Hello from China! Sorry for the late posting; it has taken me a while to figure out how to get into blogspot. My initial attempts resulted in a page in Chinese that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. According to one of my students, many websites are not accessible due to government control, but using a different approach I was able to get to the familiar posting page.
I’ve been here in Shanghai for ten days, with another 3 weeks to go. For the most part I’ve enjoyed myself, although admittedly I’ve stayed away from the more challenging cuisine. The area of the city I’m in, Pudong, is a relatively new area with most of the buildings built in the last 15 years. It is south and east of the Huangpu River and is considered the financial capital of southern China. The offices I’m working in are just 1 km from my hotel and I’ve been walking there every day since the second day. The weather’s been great with just a couple of days of showers.
My job here is to help “bring to life” a new business operation for a multinational company, and it involves training, data preparation, and deployment tasks – all of which I enjoy doing. I’ve been working a lot of hours, many more than I’m being paid for, but I suppose it’s all in good fun…
I’m working with several others on this small team – two people from the east coast and one from Europe. On our first working day the local management hosted us for a team dinner. The variety of foods served went pretty far beyond my experience - squab, suckling pig, pig skin and pig knuckles, roast goose, duck soup, and chili fish just to name a few, all washed down with warm watermelon juice. Of course I tried a bit of everything and it was all fine and interesting, although one of my coworkers was a little less fortunate with his consumption…We’ll have another team dinner tomorrow night so that should, again, be interesting.
In the mean time I’ve been on my own for most dinners (breakfast at the hotel, and lunch has been catered in every day). There are quite a few restaurants within 1-2 miles of the hotel so I’ve been exploring them – many serving some combination of western and oriental dishes. Last night I made the mistake of ordering the ‘Thai-style’ chicken curry over rice. Whooo! I should have known better – a lot of Thai spicing is way too hot for me these days. Today I had a few bites of Kung Pao chicken off of someone’s plate, and that dish was only about as spicy as we’d find in the US.
There’s a Carrefour down the street (Euro-based chain; think WalMart SuperCenter) and it has a lot of restaurants downstairs. There’s a bread-making shop with a sense of humour – tonight I bought a thing called “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Bacon” along with some Indian curry naan bread and a fruit-tart kind of thing – total 19 yuan, or about $2.60. Cheap eats…I’m nowhere near consuming my $70/day per diem guideline.
One of the tourist attractions in town is a TV tower called the Oriental Pearl (http://www.shme.com/attracti/tower/tower.htm). It’s about 1400 feet tall and one can take an elevator to the top for a view. Since it’s about 10 miles from my hotel, I walked down there so I could explore Shanghai a bit, and met my coworkers there. Unfortunately what had started out as a typical smoggy day became extremely hazy – to the point where we figured we might not even be able to see the ground from the top, much less any of the rest of Shanghai. We’ll have to try to get up top another clearer day – and maybe in the morning before the smog gets too bad. This place is worse than LA on its worst days back in the 70s.
I did enjoy the walk, and the previous day’s walk with one of my coworkers (we did about 6 miles). As you would expect in a city of 18 million, it’s very urban with huge skyscrapers – both office and residential – and a lot of small shops and alleyways in the shadow of the ‘scrapers. Many street vendors – and many very persistent “Rolex” watch salesmen. My coworker Joe seems to attract these – he apparently looks like a man in need of a watch, whereas me, with my shorts and beard, apparently look like someone who can’t afford one – even though these fake watches can be bargained down to less than $4 each. It’s pretty funny – you can always spot Joe; he’s the one trailing several watch salesmen…
I wanted to take some pictures of the more gritty areas of the city that I was walking through, but felt it would be rude – might look a little like a man taking photos at the zoo or something. So for common courtesy I didn’t, but maybe I’ll figure out how to get a few discreet shots. I’d describe it as sort of a cross between India and the west – you don’t have the variety of vehicles and rickshaws and oxen and such, but it’s not exactly downtown San Francisco either. Although there are still a lot of cars, it’s nowhere near what you’d expect from a city this size – I haven’t seen a traffic jam yet. Lots of two-wheeled vehicles, mostly non-gas-powered – either manual or electric. And it was several days of wandering around town before I spotted my first gas station. So I’m not exactly sure where all the smog’s coming from.
I could go on, but it’s approaching midnight and I have my daily 6am date with the hotel gym. And the stairs, of course: I’m on the 11th floor and it’s 169 stairs up from the 4th floor where the gym is. A good warm-down, I guess. And it’s 269 steps from the ground floor, which I’ve been trying to do once a day. Anyway, I’ll hang it up here and post something again in a few days. Assuming I survive tomorrow night’s meal…
Thanks for reading!
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
home at last...final posting in THIS series (china blog up next!)
Home sweet home. This is the last in the series, as I’ve finally returned from my exploration of the USA. Over the two month period of being on the road I think I satisfied most of my goals to see, meet, and hike America, but there’s a lot more I would have liked to do. Gives me the incentive to do it again…
I was trying to count up the states I’ve hit and discovered it was easier to count the ones I didn’t. Looks like I was in 39 states and covered just over 17,000 miles, averaging about 7+ miles of hiking per day (over 500 miles!). On the continental US, I missed only Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Arizona (which I’ve been to many times). Maybe in a few years when I walk across America I’ll take in the rest of those states…
When I posted last, I was in Cedar City, Utah doing my laundry. I grabbed a quick meal and headed west on hiway 56 towards Nevada. Not too many cars on the road until I got south on US93 in Nevada, which is designated as a scenic drive. I then turned north on what is called the ‘alien’ hiway, for reasons unknown to me. As I turned off I saw the sign ‘next services 150 miles’. Aaaahhh, the joys of having a high-mileage vehicle. This ‘alien’ road, hiway 375, had only one settlement on it which, naturally, featured the Alien Inn, complete with spacecraft out in the parking lot. Cute. I can see why aliens may have landed there because this 100 mile stretch was pretty desolate and deserted – I saw maybe 15 cars going the other direction. Perhaps the aliens scared them off.
It was getting dark after I turned west again on slightly-more-used hiway 6, so I found a rest stop and set up the tent. There weren’t any ‘no camping’ signs and it was actually inside the Toyiabe National Forest, so I figured I’d have a good story for any cop who bothered me in the middle of the night. But as usual, none did, and no spacecraft landed nearby, so it was a pretty boring evening looking at the lights of Nellis AFB down the hill (I was at 6200 feet). The temperature dropped down to 37 degrees just as it had at Zion, but I was prepared so I had a reasonably warm night. In the morning I zipped into Tonopah, Nevada for gas and breakfast and headed towards the east entrance of Yosemite, Tioga Pass. As usual when I drive 395, I had to stop at Mono Lake, which just fascinates me with its surreal tufa formations.
I hit Tioga Pass about noon. Tioga is over 10,000 feet in elevation and I decided to tune up my lungs with a short hike at that altitude. Didn’t want to wear out my legs for the 18-mile Half Dome hike the next day, but it was worth it to add slightly to my conditioning. Let me tell you, that was the most physically-challenging 2-mile hike I’d ever done! I must have stopped about 4 times on the way up this fairly steep trail, which I’m guessing topped out at over 11,000 feet. Not too much oxygen up there, my lungs kept telling me…I decided to bag a couple of nearby peaks while I was up on the ridge, so it actually came out to about 4 miles.
I was surprised to find the campgrounds nearly full in the Yosemite valley floor. Being as it’s early October and mid-week, I expected very few people but I guess Yosemite is a real international draw. I heard so many different languages in the campground, most of which I couldn’t identify.
The hiking portion of my trip ended badly, however. My goal was to start on the Half Dome trail the next day by 7am, as I still needed to drive to Reno when I was done hiking. My record time up and down Half Dome is 7 hours, but I was a bit younger and fitter then. I hit the trail just after 7am (funny: a bear was in the parking lot and had broken into one of the ‘bear-proof’ lockers and was having breakfast – instead of chasing him away like they tell you to, I let him munch – less chance he’d break into my car). But instead of ‘going up Half Dome’ my hike turned into ‘going up TO Half Dome’.
Here’s the deal: I had an absolutely fantastic hike up to the cables, which are the last 1000 yards of the hike to get you up on top of the peak. The granite at that point is at nearly a 45 degree angle so you have to pull yourself up the cables. Because thousands of people go up the cables every year, the rock is very slick – and I had chosen to try to get ‘one last hike’ out of my sneakers instead of wearing the brand new pair I had in the car. My shoes simply couldn’t get any traction, so I got about ¼ of the way up the cables and had to turn back. It’s hard enough to admit defeat – but it’s even harder to admit defeat at the hands of your own stupidity. Much harder than being defeated by, say, a couple of mountain lions.
As I say, I had the easiest hike up Half Dome ever. I surely would have equaled or beaten my personal best. The fact that I’d been doing so much hiking, combined with being at altitude for most of the last couple of weeks, made it almost a cruise to the cables. I’ll probably never have the same situation again, so I’m really angry with myself. I felt like going back down to the parking lot, changing shoes and starting up again! But 17 miles is a long way, and 34 would be out of reach. Even a second day of 17 wouldn’t have been too much fun, even if I’d had the time.
But hey - for the most part it HAS been a great trip. I’ve decided there are 5 places that I absolutely HAVE to get back to – but they happen to be in all corners of the US, so it’ll be several trips, I think. I need to get back to Glacier (Montana), Acadia (Maine), the Florida Keys, Big Bend (Texas), and southern Utah. Those last two I could probably do in one 3-week trip…if I can figure out how to get Naomi to let me go again, or figure out how to bring her along without making her sleep on the ground. I’ll have to work on that…
My drive to Reno after the hike was uneventful – I had to basically go back out of Yosemite the way I came in and then go north on hiway 395. That’s always been one of my favorite roads in California, so I enjoyed the fall colors in the Eastern Sierras. I took care of my business in Reno and then headed home at last – with one last snowstorm over the Sierras to drive through. But my trusty Prius and I made it safely and are now back in my family’s good graces (and the dogs, too). I averaged 52.3 mpg on the trip, buying just under $1000 worth of gas (at an average price of $2.92).
Next up, I’ll be heading over to Shanghai for almost five weeks starting October 19th. I will post some blogs from there, for those who are interested in whatever adventures I have in China…likely to be at least some of the culinary type! I shudder in anticipation…
Thanks for reading my blog, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it! I heard a couple of people tell me they were traveling vicariously through me, so I guess it served a purpose. And I had fun sharing my experiences. Now it’s YOUR turn!
I was trying to count up the states I’ve hit and discovered it was easier to count the ones I didn’t. Looks like I was in 39 states and covered just over 17,000 miles, averaging about 7+ miles of hiking per day (over 500 miles!). On the continental US, I missed only Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Arizona (which I’ve been to many times). Maybe in a few years when I walk across America I’ll take in the rest of those states…
When I posted last, I was in Cedar City, Utah doing my laundry. I grabbed a quick meal and headed west on hiway 56 towards Nevada. Not too many cars on the road until I got south on US93 in Nevada, which is designated as a scenic drive. I then turned north on what is called the ‘alien’ hiway, for reasons unknown to me. As I turned off I saw the sign ‘next services 150 miles’. Aaaahhh, the joys of having a high-mileage vehicle. This ‘alien’ road, hiway 375, had only one settlement on it which, naturally, featured the Alien Inn, complete with spacecraft out in the parking lot. Cute. I can see why aliens may have landed there because this 100 mile stretch was pretty desolate and deserted – I saw maybe 15 cars going the other direction. Perhaps the aliens scared them off.
It was getting dark after I turned west again on slightly-more-used hiway 6, so I found a rest stop and set up the tent. There weren’t any ‘no camping’ signs and it was actually inside the Toyiabe National Forest, so I figured I’d have a good story for any cop who bothered me in the middle of the night. But as usual, none did, and no spacecraft landed nearby, so it was a pretty boring evening looking at the lights of Nellis AFB down the hill (I was at 6200 feet). The temperature dropped down to 37 degrees just as it had at Zion, but I was prepared so I had a reasonably warm night. In the morning I zipped into Tonopah, Nevada for gas and breakfast and headed towards the east entrance of Yosemite, Tioga Pass. As usual when I drive 395, I had to stop at Mono Lake, which just fascinates me with its surreal tufa formations.
I hit Tioga Pass about noon. Tioga is over 10,000 feet in elevation and I decided to tune up my lungs with a short hike at that altitude. Didn’t want to wear out my legs for the 18-mile Half Dome hike the next day, but it was worth it to add slightly to my conditioning. Let me tell you, that was the most physically-challenging 2-mile hike I’d ever done! I must have stopped about 4 times on the way up this fairly steep trail, which I’m guessing topped out at over 11,000 feet. Not too much oxygen up there, my lungs kept telling me…I decided to bag a couple of nearby peaks while I was up on the ridge, so it actually came out to about 4 miles.
I was surprised to find the campgrounds nearly full in the Yosemite valley floor. Being as it’s early October and mid-week, I expected very few people but I guess Yosemite is a real international draw. I heard so many different languages in the campground, most of which I couldn’t identify.
The hiking portion of my trip ended badly, however. My goal was to start on the Half Dome trail the next day by 7am, as I still needed to drive to Reno when I was done hiking. My record time up and down Half Dome is 7 hours, but I was a bit younger and fitter then. I hit the trail just after 7am (funny: a bear was in the parking lot and had broken into one of the ‘bear-proof’ lockers and was having breakfast – instead of chasing him away like they tell you to, I let him munch – less chance he’d break into my car). But instead of ‘going up Half Dome’ my hike turned into ‘going up TO Half Dome’.
Here’s the deal: I had an absolutely fantastic hike up to the cables, which are the last 1000 yards of the hike to get you up on top of the peak. The granite at that point is at nearly a 45 degree angle so you have to pull yourself up the cables. Because thousands of people go up the cables every year, the rock is very slick – and I had chosen to try to get ‘one last hike’ out of my sneakers instead of wearing the brand new pair I had in the car. My shoes simply couldn’t get any traction, so I got about ¼ of the way up the cables and had to turn back. It’s hard enough to admit defeat – but it’s even harder to admit defeat at the hands of your own stupidity. Much harder than being defeated by, say, a couple of mountain lions.
As I say, I had the easiest hike up Half Dome ever. I surely would have equaled or beaten my personal best. The fact that I’d been doing so much hiking, combined with being at altitude for most of the last couple of weeks, made it almost a cruise to the cables. I’ll probably never have the same situation again, so I’m really angry with myself. I felt like going back down to the parking lot, changing shoes and starting up again! But 17 miles is a long way, and 34 would be out of reach. Even a second day of 17 wouldn’t have been too much fun, even if I’d had the time.
But hey - for the most part it HAS been a great trip. I’ve decided there are 5 places that I absolutely HAVE to get back to – but they happen to be in all corners of the US, so it’ll be several trips, I think. I need to get back to Glacier (Montana), Acadia (Maine), the Florida Keys, Big Bend (Texas), and southern Utah. Those last two I could probably do in one 3-week trip…if I can figure out how to get Naomi to let me go again, or figure out how to bring her along without making her sleep on the ground. I’ll have to work on that…
My drive to Reno after the hike was uneventful – I had to basically go back out of Yosemite the way I came in and then go north on hiway 395. That’s always been one of my favorite roads in California, so I enjoyed the fall colors in the Eastern Sierras. I took care of my business in Reno and then headed home at last – with one last snowstorm over the Sierras to drive through. But my trusty Prius and I made it safely and are now back in my family’s good graces (and the dogs, too). I averaged 52.3 mpg on the trip, buying just under $1000 worth of gas (at an average price of $2.92).
Next up, I’ll be heading over to Shanghai for almost five weeks starting October 19th. I will post some blogs from there, for those who are interested in whatever adventures I have in China…likely to be at least some of the culinary type! I shudder in anticipation…
Thanks for reading my blog, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it! I heard a couple of people tell me they were traveling vicariously through me, so I guess it served a purpose. And I had fun sharing my experiences. Now it’s YOUR turn!
Sunday, October 7, 2007
yee-haw!
Hi friends and family. No animal encounters to speak of as I start this blog (unless you count the 5 whitetail deer grazing about 20 feet away – I think they live in this campground). But stick around to the final paragraphs, you never know what’ll happen before I finish it!
It’s pretty darn cold as I write this and my fingers are numb, so if I bjabcnoil a few words, forgive me.
First, a correction in my previous posting – I looked at my notes and it’s ‘Woman HOLLERING Creek’. Even funnier that way…
After posting my last blog in Durango, Colorado, I proceeded to Mesa Verde National Park about 50 miles away. This national park is home to the famous ‘cliff dwellings’ of the Anasazi, which were mysteriously abandoned about several centuries ago. They even left food on the table, they left in such a hurry, and no one knows why. I took a ranger-guided tour for $3 that go you up-close-and-personal to the dwellings – very interesting how they’re built, and much of it has not needed restoration. I also did a 2.5 mile hike to view some petroglyphs on the nearby cliffs. The weather was starting to look a bit iffy as I completed my hike, and it was just in the nick of time because thunderstorms started roaring overhead, along with torrential rains. As I was driving out of the park along the ridge, it was blowing out of the canyons so hard that it was raining UP. Never seen that before, but I would again before the week was out…
I wasn’t going to be too thrilled to camp in that kind of weather, so I hoped I could outrun it b y heading west through southern Utah. I’m sure most of you have seen or experienced the unusual rock formations and cliffs and weird boulders that populate this area (and many old Westerns were filmed here) so you have an idea of what I was driving through – literally 100 miles of this beautiful countryside before I had to stop for the day. I had intended to get as far as Capitol Reef National Park, but had to stop and help some people who’d had a blowout on their trailer. That consumed precious daylight hours as we tried to get the wheel off while supporting the trailer, since their jack wouldn’t slide under the right point. We finally got it done; I’m not sure how it all ended because the nearest place to fix a trailer tire would have been 50-100 miles away – we were truly out in the middle of nowhere (just like I’ve spent a good portion of my trip!) But finally I was on my way with a few minutes of daylight left. Fortunately all of the land I was passing through was under some sort of public domain, so I knew I could simply pull off the side of the road and pitch my tent anywhere. When it got too dark to see anything – and I didn’t want to miss any of this gorgeous scenery; I could have take a week to do this drive – I stopped at a spot where I could see a couple of porta-potties and a few cars. I was inside the Glen Canyon Recreation Area and just past the bridge over the Colorado River and drove down a short dirt road to a flat spot where the cars were parked. I assumed I’d have company that night, but as it turns out, this was a place where rafters (and rafting outfitters) put their boats into the river and left their cars there. There was only one guy in a camper across the way and he was being pretty furtive, so I pitched and made dinner and stared at the Milky way for the longest time. Oddly enough, I didn’t hear much of any animal noises throughout the night. It seemed a perfect spot for coyotes, which I love to hear ‘singing’ at night, but there were none there. In the morning I snapped a few photos of the surrounding rock formations, wandered down to stick a toe into the Colorado, and headed west again. I stopped at a nearby rest stop which had a good hiking trail and rocks to climb on, and also stopped in Capitol Reef to do a quick-but-intense 3.5 miler. I also checked out the historic fruit orchards in the area – I guess the weather is pretty mellow in that area and the Indians had been irrigating their crops with the nearby river for centuries. The first Mormon settlers in the area a century ago found most of the irrigation ditches still intact and used them to ranch. So many of the still-bearing fruit trees are 80-100 years old.
I’m glad I grabbed that quick hike because the weather turned bad once again. My goal was Bryce Canyon National Park, and just past the town of Boulder, Utah, the road went uphill along a knife-edge ridge – a steep dropoff on either side of the two-lane road, with no guardrails. I stopped to take a photo and once again, the rain was blowing UP into my face. And the weather would get worse – as I drove through the Dixie National Forest (Dixie? In Utah?) I went over a 9600 foot pass and it was snowing. Not much built up on the road but still, not what I was expecting on this trip! There were even a couple of trees down in my lane. I rolled into Bryce wondering what I was up against, weather-wise. It was still early afternoon and time for a hike, so I pitched my tent and staked it down and headed out on the trail. Everything in Bryce goes downhill first (since you’re at the canyon top) and I got about 1.25 miles into this trail, just starting uphill, when it really let loose. Hail, driving rain, and it chased me back to my car. The trail was extremely slippery, but goopy at the same time (I guess it was adobe; it was sticking to my shoes) so I was a mess by the time I got to my car. And my one and only light jacket was now soaked inside and out. Not a pretty picture with the temperature falling.
I found the showers and luxuriated in a 10-minute hot shower. (About 5 minutes longer than I’ve ever showered before, but hey – it was $2 for 10 minutes, whether you used them all or not. And I definitely needed to warm up!) I wandered over to the campsite next door where they had a roaring fire going. It had stopped raining by then but the guy gave me a garbage bag to use as a makeshift poncho. We stood around and talked for a while; he was a minor-league baseball player in the White Sox organization. I found out the forecast was for snow that night, which I was definitely not prepared for! I got as warm as I could in my tent (without my wet jacket) which wasn’t very warm, and in the morning it was 25 degrees – but no snow. I wasn’t going to try another hike as it was probably still wet, so I headed down the road to Zion National Park, which was just 80 miles away and at a lower elevation. The ranger told me the forecast was a low of 37, which I could handle with my now-dry jacket. It was Saturday and the campground was filling up fast even though it was only 11am. I grabbed one of the last 10 spots and headed out on the trail with good, but pretty chilly, weather. I did an awesome 10 mile hike with 2500 foot elevation gain and great views of the valley, and also included a secluded canyon. The canyon trail had some sections that were along a sheer drop of a few hundred feet and they had chains to hang onto, so that was a little exciting. I took the shuttle back to the lodge and had ‘dinner’ at the snack bar there and then walked a couple of miles back to the campground along the Virgin River. There was quite a bit of interesting plant and bird life along the way, along with three Belgian women ‘admiring’ a large tarantula. I tossed a penny down next to the tarantula so they could get a photo with some size perspective.
The weather wasn’t too cold; I didn’t check my car thermometer when I got up but I would guess the forecast of 37 was accurate. I broke camp and headed out for the ‘signature’ hike of this park, called Angel’s Landing. It’s a 5 mile round trip with 1500 foot elevation gain, so not that physically challenging, but the last half-mile is a steep clamber up one butte, across a ridge and up another butte. The ridge portion of the trail is 3-4 feet wide with an immediate 900 foot drop on your left and a 1200 foot drop on your right. There are chains to hold onto while walking over this saddle but it’s still pretty intimidating if you look down. There isn’t much more room on the other portions of the trail but at least you can only fall off one side or the other! To give you a feel for the technical difficulty of this section of trail, I did the first 2 miles in 37 minutes, and the last half-mile in 29 minutes. Definitely a good waker-upper! I’m glad I went early, too, because the trail up the chains quickly gets crowded and, of course, most sections are one-way so someone has to step aside. Going down was almost as exciting as going up…
After the hike I headed towards Nevada, stopping in Cedar City, Utah to do my wash and write some more of this posting. And bonus – they had access to the KOA campground’s wireless next door, so I’m posting. This may be my last post before I get home, as it’s Sunday and I intend to be home by Wednesday. Thanks for reading!
It’s pretty darn cold as I write this and my fingers are numb, so if I bjabcnoil a few words, forgive me.
First, a correction in my previous posting – I looked at my notes and it’s ‘Woman HOLLERING Creek’. Even funnier that way…
After posting my last blog in Durango, Colorado, I proceeded to Mesa Verde National Park about 50 miles away. This national park is home to the famous ‘cliff dwellings’ of the Anasazi, which were mysteriously abandoned about several centuries ago. They even left food on the table, they left in such a hurry, and no one knows why. I took a ranger-guided tour for $3 that go you up-close-and-personal to the dwellings – very interesting how they’re built, and much of it has not needed restoration. I also did a 2.5 mile hike to view some petroglyphs on the nearby cliffs. The weather was starting to look a bit iffy as I completed my hike, and it was just in the nick of time because thunderstorms started roaring overhead, along with torrential rains. As I was driving out of the park along the ridge, it was blowing out of the canyons so hard that it was raining UP. Never seen that before, but I would again before the week was out…
I wasn’t going to be too thrilled to camp in that kind of weather, so I hoped I could outrun it b y heading west through southern Utah. I’m sure most of you have seen or experienced the unusual rock formations and cliffs and weird boulders that populate this area (and many old Westerns were filmed here) so you have an idea of what I was driving through – literally 100 miles of this beautiful countryside before I had to stop for the day. I had intended to get as far as Capitol Reef National Park, but had to stop and help some people who’d had a blowout on their trailer. That consumed precious daylight hours as we tried to get the wheel off while supporting the trailer, since their jack wouldn’t slide under the right point. We finally got it done; I’m not sure how it all ended because the nearest place to fix a trailer tire would have been 50-100 miles away – we were truly out in the middle of nowhere (just like I’ve spent a good portion of my trip!) But finally I was on my way with a few minutes of daylight left. Fortunately all of the land I was passing through was under some sort of public domain, so I knew I could simply pull off the side of the road and pitch my tent anywhere. When it got too dark to see anything – and I didn’t want to miss any of this gorgeous scenery; I could have take a week to do this drive – I stopped at a spot where I could see a couple of porta-potties and a few cars. I was inside the Glen Canyon Recreation Area and just past the bridge over the Colorado River and drove down a short dirt road to a flat spot where the cars were parked. I assumed I’d have company that night, but as it turns out, this was a place where rafters (and rafting outfitters) put their boats into the river and left their cars there. There was only one guy in a camper across the way and he was being pretty furtive, so I pitched and made dinner and stared at the Milky way for the longest time. Oddly enough, I didn’t hear much of any animal noises throughout the night. It seemed a perfect spot for coyotes, which I love to hear ‘singing’ at night, but there were none there. In the morning I snapped a few photos of the surrounding rock formations, wandered down to stick a toe into the Colorado, and headed west again. I stopped at a nearby rest stop which had a good hiking trail and rocks to climb on, and also stopped in Capitol Reef to do a quick-but-intense 3.5 miler. I also checked out the historic fruit orchards in the area – I guess the weather is pretty mellow in that area and the Indians had been irrigating their crops with the nearby river for centuries. The first Mormon settlers in the area a century ago found most of the irrigation ditches still intact and used them to ranch. So many of the still-bearing fruit trees are 80-100 years old.
I’m glad I grabbed that quick hike because the weather turned bad once again. My goal was Bryce Canyon National Park, and just past the town of Boulder, Utah, the road went uphill along a knife-edge ridge – a steep dropoff on either side of the two-lane road, with no guardrails. I stopped to take a photo and once again, the rain was blowing UP into my face. And the weather would get worse – as I drove through the Dixie National Forest (Dixie? In Utah?) I went over a 9600 foot pass and it was snowing. Not much built up on the road but still, not what I was expecting on this trip! There were even a couple of trees down in my lane. I rolled into Bryce wondering what I was up against, weather-wise. It was still early afternoon and time for a hike, so I pitched my tent and staked it down and headed out on the trail. Everything in Bryce goes downhill first (since you’re at the canyon top) and I got about 1.25 miles into this trail, just starting uphill, when it really let loose. Hail, driving rain, and it chased me back to my car. The trail was extremely slippery, but goopy at the same time (I guess it was adobe; it was sticking to my shoes) so I was a mess by the time I got to my car. And my one and only light jacket was now soaked inside and out. Not a pretty picture with the temperature falling.
I found the showers and luxuriated in a 10-minute hot shower. (About 5 minutes longer than I’ve ever showered before, but hey – it was $2 for 10 minutes, whether you used them all or not. And I definitely needed to warm up!) I wandered over to the campsite next door where they had a roaring fire going. It had stopped raining by then but the guy gave me a garbage bag to use as a makeshift poncho. We stood around and talked for a while; he was a minor-league baseball player in the White Sox organization. I found out the forecast was for snow that night, which I was definitely not prepared for! I got as warm as I could in my tent (without my wet jacket) which wasn’t very warm, and in the morning it was 25 degrees – but no snow. I wasn’t going to try another hike as it was probably still wet, so I headed down the road to Zion National Park, which was just 80 miles away and at a lower elevation. The ranger told me the forecast was a low of 37, which I could handle with my now-dry jacket. It was Saturday and the campground was filling up fast even though it was only 11am. I grabbed one of the last 10 spots and headed out on the trail with good, but pretty chilly, weather. I did an awesome 10 mile hike with 2500 foot elevation gain and great views of the valley, and also included a secluded canyon. The canyon trail had some sections that were along a sheer drop of a few hundred feet and they had chains to hang onto, so that was a little exciting. I took the shuttle back to the lodge and had ‘dinner’ at the snack bar there and then walked a couple of miles back to the campground along the Virgin River. There was quite a bit of interesting plant and bird life along the way, along with three Belgian women ‘admiring’ a large tarantula. I tossed a penny down next to the tarantula so they could get a photo with some size perspective.
The weather wasn’t too cold; I didn’t check my car thermometer when I got up but I would guess the forecast of 37 was accurate. I broke camp and headed out for the ‘signature’ hike of this park, called Angel’s Landing. It’s a 5 mile round trip with 1500 foot elevation gain, so not that physically challenging, but the last half-mile is a steep clamber up one butte, across a ridge and up another butte. The ridge portion of the trail is 3-4 feet wide with an immediate 900 foot drop on your left and a 1200 foot drop on your right. There are chains to hold onto while walking over this saddle but it’s still pretty intimidating if you look down. There isn’t much more room on the other portions of the trail but at least you can only fall off one side or the other! To give you a feel for the technical difficulty of this section of trail, I did the first 2 miles in 37 minutes, and the last half-mile in 29 minutes. Definitely a good waker-upper! I’m glad I went early, too, because the trail up the chains quickly gets crowded and, of course, most sections are one-way so someone has to step aside. Going down was almost as exciting as going up…
After the hike I headed towards Nevada, stopping in Cedar City, Utah to do my wash and write some more of this posting. And bonus – they had access to the KOA campground’s wireless next door, so I’m posting. This may be my last post before I get home, as it’s Sunday and I intend to be home by Wednesday. Thanks for reading!
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
grrrrrrowl...
Greetings one and all. I’m starting to write this blog as I relax in a campground at Big Bend National Park in Texas, but not sure where I’ll be by the last paragraphs of this posting…
I’ll start with a funny place name I saw in Texas (I think, or Louisiana): Woman Yelling Creek. Wouldn’t you like to know the story behind THAT name?
When I last left you, I was sitting at a Starbucks in Galveston while simultaneously getting my car washed. Even when vacationing I multi-task! Galveston is quite a cool town, as beach towns go, and I’d love to have spent more time there. But as noted, I have an obligation to be back in Sacramento pretty soon to earn some money, so at this point I have to sacrifice quality for quantity. Sigh…
I intended to drive to San Antonio to visit my cousin who lives there, but having not had a shower for a while, I decided I had to find one before I got to their house. Being a member of 24-hour Fitness Clubs, I knew there were some clubs in Texas and I could walk in and use the shower facilities to get good and scrubbed up. Unfortunately there were no clubs in the San Antonio area so I had to detour a bit into Houston, which had about a dozen of them. It was a successful foray – until I missed the turnoff for the beltway that goes around Houston and had to drive all the way downtown to catch the freeway towards San Antonio. Which of course was under construction, and bumper-to-bumper even though it was Saturday. Again, sigh…
My family visit in San Antonio was fun, though. We went downtown to the world-famous Riverwalk and had dinner and cruised around the Alamo, and I crashed there for the night so I was able to get showered up for the next portion of my camping trip. I’d looked on the map and estimated that Big Bend was maybe a 4-6 hour drive, at most, so I targeted to leave Sunday morning at about 9am. I was way off - Big Bend is truly in the middle of nowhere. 413 miles later I was rolling into the campground, still with enough light to set up camp and walk a mile over to the lodge/restaurant/grocery area to identify my ambitious hike for the next day. The plan was to loop around the mountains and, in the middle of the hike, summit the highest of the peaks at 7800 feet (starting at about 5300 feet) – a total of 12 miles. I hadn’t had a challenge like that for quite a while, so I was a bit concerned about my fitness. Who knew Texas had mountains like this? Lots of people, I guess, because despite it being Sunday night, the tent portion of the campground was about 90% full and the lodge looked about half-full – all at the end of September. Admittedly, the weather is fairly pleasant – warm at least (but thunderstorms, too). Driving in the route that I did, at least 300 of the miles were desert – boring to some people – so you really have to want to get here. But it is spectacularly beautiful, with jagged peaks all around the campground. And I hear it’s quite the rock-climber’s mecca.
Well the best-laid plans have a way of going awry – in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I got up early, packed up my tent and headed over to the restaurant associated with the lodge, because they have a good buffet that would fill me up for my ambitious hike. I hit the trail just a bit after 8am and it was as strenuous as I’d hoped. I’d gotten about 2 miles uphill and my heart was pumping pretty hard when I came around a corner and was face-to-face with…two mountain lions! Naturally my heart raced a little faster – they were about 80-100 feet away and not scared of me at all. I started hollering at them and ‘looking large’, as they tell you to do, but to no effect. I snapped a couple of photos but then one started towards me and I decided it was time to put the camera down and pick up some rocks. I can multi-task but not that well! I started tossing rocks and the first one slunk off the trail, but the one behind him needed a few more rocks in her direction. (I randomly assigned genders to them. I know nothing about mountain lions and never expected to see one, since they are notoriously reclusive.) So they both headed uphill into the bushes, which of course was the direction I was heading. I cautiously proceeded up the trail, throwing more rocks at the bushes where they’d disappeared, and telling them I had an arm like Nolan Ryan’s. (I can’t throw like him, but I’ll bet my arm looks sorta like his.)
Another ¾ mile up the trail, I saw another one. She was crossing the trail about 50 feet in front of me and then stopped in the bushes to watch me. I could see her face so I snapped one picture and then tossed some rocks at her, which got her out and up the hill again. Now I had a decision: was this one of the two I’d seen earlier? And if so, where was the other one – circling around behind me? Were they protecting something like a den of kittens? Given my lack of knowledge about cougars, I reluctantly turned around and headed down the trail, yelling my frustrations at them with every step. I took a photo of some “cat scat” that was on the trail, to show what she’d been eating. (The only scat on the trail after my first encounter might have been my own.)
I went down to the visitor center to report my sightings, as they tell you to do, and gave them my account and photos. The pictures weren’t all that great; wish I’d used the zoom but obviously I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly at the moment. I don’t know if they closed the trail after me or not; the wildlife ranger thought that the one coming towards me might have been more curious than aggressive. Of course, I wasn’t going to wait and find out. He also thought I’d probably seen a third one, not one of the first two, and that maybe they were all siblings. They were big, about the size of my dogs, which means they were about 100-120 pounds. I had my trekking poles with me (an unusual occurance; I don’t often use them) so I may have been able to successfully fight off an attack but anyway, we’ll never know – and I’m glad.
So my nice 12-mile hike was ruined, and I settled for another 5-mile loop to add to the one I’d already done. As noted, the place is simply spectacular and I need to go back there. Move over, Glacier, I might have a new #1 favorite for this trip! There are also hot springs right on the banks of the Rio Grande which were in the wrong direction for me to go back to (it’s a BIG park) and were, unfortunately, under water as the Rio Grande was running pretty high. So that’s another incentive to return. And a third incentive is the drive OUT of the park. I went south through an adjacent state park and down along the river for about 50 miles and it was everything I could want in a road: windy, dippy, great scenery (if you like the desert, which I do) and not a soul on it. I had a blast driving down to Presidio and then north through Texas up to the Guadalupe Mountains, which is a national park on the border between Texas and New Mexico.
Every mile or two I’d see a tarantula crossing the road. Why did the tarantula cross the road? I guess to get to the other side. I didn’t want to run over those cute things so I missed most of them. I’d already gotten a photo of one on the trail, as well as a scorpion I encountered in the bathroom. (I guess it was a beastie sort of day.)
Guadalupe Mountain is the highest peak in Texas at 8749 feet. There was a 8.4 mile round trip hike up to the peak with a 3000 foot elevation gain, so I did that one the next morning to offset my disappointment from the previous day’s hike. It was one of the toughest 8 mile hikes I’ve ever done – it took me 1:52 to the top and 1:35 back down, because the footing was so treacherous. Fortunately I’d brought my poles again (in case I was attacked!) and they helped on the descent. The park was just 50 miles away from Carlsbad Caverns so I drove into New Mexico and headed underground (after fielding yet another call from an interested employer – it’s hard to stay retired).
The self-guided tour takes about 2+ hours and I must have shot about 30 photos, none of which came out very well. Either I used the flash and got over-exposed shots (because many of the interesting features are already lit) or I turned the flash off and got blurry or under-exposed shots. I guess I’ll leave cave photography to the experts with better cameras. And I know I’m overusing the term ‘spectacular’, but ere are so many cool things in this cave that you just get jaded after a while. Stalactites, stalagmites, crystals, pools, bottomless pits, … Definitely worth the trip.
Naomi’d asked for a postcard to be sent from Roswell, NM, site of the supposed alien crash-landing in 1947 where the government captured, and is still keeping, aliens. Of course, that’s the main tourist attraction in town, so finding the postcard was easy – but not finding the post office so I could buy a stamp! Long story short, I eventually found someone who gave me a stamp and I got the thing mailed. But I was running out of daylight, so I drove up into the mountains near Ruidoso Downs hoping to find a campsite before dark. No luck, so since it was dark and the stretch I was driving was supposed to be beautiful (and I didn’t want to miss it) I took off on a Forest Service road and went about 2 miles up this dirt road and parked at a wide spot in the road. I checked into Chateau Prius for the night at about 8:30 after basking in the glow of the Milky Way, which was really bright and clear. It got down to about 45 degrees and I eventually closed the window in the car because I was cold. I got moving about 6:45 the next morning (this morning) and in all that time, not a single car came up that service road, even though I was just a couple of miles off of the highway. I could have pitched my tent right in the middle of the road!
So today I rolled on up to Santa Fe, which is in the northern part of New Mexico, and took the scenic route. It really is a beautiful state once you get out of the flats. I was looking to get my oil changed in Santa Fe but didn’t find one of those quickie places, so I decided to push north and west and ended up in a motel in Durango, Colorado, where I sit as I finish (and post) this missive. One of the road segments I drove, Hiway 64 west, is one of the most beautiful drives of the trip. It is waaaay up in the mountains, I’m guessing perhaps as high as 9000 feet, and the fall colors are already showing in a big way. Most of it is ranches and farming, and so you have this pastoral scenery of old barns, livestock, rolls of hay, and a stream running through it, surrounded by forests of alder and pines. Except for the winters, I could live up there!
I hope this finds all well and happy. I plan to visit Mesa Verde tomorrow, where there are mysteriously-abandoned cave dwellings. Then I’ll head in the direction of Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks for some more good hiking…stay tuned! You won’t want to miss my next animal encounter (but I may want to!)
I’ll start with a funny place name I saw in Texas (I think, or Louisiana): Woman Yelling Creek. Wouldn’t you like to know the story behind THAT name?
When I last left you, I was sitting at a Starbucks in Galveston while simultaneously getting my car washed. Even when vacationing I multi-task! Galveston is quite a cool town, as beach towns go, and I’d love to have spent more time there. But as noted, I have an obligation to be back in Sacramento pretty soon to earn some money, so at this point I have to sacrifice quality for quantity. Sigh…
I intended to drive to San Antonio to visit my cousin who lives there, but having not had a shower for a while, I decided I had to find one before I got to their house. Being a member of 24-hour Fitness Clubs, I knew there were some clubs in Texas and I could walk in and use the shower facilities to get good and scrubbed up. Unfortunately there were no clubs in the San Antonio area so I had to detour a bit into Houston, which had about a dozen of them. It was a successful foray – until I missed the turnoff for the beltway that goes around Houston and had to drive all the way downtown to catch the freeway towards San Antonio. Which of course was under construction, and bumper-to-bumper even though it was Saturday. Again, sigh…
My family visit in San Antonio was fun, though. We went downtown to the world-famous Riverwalk and had dinner and cruised around the Alamo, and I crashed there for the night so I was able to get showered up for the next portion of my camping trip. I’d looked on the map and estimated that Big Bend was maybe a 4-6 hour drive, at most, so I targeted to leave Sunday morning at about 9am. I was way off - Big Bend is truly in the middle of nowhere. 413 miles later I was rolling into the campground, still with enough light to set up camp and walk a mile over to the lodge/restaurant/grocery area to identify my ambitious hike for the next day. The plan was to loop around the mountains and, in the middle of the hike, summit the highest of the peaks at 7800 feet (starting at about 5300 feet) – a total of 12 miles. I hadn’t had a challenge like that for quite a while, so I was a bit concerned about my fitness. Who knew Texas had mountains like this? Lots of people, I guess, because despite it being Sunday night, the tent portion of the campground was about 90% full and the lodge looked about half-full – all at the end of September. Admittedly, the weather is fairly pleasant – warm at least (but thunderstorms, too). Driving in the route that I did, at least 300 of the miles were desert – boring to some people – so you really have to want to get here. But it is spectacularly beautiful, with jagged peaks all around the campground. And I hear it’s quite the rock-climber’s mecca.
Well the best-laid plans have a way of going awry – in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I got up early, packed up my tent and headed over to the restaurant associated with the lodge, because they have a good buffet that would fill me up for my ambitious hike. I hit the trail just a bit after 8am and it was as strenuous as I’d hoped. I’d gotten about 2 miles uphill and my heart was pumping pretty hard when I came around a corner and was face-to-face with…two mountain lions! Naturally my heart raced a little faster – they were about 80-100 feet away and not scared of me at all. I started hollering at them and ‘looking large’, as they tell you to do, but to no effect. I snapped a couple of photos but then one started towards me and I decided it was time to put the camera down and pick up some rocks. I can multi-task but not that well! I started tossing rocks and the first one slunk off the trail, but the one behind him needed a few more rocks in her direction. (I randomly assigned genders to them. I know nothing about mountain lions and never expected to see one, since they are notoriously reclusive.) So they both headed uphill into the bushes, which of course was the direction I was heading. I cautiously proceeded up the trail, throwing more rocks at the bushes where they’d disappeared, and telling them I had an arm like Nolan Ryan’s. (I can’t throw like him, but I’ll bet my arm looks sorta like his.)
Another ¾ mile up the trail, I saw another one. She was crossing the trail about 50 feet in front of me and then stopped in the bushes to watch me. I could see her face so I snapped one picture and then tossed some rocks at her, which got her out and up the hill again. Now I had a decision: was this one of the two I’d seen earlier? And if so, where was the other one – circling around behind me? Were they protecting something like a den of kittens? Given my lack of knowledge about cougars, I reluctantly turned around and headed down the trail, yelling my frustrations at them with every step. I took a photo of some “cat scat” that was on the trail, to show what she’d been eating. (The only scat on the trail after my first encounter might have been my own.)
I went down to the visitor center to report my sightings, as they tell you to do, and gave them my account and photos. The pictures weren’t all that great; wish I’d used the zoom but obviously I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly at the moment. I don’t know if they closed the trail after me or not; the wildlife ranger thought that the one coming towards me might have been more curious than aggressive. Of course, I wasn’t going to wait and find out. He also thought I’d probably seen a third one, not one of the first two, and that maybe they were all siblings. They were big, about the size of my dogs, which means they were about 100-120 pounds. I had my trekking poles with me (an unusual occurance; I don’t often use them) so I may have been able to successfully fight off an attack but anyway, we’ll never know – and I’m glad.
So my nice 12-mile hike was ruined, and I settled for another 5-mile loop to add to the one I’d already done. As noted, the place is simply spectacular and I need to go back there. Move over, Glacier, I might have a new #1 favorite for this trip! There are also hot springs right on the banks of the Rio Grande which were in the wrong direction for me to go back to (it’s a BIG park) and were, unfortunately, under water as the Rio Grande was running pretty high. So that’s another incentive to return. And a third incentive is the drive OUT of the park. I went south through an adjacent state park and down along the river for about 50 miles and it was everything I could want in a road: windy, dippy, great scenery (if you like the desert, which I do) and not a soul on it. I had a blast driving down to Presidio and then north through Texas up to the Guadalupe Mountains, which is a national park on the border between Texas and New Mexico.
Every mile or two I’d see a tarantula crossing the road. Why did the tarantula cross the road? I guess to get to the other side. I didn’t want to run over those cute things so I missed most of them. I’d already gotten a photo of one on the trail, as well as a scorpion I encountered in the bathroom. (I guess it was a beastie sort of day.)
Guadalupe Mountain is the highest peak in Texas at 8749 feet. There was a 8.4 mile round trip hike up to the peak with a 3000 foot elevation gain, so I did that one the next morning to offset my disappointment from the previous day’s hike. It was one of the toughest 8 mile hikes I’ve ever done – it took me 1:52 to the top and 1:35 back down, because the footing was so treacherous. Fortunately I’d brought my poles again (in case I was attacked!) and they helped on the descent. The park was just 50 miles away from Carlsbad Caverns so I drove into New Mexico and headed underground (after fielding yet another call from an interested employer – it’s hard to stay retired).
The self-guided tour takes about 2+ hours and I must have shot about 30 photos, none of which came out very well. Either I used the flash and got over-exposed shots (because many of the interesting features are already lit) or I turned the flash off and got blurry or under-exposed shots. I guess I’ll leave cave photography to the experts with better cameras. And I know I’m overusing the term ‘spectacular’, but ere are so many cool things in this cave that you just get jaded after a while. Stalactites, stalagmites, crystals, pools, bottomless pits, … Definitely worth the trip.
Naomi’d asked for a postcard to be sent from Roswell, NM, site of the supposed alien crash-landing in 1947 where the government captured, and is still keeping, aliens. Of course, that’s the main tourist attraction in town, so finding the postcard was easy – but not finding the post office so I could buy a stamp! Long story short, I eventually found someone who gave me a stamp and I got the thing mailed. But I was running out of daylight, so I drove up into the mountains near Ruidoso Downs hoping to find a campsite before dark. No luck, so since it was dark and the stretch I was driving was supposed to be beautiful (and I didn’t want to miss it) I took off on a Forest Service road and went about 2 miles up this dirt road and parked at a wide spot in the road. I checked into Chateau Prius for the night at about 8:30 after basking in the glow of the Milky Way, which was really bright and clear. It got down to about 45 degrees and I eventually closed the window in the car because I was cold. I got moving about 6:45 the next morning (this morning) and in all that time, not a single car came up that service road, even though I was just a couple of miles off of the highway. I could have pitched my tent right in the middle of the road!
So today I rolled on up to Santa Fe, which is in the northern part of New Mexico, and took the scenic route. It really is a beautiful state once you get out of the flats. I was looking to get my oil changed in Santa Fe but didn’t find one of those quickie places, so I decided to push north and west and ended up in a motel in Durango, Colorado, where I sit as I finish (and post) this missive. One of the road segments I drove, Hiway 64 west, is one of the most beautiful drives of the trip. It is waaaay up in the mountains, I’m guessing perhaps as high as 9000 feet, and the fall colors are already showing in a big way. Most of it is ranches and farming, and so you have this pastoral scenery of old barns, livestock, rolls of hay, and a stream running through it, surrounded by forests of alder and pines. Except for the winters, I could live up there!
I hope this finds all well and happy. I plan to visit Mesa Verde tomorrow, where there are mysteriously-abandoned cave dwellings. Then I’ll head in the direction of Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks for some more good hiking…stay tuned! You won’t want to miss my next animal encounter (but I may want to!)
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