Who told Old Man Winter he could come for a visit?
Welcome to Great Basin National Park. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of it because if you list all of the 59 National Parks by annual visitors, this park comes in 50 of 59! The only park in the continental United States that comes in lower is Dry Tortugas. You have to take a boat to get to that one so hopefully you can understand just how sparsely visited this park is. The park derives its name from the Great Basin, a dry and mountainous region between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Mountains. Again don't feel bad if you've never heard of the Wasatch Mountains. I hadn't until I came here.
This area has been a thriving ranch area for the last 150 years. As you look at the photographs, the dry part of the land feature is extremely important. This area is only farmable and ranchable because of water diversion. Much of the water that they're using is ground water from aquifers and snow runoff. I found this large display very interesting because, as Eastern US natives, we don't think about water as water rights anywhere near as much as people in the West do.
When we got to Great Basin we soon found out that the road was closed to most of the park. If we wanted to see it, we'd have to hike in. Great Basin is such a sparsely visited park that they've only recently begun getting requests to do backcountry hiking. Luckily this meant that the permit was free and we got to camp in the currently closed section of the park.
We began our trek up the Lehman Trail, which starts in the Upper Lehman Campground. As we walked through the campground, Mike made a squeaky noise and pointed...asked me if I'd seen it, the mountain lion just a few feet away. Lucky for us it was not interested and beat a hasty retreat up into the mountains.
We were very lucky because the terrain might have been snowy for most of the way up but we were quite warm because it was sunny and not windy.
Mike decided to take this opportunity to throw his monthly snowball at me. Little did we know this was not going to be an aberration but the beginning of normal. Lots more snow to come in this post!
As we got higher in elevation there was more snow on the trail. We decided that it was time to put on our Yaktrax just to be safe. I have to thank my Mom for these because they were under the Christmas tree for us last year. We barely got a chance to use them because last year wasn't all that snowy, but we certainly appreciated them here.
With not very much trouble we reached the Wheeler Peak campground. We picked this spot because as we got higher in elevation the wind really picked up. We set up camp as fast as we could so that we could make it out to see the glacier that evening.
We know how much the temperature drops as soon as the sun goes down, so before we left for the hike we also walked around and collected some firewood.
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The hiking up to the glacier was very pleasant. Great Basin may not get many visitors, but their infrastructure is lovely and the scenery is stunning. Mike said he had forgotten how much he missed the forest until we were here. He said it reminded him of areas in which he would go snowmobiling.
We have to move pretty quickly because we have to cover this trail before the sun goes down. It would be extremely difficult to make a fire in the dark.
Before we came to Great Basin, someone had said that it reminded them of a little version of the Rocky Mountains. I wasn't sure whether I was going to agree, but the more we hike the more I do.
As we walked along at the edge of the ridge you could look out into the Valley below. It's crazy how it's snowy and wooded here but completely desert-like just a few miles after the mountains end.
When we came around one last bend there it was, the glacier. Unfortunately, when we spoke to the rangers, it is shrinking like almost every other glacier.
When we arrived at the park I had no idea that they had groves of the longest living land thing on Earth! Welcome to one of the groves of Great Basin Bristlecone pine, Pinus longaeva. These trees are often touted for their ability to reach great age, but sometimes the fact that they are able to survive in areas that boost low rainfall, subzero temperatures and poor soil is often overlooked. The dead Bristlecone pine you see above took more than 1,000 years to meet its ultimate demise. When it did, it was over 3,000 years old. Bristlecone pines have a unique feature in which the roots of the tree only feed the branches that are directly above. In this way the tree may die in one section but continue to survive in others. Also the tree wood is incredibly dense due to the slow rate of growth so a tree like this may also take another 1000 years to decompose. Keep this in mind if you think of littering in an environment like this! There are not so many decomposers up here.
Here is a picture of a Bristlecone pine that is displaying the feature that I told you about above. You can see that the left hand side is dead but the right hand side is doing just fine.
There was a tree in Great Basin National Park that was, for a time, the oldest living thing on Earth. The tree's name was Prometheus and it contained 4,862 growth rings. Due to the harsh conditions in the Wheeler Peak area of Great Basin, it is likely that a growth ring did not form every year, making Prometheus approximately 4,900 years old. After the death of Prometheus, the oldest known living tree was a 4,847 year old Bristlecone pine found in the White Mountains of California. It wasn’t until 2012 when another Bristlecone from the same area proved to be 5,065 years old that Prometheus was unseated. I want you to think back over 4,000 years and try to imagine what the world was like when this Bristlecone pine was just a seed. It boggles the mind. Just in case you need a little help with what that time period would have been like, here's what Wikipedia has to say…
The 3rd millennium BCE spans the years 3000 through 2001 BCE. This period of time corresponds to the Early to Middle Bronze Age, in which imperialism, or the desire to conquer, grew to prominence in the city-states of the Middle East and throughout Eurasia. The civilization of Ancient Egypt rose to a peak with the Old Kingdom. World population is estimated to have doubled in the course of the millennium, to some 30 million people.
There are two large Alpine lakes at Great Basin. I was very excited to see them because we had loved them so much at Rocky Mountain National Park. Welcome to Teresa Lake, the smallest and saddest Alpine Lake ever! The park is simply getting less snow, less snow runoff, and this is the result. If you look really hard at the very far edge of the photograph, there is actually water still there, frozen but there.
Then we hustled back to camp to build a fire. Against incredible odds and on a wet surface Mike managed to make it happen. I'd like to think of this one as a bit more of a team effort than usual. If you look on the right hand side of the fire, there's a grate where we were able to dry off our socks. I'm not sure what we would have done if we hadn't been able to get a fire started because our shoes were soaking wet and it was 10°F at camp.
Another reason I was really grateful that Mike got a fire started was that I had brought hot dogs for dinner. Let me tell you, these guys are not all that good cold when there is a whipping wind and below freezing temperatures.
Before we went to bed we were rewarded with the rising moon. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to see the Milky Way, but this was reward enough.
In the morning we headed up to see Wheeler Peak and the other Alpine Lake.
Here is Stella Lake; it is at the base of Wheeler Peak. It is quite lovely but a shame that we had to see it totally frozen as it usually has a deep blue hue. If you'd like to see a video of it you can head on over to YouTube for a one-minute look.
It's amazing; we had barely had any fires for most of the trip, and now I hardly want to go a night without one. Even though it's freezing cold and the wind is whipping up, I'm still happy to sit outside and just watch the fire burn.
One of the most popular things to do in Great Basin is to take a tour of Lehman Caves. There are actually 40 caves in Great Basin but this is the only one that's generally available to the public. Unfortunately for us, because of the high winds and snow storm, the power to the entire park was knocked out. No power, no lights, no cave tour. We didn't want to stay an entire extra day to see the caves so we moved along.
Chatting with Park Rangers has so many benefits. Firstly we get to learn some really historical stories, we also get to learn about brand new places that we probably would have driven right past. The woman who sent us to see this archeological site had the best ranger story that I've heard in a while. A little while ago she was stationed at Capitol Reef National Park. More than once visitors came in and asked whether the park had giraffes. Please tell me that you all remember Capitol Reef National Park from a few weeks ago. At first she didn't know what they could possibly be asking about. She enlisted the help of a ranger who had been in the park longer, and found out that when deer stand up on their hind legs to eat the apples out of the trees some visitors think that they're giraffes. I know as a teacher I'm supposed to say that there is no such thing as a stupid question, but this one really stretches the line.
I thought that perhaps a visual would help to bring it all home.
One of the many things that I learned on this trip is that there are so many classifications and sub-classifications inside the American park system. I have to say that this is the first time that I've seen an archeological site all by itself. The BLM administers this site and produced the most incredible brochure walking visitors through this location. To be honest, if we hadn't had the brochure it would have just been another spot in the desert. This is a truly great use of governmental funds and the partnership with Brigham Young University. Baker Village contains the remains of a Fremont Indian village. This site was occupied from ~1220 to ~1295 CE. The village contains several small pit houses and granaries, surrounding a main big house, and practised a form of agriculture.
Here is a close-up of the big house. The Fremont people were extremely complex societally. The great house was lined up so that the Sun would shine through the mountains to the right through a door in the big house and land on the back wall. In this way the people would know what time of year it was exactly and be able to judge when to start planting the crops. Sometimes the Fremont people are thought to be less complex than other societies of the same time period, but recent archeological developments have shown that this is incorrect. They appear to be less complex because they built their homes out of a less durable material that has disintegrated in many sites, leaving us with less clues to their culture.
This road may seem like nothing but it actually goes somewhere incredibly special. I mean we didn't know what at the time, but I made Mike turn down this dirt road so I could go and see the salt flat that you see ahead of you.
Here it is on Google. If you didn't know any better you'd simply pack up your family, your swimsuit, your floaties and come out here for a family vacation. I don't particularly recommend the swimming as there is no water. But when all is said and done, and we've left Utah, we will have seen all of the parts of the ancient Lake Bonneville.
Here is what Lake Bonneville looked like at the height of its fill. It was more than 1,000 ft deep and 19,691 square miles. Just to put this in a bit of perspective, it was as large as Lake Michigan and significantly deeper. As the world became drier Lake Bonneville changed. The current remnants are Great Salt Lake, Utah Lake, Sevier Lake, Rush Lake, and Little Salt Lake. I didn't add pictures of them all here because we saw them spread out all over Utah. But this one was the first and the most impressive to me.
As the salt flats come they go, and almost as soon as it appeared on the horizon it was gone and we were back to the typical Utah view at sunset... red soil and long straight roads
...though I have to say sometimes even I have to pull over and take a photograph of the sunset. What am I going to do when I come home? Where do I see the stars and the horizon?
Long after sunset we arrived at Little Sahara Recreation area. This is another example of if we'd known better we would never have come. Except I'm so glad we did because I love this place. When we arrived it became immediately apparent that no one comes here to hike. This is a gigantic play area for OHV vehicles. If you own a dune buggy or a dirt bike or an ATV, this is heaven on earth. The Beaver Lodge said that it really wanted to give the dunes a go but we talked some sense into her and just went hiking.
So here it is. These immense and gorgeous remnants of an ancient ocean all piled up for us.
Notice how we turned the Beaver Lodge away from the dunes. Smart not to take a chance that she would make a break and try to climb this insane hill. It would seem like nothing can climb it but I have video that says otherwise.
In the morning we perused the dunes and thought, why not just go for the best part and summit the highest one.
I included this picture because from a distance it would seem that the dunes were entirely uniform in construction. This couldn't be farther from the truth. This sand has run itself up against a previously formed rock mountain. The prevailing winds have carried the grains here to rest but the mountain still has its way and pokes its head through, making it interesting to climb.
When I left the Van I thought it would be smart to put on my water shoes so that the sand would drain out. I have not recently made such a bad call in judgment. The sand here is extremely cold and it feels like running your feet through freezing water as the sand seeps through your sandals. One has to weigh that against the view, and unfortunately a little bit of discomfort is never going to win out.
When we reached the top, we got to look out over the distant dunes. We also got to look back on a coal-fired power plant that we'd passed hours ago.
I just wanted to put in a bit of a public service announcement. Here is Mike working his way up the dunes. It's not exactly a quick process and you have to understand that even when hikers normally have the right of way, here they certainly do not. We hit this park at a magical juncture when the OHV crowd was not around. Be sure, if you're ever as lucky as we are to visit, that you are careful.
After our hike up the 700' dunes, I got to engage in my favorite activity. Running down the dunes at terrific speed. I had to pause at a few points because these dunes are so vertical and I thought I might lose control and have a tumble down the front side.
Once we got back to the Beaver Lodge I was feeling better about my choices of partially open footwear. No other explanation is necessary I trust.
After our incredibly rewarding hike Mike and I settled down to do some business of blogging. All of a sudden we heard a noise behind us and this dune buggy had pulled in! Of course being me I scampered over, fully intending to charm him into taking me for a ride. Irritatingly I was rebuffed! I didn't even get to state my case. He was not interested in speaking to me at all. That didn't stop me from including a video in this blog.
With your $18 entrance fee you also get to camp in the park. This is the site that we chose overlooking the white dunes. We also had a wonderful fire, though I have to say the wood was scarce pickings at this campsite. Luckily we had brought our own.
On the way out we ran into a single man driving an entire herd of sheep, using only four dogs. It was like being back in the Pyrenees as they swarmed around the van.
Here is the gentleman and two of his puppies. They came right at the end of the sheep. He must have a lot of faith in his two front dogs because they're the ones that kept the herd moving in the right direction. If you'd like to see what I mean you can check out the video on YouTube.
We stayed overnight in salt Lake City. There are no photos of it because the air pollution over Salt Lake City is appalling. If you've never seen Salt Lake City, it's nestled right at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains to the east/north and the Oquirrh Mountains at the western edge. It is quite a sight to see the mountains towering over the city.
On our way out of town I asked Mike to pull over so that I could take a look at the Great Salt Lake. Here is the view that we saw. I know that it's a dying lake but this is insane! If you read the historic marker above, it bears no resemblance to what the area looks like today.
As we were driving along Route 80 this sculpture came up out of nowhere. Thank goodness for Google because I was able to figure out what it was. The work is called Metaphor: The Tree of Utah, and it was funded and sculpted by Swedish artist Karl Momen. It is located in the vast Great Salt Lake Desert. The sculpture is constructed mainly of concrete, and has six spheres that are coated with natural rock/minerals that are found in Utah. There are also several partial sphere segments on the ground around the base. Inscribed on the plaque are the words from Ode to Joy by Friedrich Schiller.
Momen was, supposedly, moved to create the 87-foot-tall "tree" by the: "vastness and relative emptiness of the Bonneville Salt Flats, because trees brings space, nature, myth and technology together. Also the partial spheres below symbolize the changing of the seasons, when trees naturally transform themselves and the landscape around them." I certainly didn't expect to have a moment of art critique in the middle of the Utah desert, but it happened!
We drove quite a bit out of our way so that Mike could be the coolest boy in his group after he saw the Bonneville Salt Flats. This area was created as Lake Bonneville evaporated at the end of the Pleistocene Era. It is a densely packed salt pan in northwestern Utah. The area is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is best known for numerous land speed records that have been set at the "Bonneville Speedway".
If you go 6 miles behind where Mike is standing, you would be on the actual speedway.
We drove around to get even closer to the Speedway. This is where the current world land speed record was made. It stands at 763.035 mph, set in October 1997 by British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green.
Here is his "car". To me it looks more like an airplane without the wings. If you want to see his record breaking run driving the jet-powered Thrust SSC, Click here.
Here is a panorama of what the salt flats look like with a bit of winter water on them.
Mike took the Beaver Lodge for a spin on the Speedway. We didn't quite get up to the record but he made a pretty good go at it.
As we headed to Craters of the Moon National Monument we kept passing under these structures on Rt 93. Clearly Nevada and Idaho are very dedicated to minimizing motorists' encounters with mule deer and elk.
On this trip Mike and I have taken to collecting some odd things. When possible we've been trying to hit the highest peak in every State, go to a brewery, summit as many 14,000 ft. peaks and do a geocache in each State. Normally I don't put up photographs of our geocaching adventures but this one was really amazing.
When we got out of the car we had to climb under a barbedwire fence, go through the boulder field that you see above, to find the cache that looks out on this beautiful meandering stream. This is one of those places that you can't see from the highway and would only know about if you lived in the area or if you go geocaching.
After geocaching we went to Twin Falls Idaho, hit a brewery and stayed the night. It had been quite a while since we've had a hotel room, and I was ecstatic. We also hit Mi Puebla, a wonderful Mexican grocery that I will sadly never see again. They had a food item that was a marriage between pork belly and Chicharrón. They also had Lengua... don't judge until you try it. In fact if you ask, I'll be happy to make it for you.
We are spending my birthday in Craters of the Moon National Monument. It is named because one of the first people to see it thought that it looked like the surface of the moon. I had no idea that there was such an enormous lava flow in the continental United States.
I thought that an aerial view of the park supplied by NASA might help you understand the extent of this lava flow.
But I'm not sure that anything really prepares you for how beautiful it is when you see it with snow. There is a tremendous amount of humidity in the air and it settles out on top of the accumulated snow as beautiful crystals. All over the park we ran into different snow and ice crystal structures depending on wind, humidity and land formations.
Even though it had not snowed here in a while, all of the trees and saltbush were covered in a beautiful layer of snow crystals.
One of the wonderful things about pit toilets is that it doesn't matter how cold it gets, they still work. The other nice thing about them is that they cut the wind and raise the temperature dramatically so you can go to the bathroom in relative comfort. I know this may seem like a small thing, but trust me when you use the facilities outside and a 50 mile an hour wind pokes you in the butt, you wish for a pit toilet.
The most visited area in the park is a section that contains caves and lava tubes. As you look across the landscape you can't see them at first. You have to be quite close because the entire landscape is so uniformly rugged.
You may not be able to believe it but they have hibernating bats here. Luckily these bats don't have white nose syndrome yet so the park requires you to get a permit before going into the caves.
You'd have to bring a head lamp because 10 steps in and you're in pitch blackness.
Remember this is not a cave that is formed in the normal way. There was not running water, wind action or sulfuric acid. All the walls are pure hardened lava, and because we were here in winter, ice stalactites and stalagmites began to form.
There are also lots of icicles that form as well. I have to say that this might be the most fun I've ever had in a cave. It might also be the fact that we didn't have a guide so we got to tramp around all on our own.
This picture gives me the opportunity to put out there one of my favorite memorizing devices. Stalactites hold tight to the ceiling, Stalagmites might reach the ceiling some day and if they do they'll form a column. In this case a column of ice. If we'd been here a couple of months later we might have even seen it.
Here is a close-up of the ceiling and part of the wall. I cannot even imagine watching the lava solidify into these amazing structures.
Finally after doing three caves we got to the lava tubes. In the past there would have been many more lava tubes. but generally as they cool they crack and crumble inwards. The picture above shows what happens when the lava cools quickly and then shatters into the now empty tube underneath. If the lava cools more slowly, then it collapses inward much more like a souffle and less like peanut brittle.
Here is a view inside one of the lava tubes. You can see that 2 sections of the roof caved in, leaving the rock piles you see in the foreground.
When we finally emerged from the lava tubes we were able to see the sun set over Craters of the Moon.
The next morning we got up and took a walk to a much less visited section of the park. We decided to walk a large 13-mile loop. Because you have to walk so far, most people don't ever see this section of the park in winter. In fact all day we saw only two other people.
Here the surrounding landscape is not black like the lava tube area; instead it is a reddish black which indicates that surface oxidation has occurred in the rock.
In one section we climbed up a cinder cone volcano to get a better view of the surrounding land.
While up there I felt the need to make a snow angel because this is the first time that we've seen enough accumulation to make it possible. Unfortunately the snow was fairly compacted and so it's sort of a light snow angel.
These are spatter cone volcanoes. They may not look like much now but they're extremely rare and incredibly important geologically speaking. They are formed when magma surfaces in a segment of the rift. At first there is a curtain of fire and a line of small eruptions. Next, portions of the rift become clogged, causing the magma to jet higher. If the magma is charged with gas it sprays high up creating cinder cones with very holey, low density rock. Some vents along the rift did not eject magma that was highly gaseous; this forms the spatter cones that you see above.
After we left Craters of the Moon we headed back towards Salt Lake City because I wanted to see the Mormon temple at Christmas. Since it was the day before Mike's birthday we ate out at Red Rock Brewing. The food and beer were delicious here, just a wonderful experience.
After that we walked the short distance to the Mormon temple and came upon this odd collection of signs.
Just a little bit further along we came upon at this spaceman. Sometimes I miss being in cities because you can spontaneously trip over art like this anywhere.
The fun thing is that you can look up into the helmet and take a picture of yourself looking at him while he's looking back at you. Ground Control to Major Tom? Not a chance if he's hanging around in Salt Lake City!
I'm not sure I was prepared for how popular this site was going to be. Normally I'm pretty good about cutting out the people in my photos, but not here and this was on Monday! I can't imagine what kind of crazy zoo it would be on the weekends. You're not allowed to go into the main temple because it's considered sacred by the Mormon people. The first building that we could go into was the Assembly Hall which is one of the many buildings included in Mormon Temple Square.
When we first walked into the Assembly Hall, I thought that this was the organ that is used for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It isn't and was installed in the 1980's though you'd never know it to look at it.
The next building that we walked around is the temple itself. To me it looks much more like a palace or a prison but it is quite beautiful and ornate.
Directly in front of the temple they had a beautiful reflecting pool with the Holy Family surrounded by lights. I'm not sure why I find the nativity so troubling here because supposedly the Mormons don't consider themselves to be Christians....odd.
Unfortunately we were unable to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir practise. This is their Assembly Hall and the famous organ. The organ is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. It truly is a beautiful instrument.
After we left Salt Lake City headed for Dinosaur National Monument we passed this beautiful reservoir as the sun rose. This is Strawberry Reservoir and it is in the Uinta Mountains.
In the morning I thought that we should go out for Mike's birthday because, on the actual day, it was the only meal we were going to have in a town. We only stopped here because I needed a grocery store and this little breakfast place was right down the road. Their food was ok but the breakfast meats were amazing! Mike had the sausage and I had the bacon; both were very, very good.
Fairly close to Dinosaur National Monument we passed this Sinclair's on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. I thought it boded well because they had this dinosaur all dressed up for Christmas. Also it gives me a moment to discuss the fact that the name of the state of Utah is a mistranslation of the Indian tribe Uintah. It's amazing how much gets lost in translation. Remember that Devil's Tower was also a mis-translation of an Indian word that meant Sleeping Bear.
I was so glad that we got to spend Mike's birthday in this national monument because he missed it on his last trip. Consider this like my missing the Grand Canyon on my last trip. Sometimes things are too far out of the way, and sometimes you feel like you can't do them justice. The bottom line is, sometimes it's best to skip them and come back later.
When we got to the visitor center I was entranced by this stegosaurus sculpture. I'll let the placard next to it tell you where he came from.
I have always been a bit entranced by the World's Fair, especially the old ones. This is just one more interesting thing that I've seen from a World's Fair.
The main attraction at Dinosaur National Monument is an enormous wall that is studded with dinosaur fossils. This is a view from the walkway looking out over the parking lot and the plain from which this ridge rose up.
Here is the actual dinosaur wall itself. I'm sorry that the photo is not the best but the wall is huge and the lighting was not advantageous. I just thought I would include it because it's very difficult for me to express how enormous this wall really is. Essentially they managed to encapsulate a butte for perpetual public enjoyment.
Here is a close-up of one section. There are so many dinosaur bones here I can't even begin to tell you what they are. We did pick up a description booklet but perhaps specifics take away from the grandeur of the fossils themselves.
On the lower level of the museum they have several dinosaur sculptures that show where nearly complete skeletons were located on this site. The reason that so many full dinosaur skeletons and skulls were found here is because, as the landscape changed, there were periods of drought/die-off and then subsequent periods of heavy rain and silt accumulation that alternately washed the bones into a logjam and covered them in sediment.
They did a very cute job with decor in the museum. Also, behind Mike they had case after case that covered smaller and less well known fossils that were found on site. It was all extremely educational.
On the lower level Mike and I got to touch real fossils. I know that the hands-on portion is supposed to be for kids but we're just big kids so I hope you get it.
Here's a view of the museum you've just taken a tour of, from the outside. I hope that you can see why I say that they literally encased a butte. To the right of the museum is a lovely walking trail where you can see dinosaur bones in the wild, and by this I mean not in any way preserved.
Dinosaur National Monument also had an extreme wealth of petroglyphs and pictographs. There really are way too many for me to include in the blog but if you would like to see this interesting collection, you could head over to Instagram and look for my collection there. They will all be nested together under the picture that you see above. Just click on the sentence and it will take you.
Pat yourself on the back. You have just seen as much of Dinosaur National Monument as 90% of the visitors. Unfortunately there's so much more out there that no one ever sees. First we're going to take a tour of the section that is in Utah and then we're going to head over to Colorado to finish up. This is one of those National Monuments that spans more than one State.
Something else that makes it special is that in the middle of the national monument on the Utah side there is a longstanding and currently working farm/ranch. They grow grain, graze cattle, and have sheep. There is clearly a good working relationship between this ranch and the National Park Service. They share the only access road.
One of the other wonderful things about this park is that they give you a driving brochure that takes you through the scenic drive as well as some of the hikes on the side. It's extremely well written and they stop you at places like this. Any guesses what they call this rock?
This is Josie Bassett Morris's homestead. She lived for most of her 90 years in this stunning landscape. Josie's family gave her an unusual upbringing. Her dinner time guests included some outlaws like Butch Cassidy, which fostered in Josie a strong sense of hospitality, generosity and community which one desperately needs if you're going to live in an environment like this.
The women in Josie's household were the best definition of feminist. She was married and divorced five times in an era when divorce was almost unheard of. In letters from people who actually knew her, she was universally admired because she could work alongside the cowhands and run an efficient ranch. Her family had nothing to give her, even in marriage, so in 1913 she moved to Cub Creek and built her own homestead, lived there more than 50 years, worked out how to feed, house and water her cattle; going so far as to dike a stream so that it was her own. Water rights were asserted, giving her and her son a way to live in this barren landscape. The picture above shows a Box Canyon that Josie and her son used to corral their cattle. Much cheaper to use the landscape than to put up fences.
Here is a picture that was taken just down the road from Josie's Homestead. I want to give you an idea of what the rest of the landscape looks like.
I wish that I could be as industrious as she was, but we have the Beaver Lodge and it allows us to park here with no problem whatsoever. We were able to make a fire, Mike called his parents, and I made dinner.
It may not seem like your idea of a Happy Birthday celebration, but I think it fit the bill for us.
On the next day we took a hike in a more remote section of the park. We wanted to see some of the sections that don't contain dinosaur bones and are more overlooked. I can't believe how glad I am that we chose this hike because the brochure provided by the National Monument was amazing. It has inspired me to create an entire video and pictorial walkthrough for my students at home.
After the previous hike we started out towards Colorado. There is a completely different section of the National Monument that is accessible only from this State. It was quite a long drive around so I thought we should break out Mike's choice of snacks. Sugar cookie poptarts!
We drove into this portion of the National Monument and realized that it's completely surrounded by BLM land and private land. Clearly the people here fiercely guard their land rights because there were lots of signs that warn Do not Trespass.
We had come specifically to camp at Echo Park so we headed off on 14 N to 156 which are two of the dirt roads that were supposed to be about a 6% downward grade for 10 miles.
We were definitely not on a 6% grade road. The average might have been 6% but there were many sections that were probably in the neighborhood of 12%, especially up towards the rim. This will become important later. One might think to themselves how can you know what the grade of a road is? Once you have driven the Beaver Lodge around for a while, the grade becomes irritatingly apparent.
I thought I'd include this picture to show that we did go through some Canyon sections that were both geologically beautiful and flat.
We also encountered some new things for the Beaver Lodge, such as water crossings. There were 3 in total and this one was the next to last. I made Mike get out and check each one because I am not so bold when it comes to crossing running water with snow.
When we were almost all the way to Echo Park there was a petroglyph area called high rock. Trust me, I wondered in my own head how any native person would have made their way to this area. When we got to Echo Park, it was abundantly clear why they would have come. The game in this area is astounding! We drove past about 8 deer, and wait until you see what else we saw evidence of.
I think that I mentioned previously that Mike and I do a lot of scouting around the camp grounds to find wood. This time we let Castor do the work for us, and this is what he came back with... crazy beaver.
Just down from our campsite we walked out to the river and found evidence of Castor's brethren. I have never seen a beaver in the wild and I really wished that today was the day that would change. But there was so much evidence of beaver activity that I thought the next morning I was sure to make a sighting. Sadly it was not to be.
Here is another picture of the river area that I loved so much. I would come back to this campground any time! Well maybe not in Winter.
Please keep in mind that Mike and I had checked the weather report that there was 0% precipitation in the area so we set up a fire and made dinner. Right as we got to eat Mike said, "Is it sleeting?" I said, "Let's monitor the situation and see. Would you like a S'more?" Both of us should have been more than intelligent enough to say Oh my God... pack up and run. We are more than 1000' down a canyon and I bet it's snowing at the rim.
Luckily we were smart enough to drive out that night or I swear we'd still be stuck down there.
It may not look that bad, but it was. What started as sleet turned into some snow, then turned into a lot of snow, then turned into more than 2" of snow up a 12% grade with a cliff on the right that posed certain death if we went over. We're just glad to be headed towards home for Christmas!
