When I started my first road trip of 2019, I knew my first stop would be Cedar Breaks National Monument, located just east of Cedar City, Utah. There were a couple of reasons for camping here, one that it's usually very uncrowded and so you pretty much have the pick of campgrounds. A second reasons was there was an earth cache in the park that I wanted to find so I could complete a geocaching challenge of finding an earth cache in four different states on the same day. As it was, I'd already found an earth cache south of where I was, but camping there still made sense as it was a good jumping off point for my next day's adventures.
I've camped in Cedar Breaks previously and it really is a good jumping off point for various spots around Utah that we have wanted to explore. For those of you who aren't familiar with Cedar Breaks, I think I can best describe it as a miniature version of Bryce Canyon National Park. It doesn't attract the visitors that Bryce Canyon does, mainly because there's not nearly as much to do there. The features in the park are nice, but you can't hike down into them the way you can at Bryce Canyon and that's by far and away the best feature, to be able to hike among them. And so it becomes more of a jumping off place. You walk the rim, you look down on the hoodoos below you and then you move on.
But, apparently, the word is out that this is a nice place to visit. When I got there around 5:30 in the evening, the campground was pretty much filled, so I didn't have a great deal of choice in spot, but I was still able to snag a nice spot for the night. Once I had camp set up and dinner in my belly, I decided to head out on a hike because I still had plenty of daylight.
Because I've been there previously, I decided to take a trail I hadn't explored before which was the Alpine Pond Trail which led off of the Chessman Ridge Overlook and walked along the eastern edge of the amphitheater of Cedar Breaks, leading to an alpine lake at 10,400 feet of elevation.
It was a pretty much level hike because most of the park where visitors are is all above 10,000 feet, but the air was thin. I probably overdid it a little bit on this hike for a couple of reasons. One, I was running out of daylight and I wanted to get some good shots while there was still light and two, which is in hindsight, I was a little bit dehydrated after driving all day. I definitely had not kept up a sufficient amount of fluids in my system that day and I was going to pay for it later with a little bit of altitude sickness.
Another reason I decided to take the trail was also to escape some very loud college students who decided to park themselves out on Chessman Overlook and scream at each other from 3 feet away or so. Seriously? You're 3 feet away from each other and you feel the need to scream? I can already hear my daughter in my head saying, "GET OFF MY LAWN." It didn't really matter, because I escaped the noise by hiking away from it, and when I came back, they were gone and I had the overlook to myself.
The hike was very peaceful and I had lots of opportunities to see the amphitheater through the trees. There were lots of wildflowers alongside the trail: Scarlet paintbrush, Colorado Columbine and Shootingstar being the most abundant that I saw. The trail followed a creek that flowed down into the breaks and eventually led to the pond. I followed that creek to the alpine pond where I was rewarded with some very nice reflections of the sun glowing off of the trees along the opposite bank. I lingered there taking several different photos with different exposures hoping that one of them would turn out decently, then decided to take the same trail back to the overlook which was a very good decision.
Had I taken the trail in a loop instead of an up and back, I would have missed the sunset on the rim. After enjoying the sunset and taking a multitude of shots, I drove back to my campground and settled down for the night, hoping to have a restful night sleep. Unfortunately, the high altitude did me in that night and I didn't sleep very well due to headache and upset stomach. Fortunately, fluids and food the next morning, plus a drop in elevation leaving the monument helped me recover rapidly. In the past, I've always slept well at Cedar Breaks and the only thing I can attribute all of this too was my intake of fluids during the drive up there from Southern California. I didn't have any problem the rest of the trip, even though I was at altitude for most of the trip. I made sure I was properly hydrated and was probably acclimated to the altitude as well.
In the morning, I walked along the rim, taking photographs, checking out the visitors center when it opened and just enjoying the sights the park had to offer before I hit the road again. I could hear Utah's oldest geocache calling my name.
To be continued.....
August has been a very enjoyable month. For the first time in 20 years or so, I didn't go back to work in August. Yeah, school used to start in September, but it's been opening up in August for quite a number of years. In fact, today is my youngest's 24th birthday. His due date was September 12th. I was concerned at the time, because that was the first day of school for me. Now, school begins the first week in August. But as many of my friends know, it's not my circus, not my monkeys anymore because I retired at the end of the last school year in May.
P.J. has his monthly blog challenge and this month's challenge, for the month of August was The Written Word. At first, I thought I wouldn't be able to put anything together, photographically for this particular month, but when I look back over my photos I took this month, I realized that I have quite a selection from which to choose. And so it goes.
August, as noted above, was very different this year. I actually spent time in five different states, so I've decided that each photo this month, not only should convey the theme of the written word, but should also represent each one of the different states that I spent time in this month. I've posted on Facebook photos of signs leading into National Park sites that I visited and said, "I'm a National Park Geek." And someone joshingly pointed out that maybe I was a sign geek. Well, that's possible. I love how signs sometimes give you so much information with very little words.
1. Hiking
I like to hike, always have, always will. I spent the month hiking a lot. In fact, I spent a large portion of the summer hiking. One of my favorite hikes is a 5 mile loop in the Claremont Wilderness Park, a park that I didn't know even existed back in 2001. That was the park that started me on geocaching, mainly because when I discovered geocaching, this park was where the closest geocache was hidden from my house at the time. It was literally 7 miles away and a half mile hike. I bought a GPS, took the boys out that Saturday and we found the cache. We didn't walk the entire loop that time and there have been many times in the past I have not hiked the loop, mainly because I was out of shape at the time. I'm not sure I'm in great shape now, but I do know that I'm in much better shape than I was back in 2001. This is a good thing because I want to enjoy my retirement for as long as possible and being in good shape will help me achieve this goal. So the written word on the sign post either tells me how far I've gone, or how far I still need to go to complete the loop. In this case, I took it after I'd already hiked 4 and a half miles. This was taken in California.
2. Road trip
In the middle of the month, I took a week-long road trip through four states, just so I could feel that my routine was a little bit different for this month as opposed to most Augusts over the past years. I grabbed Interstate 15 and took it north, traveling through Nevada and then into Arizona where the second photo was taken. I love the color in this photo and amount of information.
At least 7 different signs tell you a bunch of information that you need to know as you barrel your way into Arizona at 75 mph. And no, I didn't take this photo while flying down the Interstate. I actually did pull over and take the shot, although now that I look at it, I wonder if that would be considered emergency parking?
3. The Golden Spike
That first day, I eventually ended up in Utah. A couple of days later, I decided that my next point of destination would be Golden Spike National Historic Site, the site where the trans-continental railroad joined the country together in May, 1869. The country would never be the same. Promontory, Utah was a boom town, which grew up at the site of the Golden Spike, but soon died when the railroads moved operations to a more profitable route. I spent time time at the site watching the engines move up and down the tracks and I also got a nice hike in along the old railroad rights of way. I say ways, because the two railroad companies literally created grades for the two lines that went by each other for 230 miles or so, mainly because they hadn't agreed upon a meeting place and they were getting paid by the mile by the United States Government. When they finally agreed upon a meeting place that at Promontory, the grading stopped and they worked toward that point. I also learned that the original golden spike is nowhere near Utah anymore.
Because the Union Pacific Railroad abandoned these lines first, the Central Pacific ended up taking over this part of the rail lines and so ended up in possession of the golden spike, which is now located at Stanford University. I guess I need to go to Stanford to complete this trip.
4. Atomic Power
After Golden Spike, I ended up in Idaho for my next adventure. I was going to be camping at Craters of the Moon National Monument. Taking back roads to the northeast of the monument, I ended up driving through the small town of Arco, Idaho. Now, when you think of Idaho, do you think of atomic power? Probably not and although I was peripherally aware of Idaho's contribution to atomic power, I was not aware that Arco was the first city lit by electricity via atomic power, something that the town, obviously, is very proud of. This is one of the reasons I love road trips like this. You stumble upon all sorts of interesting tidbits of information that you might have missed if you just flew into an area with one destination in mind.
5. Extra Terrestrials
After camping at Craters of the Moon and also Great Basin National Park, I decided to come home. But, as a geocacher, I had to stop here. This last shot I found at a gift shop at the beginning of the E.T. Highway which runs along SR-375 in Nevada just east of Hwy 93. It's become somewhat of a Mecca for geocachers around the world, because it's one of the major "Power Trails" in existence. A power trail is a route set up by geocachers where there are a lot of geocaches along a specific route. Geocaches are not supposed to be closer than 528 feet apart, so a power trail typically has one every 10th of a mile for a long distance, in this case, the E.T. Highway has a geocache hidden every tenth of a mile for 200 miles. Yeah, the math works out to 2000 geocaches. I found the first one in the series and then turned around and continued on my way home. At least now I can say I've geocached on the E.T. Highway. Whether I ever get back to it or not is an entirely different story. I have, however, signed a challenge cache near the beginning of the E.T. Highway, which challenges me to find 1000 geocaches in the state of Nevada. With only 76 finds in the state, I have a ways to go and this power trail would help me complete that challenge.
So that completes my interpretation of P.J.'s month blog challenge, the Written Word. Please click on the link and check out other bloggers' interpretations of the theme for this month.
Just because you happen to live in suburbia and are hiking/walking on a paved trail, does not mean you need not be watchful of your surroundings.
As I came down the Thompson Creek Trail this morning, about halfway through my morning walk, I spotted a gathering of people, all of whom had their phones out. Gotta be an unusual animal of some kind.
Yep. Just your average Southern Pacific Rattlesnake slithering from one little haven to another, across a cement bridge and then over to another spot where it could hand out for the duration of the day that was promising to get nice and hot.
Here's a link to a YouTube video that I took right after I took this still shot. The agave plant where the snake eventually took refuge is literally up against someone's back yard wrought iron fence.
Over the course of the year, there is an ebb and flow as the seasons progress throughout the year. Many of us have our ebbs and flows with our job as well. It's at this time of the year that my thoughts usually turn back to my job since the school year is starting throughout most of the country.
This year, however, as most of you are aware, that changed for me because I retired at the end of the last school year. So instead of going to my first day of school, I went on a hike today. That's the first time I haven't been at a first day of school in 36 years. Then, after I got back, my son and I went to the local REI store and I purchased a new hiking shirt, something that would wick the sweat away from my body a little bit better than my T-shirt did today.
Summertime, for me, was always a more leisurely time period. No alarms, unless I set them because I wanted to do something. Getting up a little bit later in the morning and just enjoying each day without having to rush to get things done. Now it seems like the entire year is going to be more like that.
My wife started back on her work day routine this morning, so I woke up when her alarm went off, but didn't immediately get out of bed. During our regular work week, I'd get up first, take a shower and then she'd take a shower, after I "warmed up" the bathroom. Well I didn't do that this morning, but I did eventually get up and made a pot of coffee for us to start the day.
So it's a little bit different now. Next week, instead of creating second week lesson plans for four or five different classes, I'm heading out on a camping trip into Utah, Idaho and Nevada. In October, I have a road trip planned to Denver, because there's a major exhibit of Monet paintings at the Denver Art Museum. It's only there from October to February so when, as a teacher, could I really see something like that? Now I can.
In September, during the week, I plan on doing an over night trip to Paso Robles to see the Sensorio Paso Robles Field of Light. My hope is that I'll have something like that to do each month. I'm looking forward to new explorations and adventures. That's my new normalcy.
We've had lots of June bugs this summer for some reason. It's probably because we had such a wet winter. I actually saw a photo today, that said it was a good thing they only eat plants.
Every so often, I like to take photos of insects and creepy crawly things. Most of the people on Facebook already know this. I like spiders. Insects, not so much, mainly because they're pests. They fly in your face and annoy the heck out of you. They suck your blood and spread disease. And so I like spiders and bats, because they eat lots of insects.
However, insects do provide many important things for us. They pollinate the flowers we love to smell and they pollinate the flowers of all of our food we eat. We need to be thinking very clearly about bees in the future. Actually, we need to be acting on bee welfare right now. We run out of bees, half of our population of people worldwide will probably disappear due to mass starvation. That's a sobering thought.
And so I leave you with this June bug on some Hydrangea flowers. Yes, I know this post is in August, but I took the photo in late July.
This is the 4th of a series of semi-regular articles chronicling the 2017 road trip my youngest and I took to Wisconsin and back again. The next major stop on our trip was the Black Hills of South Dakota.
After Yellowstone, we drove the next morning into Grand Teton National Park. It was sort of a drive by and the weather was awful, thunder, lightning and hail and we got out of there as quickly as possible. I did get some shots, which I'll probably post later, but it's probably not worthy of a separate post. The other eventful thing that happened there was on our way out, we had to drive slowly around a downed tree that had evidently been hit by lightning probably about 15 minutes prior to us getting there.
The rest of the day was devoted to driving across Wyoming. You don't realize how big Wyoming is until you're driving across it. I mean, it's just a big rectangle, but it just goes on and on and on. So, we ended up in Rapid City, South Dakota later in the evening. The next morning, Mt. Rushmore was on the agenda.
I've been to Mt. Rushmore previously, as an early teenager, so some of my memories have faded over time. They're in focus again. I have to say, I'm really glad we got an early start to our day and were able to make the entrance gate to the memorial right at 9:00 AM. Had plenty of parking, so we were just able to pull into the huge parking facility and park anywhere we wanted.
There were very few people around at that hour and so we walked the entrance leading up to the memorial. There are pillars on each side with the flags of all of the states of the United States on either side framing the sculpture. It doesn't get more American that this. Once out on the observation area, you have a pretty much unencumbered view and I took lots of shots. I wish there had been some clouds in the sky as I think I would have been able to have some more dramatic shots than the ones I took, which I think are pretty average.
After walking up to the viewing area, we decided to hike the Presidential Trail, which gives you different outlooks of the sculpture. I would highly recommend this trail, no matter what time of day, but the early morning hour that we took it meant that we pretty much had the trail to ourselves. We could linger and observe the sculpture without being interrupted by hordes of visitors that I'm sure walk the trail later in the day.
By the time we got back from the trail back up to the observation deck, it was probably a little bit after 10 in the morning and the observation deck was crowded, very crowded - think Disneyland type of crowds. We walked into the visitors center and walked around in there, then ended up near the entrance and decided that it was time to take our leave and head down to Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park.
All in all, I'm glad we went. And I can't believe how lucky we actually were. We got there at the perfect time and were able to leave at a good time to avoid the crowds. I can't imagine what the place would be like during the afternoon when the majority of people come to visit any attraction like this. I can't stress this enough. Come as early as possible.
This is the 3rd of a series of semi-regular articles chronicling the 2017 road trip my youngest and I took to Wisconsin and back again. This is something that, after you read this, think to yourself, "don't do Yellowstone in just one day."
The first time I visited Yellowstone National Park, I think I was 12 or 13 and we spent at least a week there. The second time, I was newly married and my wife and I spent 3 days. This time around, my youngest and I spent just a day in the park, driving in from Idaho, then driving back out later that evening at dusk. There is no way, that's nearly enough time for anything, but we packed as much as we could into the day, hiking, sightseeing and geocaching.
We came in through the West Yellowstone entrance and then headed toward the geyser basins. The first major stop was at the Grand Prismatic Spring seen in the first shot. This alone is worth a partial day visit. I wish there was a way I could convey the colors, the smells and everything about this, but I just can't. This photo is close, but I don't think it does it justice. And we didn't even get around to the other side. There's a trail on the hillside that gets you at elevation above the spring so you can see how truly grand it is and how large it is. That, in and of itself, gives me another reason to go back and spend more time there. It's the largest hot spring in the United States and third largest in the world. It measures 370 feet in diameter and is 160 feet deep.
After the spring, it was on to the Old Faithful area. All I can say is check the geyser schedule somewhere ahead of time. We got there at noon, about 10 minutes before eruption and it took us 15 minutes to find a parking spot. Because we were day tripping in the park, we didn't really have a choice as to when we were going to be there. Needless to say, we didn't see it erupt that time, but watched it erupt twice more that afternoon, once by the seating areas and once from a trail. The second time, it was erupting while Beehive geyser was also erupting. That's pretty spectacular to see two different geysers fairly close to each other erupting at the same time.
The rest of the afternoon, we spent hiking here and there among the geysers, taking in the sights, doing virtual and earth caches. Earth caches and virtual caches are geocaches that don't have a physical container. Virtual caches usually take you to a specific place of scenic or cultural beauty and you have to answer a specific question about the spot, or post a photo of you at the spot to prove that you were there. Earth caches are similar, only the spot is geological in nature and you have to answer geology questions based upon what you see at the spot. The National Park Service, with a couple of exceptions, doesn't allow physical geocaches in the parks because they view them as litter. They do allow virtual and earth caches though, so we spent the day doing those. With all of the stuff we were learning, our brains literally hurt by the end of the day.
While we were there, we watched Old Faithful erupt at around 2:30 or so. Packed house. We hiked around some more in the area, then went to nearby restaurant to eat dinner. Came back out and watched Old Faithful erupt again and could have had our pick of seats in the seating area at that time. Lesson learned. If you have time, wait until after dinner to watch Old Faithful erupt. Most of the crowds have dispersed back to their hotels or campsites and the parking lot has many spaces available. I don't think it's ever not crowded there, but there were definitely less people later in the evening. In the summertime, it doesn't really get dark until after nine o'clock, so you have lots of daylight hours in which to work.
After dinner, we drove over the continental divide and drove down to view Yellowstone Lake. There was another geyser basin right along the lakeshore, so we walked the boardwalks there and enjoyed the peacefulness of the lake. There were not as many people here, mainly because it was getting later on in the day and as noted above, most people had "gone home" for the day. After sightseeing lakeside, we hopped back in the Jeep and made our way back through West Yellowstone and into Idaho where we were staying the night. A bison jam slowed us down, but that was pretty cool watching a herd of bison walk across the road in front of us. At least we weren't going the other way on the road where a bison decided to lay down in the middle of the lane and take a siesta.
Moral of the story is, don't even think about just spending a day there. I think you need a week, maybe longer to fully enjoy the park. I know I'm going to be spending some more time there in the future.
