The fun continues in Colorado

Before we move onto the skiing, here are a few more photos from the Rocky Mountain NP.  I insisted that we drive up to Bear Lake one morning, so here we are.  It was really cold!

 Plenty of snow lingers here making the hike around the lake or to the waterfalls difficult.  Phil is standing on about 2 feet of packed snow here.

No wonder it is cold, we are up at 9475 ft.  It is windy and snowing a little bit.

Brrr. Time to head back down the mountain and spot some more wildlife.



As I mentioned in the previous post, Phil and Chris finally braved the snow and cold for a day on the slopes with friends.  Our friends live in Colorado and consequently are very good skiiers and luckily, more than patient with us novices.

I seem to up end at the mere thought of snow.

Their little escapade begins in the ski rental room.

Isn't there somewhere flatter we could try??

No changing our minds now, there is only one way down the mountain.

At the top.  Ok, not quite the top, but as far up as we wanted to go.

No speed records were set today, but here Chris is actually skiing and not sliding around on her butt.

Made it all the way!  What a great day, we had FUN and many thanks to Sandra and Scott.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I do what I do best, wait for someone to light the fire and keep the wine from getting stale.

Colorado

With a bit of sadness we drove east from Utah.  We enjoyed all the National Parks in Utah, the weather was terrific and there was much we didn't have time to explore.

Grand Junction was the first stop for us in Colorado.  We visited the nearby Colorado National Monument and were intrigued by the cyclists riding up to the monument.  The elevation in Grand Junction is over 4500 ft, and then they cycle up to over 6100 ft.  I'm sure the ride down is fun.

In the photo below, we are near the top of the drive up to the monument looking down at the winding road up.

Balanced Rock is a huge boulder perched precariously above the road on the drive up.

We saw some of the prettiest scenery driving east along I-70 through Colorado.  Normally the Interstate highways aren't noted for the scenery, but this was an exception, and photos taken at over 60 mph don't really do it justice, but here they are.

We found a spot just west of Denver to camp (Echo Lake).  It was early in the season and the campground wasn't really open, but the information person said camping is ok.  With scenery like this, we didn't complain about the lack of facilities.

We stopped in Denver to check out the big REI store and then an outlet mall.  Next we went down to Royal Gorge, a spectacular gorge with a bridge that spans the Arkansas river.

 We were not allowed to drive the RV over the bridge and the road to the south rim was closed so this was a close as we could get.  In summer it is an apparently very touristy place with a cable car over the gorge and a zip line over another section.  Down at the bottom of the photo below you can see the Arkansas river over 1000 feet down.

We visited friends in Fort Collins for a couple of days before another scenic drive over to the Rocky Mountain National Park.  We camped in the park and hiked up to Cub Lake in the afternoon.

 Plenty of elk were enjoying the warm sunshine that day and we saw three herds in the meadow and another small group of elk along the trail.

We saw several of these curious little creatures as well.

 The view at the lake was just beautiful, well worth the hike up.

Next we met up with our friends again for some Colorado skiing and we'll have some photos in the next post.

Utah, National Parks and Trekking part 2

Once again, we were reluctant to move on from our friendly camping area in Capital Reef NP, but there is more to see.

The drive up to Canyonlands NP is pretty long so we planned to camp somewhere along the way.  We drove east from Captital Reef to Hanksville where we fueled up and noticed, much to our surprise, a lot of boats.  Needless to say we asked why there are all these boats parked out in the middle of the desert.  It is only an hour from Hanksville to Lake Powell, so this is where many people keep their boats.

Next along the way we drove through a small section of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, over a bridge crossing a narrow section of Lake Powell and then on to the Natural Bridges National Monument.  We caught up with our Canadian friends here and went around the park to check out the Natural Bridges.  This was the cold day when Bryce Canyon was due to receive 9 inches of snow and none of us were particularily inspired to do much hiking.

We camped just north of Monticello and got an early start to arrive at Canyonlands early to secure our camp site.  On the drive into Canyonlands there is a place called Newspaper Rock.  We had no idea what it was and stopped to take a look, and it is a rock where people have inscribed hieroglyphics and pictographs for over 2000 years. 

We went to "The Needles"section of the park which is south of the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers.  It was an exellent place to be.  The campground is nestled amidst big rock formations and there were numerous hiking trails all in our camping area. 

Hiking here was really fun and interesting.  The formations were great and we hiked in and out of canyons, clambered up and over all the slickrock forms and squeezed between huge rocks.  The formation below is huge and we had to cross it to get to the next canyon and while up there, it was snowing.

 Check out the lunch spot we found one day.  In the photo above Chris is standing in a rock hollow.  Both of them climbed up there and had lunch in the sun with a view.

 The trails are marked with these little piles of rocks (cairns).  It seems to work here, but I wonder if it would work as well in Australia with all the larrikins making rock piles where they shouldn't be.

Sometimes we found barely a shoulder width separating two rocks, and here is a narrow set or stairs.

 One thing was certain, there was spectacular scenery around every corner and we could have stayed at Canyonlands longer.  The good news is that there is another part of Canyonlands to the north that we will visit after the Arches NP.

Our next park was Arches NP.  This is another popular park and normally it would not be possible to get a camp site without a reservation, but we sort of lucked into a place so we stayed here one night.  The campground had the most magnificent view...there were the rock formations nearby in the park, and in the distance were the La Sal mountains.  Nice. 

Below is the landscape arch.  Years ago visitors were allowed to go right up under the arch, however one day a big chunk of it fell...tons of rock, this is a very large structure.  Now the tourists are all kept a little distance away.  There are signs in the park that read  "If you hear loud crackind noises, step away from the arch".  Good advice.



There are over 2500 natural arches in this park.  Phil and Chris saw a good number of them.

 I was able to visit one near the camp site.

We returned to Moab after our visit to Arches NP and will head to the Northern section of Canyonlands next.  We are a little uncertain of where we'll go after that, but hopefully we'll get to an internet location again and keep you all informed of our adventures.

Utah, National Parks and Trekking Part 1

We ended up in Utah at a great time of the year to see these national parks.  The weather has generally been terrific, although last week we had a cold front move through the state and the higher elevations received some snow.  One day when we crossed from one canyon to the next, it was snowing up there on the pass, but as you can see, we survived.

Here at Zion NP the leave are just coming out on the trees.  At Zion, you enter the park from the bottom, as opposed to the Grand Canyon where you view everything from the top.

We arrived early enough to get a camping spot, and it is just terrific to be surrounded by the canyon walls.  Phil and Chris grilled some garlic on the Weber and here they are having it with Havarti cheese for happy hour...yum...delish.

There are numerous hikes in the canyon, and they did several of them.  One day they hiked all the way up to the top of "Observation Point", a gain in elevation of over 2100 feet in an eight mile round trip hike.  They moaned a little about their legs and feet for a few days afterwards, but the views were terrific and it was a great hike.

We hated to leave Zion, but there are more parks to explore.  The drive out of Zion was literally up the hill and through the cliffs following a 1.1 mile tunnel.

The next park was Bryce NP.  Here you visit the rim of the canyon and look down.  Any hikes are down into the formations.  We arrived too late in the day to secure a camping site and the park wasn't quite ready for the spring crowds.  Only one camping area was open and the shuttles weren't running yet so there was a lot of traffic and few places to park.  All in all, a little disappointing, but not to take away from the interesting formations in the canyon.  We visited some of the main lookouts, and owing to the little sore feet and crowded park conditions, we decided to move on towards the next park that evening.

We drove to Torrey, Utah, just outside of Capital Reef NP and camped there for the night to ensure an early morning arrival at the park. 

Capital Reef NP is just a great place to stay.  After the big, very popular parks of Zion and Bryce, it was refreshing to find a laid back and very relazing park.  We were again down in a canyon, and it used to be a homestead and farm complete with orchards.  Conveniently, there was an old home only a few hundred feet away from the campground that sold wonderful, fresh bakery, tea and coffee.  There were wild turkeys running around the area and several horses in the paddocks for the rangers to ride.  How does one get a job here?

We went on a hike with some people from Toronto we met at Zion NP, then invited them over for a beer and dinner.

 One day we took the RV down a fairly adventurous road into a narrow canyon.  All the way in we were hoping for a large enough turning area at the end, and luckily, there was. 

As usual, they encourage me to get some exercise with them, but alas, bears aren't welcome on the trails.

 I wait by the sign, wondering if they will find their way back in time for happy hour.

We will take a little break here and continue this story in part 2.  The server is slow to load our photos!

Las Vegas and another birthday

We finally have some internet coverage.  We are currently in Moab, Utah and it has been over a week since we've seen McDonalds or Walmart, quite a remarkable statement here in the USA.  We've been busy travelling east across Utah, visiting five national parks, two national recreation areas and one national monument.  The scenery is just amazing and I don't think the little photos we post here do things justice, but here is a little catch up of where we've been since our last posts. 

What was planned to be a quick stop in Las Vegas for some provisioning and a look around stretched out to include a birthday celebration and Good Friday.  Neither Phil, Chris or I have been to Vegas and suffice to say, it lives up to it's reputation.  Plenty of bright lights down on the strip, lots of people from all over and everyone with the answers to absolutely everything if you care to stand around and listen.

Check out the price here for 1.75 litres of Rum. To bad they don't want a polar bear on the label.



The generator needed it's 50 hr service and we were able to book it in at an RV dealer for Friday, April 6.  Apparently Easter isn't a big deal of a public holiday here like it is in Australia where we get a four or five day weekend.  For us that meant a couple of things.  First, we'd be temporarily homeless and how could Phil bake Chris's birthday cake?  Thursday Phil baked the cake and we all had to have some that night, it was really good...a rum cake.

The second problem, temporary homelessness, was solved by the casino across the street from the RV place.  It was breakfast time when we dropped our RV off and conveniently, the casino had a huge breakfast buffet, so we had birthday breakfast there.

Later in the day, we collected our home and settled into our RV park before heading out to the strip for one last look, a pirate show and a nice birthday dinner.  The next day we headed out of Nevada, to the state of Utah.

Hoover Dam

We drove west out of Flagstaff and into desert again.  Where did all those nice pine trees go??  We got to Kingman and turned left.  It was late in the day, and we were sort of looking for a place to camp in the Lake Mead Recreatioin area and when we saw the sign for Willow Beach we turned in and started driving down, down, down.  "Warning, flash flood area" signs appeared frequently as we continued down this road.  Eventually we came to a boat launching area and then later, a new campground.  Too bad it was so dark out, it looked fairly interesting, but not quite the place we had in mind. 

Here I'd like to comment on the wind.  Perth is supposed to be one of the windiest cities in the world but it has got nothing on this region!  We stayed in Albuquerque a few extra days because of high winds (and snow to the west) and since then, all across Arizona, it is just windy windy windy.....and then there is that static electricity that we don't seem to have in Perth.  I tell you, my fur is a mess...it is just one bad fur day after another.  Can't do a thing with it.

Back to the dam.  We found ourselves a nice camping spot near Lake Mead.  Next day Phil and Chris hiked the eleven miles to the dam (and back).  They said that it actually didn't look so big from their vantage point near the new parking lot.

The following day we drove in early and got on the first tour through the power plant.  The complex may be dwarfed by the canyons and everything that is so big nearby, but it is truely massive, and it is nearly as wide (deep) at the base as it is tall.

The photos from the dam's construction are interesting too.  These water intake towers are very high, and perched on little ledges that were created by blasting out part of the canyon wall. 

We were down in the room with the generators, of which there are 17, and they produce enough electricity for about 1.3 million homes.  Somewhat unnerving to be standing next to the base of that dam, about 400 ft below the level of the water on the other side.  A very interesting but short tour.

Traffic used to jam up on the dam so a new bridge was planned and recently constructed.  Chris and Phil were able to walk up there for a photo op.  We drove across it at night when it was really windy and could not see a thing.  At 890 ft above the Colorado River, it is not recommended for anyone afraid of heights.

Those intrepid little tourists.

The damming of the Colorado River created the largest man made lake in the US...Lake Mead.  In 1983 the water reached it's highest level and that is what accounts for the "bathtub" ring around the lake.  There are marinas on the lake and plenty of boats.

 The hike to the dam was along the old railroad bed.  During construction of the dam they built this rail line to haul all the equipment and supplies from Boulder City, there were five tunnels along the relatively short distance.

Boulder City is only 26 miles from Las Vegas, so that looks like our next stop.