Zion National Park

We left the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on Sunday morning and drove to Zion National Park in Utah, one of Utah’s famous circle of national parks.

Zion National Park:  It is time to add a few superlatives – how about “Wow” or “Oh my gosh!”  After seeing so many national parks, we know that each one has its own unique characteristics and each is awe-inspiring in its own way (and they probably would not be national parks if they were not).  Even so, in our eyes Zion is exceptional and, admittedly, though we loved the Grand Canyon, we think we were even more impressed by Zion.  The towering Navajo sandstone cliffs are magnificent and formidable.

People have occupied the current Zion National Park area for thousands of years.  The original residents tracked mammoths, camels, and other game in the region.  Then came climate change, disease, and over-hunting, which forced them to become more agricultural.

The original farmers, the Ancestral Puebloans, developed the system for terrace farming at heights between 5,000 and 7,000 feet of elevation.  They were followed by the Southern Paiute people who came out of the desert with their own abilities to grow crops in a harsh environment.  Last, in the mid-19^th century, came the Mormons who built communities and farmed the river terraces.  They gave biblical-sounding names to many of the geological sites we see today, including the name of the park.  (Other names given to some of the formations are Angels Landing, Court of the Patriarchs, North and South Guardian Angels.)

Zion became a national park in 1919.  It is in the desert, and the temperature the day we were there reached 107 degrees F, but it was not terribly uncomfortable as it was dry heat and there was lots of shade.  Zion was formed by water, including the Virgin River that runs through the park (and much further – 162 miles in total), and it is water that shapes the land.

The park has a very good system of shuttle buses that go from one trail head to the next, which makes traveling through the park very easy, as they run every 10 minutes.  After parking at the Visitors Center, we took the shuttle from one trail to another.

We took four walks in the two days we were there: from the Visitors Center to the Museum where we saw the best introductory movie to a park that we have seen; Emerald Pools, a walk that started out easy and then became more difficult as we climbed to see pools of water nestled among the rocks; Weeping Rocks, where water that had been absorbed by the wall of rock was seeping out; and the very pleasant River Walk along the banks of the Virgin River.  There we met a trio of gentlemen in their 70s hiking with great energy, and going into areas that we did not try in the 107-degree heat.  We give them great credit and admire their attitude and stamina.

Weeping Rocks was about as inspiring a view of nature as we have ever seen.

The one negative was that the park was very crowded (although as one person said, “Just wait till summer”).  The parking lots were marked full at around 10 am but we learned to go around the signs, as there were always people who were there for morning hikes and were leaving.  Both days, we got lucky.

Leaving the park the first night, we had some difficulty finding a campground; the first we tried was full, but they suggested a campground at the end of the road that may have some availability.  It had full hookups, was very reasonably priced, and was owned and operated by the Best Western Hotel across the street.  The next morning, we decided to extend it to a second night and a second day in Zion.

Bryce Canyon National Park

A short drive from Zion National Park is Bryce Canyon National Park, established in 1928.  A very good introductory film at the Visitors Center said of Bryce that there is nothing like it in the world.  And, indeed, we think the photos will attest to that.

The most famous feature of the park is the Bryce Amphitheater, a canyon filled with unique rock formations called Hoodoos (no relation to the Paul Simon song), or Fairy Chimneys, or Earth Pyramids.  These are small, skinny spires of rock, crimson in color, that protrude from the bottom of arid basins.  These strange-looking geological wonders are formed over many centuries by wind, acid rain, and frost.  They are ever-changing, and what we see today will be entirely different in the future as the forces of nature will erode and break them down – and different-looking formations will take their place.

The park’s main road, 18 miles long, leads past the Amphitheater and has multiple viewing areas to show the different aspects of the formations, each connected by a trail that you can walk, drive to, or take a shuttle from point to point.  One of the nice aspects of Bryce Canyon National Park is that it is friendly to people with physical limitations.  There are many viewing areas with level, paved access and which are very popular with seniors, some with walkers, some with wheelchairs.

In our two days in Bryce, we took several walks including to Inspiration Point, a short but steep trail with a view that was indeed inspiring, and from Sunrise Point to Sunset Point, a trail of about one mile along the rim of the Amphitheater.

But Bryce is not just the Amphitheater and the Hoodoos.  We joined a ranger in a walk along the Bristlecone Loop trail, a 1-1/2 hour walk through some beautiful forest at over 9,100 feet elevation.  We had lunch and then attended a ranger talk where we learned about the Grand Staircase, an immense sequence of sedimentary rock layers that stretches from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, through Zion, and ends with the highest point of Bryce Canyon.  This region was conceptualized in the 1870s by geologist Clarence Dutton as a huge stairway ascending out of the bottom of the Grand Canyon northward with the cliff edge of each layer forming giant steps.

We had two full, thoroughly enjoyable days at Bryce Canyon National Park.  Upon leaving the park, we got a photo of one of the local residents, a wild turkey.

On the second day, as we drove back to our campground, we stopped at the Red Canyon Visitors Center and took a walk along the Hoodoo Trail.  We kind of missed the trail and ended up climbing a steep and slippery rock slope but scrambled down and got back to the RV and to our campsite and dinner.

Scofield State Park, Utah

The 3+ hour drive from Bryce to Scofield State Park was up and down a hilly and forest-covered winding road, turning and twisting along a narrow path with quick drop-offs into a deep ravine – and loving every minute of it.  We ended up at the park after passing through Scofield, Utah, site of one of the worst coal mine disasters in American history.  Over 200 miners died in 1990; hardly a family in the town was untouched by the loss of life.  A first for everything: we met a coal miner and his family in the park.

Thursday, Friday, and Shabbat we were camped on the edge of a pristine lake with mountains in the background; it was a serene environment.  Thursday night, when we first arrived, there was hardly anyone there, but the weekend was more crowded.  Most of the campers were into fishing (including the children) and enjoyed catching their meals.  To say we are in the middle of no-where is both desirable and frustrating: desirable, as in no crowds (as there can be in the national parks; for us, especially in the Grand Canyon and Zion), but frustrating as we had no internet connection.

On Friday, we drove an hour to do some shopping and finally were connected, for a short time, to AT&T so we could reach the kids.  We also got possibly the best haircuts we have had abroad at Walmart.  As we have said before, Walmart has everything.

Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert

From our New Mexico campground to the Petrified Forest National Park in Navajo and Apache counties in northeastern Arizona is about a six-hour drive (mostly in New Mexico), and the park was the next thing on our list.  Although we did not think we would be driving the entire way in one day, the road just kept going on and on – very few cars, town names that appeared on the map – but we think just so the map would not look so empty, as we were through them before we even knew we were there.  The only feature we could see of one town was a junk yard.

Almost the entire way:  No Waze (back to paper maps).  No internet reception.  No phone calls.

We turned off the road, finally, at the Petrified Forest, which we visited for a few hours.  After viewing an introductory film, we took a 1/2 mile walk, the Giant Logs loop walk, which features some of the largest and most colorful logs in the park.  They are truly stunning in their various colors.

How does wood become petrified?  Over time (a long time) trees died or were knocked down, and the logs were buried beneath layers of silt, mud, sand, and volcanic ash which protected them from decay.  Water laden with minerals percolated through the layers, carrying silica (and other minerals).  The silica bonded with the cells of the tree, replicating the organic material in perfect detail.  Eventually, the silica replaced the wood material – and the tree has now become stone.  In the picture it looks as though the logs had been sawed into smooth-edged pieces, but we learned from a ranger talk that they broke off that way – on their own, like a piece of chalk.

As it was near closing time, we left the park for a free campground (actually a parking lot next to a gift shop) just outside the park entrance.  No hookups, just a dark and quiet night, us and one other RV.

Petrified Forest-Painted Desert Day 2

After a very good night’s sleep, we sat outside the RV and enjoyed the surroundings of flat desert scrub land as far as the eye could see in any direction.  The gates opened electronically at exactly 8:00 am, as did the gift shop we camped next to – guess which one we went to first.

There is only one road which goes through the Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert.  Just off the road are some fairly short hikes and lots of lookouts.  We took a few of the walks, stopped at some of the lookouts, and took many photos.

The Petrified Forest is not just petrified wood, although the trees-turned-into-stone is certainly the highlight.  But what was unusually inspiring (and not expected) is the badlands-type terrain which takes up a good portion of the park (not as large as in South Dakota, but very, very pretty).

We chose a few trails; the first was Crystal Forest, a .7- mile loop trail through a badlands landscape with many petrified trees.  Further down the road, we stopped at the Agate Bridge, a 110-foot long petrified log bridge.  It has been shored-up by a concrete column, but it is said that eventually, water will do its work and the bridge will collapse.

At 3.5 miles off the main road was the Blue Mesa trail head, a one-mile trail through vibrant badlands (blue, pink, grey) and colorful petrified wood.  The beginning was a very narrow and steep path at the side of a hill and, of course, what goes down.… The views were spectacular.

Next was a stop at Newspaper Rock (someone in the National Park Service has a sense of humor because over and over, we were fascinated by the names given to things we saw at the various parks), where we saw rocks that display more than 650 petroglyphs – picture carvings or etchings in the rock surface.  Many have yet to be interpreted and some are over 2,000 years old.

As we continued on, we drove through the Painted Desert (a section of the Petrified Forest National Park), where there are multiple viewing stops showing spectacular views of multi-hued landscapes.

In addition to the beautiful landscapes and petrified trees, the park is also known for many fossils of plants and dinosaurs of the late Triassic period.

We said goodbye to a wonderful experience and headed to one of our favorite hangouts, Walmart, to restock our supplies.  We bet you thought we were going to stay overnight in the parking lot, but no, avid reader; for us, more desirable than free accommodations with the hustle and bustle of city traffic all around, is the quiet of a good campground, and we were able to find it in Homolovi State Park of Arizona.  Again, we were in the peace and quiet of nature, with plains vistas as far as the eye can see.  A beautiful sunset, a full moon.

On to the Grand Canyon

A four-hour drive and we arrived at Kaibab Camper Village, one of the closest private campgrounds to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon; unlike campgrounds within the Grand Canyon, this has water and electric hookups.

The ride to the campground was absolutely stunning, and one which folks who go to the more popular South Rim (the part of the park with all the amenities and crowded with tourists) miss.  We drove past the multi-colored Echo and Vermilion Cliffs and through Marble Canyon, which had cliffs on both sides.  We also drove through a good part of the Navajo Nation Reservation (photo below is of the Colorado River near the Navajo Center) and the Kaibab National Forest – our campground was actually in the forest, nestled between trees.

We took an hour walk through the forest, enjoying the surrounding tall trees and trying to find Jacob Lake, a place so significant a small town was named after it.  Without being successful, we returned to the campground and inquired at the office as to the lake’s where-a-bouts.  It turned out it was just outside the opposite end of the campground and had barely enough water to float a boat.

A short hike from Jacob Lake is a small cabin – built in 1910 by the Forest Service – which served as a ranger station for the entire area.  The cabin, together with six other cabins built soon after, provided rangers with strategic locations to manage their programs and as a way to transfer supplies along the area of the North Rim, especially in winter.  The 1910 cabin, refurbished to its original look in 2014, is the only one still standing.

Our campground was about 45 miles from the entrance to the North Rim, and then another 12 miles to the Visitors Center.  The entire route is through the Kaibab National Forest (the word “kaibab” is derived from a Paiute term meaning “mountain lying down,” their name for the Grand Canyon), an hour of very, very pretty driving on a not-crowded road.  This is early in the season, so there was plenty of parking in the park and it was not crowded.

The Grand Canyon

There is so much beauty in the Grand Canyon that descriptions do not do it justice.  It is that big, and that beautiful.  What can one say about the world’s most famous hole in the ground?

To get a feeling of the scope of the Canyon: As the crow files, the North Rim and South Rim are about 10 miles apart (can be more – up to 18 miles, can be less).  It is also 277 miles long, and has depths of over one mile.

We spent most of the day in the Canyon and took two hikes.

Our first hike was a combination of two trails: The Transept Trail (about two miles) and the Bridal Path (a little less than two miles).  The Transept Trail goes along the edge of Transept Canyon, an inner canyon (between the north and south rims) and, as we walked along, we saw the canyon below and soaring ridges above.  The colors were gorgeous.

While on the path, we connected to the Bridal Path, a maintained path that was relatively easy and flat, (which together made a loop) – and was a good way to get back to the Visitors Center.

The second walk was Bright Angel Path – a short (1/4 mile), paved, steep, and narrow trail, which had a drop on each side – and which gave us a spectacular view of the canyon from three directions, south, west, and east.

Grand Canyon Day 2

We returned to the canyon for another hike but first indulged ourselves with coffee we made in the RV.  The day before, we had bought coffee from the coffee shop in the park but it left a lot to be desired; this time, we brought our own and it was far superior.  (One of the advantages of traveling in an RV and having your kitchen go wherever you go.)  We took our coffee to the patio of the Grand Lodge, which has Adirondack chairs overlooking the canyon, and soaked up the view.

Two pictures that we were hoping to get – and which we did get – were of rare sights in nature.  At the entrance to the park we came across a herd of bison with new born calves.  Spring is usually the time when calves are born and we were lucky enough to be there at the right time to see them.

Also, unique to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (in all the world) is the Kaibab squirrel with its long ears and white tail.  We were about to give up finding this rare animal until, while sitting outside our RV on Friday afternoon, a man ran past asking, “Did you see which way it went?” When asked what, he replied, ‘’a squirrel with a white tail.’’  Bill ran for the camera and was able to capture it on picture; they are so fast that the shots are not great, but we got it.

We had no reception in our campground and there was none at the park, no matter how often we went to the edge of the canyon and held the phone up in the air.  A very kind person suggested we could get sketchy Wi-Fi in front of the general store at the North Rim campground, and we were thus able to get a few messages out to the kids to let them know we were ok.  [It seems that no one we spoke to could get internet.  A few did get phone reception (not always good) with Verizon.]

Shabbat was restful, and the way the campground is situated, we were able to take short walks into the forest.  We finished the cold cuts we bought in Houston and had fresh challah made in our bread machine.  Salmon patties for dinner and corned beef and turkey for lunch with salad, rice, Claussen pickles – a feast in the middle of the forest near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  Did we emphasize enough where we are?  Because even though we’ve been here for four days, it’s still hard to believe.

The Grand Canyon is truly inspirational.  Its immense size overwhelms the senses.

Dear Avid (at least we hope) Reader,

Due to technical difficulties beyond our control, we were not able to post most of our entries from the road.  We bought a new laptop computer specifically for the trip that worked fine at the beginning, but first stopped downloading our pictures from our cameras and then stopped accepting our cell phone as a hot spot.  Added to this, we were often in places where we had no reception from AT&T.  Even though we stopped at a computer store in Moab, Utah where they worked on the computer for over an hour, our problems were not solved and eventually we came to the realization we would not be able to post from the road.  However, we continued to write the blog while on the trip; now that we are back home in Israel, we will attempt to post our back stories and pictures.

And now we will continue with our previously scheduled blog.

Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

How do you describe something that is indescribable?  There is nothing in our past experiences that even comes close to the uniqueness of Carlsbad Caverns.  You can walk down to the caverns (by way of the Natural Entrance, about a 1-1/2 hour walk in itself), but we took the elevator down, 800 feet below the surface, to the entrance of the subterranean chambers that make up the caves.

Carlsbad Caverns was discovered by explorer Jim White in the early 1900s and photographed by Ray B. Davis (with Jim White) in 1915.  When the photos reached the public, they created a sensation.  But there were people who would not believe that the caverns were real.  So, in 1923, the U.S. Department of the Interior sent an inspector and, in his report, he wrote: “I am wholly conscious of the feebleness of my efforts to convey in words…the feeling of fear and awe and the desire for an inspired understanding of the Divine Creator’s work….” ’מה רבו מעשיך ה (and not for the first time have we thought this).

Carlsbad Caverns was designated a national park in 1930, and a World Heritage site in 1995.

We first explored the Big Room (a self-guided tour), a 1.25-mile walk around the 8.2-acre chamber that takes about 1-1/2 hours.  Numerous stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, draperies (look them up), and cave pools of water are the attractions, but any description cannot do justice to the scale of the formations.  Not sure the photos can do either, but we tried.

Among the things we saw: a bottomless pit (called that because the early explorers didn’t have lamps that could show the bottom), a giant dome, a formation called the Rock of Ages, and the Painted Grotto.

The second tour, of the King’s Palace, was led by a very entertaining and knowledgeable ranger.  It consisted of four rooms which are only accessible with a ranger (due to earlier guests taking home “souvenir” stalactites) who was a true educator.  We learned how the formations were created and the history of the caverns; one of the rooms has a still-active formation, as attested to by the dripping water.  We each received cave kisses, water dripped on our heads.  Though we only saw a small portion of the caves, we spent most of the day below ground, including having our brown-bag lunch.

[A very interesting piece of information that we learned after the tour from the ranger: For many years, explorers felt a strong breeze blowing from a small cave.  When they received permission to break through and explore, they discovered Lechuguilla Cave, which extends over 140 miles and holds a spectacular ecosystem not open – and never will be open –  to the public.  Within, scientists have discovered enzyme-producing microbes capable of destroying cancer cells.]

After we came up for air and natural light, we headed to one of our favorite campground chains, the parking lot of Walmart in Roswell, New Mexico.  It may not be fancy and it certainly isn’t cheap, as we went shopping for supplies three times.  And we were not alone there; at night it turns into a mini-RV campground.

The only aliens we encountered were on billboard signs.

Twin Spruce RV Park, Ruidoso New Mexico

Sometimes things are just meant to be.  Friday morning, we had no plans for Shabbat and were starting to think we would end up in a hotel (as it was Memorial Day weekend), but we found a place by looking through the Good Sam campground locator book and were fortunate enough to get a campsite in the shade of a beautiful wooded area.  Our campground, Twin Spruce, was crowded, but we were a reasonable distance from our neighbors.  It is near the town of Ruidoso, New Mexico, a tourist haven with a horse racing track that opened its season that weekend.  The population of Ruidoso is 8,000 residents with 20,000 tourists over Memorial Day.  Thankfully, we were not near the action, though we did walk through the main street, examined what the stores had to offer, and quickly returned to our RV to prepare for Shabbat.

Fire is a real threat in much of New Mexico, and signs are posted in the campgrounds and along the roads indicating the severity of the alert.  In this part of New Mexico, it was extreme – no charcoal grills, no campfires, and even smoking a cigarette outside can get one a $500 fine.

White Sands National Monument, New Mexico

White Sands National Monument, in the Chihuahuan Desert at the foot of the San Andres Mountains, covers 275 square miles, and it is the largest gypsum dune field (a large area of dunes entirely composed of gypsum grains, a relatively rare constituent of sand) in the world.  As we drove through the park, there were miles and miles of soft white sand; the national monument encompasses 145,344 acres with shifting sand dunes of up to 60 feet in height.  The whiteness was blinding, and the temperature was 104 degrees F.  One of the interesting things we saw was a snow-white lizard, changing its color to match the surroundings.

Sledding down the dunes is a popular activity, although we did not partake in it.

In the background were the San Andes Mountains.

White Sands was proclaimed a national monument in 1933.  [As an aside: National monuments can be proclaimed by the president of the United States.  National parks must be voted on by Congress.]

The monument was a 1-1/2 hour drive from the campground, but worth the effort.

White Sands area is also known for being near the site (60 miles away) of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon (Trinity Site) in July 1945.  The White Sands Missile Range surrounds the monument and the area is closed off on average of twice a week for a few hours for missile range tests.

As we continued on our drive to Arizona, we passed the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a federally funded research center of the National Science Foundation.  NRAO designs, builds, and operates high sensitivity radio telescopes for use by scientists around the world.  An impressive array, as the photo shows.  “ET call home.”