We left Canyonlands for the relatively short drive to Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado.  We were just south of the forest fires and they were relatively under control (54,129 acres were burned in the area.  In total for the state of Colorado, over 431,606 acres have been burned in Colorado wildfires so far this year), so we were fortunate to be able to continue to our destination.  On the way to Mesa Verde we stopped off at the Colorado Visitor Information Center in Cortez to pick up general information about the park.  There, we were introduced to a couple of archaeologists who just happened to be at the center and were working on digs in the Crow Canyon area near Mesa Verde. They talked about finds that were 800 to 1000 years old.  Not much compared to Israel (and they were fascinated to hear that we lived in Israel), but they were passionate about their work and very interesting to listen to.

We had heard from other campers about a trading post where authentic American Indian crafts were sold at reasonable prices, and we found this to be true.  After purchasing a few gifts to bring home, we continued on to Mesa Verde.

Mesa Verde is unique in the national parks system; it was created in 1906 to preserve the archaeological heritage of the Ancestral Pueblo people, both atop the mesas and in the cliff dwellings (dwellings built beneath overhanging cliffs).  It is the amazing cliff dwellings that bring over half a million people to the park each year.  There are also viewing areas from the top of the mountain showing the valley below.

The first peoples, the Ancestral Puebloans, settled in Mesa Verde about 550 CE and lived in clusters of pit houses dug into the ground with a roof of wood over them.  These worked well, except in the rain; often, after a large storm, the buildings had to be repaired or completely rebuilt.  These early settlers prospered and by 750 CE, began to build houses above ground; in 1000 CE they moved to stone construction and by 1150 CE, thousands of people lived on Mesa Verde.  The cliff dwellings came next.

We followed the Mesa Loop trail, a six-mile loop trail with outlooks over the ruins of three outstanding cliff dwellings: Square Tower House (four-story, the tallest of the cliff dwellings), Sun Point View, and Sun Temple.  These villages, which were mostly built between the 1190s to the late 1270s, ranged from one-room houses to community centers of about 150 rooms. The cliff dwellings protected the dwellers from the elements and served as a defensive structure against enemies.

Wanting to see the cliff dwellings close up, we took a ranger-led tour of Cliff Palace, the largest of the cliff dwellings, and only accessible with a ranger (as are two other cliff dwellings).  Cliff Palace was home to about 100 people and contained 150 rooms and 23 kivas (underground rooms).  The one-hour tour began by descending to the dwellings on uneven sandstone steps and ended with a series of three ladder climbs to get back to the top.

Cliff Palace has been compared to a condominium, as families had their own rooms.  They often did not speak the same dialect as their neighbors.

By about 1300 CE, though, Mesa Verde was deserted; historians and archaeologists can only speculate as to the reasons: drought, crop failures, land depletion, social and political problems.  The Ancestral Puebloans moved south, to what is today New Mexico and Arizona – joining family members who had already settled there.  Today, descendants of the ancient cliff dwellers return to the place of their ancestors as a pilgrimage to a holy site.

That night we stayed in the park’s campground; in the evening, we heard a talk from an interpretive ranger (one-half Indian from the Lakota Sioux) on Indian flutes.  At 70-years old, he has made over 9,000 flutes by hand, and he brought and played a number of them.  The haunting melodies were perfect for the surroundings and the setting sun.  He was also a natural comedian and the program was very entertaining.

The next day we began the long trek back to Atlanta, about 1,600 miles.  We traveled in New Mexico for a while along the famous Route 66 and stayed in Santa Rosa, just east of Albuquerque.

Then, on to Oklahoma, where we camped at Foss State Park through Shabbat.  Friday night we experienced the worst thunder and lightning storm we can ever remember with the strongest of winds.  When it was over we overheard someone yell, “We survived a tornado!”  We’re not sure that was accurate, but the storm was intense.  And the RV was dry and comfortable.

On Sunday we continued east traveling across Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi (we drove through Tupelo, Mississippi, where Elvis was born), Alabama, and Georgia.  Extremely heavy rains followed us much of the way making the driving very slow, but we made it back to the RV storage facility just outside Atlanta safely, TG.

We spent our last Shabbat of the trip in a beautiful Georgia park called Shoal Creek Campground, also known as Margaritaville.  It was recently purchased from the Buford, Georgia municipality by Jimmy Buffett (hence the name).

A few days at the RV center to prepare our camper for storage, and then our return to Israel: Atlanta-New York-Ben Gurion Airport.  Our third – and quite fabulous – trip will forever stay with us.

 

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Canyonlands National Park – June 14 –18, 2018

We left early for Canyonlands, the final national park on our Utah circle of (five) national parks.  It was about one-half hour from our campground (which was between Arches and Canyonlands) along another of Utah’s scenic highways.

Canyonlands is large (337,598 acres) and is divided into three districts: Island in the Sky, the Needles, and the Maze.  Island in the Sky is the most popular district, followed by the Needles.  The Maze is the least accessible – remote with very difficult roads which can be traveled only with 4x4s or off-road vehicles.  The Colorado and Green Rivers, which wind through the heart of Canyonlands, separate the districts.

Although, as the crow flies, Island in the Sky is only twelve miles from the Needles, by car it is over two hours.

Island in the Sky mesa (an isolated flat-topped hill with steep sides and horizontal strata) rests on sheer sandstone cliffs, over 1,000 feet above the surrounding terrain.  Once again, there was one road going through most of this section of the park with several overlooks of spectacular canyons and many trail heads.  We chose two trails, labeled easy.  The first was a one-mile round trip trail to Mesa Arch, which – in addition to being a beautiful arch – provided a stunning view towards the La Sal Mountains.

After driving to some of the other overlooks and viewpoints, we arrived at Grand View Point, a 2-mile round trip hike along the canyon’s edge, showcasing a spectacular panoramic view.

We returned to our campground, worn out, tired, and sweaty (well not sweaty because it’s too dry to sweat here), turned on the air conditioning in the van (though it was cooler today, only 100 degrees F at the campground), and relaxed.

Friday, we spent as a quiet day, went into the city of Moab to see about a computer issue, did some shopping, returned to the campground, and prepared for Shabbat.  While we were discussing whether to leave our air conditioner on all of Shabbat, we read that the temperature was supposed to drop about 15 or more degrees over Friday night; we decided to skip the air conditioning (it is noisy), and go with the fan, which turned out to be a good decision.  Shabbat was in the 80s and cloudy.

Canyonlands National Park Needles District

Sunday morning, we left our campground of five nights and drove the two hours to the Needles District of Canyonlands, named after the red and white banded rock pinnacles which dominate the area.  Although we have traveled on many beautiful roads, the 30+ minute stretch of road from the main highway to the Needles entrance is absolutely stunning and easily ranks as one of our favorite byways.

We decided that we wanted to camp here for the night and went first to the part of the campground that is first come, first served.  Finding a beautiful spot, we paid our $10.00 (seniors fee), put our name on the block, and went off to do two hikes.

The first was relatively short and easy, a 0.6-mile round-trip walk at Pothole Point.  Really, it looked like a moon surface, mostly rocks with potholes – which looked like craters – carved into them.  As this is summer, they were mostly dry – a few did have a bit of water – but we imagine that after a rain, when they are filled up, the surface must look unreal.

Our second walk was a 2-hour hike named Slickrock, a trail that features four viewpoints along its winding up-and-down path, each viewpoint having a fantastic 360-degree view of canyons and rock cliffs.  It is called slickrock because the paths over the rocks can be slippery even when dry (and the terrain is very uneven) – and especially so when wet.  It was a great walk and we felt a sense of accomplishment when we finished.

After returning to our RV we found a hitchhiker sitting on top of the van.

In the evening, we attended a ranger talk on petroglyphs (etchings into stones) and pictographs (paintings on stones), forms of art used by the various groups who lived in this area up until about 800 years ago.

We enjoyed our campground and campsite so much that we decided to stay an extra night and enjoy a few more, relatively easy, hikes: a short trail to an ancestral Puebloan granary and a longer loop trail to a historic cowboy camp (ranching was practiced in the area until 1975), with a few more pictographs thrown in.  [As an aside, in the 1950s, uranium mining took place here; the mining companies put in roads and generally tore up some of the rugged and beautiful area.]

In both parts of Canyonlands, the trails are marked by cairns, small rocks stacked one on top of the other.  Without these guideposts, it would be easy to get very lost.

Canyonlands National Park was established in 1964.

We called this post “Similar but Different.”  The five Utah national parks are all part of the Colorado Plateau (130,000 square miles, mostly in Utah, with small portions in Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona) first explored by Major John Wesley Powell who conducted surveys of the Colorado River and its neighboring region in 1869 and 1871-72.  The five parks have common themes – sedimentary rocks (sandstone and limestone), uplift, and erosion.  They all look a little bit the same, but each has variations on these themes which make them unique.  The landscape is extraordinary, and a person must step back so as not to be overwhelmed.  We tried to do just that by choosing a few trails in each park, reading park-distributed materials and other sources, and simply trying to “soak up the atmosphere.”  With our photos to remind us, these sights will not be forgotten.

Our trip was winding down and it was time to start heading back in the direction of Atlanta.  One major point of interest remained: Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado.  There was a major forest fire raging between Canyonlands and Mesa Verde, which put our being able to go there in some doubt – but as we drove on, we saw that the fire was mostly under control, and that Mesa Verde was open.

Capitol Reef National Park

After a quiet Shabbat on the lake, we left Sunday morning for our third Utah national park, Capitol Reef: a 3-hour or so drive, mostly along empty highways, with the scenery changing from green mountains, to desert, to mountains again.  Capitol Reef is in the desert but – as in Zion and Bryce Canyon – its rugged cliffs are the result of water and time.

Again, we were lucky; even though all the signs read that the Capitol Reef campground was full, we went around the signs and stopped at the campground host’s trailer.  It turned out he did have an open spot for the night and a different one for the next day, so we stayed two nights.  We loved the campground.

Capitol Reef’s defining geologic feature is the Waterpocket Fold, extending more than 100 miles – a protuberance (sometimes called a wrinkle) in the earth’s crust that has eroded into a maze of winding canyons, towering monoliths, and massive domes.  This area, which bisects south-central Utah and which was extremely difficult for early travelers to traverse, was the last area to be charted in the contiguous United States.

People (ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni, and Paiute tribes) lived in the Capitol Reef area from 300-1300 CE, as attested to by petroglyphs and pictographs, carvings and paintings on rock walls.  No evidence of Indian culture has been found since 1300.

In the 1880s, Mormons established the small settlement of Fruita (our campground was in the Fruita historic district).  They built irrigation systems, planted orchards (which are still around, and where – in season – you can pick peaches and apples and other fruit) and led a self-sustaining life.  No more than ten families ever lived in Fruita at a time, and it is now maintained for the benefit of visitors and as a testimony to the self-reliance of a small community of people.

We took a couple of hikes in our two days at Capitol Reef.  Not long after arriving, we walked 1.2 miles to the Visitors Center (and back), along a dirt, marked path.  We watched an 18-minute movie on the park, bought a book on the circle of Utah parks (Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, and Canyonlands), and an American Indian-style flute (made by a Mormon), which Bill will have fun learning to play.

That evening, on an after-dinner stroll through the park we saw a family of deer: buck, doe, and three fawns.

We started the second day with a ride into town to make phone calls, as we had no reception in the park, and do some errands.  We then drove through the park on the 10-mile (each way) scenic drive; it was slow going, the fastest speed was 25mph and the slowest was 10mph – and they meant it.  You couldn’t go faster or you would go off the road around hairpin turns.

The drive was worth it; the scenery was beautiful, and when we got to the end, we were surrounded by towering canyon walls on all sides.  Among the rock formations we saw on the road were Capitol Dome, named because it reminded early travelers of the U.S. Capitol and which later inspired the name of the park; Chimney Rock, a 400-foot sandstone pillar; and the Castle, a huge rock formation in which you can clearly see the various strata: Wingate sandstone on top of grey Chinle and a red Moenkopi bottom.  We confess that we do not understand that much about the geology of the formations, but the strata are clearly visible – and they are impressive.

In the afternoon we took a 2.6-mile round trip hike labeled “moderate,” which we found challenging.  (Trails are rated by length and amount of elevation from start point to end point.)  The Fremont River Trail was a very narrow path, first along the side of the Fremont River, and then straight up, a 480-foot elevation change, finishing with an amazing 360-degree panoramic view of canyons, river, trees, and cliffs – with a long snake guarding the entrance to the trail.

The third day, just before leaving Capitol Reef, we stopped off to see some petroglyphs and then went on another “moderate” hike, similar in length and elevation to the Fremont River Trail.  The hike was to Hickman Bridge (named after Joseph Hickman, an early advocate of Capitol Reef), a huge natural arch spanning 133 feet wide and 125 feet tall. The trail went up and down and up and down, sometimes over natural “steps,” sometimes over rocks, and ended at the arch through which we could see beautiful blue sky.

We have learned that using hiking sticks are most beneficial in the walking/climbing of unpaved, uneven trails.

Capitol Reef was declared a national monument in 1937 and became a national park in 1971.

Arches National Park

We left Capitol Reef for the 2-hour ride to Arches National Park, the fourth of Utah’s Circle of Parks.  The ride went through a vast expanse of hardly travelled desert for over 50 miles.  We stopped off at the Visitors Center in the park, and the ranger there suggested that we find a campground first, as they tend to fill up by early afternoon in the area.  We drove a bit down the road, found one, and they had a campsite available.  Because of the proximity of Arches to Canyonlands National Park (our next stop and post), we took the campsite for five nights, including Shabbat.  We spent the rest of the day in the nearby town of Moab, Utah doing the everyday tasks of shopping and laundry.

We started out early for Arches, which was about a 5-minute drive from our campground – but a 40-minute wait to get in as the entrance lines were very long.  Arches is not that large, and there is one road running through most of the park.  Off of this road are several viewpoints and short walks – usually between several hundred feet to 1/2mile – to the various arches.

The viewpoints are beautiful.  One, especially caught our imagination – Park Avenue, named because the cliffs on both sides of the “road” look like tall buildings (as mentioned in an earlier post, we have often thought that someone in the National Parks Service has a sense of humor when they name things).

Among the arches we saw (and Arches has over 2,000 documented arches, the densest concentration of natural sandstone arches in the world) were Double Arch, North and South Windows, Turret Arch, Delicate Arch, Sand Dune Arch, Skyline Arch, Tunnel Arch, and Pine Tree Arch.  Tunnel Arch was Bill’s favorite; Sima liked Sand Dune Arch – but they all were fabulous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The arches we see today are different from those of years ago, and they will not be the same in the future.  Wind and water do their work: rocks fall away, arches form, weather takes its toll again, and arches crack and fall.  We saw one example of such an arch – the explanation board near the arch showed photos of it before and after a large rock dislodged from the arch-opening, enlarging its size by about one-third.

Returning to our campground, we hooked up to water and electricity, turned on the air conditioning (did we say it was about 110 degrees F during the day?) and made dinner.  As it turned out, the neighbors on one side of us were vacationing music teachers and the neighbors on the other side of us have a son who is a music major at Ohio University.

Arches was declared a national park in 1971.