My First Fourteener

Yesterday we climbed Colorado’s Mt. Yale (14,196 ft.) in the Sawatch Range. Well, there’s a caveat… we didn’t make it all the way to the summit, but we got pretty close. We hiked up to around 13,000 ft. and decided to turn around due to approaching storm clouds. (Safety first. You do not want to be caught in an electrical storm up there.) In any case, the views were spectacular of the surrounding mountains as far as the eye could see.

One guy we met on the trail said: “Is this a father-son expedition?” Of course, we answered in the affirmative. He thought that was pretty cool. Dad says I should get credit for bagging this peak since we would have made it if he hadn’t slowed us down. At one point I thought I heard him say: “Gettin’ up there.” I wasn’t sure if he meant that we were rising in elevation or that he’s superannuated.

This was the highest spot I’ve ever been to so far. Notice in the picture that I made a point of wearing my t-shirt showing the lowest place I’ve been: Badwater Basin in Death Valley.

Million Dollar Highway

U.S. 550 in Colorado between Durango and Ouray is sometimes called the “Million Dollar Highway.” I was expecting to see gold-plated road signs (I didn’t) but we did experience a dramatic alpine section of road (complete with rainy weather). I guess it must cost a lot to build a road that crosses four 10,000 foot passes.

Fire And Rain

We stayed overnight at Natural Bridges National Monument, one of my favorites. A really nice ranger led a stargazing program that we attended with other campers. Unfortunately, her efforts were somewhat hampered by cloudy skies.

In the morning around 6:00 AM we awoke to a monsoon-like downpour. (It was really loud on our tent fly.) Luckily, the weather tends to change quickly here so we did a morning hike up Mule Canyon to see the House on Fire Ruin. If you Google a picture of this place, you’ll see why it has that name. The overhanging rock has colors and patterns that look like flames. Very cool.

If James Taylor had spent the day with us, he might have said: “I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain.”

The Burr Trail

If you want an awesome (and challenging) driving tour, you can’t get much better than the Burr Trail. It starts as a paved road in Boulder, Utah and turns into graded dirt when you enter Capitol Reef National Park. The most exciting part was the switchbacks which cross the Waterpocket Fold and descend very steeply to the valley below. Dad says that he’s glad we were going downhill. All you have to do is put it in low gear, keep your foot on the brake pedal, and let gravity do the rest.

As you can see from the picture the scenery was spectacular the whole way.

Hitting The Slots

No, we’re not still in Las Vegas. We’re in Utah at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument where we took a hike through the desert to check out a slot canyon known as the “Zebra” for its striped walls. We didn’t go in very far due to knee deep water and narrow passages. It made both me and Dad a bit claustrophobic. I thought the most interesting part of the hike was a pretty big lizard who hung out with us in the shade all throughout our lunch.

Hiking in the desert in June makes me think of Dad’s #1 rule: drink water when he tells me to, not just when I’m thirsty.

Rockin’ The Red Rocks

Today we visited the Kolob Canyons in Zion National Park. We have definitely arrived in the red rock country of the Southwest. Beautiful!

Low Desert

Joshua trees, mesquite bushes, lizards, rattlesnakes, 100 degree heat… just the way we like it.

What a contrast from camping at 8,000 feet in the Spring Mountains to BLM lands in the Virgin River Gorge (around 2,500 ft.) in the northwest corner of Arizona. As as is the case with much of the West, the river was very low and lukewarm when we dipped our toes in it. (It still felt good.)

Too hot to sleep at night so we sat up late checking out the stars.

Leaving Las Vegas

Dad and I have a reputation for roughing it when we travel. But sometimes a Jamba Juice treat in town hits the spot on a warm day. We also stopped by the REI in Las Vegas to buy a few items we left at home.

Atomic Madness

When you travel into the Spring Mountains of Southern Nevada, there’s a lookout point where you can see across a vast expanse of desert mountains that includes the Nevada National Security Site (formerly known as the Nevada Test Site). Between 1951 and 1963 the U.S. military ran tests and exploded hundreds of nuclear weapons in an effort to counter the Soviet threat during the early years of the Cold War. (At the same time, the Soviet Union was doing the same thing in response to the American threat.)

Back in the day, nuclear “tourists” used to come up to these mountains to witness the fireballs and mushroom clouds from a distance of about sixty miles. The military had a policy of not announcing these tests in advance, but somehow word got out.

People love to see things go boom, but think of the downsides… I wonder what the Southern Paiute people thought about what was happening to their homeland.

Impossible Germany

So what do the capital city of Germany and dinosaurs have in common? Not much, except here in the middle of Nevada. We are spending the first night of our road trip at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. It’s the site of a ghost mining town named Berlin and… it has one of the largest intact ichthyosaur fossils in the world. Incredibly, the Great Basin used to be underwater a very, very long time ago. It had all sorts of aquatic creatures that are now preserved under layers of limestone.

The big guy in the picture who wants to give me a kiss grew to 60 feet long and would probably have considered me a light snack. Luckily, he (or she?) lived 250 million years ago during the Triassic Period so I don’t have to worry.