National Parks Rock!

After leaving Mystic Springs, we spent the next several days hiking in the many National Parks located in the southwest part of the US... We were so looking forward to getting away from people, cities, and busy days of sight seeing. We wanted to just enjoy nature and the beauty of this part of the country. It was awesome. So far, it seems that the funniest parts of our trip (and blog) have revolved around the many characters we've run into. This part of our trip might not be the most entertaining. So, we're going to just give a brief summary of those days...

We left Mystic Springs on Tuesday morning and headed to Bryce Canyon in Utah. CP - terrifying. My fear of heights had me grabbing on to trees. It was so high and steep I actually got dizzy and weak in the knees while SCOTT was off on an edge begging for a picture... But even I will admit, it was beautiful...

SM - Bryce was an awesome sight. The colors ranged from vibrant reds and browns to muted whites and greens. The hike and the trails themselves were on the weaker side, but the absolute beauty of the canyon was overwhelming. Bryce is a must see for beauty seekers. Unless willing to make an entire day or more of a hike, hikers beware.

We pushed off from Bryce and made our way through some small Utah towns and off-the-beaten-path roads on our way to Jacob's Lake, Arizona - the closest "town" to the Grand Canyon's North Rim. The "town" consisted of an inn, a gas station, and a rotary. We stayed at the Kaibab Family Campground a quarter of a mile from town. The campground was the closest full-hookup RV campground outside of the park. They'd sold us on the namesake of the town - Jacob's Lake. After hiking a bit at Bryce, we were dying to cool off and plunge into the lake. "Lake" was/is an overstatement. It was more like a small pond - maybe twice the size of a swimming pool. And there were horses grazing around it... and a "Private Property - No Trespassing" sign... not very welcoming for a swim.

CP put on an amazing spread for dinner that night consisting of homemade pasta salad with whatever vegetables we had in the Rv and Benton's bacon (!!!), and also some sausage, and a tiny little steak. It was a meat-themed dinner. There is something very primal about cooking meat out in the wilderness. It just smells and tastes better than in your backyard.

We got up early and headed for the mother of all canyons. The road from town to the North Rim is 44 miles long. 44 miles of trees, hills, plateaus, valleys, and our RV Mel chugging along. CP had mentioned on our way that others had told her that the brain can hardly comprehend what it sees at the Grand Canyon. True dat. From the North Rim vantage point (at the top of the canyon), the colored, striated peaks and plateaus stretched as far as the eye could see. On top of that, you can't see down to the bottom of the canyon. It's over a mile deep. CP didn't get as close to the edge to peek as SM. But amazingly enough, she ventured further than the day before at Bryce. Maybe she's getting used to heights? Maybe not. Later in the day while on a fenced in viewing platform she suddenly collapsed to her knees and had to crawl back to solid ground. But, hey, at least she got out there!

We decided to take a more strenuous hike at the Grand Canyon than the prior day. We settled on the North Kaibab trail. The actual start of the trail was a flat 2-mile walk from where we parked. We walked the two miles for our warm up. At the time we started the real hike, the temps were pushing 90. Unlike the many prior hikes we'd done in New Hampshire, the hikes of the Canyon start downhill, saving the hardest - the climb - for the end. It's disheartening descending first. Every step reminds you that you still have to take that very same step uphill. It may seem short, but we hiked two miles down that trail. (The full trail is 14 miles and impossible to do the down and back in one day) The kicker... it descended 1,400 feet over that distance. A pretty steep drop over that span. We must have gone through 25 switch backs to get to our ending point. The views from the lower vantage point up to the top of the Canyon were pretty amazing and well worth it. But the haul back up was brutal. There were two things working against us: the heat - now near 100 - and the altitude. We are used to hiking to peaks in NH around 4,000 feet above sea level. The Canyon starts at about 7,000 feet above sea level. Our lungs just couldn't suck in enough of that thin oxygen. Needless to say, our uphill hike was a slow trek coupled with frequent stops to slow the heart rate. Don't forget we had to walk two more miles back to the RV too.

After rehydrating as best as possible, we called it an early evening.

Zion... we'd planned on leisurely sleeping in and heading to Zion National Park in Utah late morning. However, we'd found out that the park entrance on the side where we were located would close at 9am for repairs. The entrance was 2 hours away from Jacob's Lake. So much for sleeping in.

We got to Zion at about 8:30am. The forecast for the day - sunny, of course and temps to 105!!! Unlike the Grand Canyon, access to Zion National Park is at the bottom of it's canyon. Since we killed ourselves descending and climbing the day before, we decided to take a much different and flatter hike - The Narrows. The trail starts along a relatively flat and well manicured path winding next to a river for 1.1 miles. Then it just ends. The river itself becomes the trail at that point. It was phenomenal!!!

Over thousands of years, the same river that we hiked had carved it's own path hundreds of feet through the earth creating Zion's canyon. At certain points of the hike, there was nothing but the water of the river running next to canyon walls on either side - each hundreds of feet tall. Absolutely breath-taking. About 60% of the hike was in water ranging from ankle to waist deep. The other 40% was along the rocky and sandy shores of the river. We hiked down the river (upstream actually) 3.1 miles to a small tributary that fed into the much larger river. At parts, wading through the rapids of the water flow was tough. CP had snagged a couple of walking sticks at the start of the hike - MUCH NEEDED for balance through the rapids. Neither of us fell in the water. However, SM was not so lucky on the return trip, slipping and falling of a boulder onto a sandy part of the shore. Thank God nothing was hurt - except for his pride. Most importantly, the camera remained dry and undamaged.

We found that hiking back through the river - downstream - was much easier and quicker. We also found the hike to be seemingly cool considering it was 105 degrees out. A good portion of the hike was in the shade and of course we had a limitless supply of cool water keeping our body temps down. We finished the overall 9.4 mile hike and felt like we needed just a bit more. So, we decided to hike another trail - the Lower Pools. Maybe a nice cool swim was in order. What a waste of time and energy. The mile or so hike was on a nice path and all, but we no longer had the cool water to combat the heat of the day. We kept our hopes up thinking we could cool off at the pools. No such luck. The "pools" were stale and murky and park signs were posted everywhere that read no swimming. That trail was a bust, but all in all, the day was a huge success.

At 6:30 pm, the temp at the RV park in St George, Utah - 25 miles from Zion - was still 103!! We're still not sure how the people there do it.

SM - I think that I must have been under the spell of Mystic Springs - maybe a pull toward communing with nature and the hippy inside me. Who knows? But, I noticed - let's say - a somewhat unpleasant odor coming from the left side of my body when I awoke. After lifting my left arm (only my left), I could smell something I can only describe as a cross between an overly "mature" Limburger cheese and an Italian sub gone horribly wrong. Then I realized it was Friday morning. Then I realized we'd been hiking for four days. Then I remembered I hadn't applied deodorant since leaving Aspen on Monday morning. I'd bathed, you know in hot springs and an occasional shower in the RV before bed, but somehow had forgotten the all-important deodorant step. Cost of the fix - $0 for a shower, and $.32 for a few swipes of Gillette Cool Wave.

CP- I have no comment regarding Scott's deodorant debacle. It's too hard to type while covering my nose.

When we got back to Mel after smelling a bit fresher, we noticed her cabin was strangely warm. The rooftop A/C unit seemed like it wasn't working. UGH! We made an appointment to have an RV mechanic take a look. Turns out that it was frozen. When we hiked Zion, we'd left the generator running and the A/C on to keep Murphy from cooking inside the RV. The unit only had a short break until we fired it up again once we got to our campground in St George. Solution - let it melt off and don't run it so long in 100+ degree weather. Who knew? Cost of fix - $0.

As most of you all know, we've had some computer issues on this trip. The refurbished Dell that we brought was having a hugely difficult time processing much of anything using the free wi-fi at the RV parks. It pretty much wasn't allowing us to share any pictures with you because it would not downloaded them to the blog. We had saved all our photos to the Dell's hard drive. As CP shared in the last post, we ended up losing several hundred photos of the trip when the Dell failed to transfer them to another drive. It was heartbreaking losing the visual documentation of the trip so far. The words of our trip can be recreated, but the images of us in that time and space cannot. When we get back to beantown, we'll be sending out both the camera and the Dell's drives to a data recovery specialist to see if we can get back the deleted files. (Fingers crossed- there were some really cool pics on there) Enough!!! We bought a Mac on our way to getting the A/C serviced. Hopefully we'll be able to give you guys some pix soon - live and in color. Cost of the MAC - too much, but well worth it. Cost of data recovery - not looking forward to finding out. Cost of our pix - priceless.

With those ordeals behind us, we hit the open road. Judy Garmin had us leave Utah, dip south back in to Arizona, then head north and west into Nevada. After driving through most of the state, we can attest that there is really nothing there. From Las Vegas in the southeast to Reno in the northwest, there is nothing but desert brush, some cacti, some mountains covered in desert brush and cacti, and of course Area 51. What trip would be complete without traveling on the extraterrestrial highway? It is a 98-mile stretch of road that cuts through the Nevada desert. There is only one "town" - Rachel - on the way. Rachel is made up of 7 or 8 broken down trailers, a "convenience" store (more like shack), and a host of falling down buildings. Creepy! We blew by doing about 75mph, hoping not to be abducted by aliens - more likely it's residents.

We'd already driven 6 hours or so and were a bit weary from the day's activity. The next town on the map and in our travel guides was Tonopah, NV. Yikes! It was on oversized Rachel. Well, not really that bad. But, we immediately looked at each other and decided there was no way we were going to stay overnight. We speedily left Tonopah behind us and headed another couple of hours for eastern California and Yosemite National Park. We pulled into our beautiful and lake side campground in Bridgeport, CA around 9pm and crashed.

We awoke the next morning with Yosemite only about 20 miles away and a final destination of Lake Tahoe in our sights. We decided pretty early on that since the past few days of hiking were a bit strenuous on the body, we were going to take a leisurely hike in Yosemite. The park is very different from the parks in Utah and Arizona. It's mountainous with lots of tree and creeks running through it. Amazingly enough, there were still un-melted snow drifts on the sides of the road and some snow on the trails we hiked. We let Murphy out of the RV for a short run off leash. This trip had been awesome to see Murphy love and convene with his surroundings. Since the weather was much cooler in Yosemite, he was beside himself to get out and run - where in the desert he was hesitant to do much more than just his business outside of the RV.

After hiking for about a an hour and a half and catching some really cool views of the rapid water running through the park, we both decided that Yosemite was a park well worth returning to for the purposes of hiking. We wish we had more time to spend there, but Lake Tahoe was calling.