Our daughters organized this trip, using Alice’s house as our rendezvous. We also enjoyed several days of desert exploring on our own.
Getting there
Sunday 4/24: I didn’t allow much time for booking this trip. So we were stuck with a red-eye flight to Denver, Colorado. I found an airport limo that was willing to come out to our house at 2 AM. I can’t complain that he was late. At 1:45, I took the garbage out and there he was idling at the curb. We walked into the airport at 2:18 with ample time to check our bags and get thru security. Too bad United’s bag check counter didn’t open until 3:30. We civilized travelers stood in line while selfish boobies crowded around and past us.
In Denver we had a three-hour layover in Concourse B, which I’ve gotten to know over the years. It’s really long, alternating between glass corridors traversed by people-movers with boarding gates on each side, and circular courts of shops and restaurants. On this Sunday it thronged with unmasked people. I had to wait in a long line just to buy a salad I found in a grab ‘n go.
We flew on to Montrose, touching down at a little airport that had just four gates. There were no boarding tunnels; we walked down a ramp from the plane into brilliant sun and chilly air, and followed a yellow-painted walkway into the terminal. Alice was waiting to hug us inside. The baggage claim area was under construction. We picked up our bags in a tent between the runway and the parking lot.
We kept our masks on until we’d gotten to Alice and Jenn’s house and tested negative. Dinner was Thai take-out; curried salmon for me. Rather chewy; I don’t think inlanders know how to cook seafood.
Road trip
Monday 4/25: Jenn loaned us her Toyota 4runner, a large SUV that stood high over the road. It had a comfortable accumulation of orange dirt. The girls also loaned us a cooler, ice packs and applicable maps and guidebooks. What great hosts! We paused in a strip mall to load the cooler with food from the Natural Grocery, where this buttoned-down town’s few hippies come to shop.
We headed south into the San Juan National Forest, driving past meadows of old snow, over forested valleys and under snowy crags. We crossed Coal Bank Pass, elevation 10,640 ft (3,240 m) and headed down past unremarkable Stoner and the pleasant Dolores River valley. We stopped at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument’s visitor center, but it was closed. We walked up a paved trail that overlooked Spanish Valley to the west in Utah; a wide, arid expanse. A mountain whose silhouette resembled a reclining warrior lay beyond. Pat followed the trail to its end at a pueblo ruin.
We drove down into the desert to Blanding, Utah, where we’d rented a cottage for a few days. Dinner was Thai takeout leftovers; not bad.
Tuesday 4/26: We went to the town’s visitor center for ideas on what to do, and were stunned to see our cottage host Jed standing behind the counter. He volunteers there. He quickly marked up a map for us with great advice about places to see.
Natural Bridges National Monument
We drove down to Natural Bridges National Monument. The shoulderless road twisted, climbed and fell across a lumpy landscape of light-gray stone. Trees and bushes followed creases in the bedrock and filled gullies and canyons that we crossed. The monument itself centers on a nine-mile loop road along the rim of a complicated canyon. Short trails led to viewpoints at many of the pullouts. We saw no pueblo ruins here, tho they are all over this area. We did see a low stone shed that had once been a food cache; access to that area is restricted. From above, the bridges were hard for me to pick out; their tops were level with the surrounding plateaus. They had been carved by streams that had formed ox-bow bends and then eroded the canyon walls between them.
We hiked down and under Owachomo, the last bridge on the loop. Our way varied from stretches of lumpy solid rock to short flights of beautifully-cut stone steps. Pat pointed out some small brown-gray lizards; they stood frozen, pretending to be stones, until they lost their nerve and darted away. We came to a dry wash that led underneath the bridge, widening and curling downward like the spout of a pitcher to pour into the central canyon. The stone floor of the wash was purple. Loose rocks here clattered like broken pottery when kicked. The bridge was about a hundred feet overhead. I slithered down the spout. On the canyon floor, grass and brave or unfortunate trees had gathered about a chain of pools that might charitably be called an oasis. When it does rain, miles of stone desert drain into this canyon and it turns into a real river fast. Meanwhile Pat explored a ledge that extended from the side of the bridge over the main canyon.
Supper was apples and pasta with a jar of sauce improved with fennel. I tried to grind up the fennel seeds in a little dish with the back of a spoon, but it was no mortar and pestle; the sauce was a bit chewy.
Monument Valley
Wednesday 4/27: Monument Valley in next-door Arizona is Navajo land. Only Native American tour companies are allowed into some areas; so we had signed up with one. We drove south and west from Blanding, crossing into Arizona and getting on SR 160, named “Navajo Code-talker Highway” in honor of Navajo radiomen in the Army whose little-known native language served as encryption during World War II. Strange to think of Native Americans giving their lives for the nation that oppressed and still oppresses them.
I peeked in the hotel where we were to meet our tour, but nobody was at the desk and I saw nobody to ask about it. Eventually a tour guide spotted us wandering about. He and his buddy had a conversation in their language that was probably pretty close to “You take them. …No, you take them.” So we climbed into the second fellow’s truck with the red awning on its back.
Our guide drove a flatbed truck with rows of cushioned seats under a red awning. It had some handrails but no seat belts. We visited a series of amazing buttes and spires. Now and then we stopped to take pictures and marvel at desert scenes that reminded me of Road Runner cartoons. We resisted shopping opportunities at booths and little stores that just happened to be at these viewpoints.
John Ford Point was a highlight of the tour. Here a flat-topped overhang was poised like a stage before a majestic landscape of purple buttes and tawny desert. Movie director John Ford liked it and used it as a set in some of his movies. John Wayne shot movies in Monument Valley too. I gathered that the Indians weren’t very impressed with these Johns. Instead, our guide had been building up how much we were going to enjoy the fry-bread that a friend of his sold in his store here. He was disheartened to see his friend leaving in a red convertible while we were still parking.
Our entertainment was rambling lectures about our guide’s hybrid Christian/Native American legends. These included an intriguing alternate story about the original sin. In this version, the first man and first woman started out living together. “But one day the woman discovered that the man had left. And in that moment, she knew that she was being deceived.” Rather than Eve eating the fruit of knowledge, it was this man’s adultery that led to God’s punishment; the coming of the Spanish Conquistadors. They had been expected; “The Navajo shamen knew that they were going to come.”
Valley of the Gods
On our way back into Blanding we paused at the entrance to Valley of the Gods. Jed had recommended this rough 17-mile desert road past a group of sculpted buttes. We were just there to take a nap; but we were interested. At the foot of the steep ramp down from the highway we came to a damp patch of ground. A sign warned “Impassable when wet.” Wetter, I guessed, than this. Jenn’s wonderful car didn’t notice the bit of mud, clambering up a rocky hill to a pullout for our nap.
In Blanding, we stopped at a pharmacy. I accidentally walked in without a mask and started patting my pockets. The clerk kindly gave me one, tho she was wearing none herself. This store proved to be a gift shop with a few shelves of useful things along a side wall.
We followed Jed’s advice and went to the Patio Diner. But this was not a good time to go out to dinner. Only three restaurants were open in Blanding (the A and W at the bowling alley was closed). The tiny diner’s parking lot and surrounding streets were full. A helmetless young couple bounced up the driveway on a blue scooter; there was still parking for them!
We resorted to the Four Corners Inn a block away. Its little parking lot was packed with hulking trucks. Parked in the center was a new pimped-out Jeep Rubicon with a winch on its front. Cheerful middle-aged folks sat on chairs and benches on the cement porch, waiting for tables. The men wore jeans or shorts, sport shirts and baseball caps. They didn’t wear masks or MAGA hats that I noticed. Were these Mormons? Some, I guessed. They chatted quietly and admired their rides. We came away with Santa Fe chicken dinners that turned out to be dry, heavily spiced chicken breast with a baked buttered yam and nothing green. The leftover pasta sauce helped the chicken a lot. What a smart woman I have!
Thursday 4/28: Anna texted that she and Brian were taking a detour on their drive to Montrose from Albuquerque due to wind-driven wildfires in New Mexico. (And this was in April! 2022 is going to be a dilly for fires.) After a lazy day we returned to the Patio Diner early for take-out salads, putting them in Alice and Jenn’s cooler.
We returned to Valley of the Gods to explore the whole road and take sunset pictures. Wandering on foot, I recognized “crypto” (cryptogamic crust), a delicate crust in which bacteria creates soil from desert sand. It seemed to favor well-drained slopes over dry watercourses, which made it possible to walk around without crushing it.
BTW even tho the desert is dry, a lot of its landforms were carved by water erosion. The heat and the lack of soil prevent much good from coming of the little rain that falls here. We’ve seen showers fall and evaporate without touching the ground.
I approached a butte, climbed a little rise and came to what looked like a low stone wall. This, I realized, was the edge of a stone platform that was almost buried in fallen rubble. The area’s layers of sandstone continue downward under the surface. Each layer is an ancient seabed—millions of years overhead and underfoot.
We moved on to a pull-out with a view eastward, hoping for a crimson sunset to light up the buttes. It was getting cold and windy, so we ate our salads in the car.
We layered up and hiked into a valley between buttes, hoping to find a westward viewpoint before the sun set. The trail took us across an incline of red-tinted debris from above. It varied from gravel to immense clam-shaped boulders that were layered like easter eggs. Sagebrush, cacti and twisted juniper trees stood about on the hillside, the ground between them immaculate. The cacti were mainly of the “clump of spears” variety and dangerous to brush against. Some plants harbored clumps of bulbous green sprouts; Pat pointed out a crimson blossom on one of them. I saw a hole in a sandbank but decided not to put my hand in it.
Our trail joined a dry wash; its purple stone floor made walking a lot easier and kept the cacti at bay. It was like a vast patio decorated with boulders and exotic plants. Our “Turn Around” timer went off. I shinnied up the next waterfall for a quick look ahead. Then we turned back without ever finding out how far the dry wash could take us.
Back in the car, we followed the darkening road toward another highway. This part of the road was rougher. We climbed steep, blind hills beyond which we could see nothing. The 4runner easily clambered over rocks, potholes and stony knolls.
Pat noticed that the gas tank was one-quarter full. We wondered if we would end the night walking to a gas station that might or might not be open. I was navigating with a snapshot on my phone that I’d taken of a park map at the entrance kiosk. The map was really more of a visual aid for identifying the buttes with fanciful names like “The Seven Sailors.” But by counting the big bends in the road I decided that we were more than halfway to the next highway. So there was no turning back. Happily, we completed the desert road and made it to a Bluff gas station with plenty to spare. Reminder: “Before driving into the desert, check your gas!” We knew that, but we’d forgotten it.
Friday 4/29: It was time to meet the kids at Alice’s house. We checked out of our cottage and picked up two more salads at Patio Diner. As we climbed north up a long hill toward Monticello, we saw thick white smoke billowing up from the forested mountainside about five miles away. As we reached the town,, a siren went off. It reminded me of Todd, a young man in Pat’s family who’d been a volunteer fireman. We drove on to Montrose via Canyons of the Ancients. Filled up Jenn’s tank and scraped most of the bugs off the windshield. The 4runner’s protective dirt covering was now a pale tan.
Ridgeway State Park
Saturday 4/30: With Alice, Jenn, Anna and Brian, we hiked in Ridgeway State Park, exploring a wetland and the hills above. The birdwatchers really liked it. Jenn pointed out the call of a chickadee; “Chicka-dee-dee.” “A chickadee is like a sentinel; the more ‘dees’ are at the end of its call, the more urgent its warning is,” she explained.
Brunch was at Katy’s Place in Ridgeway, where we ate omelets in a sunny courtyard. I checked out a Little Free Library box across the street; it held a 2003 Almanac and one of Carlos Castenada’s later books, which I carried off. Deserts and pueblos always make me think of the elusive and mysterious Don Juan. But it was a disappointing book and soon abandoned.
Ouray; Box Canyon
We went on to Ouray and climbed the Box Canyon trail above the waterfall. It began with a long steel stairway to a shelter high on the cliff face. The 7,800 foot elevation had me panting. Afterward we had treats on the sidewalk in front of Mouse’s Chocolates. Eating outdoors is taking off in a big way, these plague years.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
Sunday 5/1: Alice and Jenn had to work today. We went with Anna and Brian to see Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park, where Alice is a ranger. She is among the smaller rangers but looks very efficient in her uniform behind the counter at the Visitor Center. We drove the length of the park, stopping at all the viewpoints to marvel at the sheer-sided canyon bristling with fins and spires of stone, and at the river roaring in its narrow channel far below. Red-tailed hawks soared on the updrafts, and one of them shot down suddenly, perhaps to snag a mouse it had noticed. Children at the earlier viewpoints yelled and squealed to make echoes in the canyon. The ones at the later viewpoints shuffled about quietly, eyes glazed over.
Anna and I were looking at a row of spires that crossed the canyon floor from one wall to the next. “You could cross it if there were a forest fire behind you,” I suggested. Anna thought you’d need a superpower to cross it. “You wouldn’t have to fly,” I said. “A hopping superpower would be helpful, tho.”
“What superpower would you have, Dad?” she asked.
“Time travel,” I said.
“What time would you go to?”
“I’d go back just a few seconds, if I said something embarrassing, so I could fix it.”
“What superpower would you have, Dad?” she asked.
I was confused; hadn’t we just talked about this? Then I got it. Best joke of the trip!
We ate our lunches at Warren Point, and hiked a 3-mile round trip trail that Alice had recommended to a viewpoint above the canyon’s inlet. The Gunnison plateau stands above the surrounding farmland, split in two by the river that flows thru it. In geologic time, the river cuts the canyon deeper as fast as the plateau is rising.
We were too tired to cook so once again got Thai take-out for supper. Thai and Indian food are staples for gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan diets; and our family has them all.
Going home
Monday 5/2: Anna and Brian dropped us off at the Montrose airport and headed off on their own road trip adventure. When we flew into Denver Airport we found that our Seattle plane was delayed. So we roamed around the airport and didn’t hear a page for us to get on the plane, and we missed our plane. The airline automatically scheduled us on the next flight.
When we boarded, Pat put her backpack in the overhead compartment. A man took it out to make room for his suitcase, explaining that she could put hers under her seat. But she already had a bag under her seat. A cabin attendant found another place for her pack. And a kind man sitting next to me traded seats with Pat so we could be together.
At Seatac Airport, we located our bags, which had arrived earlier in the airplane we’d missed. My bag made a clonking sound as I towed it away. We looked it over and found that the rubber was coming off its wheels. Interesting; I’d never worn out a suitcase before. We went into the garage and were randomly assigned to a taxi whose driver spoke English and knew the way to West Seattle. There were trees everywhere and it was raining. Welcome home!
Travels, tinkering and thoughts 