Flaming Gorge Wyoming 2013

In August I was lucky enough to head down to Flaming Gorge for a long weekend.  I went with one of my college roommates, Kay, her family and another family.  It was a great time even though the Wyoming weather was not the most cooperative (but when is it ever?).

The northern side of Flaming Gorge, Buckboard Marina, is out in the sticks where the antelope roam along with sagebrush, dust and jack rabbits.  The campground itself is really quite barren but the spaces are big and the bathrooms and showers are nice.  The Russian olive trees (if you can find one) provide a little shade (sort of) in the heat of the day.  What the trees are really good for is tying down tents and things so they don’t blow away! 

Barren Campground

Antelope roaming...

 Actually there were more than antelope - how about this lost river otter?

One great advantage of Flaming Gorge is that most people go here to fish so there really isn’t much competition for other water sports – which is drastically different than most places in Utah.  The downside is that you do deal with the wind and the weather.  Each day we were sadly blown off the water by about 3pm and as early as noon.  The water is pretty brisk so a wetsuit is advised.  But, when the weather was nice it was a great place to be!

Glass water to ski or wakeboard on

Waterskiing, wakeboarding, knee boarding and surfing were all had by everyone and it was fun.  Max was able to stand up on a knee board while Bridget was getting better every minute on the slalom. Blake was able to do flips and all sorts of crazy tricks on the wakeboard.  Everyone else has a ways to go to catch up to him!  I even tried some surfboarding.  As I’m a bit balance challenged I didn’t do very good but had fun regardless.  Thanks to Abby and Mo for being energetic teachers. 

Blake showing us up on the wakeboard with a flip

While camping I learned a few new tricks.  One is to play glow stick "bocce ball".  After dark you take 3 glow sticks and connect them to create the target ring.  Then, you take 2 glow sticks to make a smaller ring for each individual.  You throw the bigger ring as a target and each person tries to throw their ring the closest to the bigger ring.  It looks cool and all levels and ages of athleticism can do it.  That isn’t to say that skill isn’t involved which apparently I didn’t possess.  It was lots of fun.

 

Another fun thing to do is take pie makers and cook biscuits in them.  I’ve cooked lots of things but never biscuits.  Throw some honey butter on them and it is darn tasty! 

I made some new friends and if things work out maybe I’ll be invited again next year –with hopefully better weather!

Yellowstone 2013 Highlights

In July I went on my family annual vacation to Yellowstone.  Sadly, times are changing and many of the extended family doesn’t come due to distance, cost or just other opportunities.  And, while I greatly miss those fun times with cousins, aunts and uncles it’s always great to be in Yellowstone.  Maybe someday I’ll blog about some of the funny standard (and not so standard) things we’ve done over the years.

Alas, back to present times.  I myself haven’t always made it to Yellowstone but that being said I am officially an expert.  Well, not officially but as my friend Jennie said, “I know a heck of a lot more than those rangers.”  It’s true.  Having gone well over 100 times to Yellowstone over 43 years I know a thing or two about the intricacies of Yellowstone.  On the flip side there are several things I haven’t ever done and I was determined to do them this visit.  So, here’s a recap of some new things I did in Yellowstone.

Great Fountain

I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this geyser before (ok, so the rangers have me on this one).  It’s located roadside on the Firehole Lake Drive.  It goes off every 12 hours +/- 2 hours.  That’s the kicker part.  You might end up waiting 4 hours for it to go off.  We were lucky because it went off just 45 minutes after we got there. 

The geyser goes off for almost a full 60 minutes.  It spurts for 5-10 minutes and then rests for 5-10 minutes and does that 3-5 times.  The wind was slightly blowing so we positioned ourselves to not get hit by steam and waited.  Then, the eruptions started and just then the wind switches and we were totally getting hit by geyser mist.  It was kind of neat but, it made for crappy viewing with all the steam in our faces so we had to move around a bit!

While waiting for the next spew we met this Taiwanese couple who worked at the same company my Dad worked for for 30 years.  They had a great time chatting in their limited English.  I jumped in when I found that they were from Taiwan (having recently been there).  They were nice folks.

Great Fountain Taiwanese Friends

 

After the 3^rd fountain spew interestingly everyone left and it was just us.  It was great to sit and watch it alone and wonder why everyone else left – the biggest spews were at the end!  Definitely a cool thing I’ll do again.  It blows Old Faithful away!

Morning Glory Pool
Sad, but true.  When I was young it was always too long of a walk and everyone kept talking about how it didn’t look as pretty as it did long ago so it wasn’t worth the walk.  Well, now it’s been 40+ years and I’m sure it isn’t looking as good as it did back then but I need to see this iconic Yellowstone pool especially since its named after the stupid noxious weed that I can’t get rid of in my yard. 

The walk out was really easy and it didn’t seem like a full 1.4mile as advertised.  Maybe that’s because there are geysers and pools as you go.  On my way I stopped and saw Giant Geyser go off.  I don’t see that one go off very often but is one of the biggest to see and rather neat. 

I got to the pool and it was quite pretty.  Yes, I know there used to be more colors and such but the yellows and oranges are brilliant.  They look a heck of a lot prettier than the white flower weeds in my yard I had to admit!  It was worth the hike and now I can say I saw it before it changes even more!  I had to wait some time because the first guy who took my picture for me cut me in half.  Really?  Anyway, the second picture turned out much better – thanks random guy who took my picture for me!

Actually at Morning Glory - finally!

Riverside Geyser

On my walk back from Morning Glory I stopped and saw the Riverside Geyser go off.  It is supposedly the most predictable geyser going off every 5.1 hours +/- 30 minutes.  Ya, it was outside the 30 minute window and I had to wait the whole time in the hot sun!  But, it did go off and is rather beautiful spewing over the Firehole River.  I didn’t see the rainbow it produced but it was worth the wait.

Riverside Geyser

Fishing Soda Butte Creek

Soda Butte Creek is on the northeastern corner of Yellowstone.  We have recently started going up into that region more often to see grizzly, bear and wolves.  This year it was just too hot for all the animals but the bison.  To try and make the trip a bit more interesting my Dad and I did a short 30 minute fishing expedition on the side of the road.  Success!  I was able to catch 2 pan fry size fish (no, I didn’t keep them).  The biting flies, horse flies, mosquitos, anything else that flies and bites were really tough though so I was glad to have a little success before we took off.  The water was rather muddy due to a previous rainstorm so I’ll count my blessings that I caught something.  Maybe another day I’ll go in and attempt to catch a few more fish.

Definitely a Pan Fryer

So, there you have it.  I found a few new things to do and did them.  I think the only other “major” thing I haven’t done is hiked in and camped at Shoshone.  Maybe someday.   There will be more adventures in Yellowstone and more good memories created for sure.  I have pictures posted from other things I did in Yellowstone HERE. 

Zion National Park

Ah, I love summer!  I went down to Zion National Park in Southern Utah with my niece, Katie for three days.  It was a great little road trip with lots of sights to see.

The trip started on Sunday with a half day trip. Surprisingly, the line into the park and parking itself was not bad for an end of June weekend.  They indicate that parking is typically completely full in the park from about 10am-3pm.  I didn’t find that to be the case on this day which was nice.  It was a hot one at 100F. We took the shuttle up the scenic drive and did two short hikes.

Weeping Rock

Ok, this is really more of a short jaunt than a hike.  It’s like a 10 minute walk along a paved path up to the cliff overhang where you can get refreshing water blown on you when the wind is right – and it makes it a bit tough to take a picture.  But, it feels good and the view down the valley is nice.  There happened to be a deer right below the walking area and people were going crazy, especially these French individuals (there were a TON of French this weekend for some reason).  It was a small, sickly looking mule deer and there are a ton of them in the park so we didn’t waste much time and moved on.

View from Weeping Rock

Emerald Pools

There are three pools.  The lower pool is an easy 1 mile walk.  The middle pools are a little tougher to get to (especially since there were trail detours going on) and an additional 0.5 mile.  The upper pool is yet another 0.5 miles up and harder to navigate.  Now, none of these are tough trails to follow or do but the first trail is a paved walkway while the last is more uphill stepping over rocks and a narrow trail.  The upper pool was definitely worth it.  There were only a couple of people there and it is right at the base of a sheer cliff so it was much more impressive and definitely worth the extra walking. 

After these two hikes Katie and I were famished so we grilled some brats before driving east through the tunnel (very neat) and hiked one last trail.  One of the neat things was that there were a ton of birds and deer out.  We saw both brilliant red and striking blue birds throughout our trip.  We saw scrawny deer (in addition to the one at weeping rock) but we also saw some healthy looking bucks as well.

Canyon Overlook Trail

I had never hiked this trail but it is one of the neater trails.  I would suggest hiking it in the morning rather than the evening if you want any decent pictures. We were staring right at the sun setting which was pretty, but was bad for any sort of pictures.  There is a short steep climb before leveling out for about a 1 mile walk where you can see into slot canyons from above and then into the main valley of Zion’s.   It was a great easy hike!

See, the sun was in the wrong spot - but you get an idea of how cool the view is.

Narrows
After sleeping on Katie’s floor my body was a bit creaky (maybe I should say creakier) but we headed off to hike the Narrow’s from the Temple of Sinawava.  You take the shuttle bus up to the last stop and then walk a mile along a sandy paved path going up and down hills to the starting point. 

We started at about 10am and while there were several hikers you could still find a little space between people.  On our way back it was like being in London’s Tubes during rush hour.  Ok, maybe not that bad but there were a lot of people!  The water was only calf deep typically so walking wasn’t too tough.   Maybe I should restate that.  It was calf deep for me (I’m rather tall).  Katie is on the shorter side (sorry Katie, but its true) and at times some of the crossings were pretty deep for her.  Being balance challenged, I was glad to have my walking sticks along the way as you are continually walking over rocks.  It wasn’t super hot outside either (the day turned cloudy and a wind storm came through keeping it cool) but with just wool socks and old tennis shoes my feet were never freezing.  I wouldn’t pay for the fancy neoprene socks and shoes unless the water was colder (they said it was like 60 degrees or something). 

We hiked up to the Orderville Slot Canyon (approx. 2 miles from the Temple entrance) and walked up that a ways.  There is a small 3 foot waterfall (again, easier for a taller person to navigate) to step over at the entrance and then it’s easy until you come to a debris area. We stopped at this point and turned around.  This is a great canyon because only a few people walk up it and the walls are much closer together – about 6 feet apart so you feel much more of that slot sheer canyon experience.   Don’t let the small waterfall deter you!

Ordervill Slot Canyon View

My knees were troublesome, and I’m old, so we walked just a bit farther up the Narrows as this is where the walls really start to come together before grabbing a bite to eat and heading back down. 

I was impressed by the older folks I saw navigating the river.  I was afraid some of them would break a hip but they were totally going for it!  We saw another guy puking his guts out about a mile upstream.  That didn’t look fun but it was a good reminder to drink LOTS of water – while at the same time DON’T drink river water– while it looks clean obviously there are other things in there! 

Kolob Canyon

The final day we drove up a 5 mile scenic drive at Kolob Canyon.   At the top is a 1 mile walk to a canyon overlook where you can see for miles.  I actually think that the viewpoint about 200 yards from the end has a better viewpoint so we ate our lunches there before heading back.

Kolob Canyon Viewpoint

All in all it was a great trip and activity packed.  We did see all of the major sites in the 48 hours we were there and I had a lot of fun (i.e. sore muscles, aches and pains) trying to keep up with my college aged niece.  

Check out the new pictures in the Photo Gallery!

Dead Horse State Park and Mesa Verde National Park

I recently went on a spontaneous trip down to Dead Horse State Park and Mesa Verde National Park.  While I have been to Dead Horse State Park within the last 5 years I hadn't been to Mesa Verde for over 20 years (gulp, that's a long time!).  A friend called me up late on Thursday night with the proposition and I had rearranged my schedule by Friday at noon to head on out.  It's great to be spontaneous sometimes!

It took a bit for the group of 6 to get started.  We kept having these issues of, "did you bring?" "who has?" and we either had 4 of them or else none of them.  I was laughing at the zerns we were taking. By the way, a zern is a word coined by Pat McManus many moons ago which is defined as taking exactly twice as much stuff as you need.  My family is at least a 2 zern family (meaning taking four times as much stuff as one needs). 

We eventually got on the road with at least a couple of zerns and made it to Dead Horse State Park at about 11pm.   I'm sure the people in the campground just loved it when we barreled in and set up our two large tents and blew up air mattresses.  I was actually pretty impressed with how quiet we were, especially considering the fact that the wind was whipping and dust and tents and such were blowing everywhere in the dark.  The funny thing was that we found the light switch for the covered table in the morning.  Gosh, that would have been way helpful. 

View of the Campground.  Small Trees with little shade so it gets HOT!

A few of us got up and headed down to Dead Horse Point.  This really is about the only thing at this state park but it is spectacular.  The canyon vista is over a large oxbow of the Colorado River creating a sight to behold.  The morning light was pretty good too.  You can check out the panoramic pictures here and all my best pictures from the trip.

After a scrumptious dutch oven breakfast pizza and before it got much hotter we broke camp and headed on a 3 hour drive to Mesa Verde.  It's not a hard drive but not really exciting either. 

One trick about Mesa Verde National Park is that its wise to get your tour tickets a day in advance during the high season.  The National Park service has a 3$ fee and caps the number of people per tour for many of the major cliff dwelling sites.  We chose Long House for the guided tour because its a lesser known area (i.e., fewer people on the tour) and you can actually go up inside the dwellings (unlike Cliff Palace).  We booked the first tour of the next morning and headed off to camp for another great dutch oven meal. 

All the flowers were in bloom! 

I'll admit, this group I went with are all great cooks and we did NOT go hungry.  We even had Dutch oven cheesecake one night.  Sadly we weren't hiking seriously so my eating intake didn't equate to my calorie expended.  Life goes on!

Long house was a 90 minute tour at the end of Wetherill Mesa.  Going on the first tour of the morning had some great advantages.  One of them being it was much cooler.  The second being you got some good photo ops because there weren't people already in the ruins. 

While Ranger Pete, our tour guide, didn't have a lot of answers for me (I don't know why I seem to ask the hard questions always) and I wonder how much of the talk was speculation it was interesting to learn more about these ancient people, how they lived and to actually crawl around in the same area.  We also walked to the Step House which is a self guided tour.  Between the two of them you get a pretty inclusive idea of the cliff dwellings in that area.  As a side note, my friends laughed at me as I needled (ok, maybe harassed is a better term) the ranger at Step house.  One of the "cool" items is to see a Navajo star.  Apparently the Navajo's came into the area later than the original dwellers and marked several spots by an X on the wall.  They were hard to find!  I was determined to find one and finally (phew) thanks to another lady we saw it.  

Step House

One ancient man's garbage is a modern man's treasure.

The Navajo star is an "X" in the left third center above a white polygon.

We then drove down Chapin Mesa and stopped at the Far View Sites and the Mesa overlook loop to look back into the Cliff Palace area.  I really liked the Far View Sites (unmarked left turn going south) because again you walked around the sites and there was a variety of buildings, a tower, and pit houses. 

Far View Tower Site

It was then back to camp for some serious rook playing and star gazing with the group.  I was soundly beat but I'll blame whomever dealt me bad cards.  However, on the up side I can now spot Scorpio in the sky! 

It was a fun trip with good people, some educational activities, great food and neat things to see.  I would highly recommend it! 

Check out my pictures here.

Lower Calf Creek Falls

My friend Micah and I recently hiked Lower Calk Creek Falls which is located in southern Utah about 12 miles south of Boulder, Utah.  The hike is a level hike approximately 6 miles RT.  We did the hike in the morning when it was cool and fewer people.  As we were on vacation we didn’t do crazy early but were surprised that even with a 9am start we saw one person at the falls.  Coming back out there were several parties.  I’m sure this changes as the temperature heats up – we were at probably 50F that day is all.  But, as someone who enjoys NOT hiking with big crowds it worked out great.

The hike starts at the end of the campground with a trail guide which is a must.  It’s not a must because the trail is difficult to follow but instead because it has some really interesting points on it including geography, history, flora and fauna.  I like knowing the history and factoids about an area.  On this hike you past some ancient Fremont Indian grain storage and pictographs which is really unique.  Not everyone can say that they have seen ancient artifacts while hiking beautiful scenery!  On that note it did help that I had a small set of binoculars.

The hike parallels Highway 12 to the North.  In fact, if you drive North to about the second overlook you can actually see the ravine you hiked up but you just can’t quite see the actual falls.  You have varied rock structures and actually several tree groves which provide some great shade (if you need it – I tend to not need breaks from the sun).  I’m sure in the summer months when it’s actually warm it can get seriously hot as the sun beats down on the rocks into the ravine.  But, today it was really pleasant (ok, it was a bit cold for me but I survived). 

The ravine you hike up to Lower Calf Creek Falls as seen from Hiway 12

  

You gradually follow the actual calf creek and there are some small fish in it if you look careful.  At the end of the trail you come through a grove of trees to a cool semi-circle cliff with the falls.  For those who need the shade (again, not me) you can sit back and enjoy the vista.  Otherwise, you can venture out to the actual beach or pool of water to see the beautiful falls.  With the beach and pool of water it creates a photographic wonder – these falls are one of the most photographed in Utah.  I did my best to follow suite. 

 

We had thought about jumping into the water when it was 90 degrees about 4 days earlier but the water is on the nippy side and the morning was brisk as well so besides dipping my hands in the water there was no way I  was jumping in. Micah and I sat and ate some fruit and just felt the ambiance before heading back.  It was great timing because just as we started to put our packs on another couple came. 

The hike, although 3 miles each way, is flat and very enjoyable.  It took us an easy 3 hours to walk in and out as well as sit and enjoy the sites.  The time also included reading the guide map and looking at things as well as many picture taking breaks.  I’ll put this on my do again list!

Check out the Pictures from this trip