The park less traveled makes all the difference
This is Little Finland, it is our second favorite place of the whole trip... more photos later in the blog!
If you are in Las Vegas and want to skip the crowds of Red Rock Canyon, we strongly recommend that you drive a little farther and visit Valley of Fire State Park. It is farther outside of Vegas but you do get a much greater appreciation for the Nevada desert and the Red Rock expanses.
Here is one of the first formations that you see. It is called the Beehives.
We love honey, and we love that we can photograph the Beaver Lodge through an arch in the Beehives.
Valley of Fire also has a few petroglyphs.
Oh and an Arch, formed by wind, not water.
In the visitor center they are kind enough to house some of the reptiles you may not see in the park. This is Chuck the Chuckwalla. He is the second-largest lizard in the park behind the Gila monster. We would love to see a Gila Monster as they are one of only two poisonous lizards on earth.
I was not aware that this is the first State Park in Nevada. I like how they jumped the gun and became the first.
Outside the visitor center, the antelope ground squirrels made use of the birdfeeder. They were clearly used to people taking their photographs because they let me get quite close.
In Valley of Fire State Park there are not very many long hikes, but this one was one of my favorites. It is called Mouse's Tank canyon hike and is named after an outlaw who hid in this area.
Sometimes Mike and I just don't know what to say to other people. If you look at the black dot in this photo, it's a drone. They're banned in all state and national parks, but some people think it's OK to drive 8 miles an hour on a road so that their drone can take pictures of them on their motorcycles. Idiots...
Luckily it was all worth it once we got to the Fire Wave. This beautiful swath of striped sandstone is something to behold. It is smooth and expansive. It looks like pulled sugar when the sun hits it.
Here is a view on the edge of the formation looking out onto the Valley of Fire desert. You can clearly see how this State Park got its name.
As our last walk of the day we decided to do the White Domes hike. This is a lovely loop trail that takes you past lots of different sandstone formations, down past the remnants of a movie set from the Western called The Professionals, and then through a slot canyon. Mike loves slot canyons so you'll see us in them a lot.
On the way out of the park we stopped to let these two Desert Big Horn Sheep pass. Lots of them in the park today.
Right along the road as you leave the park is this last rock formation. Any guesses as to its name??
Bye Valley of Fire! We are off to Gold Butte National Monument.
So there is a heck of a lot of crazy going on in the area leading up to Gold Butte National Monument. Do you remember the Bundy standoff in Oregon in 2014? It really started here in Clark County Nevada with Clive Bundy and his assertion that the Federal Government cannot own large tracts of land. This is of course nonsense, and Federal ownership of land has been upheld by the Supreme Court in several cases. Anyway he owes the government 1 million dollars in back grazing fees which he disputes because of his prior assertion... if you are interested in Clive's standoff with BLM officers you can peruse a poorly written Wikipedia article here . I think what cracks me up the most about this sign is that it is overlooking stunning BLM land!
Going back to Clive for a moment... perhaps you can see why I wanted to add a picture of cattle into the blog because I like to tell myself that this is one of Bundy's trespassing cattle!!
When I took this photo, entering Gold Butte, I did not know that we were going to meet a man with a great Desert Tortoise story. For now it's just a teasing reminder that we might get to see one of the few animals we have not been able to spot in the wild.
As we entered, I pointed a finger at Mike and said, "We are 25 miles from the nearest paved road... I swear if your rainy weather Zen kicks in here we are in trouble, so think dry thoughts." Luckily my dry Zen won out and we did not get stuck out here in this 4-wheelers' paradise.
If you look all the way out between these two mountains, you can see two places. The first is Lake Mead and the second is Valley of Fire State Park. Unfortunately we had to go all the way around to get here. It took us over 2 hours whereas if we could have gone as the crow flies it would have been less than 30 minutes. Sometines it feels like we are driving in circles but I wanted to give you an idea of where we are in relationship to other things.
I'll give you one guess why we love this place so much... Give up? It is nearly people-free, silent and beautiful, but mostly the lack of people.
The weather is still very nice, even though we are over half way through November. Days are 75 and the nights 45. As we walked in the washes to get to Little Finland there were yellow flowers blooming everywhere.
There was also a plethora of different cacti. I am a huge fan of the Barrel Cactus and this was was doing its darnedest to turn this rock into useable soil. Fight the man, little cactus!
Here is the very first view we had of Little Finland. It doesn't look like much yet, but in this wide open Valley some of the most beautiful rock formations I've ever seen are going to be found.
Here is a closer view of what was between the two ridges in the previous picture. The red rock that you see is where we're ultimately headed.
Mike asked me if I wanted to go right, away from Little Finland and come around the back side, or left and go directly there. Luckily I chose to go right. We ran in to two other hikers who asked us if we were here to see the petroglyphs. We said what petroglyphs? If we hadn't run into this hiking duo I'm sure we would have missed them.
The first panel that we saw was enormous. Possibly 40' long. I'm sorry that it is so difficult to view, but I wanted to give you an idea of what the whole thing looked like. I took a nice video of the entire area and it is on YouTube here....
Here is the second, much smaller panel. The shapes are unique. If you were Mike you might say that they were more unique than other panels. This of course is just to infuriate me. He will call things more yellower, or drop the verb to be, just to get a reaction... well at least one of us is entertained. If you look closely at the panel, it seems as though there are letters engraved on spaceships. It also looks like some kind of crystal formation. I really wish that we could go back and ask them what these panels meant.
This section might give you an idea why the area is called Gold Butte. A lot of the rock here is red, but there are definite inlays of gold. If we had been able to go all the way to the ghost town of Gold Butte, I know that there are full walls of golden rock. Unfortunately that was 30 more miles of unpaved road.
So as we walked around on our way to Little Finland, we found the Lake that the cows drink from! We kept seeing them in the big open meadows and wondered where they possibly went to have a drink. No one checks on them on a regular basis, or brings them food and water. This is their oasis. You can see me looking at it with disdain because it's a mosquito-breeding ground, but at least it is water.
Here is a close-up of Little Finland. Perhaps it's appropriate that I explain where the name came from. It is derived from the geologic term "fin"; hence little land of fins. In geology a "fin" is a narrow, residual wall of hard sedimentary rock which remains standing after softer surrounding sedimentary rock is eroded away. Fins are formed when narrow vertical/parallel cracks form in the rock. Fins are an intermediate stage of erosional geology. You have seen many other examples of this in our blog. Examples are windows and arches... oh and coming up in Bryce National Park you'll be introduced to hoodoos.
I'm sorry for how many pictures of this are about to be included. But I was so amazed by their shape that I find it hard to leave any of them out. I'll try not to overanalyze what I saw, I think it's really up to you the viewer to tell me what you see.
These photos are all on the right side of the zoomed-out photo above.
Here is Mike seeing little Finland for the first time. Sometimes I'm so glad that I get to catch moments like this on film because we are both so amazed about what this area looks like.
Again I'm sorry I have to redirect you to YouTube. If you'd like to see the area that Mike is walking through, jump on over to YouTube and see our very short video on the area.
Here is a close-up of the water and wind pitting detail on the rock in the area.
Ok and another fin picture...
Right on the edge of all this beautiful red rock are date trees. They seem completely out of place in this landscape and I would have wondered how they got here, except we met someone who had the answer. His name is Andy and he has been romping in BLM land for more than 40 years. He was walking along the red rock and talking to one of his employees when I butted it in to ask where he would go if he had a second day in this area. He gave us good advice and told us that these palms were ancient, the Spanish explorers' version of Johnny Appleseed. They planted them all over Mexico and the American Southwest. Unfortunately no dates are on in the winter, but I felt like I was looking at a past filled with conquistadors.
Well we ended up talking so long that the Sun was low in the sky and we were never going to make it back to the Beaver Lodge. Luckily he offered us a ride back and I got to take my very first off-road 4-wheeling trip of my life; but more importantly I promised you that someone had a story about desert tortoises, and this is he. If you ever go to Zion National Park, he owns a store in the neighboring town of Virgin. This all plays together because his store has a petting zoo, which I have the feeling is a combination of a life of having children who love pets. When they were on a family vacation many years ago, he and his children decided to take a desert tortoise home as a pet. This was long before they were a protected species. They picked him up and drove 300 miles back home. Andy went out and bought the tortoise every sort of green, red, orange, yellow vegetable that was available in the grocery store. He brought them home and presented them to the tortoise who poked up his nose and refused to eat. Andy consulted herpetologists who told him that the tortoise might be too cold, so he put the tortoise in a cage in the bathroom with several heat lamps. When one of his children went in to use the bathroom and flushed the toilet, the cold water rushed in cracking the bowl and dumping toilet water all over the floor. The tortoise lamp had made everything, including the toilet, so hot that when the temperature change in the water occurred it cracked the bowl. Now Andy has a tortoise that won't eat, a toilet that doesn't work, and children who keep telling him that their new pet is going to starve and die. Being a good father, he gathers up the children and the tortoise and drives 300 miles back to where they picked it up. Everyone hugs the desert tortoise and they place it on the ground hoping that it will make it. The tortoise takes 3 or 4 steps forward, smiles inwardly and eats the first desiccated plant that it sees. Andy smiled inwardly as well and swore no more wild pets in the house...no matter how much his children beg.
Mike and I felt that we didn't spend quite enough time in Little Finland. We woke up early the next day and walked the entire way back. There was so much to see and we aren't sure we will ever get to come back again. It's not exactly on the main road!
As you walk across the washes, hills and planes to Little Finland, you cross a sea of red sand which is the aftermath of the erosion of the fins. When you're here you get to see the entire life cycle, assuming you walk there and don't take a car.
I know that I said I wasn't gonna tell you what I thought something looked like, but I swear this looks like the rock version of The Great Wave off Kanagawa 神奈川沖浪裏 by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾 北斎.
Then Mike pointed out this next formation to me.
Again is it a Kabuki mask or something else?
Just before we left I snapped this photograph, lest you think that the entire formation is just jagged rock. It also has gorgeous swirled red rock. The amazing thing is that these formations can also be played.
Then we walked all the way back to the Beaver Lodge, back across the washes and the mountains, and through the passes, in time to get into the van and traverse the 20 miles of dirt road before sunset.
The road here is really quite good and we followed it all the way back to the main road.
We saw a beautiful sunset along the way and arrived back safely where we had started.
Just in case you thought I was kidding about how many crazy people there are in this area, we spotted this sign in one of the yards on our way out. Seriously, do they not know where Zika infestations occur? Whom is this meant to scare off?
After a good night's sleep we headed off to Capitol Reef and Bryce National Park. I took this photograph so that you could see how much amazing infrastructure the Western States put into their roads. I love driving along as the sun rises and watching it warm the rocks ahead of us.
And it's a good thing that the Sun was warm, because not very far away we ran into winter.... real Winter, the kind that has snow on the ground. This is the first snow that we've seen fall in our entire trip. Mike was quite excited because he had always wanted to see these western National Parks with snow on them.
Fortunately there wasn't quite enough snow. Three-quarters of the way to Capitol Reef we ran out of snow, but ran into such cute small towns.
I hope you're not getting tired of red rock because we aren't. There's quite a lot more coming!
Capitol Reef was not on the original trip plan. It was a National Park that I sort of threw out at the last minute and said, "Last time I was out here I missed it and I kind of want to see it." Mike asked me why and I just shrugged and said, "I do."
Luckily he gave in, added on the distance and took us. This National Park is amazing! I know it seems like everywhere we go is just red rock, but I'm telling you each different park has its own amazing features.
Capitol Reef has one long driving road directly down the middle. We got there kind of late and so only had time for one hike on the first day.
When we finally decided what hike to do, it was all the way down the scenic road at the very end. Then you turn onto a dirt road to go to the trailhead. Here is a picture of the Beaver Lodge on that road in the middle of a canyon. There's not many roads I've ever driven on that look like this.
This might look like rock graffiti and I guess in a way it is, but these are the signatures of early Mormon pioneers. They came through this area going West and signed their names on the wall. Take a look at some of the dates.
When we walked all the way through the Canyon to the end, this is the view that we were rewarded with. Unfortunately we didn't have a whole lot of time to dawdle because we had to make it the few miles back to the trailhead and the van before the sun set.
If you've noticed, on this portion of the trip we have been driving in some pretty odd patterns. Mike has been working with the Atlas tirelessly to make sure that we end up seeing what we need to see but get to the Grand Canyon for our permits on the 26th of November.
On our first full day in Capitol Reef, we did a loop trail. We started out along a canyon walk in a wash and then climbed out to see views on the top of the bluffs.
This wonderful 12-mile trail took us past an arch which is normally the highlight of the trail but was eclipsed by the endless beautiful views along the way.
As we travel around the American Southwest we see the same sandstone formations that have been changed by different weather patterns. Again in this area, the harder white sandstone has allowed the softer red sandstone beneath to survive. In Capitol Reef there are a great amount of white sandstone features that have survived.
They give the red sandstone and Junipers a place to roost.
Finally, after quite a while of walking, we spot the arch.
It is one of the largest and highest off the ground that we've ever seen. Although it is unusually situated on a large plain of sandstone rock, you can only see it when you're standing right in front of it.
Here is a slightly better picture of the arch in its natural surroundings.
On our return trip we passed by lots of beautiful striped red and white rock. Mike and I had decided that we would stay in the campground in Capitol Reef because the distance to drive out was so great and we really just wanted to have a bit of a rest. This is not a crowded National Park so I figured that we would really enjoy the campground.
We gathered up some wood and Mike made a fire.
I think that I got the better end of the deal because I got to read and hang out next to the fruits of his labor.
Then while I was watching the fire, and Mike had walked off to get some more wood, a dozen mule deer decided to come in and hang out in our campground. They were particularly interested in eating the seed pods of the Lotus trees in the area.
Another advantage of staying in the campground is that we got to go and see sunset. Here is a picture of one of the orchards in the National Park. It might seem odd that they maintain them, but it's part of the cultural history of this area. The Mormon settlers planted these as a way to help others traverse this difficult landscape. If you're here in season you can pick fruit from the trees and eat it free of charge. Unfortunately Winter is not exactly the fruit-bearing season.
Once we had reached the top of the cliffs this was our sunset view. We then went down and had a good night's sleep in the campground.
This is our last day in Capitol Reef and we spent it doing an out--and-back hike to Navajo Knobs. Here's a panoramic view of what the hike looks like once you get to the end.
It really was 360ﾟof beautiful National Park.
After we had completed the Navajo Knobs hike, we headed off to Bryce Canyon National Park. We drove directly here so that we could figure out what to do in the park tomorrow. We were lucky and made the visitor center hours.
Once we were finished at the visitor center, we went to find a space to park for the night. The best thing about the spot was an unbelievably dramatic sunset! I'm really not sure what I'm going to do when we're back east and we lose all of these grand views.
On the way in to Bryce this morning we nipped past Fairyland Point just to see what the parking situation was like. This will be the start of our hike tomorrow and from this glimpse I'm pretty excited.
Next we stopped at Sunset Point. This is one of the first lookouts in the park and the starting point for our figure 8 hike. We headed into the canyon on the Navajo Loop, crossed to the Peekaboo Trail, then back via the Queen's Garden trail to Sunrise Point and along the rim to the Beaver Lodge.
I wasn't sure if I was going to like Bryce Canyon. It is MUCH more popular than Capitol Reef, but we hiked early to avoid the crowds and I was very taken by the tall pines that are all through this park. Having the red rock and the green trees next to each other set off by the blue sky really made me like this park.
Now that you have seen a few pictures of Bryce National Park, we should discuss its most famous geologic feature, the Hoodoos.
Geologically speaking a hoodoo is a tall, spire-like formation that forms out of sedimentary rock. The hoodoo will protrude from the bottom of an arid drainage basin / badland. It takes millions of years for a hoodoo to form. Erosion occurs in areas where a thick layer of soft rock, often red in Bryce National Park, is covered by a thin layer of hard rock, often white in Bryce National Park. A small portion of the hard rock caps over and protects the softer rock underneath, forming the hoodoo formations.
Of course... keeping with tradition, I caught Mike preparing to hit me with a snowball in November. It may not look like much but he made a fairly good sized ball in no time. Here it is in flight.
Here is a classic photograph showing the hoodoos. You can see how each particular rock outcropping comes to a narrow point at the top. This is the much harder cap rock that I spoke about earlier. Also Bryce Canyon National Park boasts a wide array of evergreens in the Canyon itself.
The National Park has also put a lot of money into making these canyons accessible to most people. Here is an example of one of the pass-throughs that they cut out so that the path can be at a reasonable grade.
I'm not entirely sure of the geology in this area. I really loved what looked like sculpted sand dunes in front of the hoodoos. I also like that there are two arches as well. So much diverse erosion.
Sometimes it's hard to get photos of us with the landscape. We ran across a nice couple who agreed to take our photo in this beautiful arena.
Off a small side trail we came across this double arch. In all the things we've seen it's different! I'm glad we took the side trip.
Before you look at the next photo, try to decide what you think this looks like. Focus on the light area of rock on the top left.
Doesn't it look like this statue of Queen Victoria by Joseph Boehm? It stands on the College Green in Bristol, England. Hopefully you can use your imagination and see it.
If you come to Bryce Canyon National Park, you absolutely must come to this overlook, which is named after the park. The actual geologic feature is called an ampitheatre. This of course entertains me greatly that the crowning jewel of Bryce Canyon is not a canyon at all but a collection of giant amphitheaters. I know it may seem like tomato/tomahto, but geology is a new thing for me and I'm totally fascinated.
If you take the road all the way down to the end of the park, you end up at Yovimpa Point. I found this place particularly interesting because you can see why the park ends where it does. It's all red and white rock in the park and then just flat land again out to the horizon.
Then on the way back we stopped by the Natural Bridge pull-out. Interesting; it's not a natural bridge at all but an arch! Though who's quibbling over what kind of erosion happened to make something this pretty.
When I saw this formation the only thing I could think about was chess. I think of the pieces moved off the board and decided to find a more fulfilling future for themselves. King and Queen stand across having a conversation with 2 rooks on their right. The Bishop stands on the left, aloof and apart, waiting for the conversation to be over. Or perhaps they're just hoodoos and I read into it too much.
I've tried not to add too many individual trees into the blog because there are so many! I couldn't resist this one.
This is one of the last grand views that we had while hiking and Bryce Canyon. After that we just saw one more rock formation and climbed backup for a long hike along the rim.
This was my favorite rock formation in the entire park. This photo here was rather a hard one because I had to climb up an entire screen field for quite a ways to get it. Also I have to give a big shout out to my Mom because the name of this one is Tower Bridge. My Mom, my Dad and I saw its namesake together for the very first time, so I guess this is my revisitation 🤣.
As we exited the Canyon and went back to the car to head off towards our next destination, Winter had fully descended. If you'd like to see a video of this beautiful river running, head on over to YouTube.
This is Kanab, Utah. Try to feel sorry for us for just one moment. Perhaps you need more than a moment. We forgot that Thanksgiving was coming up and went to Kanab to get passes for The Wave, but they were gone.
So Happy Thanksgiving to us, we went to Buckskin Gulch instead. This is an amazing canyon on BLM land because it is the longest slot canyon in the US that you can hike without technical gear. Round trip from where we entered to where you could exit is 44 miles round trip. Obviously we didn't go quite that far but if you're curious how we traversed this obstacle, you can see us here.
You start from the Wire Pass parking lot and almost immediately you are in the most beautiful slot canyons. See what it looks like here.
Go hiking in the slot canyon they said... it'll be fun they said... luckily neither of us fell in but the possibility was real. I wanted to know how viscous the mud was. If you're curious, check out my mud video...
About a mile in we came upon this. Nowhere else that we saw had moss and ferns growing on the sides. You can see that just enough light sneaks in here to support the plants. Now there are sporadic wide sections in the canyon that support cottonwoods, grasses and a few shrubs, but I loved these plants the most because they seemed so incongruous living mostly in the dark.
Unfortunately Buckskin Gulch does not get good sunlight at any time of day as it runs Northwest to Southeast, but we did what we could with the grayish sky, gray rock and limited sun.
I put this photo in because of the next one...
This little guy caught my eye scampering along the wall. This Deer Mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus, was living in the section of the canyon puctured above. We wondered, what he was eating??? Where he was living??? He was super cute and not at all into being photographed.
Right at the intersection between Buckskin Gulch and Wire Pass there are petroglyphs on the wall. Clearly there used to be a lot of Big Horn Sheep here in the past.
On the way back to the car I saw this rock formation. It reminded me of Brain Coral and is unlike anything else we have ever seen.
As we left Buckskin Gulch we entered into Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. I loved the area and we decided to stay, watch the sun set, and just enjoy a quiet night.
One of the best things about this spot is that the California Condor, Gymnogyps californianus, has been reintroduced here and is doing very well in this area. The California condor, America's largest land bird, became extinct in the wild in 1987. All remaining wild individuals were captured and put into a breeding program. The program was successful and they have been reintroduced in northern Arizona, southern Utah, coastal California, and northern Baja. It is the only surviving member of the genus Gymnogyps and is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN. So when we got to see several in flight and several roosting on the cliffs, it was a real thrill. Thankfully we had binoculars because we never would have seen them with our eyes.
Oh so here is a story that I forgot to tell... In Capitol Reef, Mike had me put the ice chest outside because it was so cold and we wanted to keep the ice. In the morning something had absconded with our cheese!! So from now on we tuck the chest under the van to keep unwelcome guests out.
I didn't know when I saw this sign how much we were going to LOVE this national forest.
Here is one more look back at where spent the last few days. On the far left is Buckskin Gulch and Wire Pass. On the right are the cliffs and the condors. Also if you look closely you can see the crappy dirt road we had to drive 20 miles out so we could make it to the Grand Canyon for our rim-to-rim-to-rim hiking permits.
