn't edit the post, to explain the lack of pictures!
*****
Well, it looks like the problem was with my network; I replaced the lightning-struck wire with fiber optic line, and everything works, so the final post now has pictures.
Thanks for hanging in there this long... you all are real gluttons for punishment!

Jiggetty Jig!

It’s tempting to skip out on typing up this one last entry, ‘cause our trip is so… two days ago, man, but Carroll says I owe our faithful blog followers some closure, so I’ll give it my best shot. Hopefully this will ease the transition for both of you!

Carroll’s parents will be greatly relieved to learn that all the money they invested in her education at Northland College was NOT wasted after all: on this trip we visited 16 of her schoolmates, and managed to freeload seven nights of lodging and meals! Big thanks to our generous hosts: Jessie Cargas in Rosebud MO,

Donna Engleson and Alex Alvarez in Flagstaff,

Gus Smith and Joy Meeker,

and Steph and Jim Wargin, in Wisconsin,

and Donna Spreitzer and Scott Mabury in Toronto!

And a tip of the hat to our drive-bys, Tom Lund and Magi Malone, Binner Rahn, Tim Doyle, Bentley Brehm, Laura Highland, Linda Rise, and Andy Noyes: it was great to see everyone, even if we couldn’t manage to mooch anything off you!

Speaking of mooching, we also invited ourselves to stay one night with Carroll’s Nantahala Outdoor Center friends, Bob and Charlotte Karls, in Colorado. The two nights we spent with the Grahns don’t really count as mooching. More like Grand Theft Laundry! Anyway, now that we’re home, we’d love to return the favor and have people come mooch off us! And we don’t even mind if you didn’t go to Northland College! Heck, if you’ve read any of this blog, you’ve more than paid your dues! Come stay for a month… that’s the least we can offer in the way of reparations!

The final week of the trip went pretty smoothly and for the most part according to plan; Pictured Rocks

and Sleeping Bear Dunes were beautiful, and our high-speed midnight auto tour of Toronto was exhilarating… (sorry, no pictures due to white knuckle grip on door handles!) By the time we reached Niagara Falls, the weather was sultry enough that we actually found ourselves thinking wistfully of the temperature at Cedar Breaks!

For those of you with inquiring minds, the total trip was 8366 miles, in 43 days. We were able to average just over 21 mpg, so it took 398 gallons of gas, for which we paid an average of $3.94. (HUGE thanks here for the generous grant from The Maxwell Grandchildren’s Travel Foundation, which greatly eased the angst at every fill-up!)

We’re also counting ourselves very fortunate, because the van made it home before the transmission quit altogether. By the last week, it would not shift out of 2^nd unless we put it in neutral, turned off the engine, and restarted it, to re-boot the transmission computer, which we assume must run on a Windows operating system!

The real measure of the trip’s success, though, is that Carroll and I are still married! (Not to each other, but…) And Robin and Sam got enough map-reading experience that we’re confident they’ll be able to find their way home once Customs releases them from quarantine. We told them to take showers, and to stop using their shirts for napkins, but no-o-o-o…

I’ll sign off here, with a thank-you to all the folks who posted comments and/or emailed us, and an apology for not being able to respond directly from the road. We loved hearing from you, but our schedule was so full, and wifi so limited, that we just couldn’t manage two-way communication. It was great to get comments, though, if only to know that someone was reading the blog! So thanks, and I sincerely hope no one ends up with PTSD* from this!

(* ”Post”-Traumatized Senility Disorder)

Your Humble Scribe,

Buzz

Whirlwind Tour of the Midwest

A couple of tightly packed days of visiting friends from Carroll’s college days (and even one friend from high school!), and a couple of late nights of driving, but by golly, we’re still on our schedule! When I first plotted it out, I kinda figured the itinerary would just give us a loose guideline, so we wouldn’t forget any of the more obscure places along the way, but it turns out we’ve stuck surprisingly close to it, and now that we’re in the last week, we don’t have a lot of wiggle room left to improvise anyway, so we’re just going with it.

Thanks to the magic of cell phones, we were able to crash a graduation party for someone we had never met, in Owatonna, Minnesota! We had almost given up hope of getting to see Carroll’s college roommate Binner on this trip, due to conflicting schedules, but she happened to be there, literally within sight of the highway as we were driving by, so we made an unscheduled stop, and the kids even got a little trampoline fix out of the deal!

Then we had a few leisurely hours on Lake Minnetonka with Carroll’s high school classmate,Terrell (and husband Greg) before we piled back in the van for our second late night drive in a row, this time to the Ashland, Wisconsin area, where Carroll went to college.

We arrived at Gus and Joy’s house around 11:00 PM, succeeded in arousing them from a sound sleep, and went promptly to bed. Their hospitality was quickly rewarded when at 1:00 AM, Sam threw up in bed, all over their heirloom bedspread! We were very impressed with what gracious hosts they were when they feigned indifference about the bedspread. Little did we realize the diabolical plan they had for exacting their revenge!

After lulling us into complacency with a gourmet breakfast, they suggested a field trip to look for tracks and other signs of wolves, and to see if we could map the location of a wolf with a radio tracking collar, to get a feel for what Gus does with his Northland students. This seemed innocent enough, and fit nicely with Sam’s fascination with wolves, and Robin’s interest in science generally.

So off we drove into the harmless-looking Wisconsin woods. A little way in, Gus stopped and pulled out what he said was an antenna for picking up the signals from wolf tracking collars. The high-pitched whine of the static it emitted sounded suspiciously familiar, but it wasn’t until our next stop that I recognized the sound for what it was; the device was actually a mosquito density detector!

Realizing we had been had, we swatted furiously, kept a stiff upper lip, and bravely studied what Gus said were wolf droppings, though by this point I was pretty sure they were probably mosquito droppings! Either way, it was awe-inspiring to see first hand the evidence that we were sharing the woods with deadly predators!

Back at their house, we had lunch and readied ourselves to move on to our next stop. As we pulled out of the driveway, Carroll and I both found our eyes welling up, and were reminded just how much we treasure our friendship with Gus and Joy.

Yellowstone: the Sequel

In hindsight, I now see that my last post might have left the impression that the only thing Yellowstone had to offer was buffalo chips. Though it certainly had those in abundance, we did see some other things, including:

Some places where water came out of the ground

Some places where ground came out of the water

Some things that were brown

And some things that were white.

We actually had a little more time in Yellowstone than we had planned, because we were originally thinking we might spend some time around Jackson Wyoming, but Robin got fresh with a dance hall girl there,

Which resulted in a nasty gunfight

So we had to hightail it out of town!

As I type this, we are racing pell-mell across southern Minnesota, feeling the first inklings of eagerness to be home again. A few more adventures to look forward to, I’m sure, but it feels like we’ve probably seen the last of the below-freezing weather; we actually had to buy ice for the cooler yesterday, for the first time, and when we pulled into Blue Mound State Park last night at 11:30 last night, we encountered our first BUGS of the trip. We almost felt like we were already home!

Holy Burning Buffalo Chips, Batman!

Our whirlwind pace and the fact that we spent the last 4 nights in Yellowstone, where there’s not even cell phone signal, much less wifi, accounts for the gap in posts here.

We had an absolutely divine 2 nights at the palatial Grahn Estate, overlooking, (or should I say looking down on?) the twinkling lights of Salt Lake City, from the lofty heights of Mount Olympus. (No joke there… that’s the actual name! I guess they must have named the place in Greece after it!) Anyway, it was a good chance to catch our breath, take showers, do several metric tons of laundry, stock up on food, and most importantly, visit with Carroll’s sister Jo and husband Allen. We highly recommend planning a stop there any time you’re west of the Mississippi; the spacious accommodations, and sumptuous cuisine complemented by a variety of delicious home made wines, will make almost any amount of detour worthwhile. As an additional incentive, if your long drive has resulted in a windshield covered with particularly tenacious, dried-on bug smears, they have some 6-year-old home made banana wine that is guaranteed to (dis)solve your problem! Just be careful not to spill any on the painted portion of your vehicle!

From there we headed for the Tetons and Yellowstone, stopping on the way at the Oregon Trail Museum in… Montpelier…Idaho! Turns out it's not a coincidence: Brigham Young named it to commemorate his hometown in Vermont. Anyway, we learned at the museum that kids on the Oregon Trail would have had to collect a bushel and a half of buffalo chips every day, for their mother to burn as fuel for cooking. So of course, we HAD to try burning buffalo chips at the earliest possible opportunity!

This came on our 2^nd night in Yellowstone. We had discovered an area of the campground along the river that seemed to be the preferred hangout of the local bison herd; we had no trouble collecting our bushel-and-a-half! Back at our campsite, we set to work, striving for authenticity by using the barest minimum number of twigs and tinder necessary to get the “chips” to reluctantly ignite. Then followed frantic, vigorous blowing and fanning to keep the “fire” “burning”. I use these words with some hesitation, because “fire” implies flame, and “burning” implies heat, neither of which were in any way evident. Smoke, however, was a different matter altogether! Huge, copious, billowing clouds of pungent, (OK, acrid), smoke blanketed the area downwind, obscuring even our nearest neighbors from view. After an hour or so of continuous feverish effort, our clothing was thoroughly saturated with the distinctive aroma, and we had a whole new respect, not to mention sympathy, for the pioneers!

At about this time, we noticed our downwind neighbor staggering through the cloud toward us, eyes red and cheeks tear-stained. He held out a store-bought firestarter log and a cardboard box. Stricken with guilt and remorse, I apologized profusely, and promised we would put out the “fire” right away. To his tremendous credit, he remained utterly gracious, and even went so far as to claim (between coughing fits) that they hadn’t been bothered at all. He did, however, insist that we keep the firestarter log, just in case, saying “It’s just better if you have a flame!”

BRRRR-ice Canyon

Man! Kids these days! They complain no matter what! Three days ago they were whining about the heat just because it was 103 degrees, so we drive around till we find someplace cooler, and what do they do? Complain ‘cause it’s too cold! There’s just no pleasing them!

In between, we did have some amazing, picture perfect days, in spectacular, breathtaking scenery; romping in the Coral Pink Sand Dunes,

3 hikes in Zion,

and an exhilarating mountain bike ride along a cliff edge and across miles of blooming sage.

But you didn’t come here to read that disgusting, saccharin tripe! Where’s the fun in that? No, you want to hear about how we mindlessly scheduled ourselves to land at Bryce Canyon on Memorial Day Weekend, as if there would be a campsite available, and how when we realized our mistake, we chose as Plan B to camp at Duck Creek, in the Dixie National Forest (elevation 8,000+ feet) and how we got pummeled with snow pellets as we cooked dinner, which we then ate huddled under the car-tarp. And how we left the cooler ice container out on the picnic table overnight, to re-freeze the ice! (And it worked!) And how we woke to fresh snow on the tent, and a temperature that was a full 80 degrees colder than what we had just three days earlier… after we had sent home 3 boxes of extra clothes.

And how we naively thought it would be fun to go to Cedar Breaks National Monument (elevation 10,000 feet) on the first day of the year that the road was supposed to be cleared of snow, except that it was snowing furiously as we drove there, so the road wasn’t exactly clear.

But Cedar Breaks was amazing, at least the couple of glimpses we got of it through the clouds and snow squalls!

And the continuing bitter cold weather did solve one problem for us: by the time we got to Bryce, we found the campground almost empty! Everyone with any sense at all had gone home! So we spent two “brisk” nights there, were treated to snow flurries both mornings as we made breakfast, and hiked over 14 miles in a day and a half, bundled up in long pants, jackets and hats!



















The other benefit of the cold weather was that it prevented my camera from overheating during the extreme use it got in Bryce!

GRRRRR!and Canyon, or “The Honeymoon is Over, The Bloom is Off the Rose, etc”

Have you ever had one of those days where everything falls in place like clockwork, you seem to have the Magic Touch, and all your plans turn out better than you even dared to hope they would? Well, neither have I!

I got up in time to bike to the rim for sunrise, returned to camp feeling pretty good, only to find my loving family… at each other’s throats! The van had been packed with evident malice, no breakfast had been cooked or eaten, and Carroll was just discovering that the rear tire on her bike, just repaired in Flagstaff, was once again flat as a prairie dog on I 70!

We drove in heated silence to the Canyon Café, thinking that treating ourselves to breakfast out might change the mood. OR NOT. Expensive, bland, dry… and in a crowning touch, the lid to Carroll’s way-too-hot-coffee-to-go didn’t fit, so slosh, slosh, fill in the blank!

By 9:00 AM, the heat was already withering, so at every pullout, we tried desperately to squeeze the van into any scrap of available shade to park. I’d like to be able to say it was too hot for the boys to even fight, but that would be a LIE!

Our moods recovered a bit as we got back on the open road, but it was not to last. By the time we reached the Glen Canyon Dam, the temp was in the high 90’s, so Carroll was in no mood to trifle with the hidebound homeland security detail, dutifully protecting the nation from tourists intent on destroying the 350 foot-thick concrete structure with a pocket knife. I think they were ready to draw their weapons and initiate a lockdown of the facility at one point in the confrontation.

Between the bad taste of that exchange, and the depressing thought of how many miles of beautiful canyon had been drowned in order to generate electricity, (something akin to burning your great-great-grandmother’s china cabinet to heat your house), it was a pretty low point for all of us. We desperately needed something to lift our spirits, and in a stroke of good fortune, we found it, in the person of one very friendly, helpful BLM employee in the Grand Staircase of the Escalante visitors center in Bigwater, Utah. We learned a lot in a short time, about the geology of the area, the dinosaur fossils they’ve found there, and good places to camp and hike. Mostly though, we just appreciated that his cheerful nature was so infectious that by the time we left, we were able to laugh when we saw that the temperature was now 103 degrees.

We took his advice and camped in a little-known, little-used state park, Ponderosa Grove, rather than Coral Pink Sand Dunes, as we had planned. We had the whole place to ourselves until 8:30 or so, when one other party pulled in. The weather cooled off nicely, there was a strong breeze, and the day ended on a good note.

Arizona

On the way to Flagstaff, we visited the Petrified Forest and Meteor Crater, both mind-boggling, in their own ways. It was hard to imagine that arid, desolate, barren landscape, with no plants bigger than sage brush, having once been a tropical forest.

It was equally hard to imagine a 150 foot diameter chunk of iron and nickel hitting the ground at 40,000 mph, making a hole half a mile wide, throwing debris 7 miles in all directions, vaporizing almost completely on impact, and driving microscopic spherules of nickel 3,000 feet into the ground!

Now we’re back on the road after a relaxing stay at The Hotel Alvarez in Flagstaff. We got the red carpet treatment from the proprietors of that posh establishment, two of Carroll’s Northland College friends, Donna and Alex, and their three children.

The boys racked up some major frequent flier miles on the trampoline, we enjoyed a hot but very scenic hike near Sedona, cooled off in Oak Creek, and did some mountain biking with Alex. Hopefully he picked up enough tricks from the boys that he will win his next race!

We figured the Grand Canyon would be spectacular enough to chase away the lingering blues we had from having to depart the comfy environs of Chez Alvarez, but boy, were we ever wrong! Our first glimpse of the canyon, from Yavapai Point, left both boys thoroughly unimpressed. “I thought it was supposed to be a rock canyon. There were trees growing all over the place in there!”

They gradually warmed up to it after we hiked a little way down the Grandview trail, but even that was fraught with difficulty, because it was HOT; well up in the 90’s, and all the way down, Sam and Carroll were butting heads like a couple of bighorn sheep, about how much water Sam was, or should be, drinking. Finally, he decided to settle the argument and prove that he was drinking enough, by leaving us in the dust on the return trip up to the rim.

Now, all the signs warn that you should plan twice as long to hike back up, as it takes you to hike down. We had spent an hour and fortyfive minutes hiking down… we made it back up in 40 minutes!

More later….

Canyon de Chelly

A very different feel here, compared with the other National Parks and Monuments we’ve been to so far. The scenery is every bit as breathtaking, but here it is woven inextricably with the evidence of how difficult it is to eek out a living in this harsh area. Immediately upon parking at the visitors center, we were accosted by locals hawking Navajo artwork; “$6 for this rock painting so I can get something to eat?” We felt uncomfortable, had no inclination to buy anything, but gave them some oranges because we suddenly felt obscenely wealthy…

We arrived in the afternoon with just enough time to do the one hike in the canyon that doesn’t require a permit and a hired guide, a 3 mile round trip to the White House Ruins. We found locals selling their wares at the bottom of the canyon also, but the atmosphere was entirely different: no one approached or pressured us, and as a consequence, we stayed and chatted with (mostly listened to!) a Navajo named Miles for quite a while, watching as he etched a stone slab with symbols, explaining each as he went, and carrying on a wide ranging discussion, about his several dogs, his relatives who still live in the canyon, and his college plans, among other things. We bought a small slate etched with a hunting story, and we also each bought a different necklace from various of his relatives, and it was a pleasant exchange.

We decided to check out the private campground just outside the park, before going to the free campground back at the entrance, and since it was so reasonably priced, and not at all crowded, and the owner seemed so pleasant, and it came with two dogs who immediately befriended Sam & Robin, AND it even offered wifi (!) we went no farther.

After getting Carroll and the boys tucked into bed, I took the owner up on his offer of bringing my laptop into the camp office to check email, and tidy up the blog a bit.

I truly felt as though I was in a foreign country; the camp office had a dirt floor, a woodstove giving off a very pleasant warmth, and the air was thick with a smoky smell I couldn’t quite identify… some type of herb, perhaps.

The wifi seemed thoroughly incongruous: the whole place was off the grid, powered by solar panels and a small windmill, and a backup generator that I could hear humming somewhere in the distance. It was a peaceful place, where the lack of material wealth didn’t seem to weigh so heavily. When the old Navajo who ran the campground wished us a good journey as we left, I had the feeling he was not referring to our roadtrip.

Canyon De CHILLY

We're at a Navajo campground at Canyon DeChelly, which has wifi, so I'm sitting in the little camp office trying to get the blog squared away and updated, and check email, etc. while the rest of the family sleeps. If you look through our previous posts, you may notice I added a picture or two, and finished the tale of the sand dunes hike.
We were at Mesa Verde the last two nights, and we had to laugh, because once again, just as we pulled into camp, it rained, and this morning, as we packed up, it started raining again! So today as we drove here, we just navigated by driving toward the darkest clouds on the horizon, and got here without missing a turn!
Can't complain, though, because we got a nice hike in this afternoon, with only a few sprinkles. No pics downloaded yet of DeChelly, but I sure took a few!

Speaking of weather, we are getting some classic desert climate; warm days but CHILLY nights. For example, our first morning waking up at Mesa Verde looked like this:>





But we had a great day, and had the good fortune to get as our Ranger guide for the Cliff Palace, one Mark Andrews, who had a breadth of knowledge that was remarkable, a wry sense of humor that was spot-on, and an easygoing, self effacing manner that made him easily approachable. When we heard that he is retiring in two weeks, we felt extraordinarily lucky. We knew we were in the presence of greatness, that not many more people will get to experience, at least in that capacity. I will end this post wishing him a happy, adventurous retirement.