Pictures, Pictures Everywhere and no where to display them, but here, The Utah Big 5 in 2022
We've taken literally thousands of pictures on our Retirement Road Trips over the years, with a good portion of them taken with our various iPhone models (all the recent ones were taken solely with my 2nd generation iPhone SE), so what better place to display them but in this blog.
And, I've kept travel journals from just about every one of our trips, even dating back to the summer of 1974 when I kept a journal of my cycle-touring for three months around Western Europe. Those journal pages are yet to be found; no doubt I squirreled them away somewhere "safe" but when they do turn up, I write them up here as well and get the few slides that I have of that summer in digital format. Enjoy!
Here's a list of our Retirement Road Trips:
- Hearst Hacienda, west of King City, CA (March 2019)
- Yosemite National Park (October 2019)
- Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (November 2019)
- Calaveras Big Trees State Park (February 2020)
- Southern Utah and Grand Canyon North Rim National Parks (October 2020)
- Bristlecone National Forest (November 2020)
- Southern Nevada State Parks (February 2021)
- Lassen National Park and McArthur-Burney State Park (June 2021)
- Oshkosh Air Show, WI picking up many National and State Parks along the route (July 2021)
- Crater Lake National Park (September 2021)
- Central Coast of California (October 2021)
- Redwoods National Park (October 2021)
- The Ahwahnee at Yosemite (December 2021)
- The Utah Big Five and the North Rim National Parks (October 2022)
- Sequoia National Park, Joshua Trees National Park, and Palm Springs (December 2022)
We stopped counting after amassing 15 Road Trips in a few short years...
We'll start with one of our later trips Number 14, and work our way back through the years. Retirement Road Trip (RRT) 14 took us from Reno (after picking up a outdoorsy.com-rented teardrop trailer) across Nevada to the "Big 5" Utah National Parks with a dip south to the North Rim as it closed for the season.
Here is the "rig" in RVer parlance:
Retirement road trip 14
Saturday, October 8, 2022, Day 1: drove from home to Reno to pick up Teardrop, rented through outdoorsy.com, from a very talkative owner of the trailer, Jun. He had six trailers in his driveway: two or three Teardrops, some new insulated small trailer, a boat...lots of toys. We're glad he doesn't live in the neighborhood! After we picked up the trailer we had lunch at a park with cold cuts in the Reno 'burbs close to Jun's place. We then traveled Highway 80 to 50 with a turn right at Middlegate south on NV361 to NV844 to Berlin-Ichthyosaur Nevada State Park at the end of a five-mile dirt road, elevation 6,880 feet. We scored site 10 in the campground of 14 first-come-first-served (FCFS) sites; $20 a night! We pulled in late in the afternoon and got everything set up and dinner reheated and eaten by the time the sun went down over the mountains to the west of the campsite.
Sunset over Paradise Peak
We never tire of the central Nevada landscape, as "bleak" as it is. After going out many of the smaller "three-digit" roads throughout the middle of Nevada (I think after the last several trips we've probably traveled every highway and byway in Nevada!) and returning from Capitol Reef via Interstate 80, we can confidently say I-80 is a VERY boring drive and US50, US93, US95, and all the "tributary roads" make for a much more interesting road trip. It's wonderful that we don't feel pressure to get from one place to another as quickly as possible; now that we are retired, who cares if it takes us two or three days to drive across Nevada.
We also learned from our previous "car camping" road trips to plan meals well ahead: for this trip we made large batches of an umami chili, a lentil soup with italian sausage, and a chicken-mushroom with penne dish that we froze in single meal batches. We used two coolers: our smallish Yeti and a large Coleman. We put "week 2" frozen items like our ribeye in the Yeti and kept it locked down until we left the Springdale/Zion hotel and we put the "week 1" foods in the Coleman with lots of ice. The Yeti kept everything frozen until we left Zion for Bryce Canyon camping, and the Coleman slowly defrosted the dinners for week 1.
Sunday, October 9, Day 2: After finishing coffee, we took the short hike to the Ichthyosaur part of the park. The fossils are housed in a large pavilion that is only open for ranger-led tours, but there were good views at both ends of the building to check out the fossils found at the site as gold and silver miners chewed up the area.
Fossil Pavilion from a viewing platform
After checking out the fossil beds, we hooked the teardrop back up and headed out to the Berlin "ghost town and mine" part of the park. As seemed to be a familiar theme across Nevada, gold and silver were discovered here and a boom town popped up and promptly disappeared when it became economically expensive to keep extracting the ore (using lovely things like mercury to separate the gold and silver from the rock).
After checking out Berlin, NV, we headed back south and east on NV361 to US95 and while heading east we saw a brand new BART car on a flatbed truck heading west in the middle of nowhere in Nevada. FYI, "Open Range" signs mean just that; cows lingering on the side of the road that occasionally spontaneously decide to cross the highway right in front of you. It looks like the main US and NV highways are fully fenced off from wandering bovines but the "three-digit roads" don't seem to have fencing at all. Heading to our second campsite, the first-come-first-served (FCFS) campground at Cathedral Gorge NV State Park, we drove on the Extra Terrestrial Highway (US95/6/93, with Area 51 being out west of there somewhere); the routing for today was NV844 to NV361 to US95/6 to NV375 then north on US93 up to Cathedral Gorge. There were spectacular clouds all day as we drove through southern Nevada. We scored a FCFS campsite, but were a bit dismayed by having to pay their $10 uplift for electrical and water hookup even though none existed on our tiny teardrop.
Not a bad view at sunrise from the back of our campsite at Cathedral Gorge
Monday, October 10, Day Three: transfer from Cathedral Gorge to Zion Springdale; it was a beautiful sunrise and beautiful drive from Panaca to St. George. As we headed south on UT18, Janet noted that we passed by the site of the "1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre" site that was depicted in the book and mini-series "Under the Banner of Heaven." We stopped at an overlook outside of St. George and looked it up and it's a stone cairn memorializing the emigrant lives lost outside present day Veyo, UT. Oddly, we had just watched the mini-series and the sign barely caught Janet's eye. It was a bit of a detour so we continued on in to St. George. We stopped and shopped for a few picnic-ey groceries in Hurricane, UT and ate a picnic lunch at their city park. We were now in the mountain time zone, but the interplay among Utah, Arizona, and Navajo Nation makes it a challenge to keep up with "what time is it?"
Tuesday, October 11, Day 4: Zion--out the door at 6:30 to hit first shuttle for the Narrows. We actually made the third shuttle due to a bunch of other people having the same idea, but shuttles came one after another so we were on our way shortly after 7am. We were so relieved that it was not anywhere near as crowded as two years ago (same time in October, 2020) when it seemed like everyone descended on the "Big 5 Utah Parks" after the first wave lockdowns were relaxed. Personal vehicles are also kept out of the main canyon unless one has overnight accommodations at the Zion Lodge, so it was wonderful to have the main canyon mostly to humans and a few bikes.
We finally made it to Zion's Narrows, but went no further
We rode the shuttle to the end of the line at the Narrows and walked the paved path 3.28 miles out and back. After Janet's dunking at Prairie Creek's Fern Canyon on RRT12, we got some pictures at the main trail's terminus then caught the return shuttle to Zion Lodge for an all-you-can-eat breakfast. There were nothing but blue-hairs in the dining room, but an older gentleman had a mini-meltdown when he was told there was no toast! After a lovely breakfast, we hiked to the three Emerald pools, which had a conga-line like experience at a few points on the trail. Returning to the Lodge for some root beers, we were enchanted by a group of a half dozen "Road Scholars" who had a little more liquid lunch than the rest of us. Consisting of five elderly women and one man, they were having a bwa-ha-ha good time--we saw them a couple more times the rest of the week, and every time they were having a rolicking good time. We gotta look in to those tours when we get MUCH older (www.roadscholar.org)!
Not too shabby of a view in the evening in Springdale, UT
We headed back to the truck at the Visitors' Center, hoping to go out the east entrance and take the Canyon Overlook Trail just on the east end of the tunnel, but the trail was closed for maintenance. By then it was late afternoon so we popped back to the hotel (Springhill Suites in Springdale, UT) then wandered out to score some dinner. Our preferred spot, a Mexican place close to the hotel, had a 45-60 minute wait so we kept wandering and found a table at a sports bar, where a young "Florida Man" was doing his best to be as loud as possible yelling at the big screen showing a baseball playoff game. But I did have my first Polygamy Porter (or two) of the trip
Wednesday, October 12, Day 5: Got a leisurely start out of the hotel, but as we headed back out to Hurricane the teardrop jumped off the hitch and hit the pavement! I could've sworn that I checked the connection as I hooked it up this morning, but sure as shit, I'm dragging the front of the trailer along the pavement at 50 - 60 mph! Luckily, the safety chains held and there was plenty of road to pull over slowly. And, being an 800-pound trailer, it was possible to deadlift the trailer back on to the hitch ball and survey the damage. The right chain connection on the trailer was bent and unusable, so we connected both chains on one side of the trailer and hoped that I had overlooked something and it wouldn't happen again. We proceeded gingerly down to the same grocery store from previous, then proceeded up I-15 to Kolob Canyon, something we overlooked last trip.
Kolob Canyon butte
Kolob Canyon, a far northwest corner of Zion NP, was a real surprise; more stunning vistas driving out to the road's end, then all along the short "overlook" hike (about 1 mile). This large two-family group was uniquely interesting in that two late teen girls kept taking selfies and photos of each other and while looking at the results, kept announcing at every picture, "you're Super Cute!"
We invited many comments and conversations from passers-by in the parking lot by cooking our lunch at the back to the trailer (reheating our Umami Chili with fritos). "Wow, nice set up!" "How do you like your rig?" Stuff like that... Speaking of which, we both certainly felt a different "vibe" on this trip versus the 2020 Utah Big 5 trip--everyone, everywhere on the trip people were happier, more friendly. The Pandemic Brain affecting everyone had been lifted. This was a much more relaxing trip, right from the outset. Everyone we encountered in 2020 seemed on edge; not this time.
From Kolob Canyon, we continued a short way up I-15, after much bouncing on the hitch to make sure the damn thing wouldn't pop off again, then we headed east on Utah Hwy 14, another spectacular drive just to the north of Zion's Canyon. Graced for mile after mile of golden aspen groves interspersed with deep green conifers made for much pulling over and slowly taking in the vistas. While pulled over at one point after a lane closure, a pickup was stopped in the opposite lane with 3 perfect dogs standing in the truck bed: 2 yellow labs and a herding dog.
Incredible vistas on Utah Hwy 14, and three pups
We rolled in to Bryce campground about 4, dropped the trailer, and drove out to the end of the road to Rainbow Point to catch the sunset. Janet was able to score two nights at the North Campground, albeit at two different spots. Appropriately, our set-up and tear-down of the "rig" was much easier than another camper with a massive 5th wheel trailer and diesel mondo-pickup...we listened to his truck idling for what seemed like an hour as they dinked around with getting the trailer just right and set up. I have a good suggestion for the new Interior Secretary: how about banning generators from use in all NP campgrounds. They are already restricted to no use after 10pm or before 8am, but come on, people, you come to National Parks for NATURE...there are plenty of RV parks outside of parks, so if you must have your home "conveniences" in NATURE, go stay there and not a National Park. The constant thrumming of gas generators is definitely a Chi-buzzkill.
There is a big overflow parking area below the campground which empties out about sunset, and, since it was far enough away from any lights, we got some quality star-and-Milky-Way gazing in that night.
Thursday, October 13, Day 6: I awoke early, so rather than standing around in the cold waiting for Janet to stir, I took the 2 mile hike out to Sunrise Point to catch the sunrise. I got a good, but windy/cold, spot on the rim at 6:45, with only another person or two out there. But as the actual sunrise wasn't until 7:30 or so, I watched as about 40 people trickled in for those 45 minutes until the top viewpoint was full..I stayed about 20 feet lower on the trail. Of course, the sunrise was glorious as it lit up the red rock hoodoos in the amphitheater on either side...truly a bucket-list worthy event!
Bryce Canyon amphitheater ablaze at sunrise
and Janet somewhere along the Navajo Trail
Janet was up and coffee was made when I got back to the campsite, and after breakfast we moved to our second night site then packed up for a proper hike down into the canyon on the Queens-Navajo Loop after hiking back out to Sunrise Point. A good number of people were on the trail, but no massive conga-lines. Nothing but indescribable sights and vistas all along the trail, and we popped in to the camp store on the way back to the site. The store had a shower room next door, so we had our afternoon $3 for an 8 minute National Park shower. After we cooked dinner, we spent another night star-gazing in the parking lot.
Friday, October 14, Day 7: We have started a new Bucket List category--it's increasingly difficult to score a room or dinner reservation at a National Park Lodge, so the new category is "eating a meal at a National Park Lodge." Our first score on this trip was the Zion Lodge breakfast and we hit the Bryce Canyon Lodge for their buffett breakfast.
We packed up and headed out towards Mount Carmel, stopping for the quick hike to Mossy Cave on the park boundary, with an obligatory stop at the Thunderbird Cafe in Mount Carmel for their pie, oh, and lunch too.
We then made the long drive down to the Grand Canyon's North Rim during the last weekend it was open for the season. Where last time we saw a couple of herds of bison on the road leading in to the North Rim, none were to be found this year. Much of the stunning aspen on that drive is still recovering from a couple of fires over the last decade; it would have been a perfect time for a dazzling leaf peeping opportunity. We scored a campsite for one night, then a cabin at the lodge on our second.
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Saturday, Day 8: After stowing the teardrop by the camp store, we headed over to the North Rim Lodge for a linguisa and eggs breakfast, after which we drove over to Port Royal, Point Imperial, and Roosevelt Point. Overheard in the parking lot, "My calves are moaning, and my dogs are barking!"
We ran in to a crazy, hyper photographer from Brooklyn, who was rushing around to set up a shot with his tripod, fire off 3 - 5 shots, then pack up and hurry along the trail for another shot, wash, rinse, repeat...his summing up of the North Rim, "the South Rim is for TOURISTS!"
We checked in to one of the cabins on the last night the lodge was open, then the following morning, Sunday, we had the final meal served at the lodge, breakfast, served buffet style. We had a very chatty waitress, obviously a long veteran of many national park restaurants and she regaled us with stories from Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon. And, she'd move on to the next table and start in again. The capper story was in Yellowstone where a grizzly was feeding on a bison carcass in view of the lodge, with wolves hungrily looking on.
it rained overnight, and we had a couple of downpours that morning, so Janet scored a Marriott property in Paige, AZ rather than taking a chance boon-docking somewhere along the Vermillion Cliffs. The weather improved a bit and we checked out Lee's Ferry and took a spin around the FCFS campground (it had spaces but we already had the Bonvoy for the night)...bummer. It was a hell of a beautiful location. We snacked alongside the Colorado at Lee's Ferry then continued on to Paige. We've seen the rather tacky "Horseshoe Bend" on the previous trip...worth skipping.
Monday, October 17, Day 10: we didn't realize the Glen Canyon Dam (and Visitors' Center) were less than a mile away from our hotel, so we popped down there after our odd, but good, breakfast at the combo K-Pop and Mexican Restaurant, that served a mean huevos con chorizo (a breakfast weakness of mine). The Glen Canyon Dam Visitors' Center was very well done, despite our feelings of all the damming of the west's rivers.
From there was had a timed reservation at the Navajo Nation's Antelope Canyon Tour. I was half expecting Horseshoe Bend cheesiness, but the Navajo guides did an excellent job leading the groups and managing the crowds. The kept it to groups of ten, and kept all the numbskull "influencers" moving along and staying with the group. One Asian woman in the group ahead of us, dressed in a light flowing gown and veils, and sparkly shoes totally inappropriate for navigating the stairs and the sand, was immediately shut down by her guide, and ours, as she tried to get these flowie posed snaps with her arms aloft as soon as she climbed down into the slot canyon. Anna Miller, our Navajo guide, regaled us with stories of "Karens" and assaults on her tours, but she also told us great stories of how the Navajo used these canyons to hide from the USArmy, and how the canyon can fill with debris during the somewhat frequent flash floods (interesting that the tours shut down until all the guides and workers at the site are able to clean out the canyon). She also taught us to use panoramic mode on our phones to get great pictures of in the slot canyon--one of them adorned our Christmas Card for 2022.
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From Paige we continued on to Monument Valley, that was completely closed and the road barred on our trip in 2020--Covid hit the Navajo Nation very hard and they were taking no chances then. We caught the perfect Alpenglow time as we pulled in to the lodge to check in for our Cabin. We had a mediocre dinner in the lodge: we hoped it would feature Navajo cuisine but instead featured a cheesy John Wayne/John Ford themed menu. I had a burger...bummer.
Absolutely perfect alpenglow on an iconic mitten in Monument Valley
No photoshopping involved; that's what it looked like!
Tuesday, Day 11: we woke up and reveled in the sunrise coming up over Monument Valley, bathing the famous "mitten" formations in a glorious glow. I get it why John Ford kept filming here.
And, sunrise over that mitten from the deck of our cabin
We had dropped the teardrop in the cabin parking lot the day before, so we took the Monument Valley's version of the "17 Mile Drive," a dirt road that takes you out around many of the features of the valley, and after that, we hiked the Wildcat Trail from our cabin that ended up circumambulating West Mitten Butte.
We left Monument Valley heading out in the direction of the "Forest Gump" road, which since 2020 has sprouted signs and pullouts so you influencers can get your snaps!
We picked the teardrop back up after a "dazzling scenery day" at Monument Valley and headed back to Moab, UT, where in 2020 the town was packed and it took us about 45 minutes to drive about a mile across the Colorado River that bisects the town. First, we found out that particular week in October 2020 was the Mormon-go-to-your-National-Parks week, which google seemed to know about but Scott, my Mormon friend knew nothing of. And, the Covid restrictions had been loosened so EVERYONE was in Moab and Arches NP. And, the single road through Moab was all torn up for sewer, sidewalk and road work, so all the people in all the cars in all the hotels and parks made for a SLOOOOWWW crawl in 2020.
Still, it was pretty crowded in and around Moab, but nowhere near the volume of 2020. We checked back in to the Springhill Suites that we stayed in 2020 and dropped the trailer in the back lot.
Wednesday, Day 12: We headed quite a ways south out of Moab to the Needles sector of Canyonlands NP--77 miles to be exact. As crowded at the Islands in the Sky sector of Canyonlands is because of its proximity to Moab, this sector was wonderfully uncrowded. We stopped at Newspaper Rock coming in to the park, home to 2,000 year old petroglyphs after passing three dead cows on the large desert meadows on the way in to the canyon. We went to the end of the road and hiked the Slick Rock Trail (about 3.5 miles OAB) featuring a beautiful and varied landscape, and we decided right then to modify our plans and stay at one of the FCFS campsites in the canyon after our stay at Moab.
Thursday, Day 13, October 20: based on our negative experience at Arches NP in 2020, where EVERY trailhead parking area in the park was full despite getting there at 8am, and we "settled" for getting the last spot at the Devil's Garden Trailhead and proceeded to get a bit lost on that less-then-well-marked trail, we got up at 5am to be one of the first at the Delicate Arch Trailhead, in absolute darkness. Of course, we had no flashlights or headlamps, so we started following a rather-out-of-shape couple who stopped too many times for us on the climb out of the parking lot. We then picked up up a trio, Jim, Lila, and Jorge, who seemed to know where they were going, with headlamps. Despite his claim that "I've hiked this trail in the dark before," Jim was lost a couple of times on the slickrock but we eventually found Delicate Arch well before sunrise. It was my first night hike since Boy Scouts all those years ago, and we were totally unprepared and relied on the kindness of strangers.
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After the sun came up, we passed the masses coming up the Delicate Arch Trail (hey, it's not so challenging once the sun is up!) and were able to park at the Double Arch Trailhead and got some early morning snaps there...damn the airliners and their contrails!
We spent the rest of the day revisiting the Islands in the Sky sector of Canyonlands and Dead Horse Point State Park, which turns out to be a mesa with a single narrow access with sheer drop off all around the mesa, and as the story goes the Navajo drove herds of wild horses on to the mesa, trapping them with fences along the access, then selecting those for their mounts out of the trapped herd. But wouldn't you know, once whitey showed up, they pulled the same stunt but didn't release the "unselected" but they just left them to die, hence the morbid name.
Friday, Day 14: up early to shop for several days of boondocking in the Needles sector (we wanted to return) and Capitol Reef on the loop north to start the drive back west. We were lucky to snag the last FCFS campsite in Site A, space #2, with a beautiful view across grasslands out to red-rock mesas to the southwest at 5,100 feet.
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Once we settled in and set up, Janet napped and I took a six-mile hike on what I hoped was the Wooden Shoe Trail, again, not well marked to get from the valley bottom up to the slickrock mesas above. The views were absolutely spectacular as I made my way along a challenging slickrock mesas, and I had to use a tree to get off the mesa and back down to the campground. I failed to find the trail to Elephant Rock which would have made my hike a loop, but after missing any trail out there in Big Spring Canyon to take me to Elephant Rock, I decided to retrace my steps back following the cairns back to the camp.
Saturday, October 22, Day 15: we "took the long way" going from Needles sector to Capitol Reef NP, first heading south on US191 away from Moab, then heading west and north on US95 to Hanksville and Goblin Valley State Park. We would vote US95 between Blanding and Hanksville as beautiful as any of the drives we've been on, like Avenue of the Giants in Redwoods NP. The routing takes you past Natural Bridges (we caught that last trip) and Bears Ears National Monument (which unfortunately is on the Whack List for Trump 2.0) and up to Goblin Valley SP. The weather was definitely turning at that point, getting windy and cold as we swung in to Goblin Valley, an interesting collection of mini-hoodoos strewn along a valley floor. As we watched families climbing up on the hoodoos, we saw a sign saying "we are testing allowing people to hike among and climb on the hoodoos" which seems like a failed test as it looks like the fragile hoodoos could be significantly damaged for the sake of family snaps.
After a little thought, we consider Goblin Valley SP is to Bryce Canyon NP as Cathedral Gorge SP (in southeast Nevada) is to Cedar Breaks NM.
After a cold, windblown visit to Goblin Valley, we backtracked to Hanksville for dinner at Dukes, where we had a very interesting "growing up Mormon and being gay" conversation with our very gay waiter. He was formally "excommunicated" from the church and the conversation moved to our assessment of the mini-series "Under the Banner of Heaven" which he had not seen. Two of his better quotes from the night, "Mom, it's a CULT!" and "I've been to a number of Parking Lot Weddings."
The weather started getting colder, then rain started, as we got to our campground in Capitol Reef, and we set up in the cold and rain and attempted to cook dinner, my specialty steak and carmelized onions in the teardrop, but moved to the back of the truck to get more shelter from the wind and rain, which eventually turned to snow in the higher elevations around the park.
Sunday, Day 16: still very windy and cold as we awoke to deer and wild turkeys running around the campground, with rain overnight with a low of 3 degrees F at our next planned destination, Great Basin NP. We bagged our plan to take the 4WD road out to Cathedral Valley, despite having the 4Runner after all the rain, so we turned around and hit the sites close in to Fruita. We took in a couple of overlooks of the various gorges around the park, Chimney Rock, Panorama overlook, and Goosenecks. More rain was forecast hitting at 6pm, and cars coming in from Torrey (west gateway to the park) sported a good layer of snow.
 Formations around Capitol Reef, with the weather getting more "wintery" |  |
Fishlake National Forest on the way west
Monday, Day 17: after deciding to bypass heading home via US50: the World's Loneliest Road and Great Basin with a rental teardrop in the worsening weather, we headed out on beautiful UT24, which had a light layer of snow as we headed through Fishlake National Forest and west and north on dry roads and spectacular views through Salt Lake City (and lunch at a Chevron on the western outskirts of SLC) and on to our favorite Bonvoy hotel in Elko on Highway 80. We had our final Road Trip dinner at the Star Basque Hotel (because of the history of extensive sheep herding across northern Nevada's mountains, Nevada from Reno to Elko is sprinkled with Basque Restaurants).
Tuesday, Day 18, October 25: we dropped the teardrop off a day early; the owner was on his own road trip and we left the trailer in his driveway. Then on to Incline then on home.
Total Trip Mlleage: 3,593.5 miles
Spectacular Sunrises:
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National Park Lodge Breakfasts:
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And, the one image that will stay with us
A shot in Antelope Canyon similar to the home page picture that Microsoft licensed for its desktop wallpaper
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