Wed 25th
Today we got up and drove a few miles to a Hertz rental place to pick up our hire car, then with me and Tris in the van and Celso following in the car we went to drop off the van. We had only done 1700 miles more than we had originally guesstimated we would do!! So in total we have covered 9800 miles of the United States, it has been great but I'm quite looking forward to moving on now. (It will be over 10,000 by the time we have gone south to Houston)
We drove the hire car down to Galveston, on the Gulf of Mexico about 30 miles South of Houston. It was strange to be in a car, nippy and manouverable, but no loo or fridge full of food and drink!!
In Galveston we checked into a motel and watched telly which is quite a novelty for us, but there is a whole load of rubbish on the TV here.
26th Nov - Thanksgiving
We slept in until around 10am and then went to a place called Moody Gardens in Galveston. We visited an excellent small aquarium which had above ground and underwater viewing areas for seals and penguins, and excellent walk through tunnel with an amazing variety of fish, sharks and a huge sea turtle. We watched Scrooge in 3D which is a really fun film and then learnt a bit about the history of Galveston. It was a major immigration point in the late 1800's when Texas wanted 1,000,000 immigrants per year to populate and develop the state, it was also a place where 1000s of slaves were shipped from the East Coast. But then with segregation and the start of large scale immigration from Eastern Europe there started to be a lot of racial tension and the port was closed.
Celso and Tristan had a Thanksgiving Buffet lunch with roast turkey and beef, mashed potato, pumpkin and artichokes followed by cheesecake and chocolate nut cake, then we drove around to try and find a couple of last minute things (some new shoes for Tris, a fishing rod container etc) but found that all the shops were closed, so it was into another motel close to a fishing shop.
27th November
Today is known as Black Friday (I don't know why) and apparently it is the busiest shopping day of the year. The sales are on and the bargain hunters have been out since the early hours. Last year there was at least one fatality in the crush. We again slept quite late (for us) until 9am and then we went out to join the shoppers. We didn't find many, a few more in Walmart than we have ever seen before and a few irate customers who couldn't find the things they had seen in the ads, but not nearly as many as we had been expecting after what we had seen on the TV. We got all that we needed and then drove to the airport to return our hire car. On the way we were stopped at one set of traffic lights next to a small canal in which we saw several water rats, a couple swimming another sitting, chewing on something, oblivious to the traffic whizzing by. Afterwards we went to our hotel via a mall to have another look around, we could walk back to our motel but there were absolutely no pavements (sidewalks) to walk on making it all quite dangerous; it just shows how little the people around here walk.
In the hotel we spent a couple of hours ironing all our patches (from all the places we have been) onto our Tshirts in preparation for wearing them tomorrow on the next leg of our journey. And having repacked our bags a couple of times we now have our luggage sorted with the correct weight in each bag and no items that might get confiscated in our hand luggage.
Friday, 27 November 2009
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Carlsbad and into Texas 22-24 Nov
Sunday 22
Up early we drove 20 miles or so south through more desert to Carlsbad Caverns. This is not the largest nor the deepest nor the longest cave in the world but it is certainly one of the most amazing places I have ever been. The caves were not formed by water but by acidic erosion. Water leaching through the rocks met the Hydrogen Sulphide gas that was formed from petroleum deposits in the area. The water and Hydrogen Sulphide formed Sulphuric Acid which then dissolved the limestone forming huge chambers. Uplift then pushed the caves up above the water table and then the creative processes began where water, carbon dioxide and dissolved limestone slowly, drop by drop, caused the formation of the amazing features of the cave.
It is home to several hundred thousand bats and another several tens of thousand swallows, both of which have now, unfortunately, flown south for the winter. We walked down through the natural entrance to the cave (which was once a steep drop only accessible by ladder) down a steep switchback path, past the twilight zone and into the darkness. Small dim lights lit the path and some of the features of the cave. Amazing formations, stalagmites; stalactites; soda straws; popcorn; slimy flowstones and grand pillars; mirror surfaced cave pools that occasionally are disturbed by a drip from overhead; cave pearls and crystals; brought out oohs and ahs from all of us as we wandered for 2.5 miles through and around the entrance and through another cave called 'the big room'. Our photos could not do the incredible features justice and so we have bought a book to remind ourselves of what we have seen when we get back to the UK.
The first man known to come down into the cave was a teenager called Jim White back in the late 1890s and then in the early 1900s bat guano was collected here and sent to California as fertilizer for the fruit orchards that were set up there. In 1915, after the first photos of some of the formations were shown in the local town, many people wanted to see inside the cave and so they were lowered over 170ft in a bucket used to haul bat guano from the cave! In 1923 the cave was declared a National Monument, it was explored by members of the National Geographic Society and then declared a National Park in 1930. In 1995 the cave was declared a World Heritage Site and now the park has expanded to include 100 other local caves.
One of the most amazing things that we learnt in the cave is that in some of the cave pools there is more biodiversity than in the rain forest. Scientists have also discovered some bacteria that produce an enzyme to kill competitors in the pools, one of these enzymes is being studied because in tests it kills cancer cells whilst appearing to leave healthy cells alone!
Our caving hours at an end we started our journey to Dallas to return the van, we passed masses of mini oil rigs (but have so far failed to take any photos of them) and horizon to horizon wind turbines (the most I have ever seen in one place). The landscape slowly became more lush, from wispy, dry, yellowish brown grasses and desert shrubs to green grass, oak trees and rivers with a decent flow of water in them. More natural water than we have seen since the Hoover Dam clogged the Colorado river! So we spent the rest of Sunday and then Monday driving over 500 miles. Tuesday was spent cleaning, washing clothes and bedding and packing. Not very interesting!!!
Up early we drove 20 miles or so south through more desert to Carlsbad Caverns. This is not the largest nor the deepest nor the longest cave in the world but it is certainly one of the most amazing places I have ever been. The caves were not formed by water but by acidic erosion. Water leaching through the rocks met the Hydrogen Sulphide gas that was formed from petroleum deposits in the area. The water and Hydrogen Sulphide formed Sulphuric Acid which then dissolved the limestone forming huge chambers. Uplift then pushed the caves up above the water table and then the creative processes began where water, carbon dioxide and dissolved limestone slowly, drop by drop, caused the formation of the amazing features of the cave.
It is home to several hundred thousand bats and another several tens of thousand swallows, both of which have now, unfortunately, flown south for the winter. We walked down through the natural entrance to the cave (which was once a steep drop only accessible by ladder) down a steep switchback path, past the twilight zone and into the darkness. Small dim lights lit the path and some of the features of the cave. Amazing formations, stalagmites; stalactites; soda straws; popcorn; slimy flowstones and grand pillars; mirror surfaced cave pools that occasionally are disturbed by a drip from overhead; cave pearls and crystals; brought out oohs and ahs from all of us as we wandered for 2.5 miles through and around the entrance and through another cave called 'the big room'. Our photos could not do the incredible features justice and so we have bought a book to remind ourselves of what we have seen when we get back to the UK.
The first man known to come down into the cave was a teenager called Jim White back in the late 1890s and then in the early 1900s bat guano was collected here and sent to California as fertilizer for the fruit orchards that were set up there. In 1915, after the first photos of some of the formations were shown in the local town, many people wanted to see inside the cave and so they were lowered over 170ft in a bucket used to haul bat guano from the cave! In 1923 the cave was declared a National Monument, it was explored by members of the National Geographic Society and then declared a National Park in 1930. In 1995 the cave was declared a World Heritage Site and now the park has expanded to include 100 other local caves.
One of the most amazing things that we learnt in the cave is that in some of the cave pools there is more biodiversity than in the rain forest. Scientists have also discovered some bacteria that produce an enzyme to kill competitors in the pools, one of these enzymes is being studied because in tests it kills cancer cells whilst appearing to leave healthy cells alone!
Our caving hours at an end we started our journey to Dallas to return the van, we passed masses of mini oil rigs (but have so far failed to take any photos of them) and horizon to horizon wind turbines (the most I have ever seen in one place). The landscape slowly became more lush, from wispy, dry, yellowish brown grasses and desert shrubs to green grass, oak trees and rivers with a decent flow of water in them. More natural water than we have seen since the Hoover Dam clogged the Colorado river! So we spent the rest of Sunday and then Monday driving over 500 miles. Tuesday was spent cleaning, washing clothes and bedding and packing. Not very interesting!!!
Saturday, 21 November 2009
East through New Mexico 20-21 Nov
Friday 20th
From Alamagordo we drove South West about 13 miles to visit White Sands National Monument, it is a part of the Chihuahuan desert which is the largest desert in North America (incl Mexico) and also the highest. That means that we have visited the lowest (Death Valley) and the highest deserts (White Sands) in the US!
The place well deserves its name, it looks just like there has been a heavy snowfall. The sand was so white and felt really cold! At the entrance we hired a couple of circular sledges and went in search of a large steep sand dune.
We found a perfect place with the sun on our backs (or our fronts when we fell off at the bottom of the slope usually gong backwards!) and no huge bumps to force us to 'take air'; we had been warned at the hire place that this can be very painful.
We could hear jet planes in the distance (we had passed an AFB on the way) and also just to the south of us is the White Sands Missile Range where they tested captured Nazi rockets after the war and still test new inventions now. Apparently the road south through the missile range is closed a couple of times a week for a few hours as new machines are tested. (Bits of both Transformers films were filmed here in the white sands (if you're interested, I'm not!))
After a couple of hours in which we established that Tristan was the champion sledger; that sand can get everywhere; that Celso was getting a mark where his Tshirt was (horror of horrors, he likes to have 'the perfect tan) and that we were all extremely hungry; we returned to the van and ate sandwiches and drank cold ginger ale. Then we set of North Eastwards to the centre of Lincoln County where Billy the Kid had made his name.
On our journey Tristan and I spotted a road runner on the side of the road, it was tiny, not at all what I had expected from the Loony Tunes road runner! We also passed through Apache land which was completely different from both the Navajo and Ashiwi lands we have passed through. There was no rubbish, no stray dogs, there was beautiful graffiti along the roads saying things like 'Honour your people', 'Respect' and beautifully intricate native designs. I wonder why there is such a difference?
At the small town of Lincoln, that used to be the county seat and was once described as the most dangerous place in America by one of the presidents (whose name escapes me as I have never heard of him before!), we stopped to see what the Billy the Kid story was all about. The town is said to be the best preserved town in America, of course the road has been tarmacked and some modernisation was done to the buildings in the early 1900s when electricity and water arrived in the town, but the shops, some houses and the courthouse at the centre of the story are still standing and you are able to go in and have a look around. If you're not interested in the story then skip the next paragraph.
'The company', (Murphy, Dolan and Co) had a monopoly on the government contracts in Lincoln county to supply Beef to Fort Sumner, they were squeezing all the other ranchers out of business, buying up their lands and had the local lawmen and politicians in their pocket. Tunstall, a young, rich Englishman, came to Lincoln and set up a new business in direct competition to 'The Company'. Dolan trumped up charges of an unpaid debt by Tunstall and then sent a group of men with the sheriff to collect... Tunstall was murdered. The teenager Billy the kid worked for Tunstall (Tunstall was kind of the father he had never known) and he vowed revenge. The whole area took sides either with the company or with Tunstall and The Lincoln County War started, the year was 1876. Billy and co set up a group of vigilantes (spelling) called The Regulators and killed several of The Company's men including the Sheriff. It all got out of hand until the Governor of New Mexico sent in the cavalry to sort things out. They burnt a house that the Regulators were hiding in and shot them as they came out surrendering but Billy escaped. Pat Garret was made the new sheriff and all went quiet for a while, but Garret was determined to get Billy and he hunted him down. He was tried by a jury selected by The Company, found guilty of the murder of the sheriff and sentenced to hang. Whilst awaiting sentence in the courthouse in Lincoln, he managed to shoot a guard whilst on a trip to the privy, shot another that came to find out what the noise was all about and then escaped. His leg irons were removed by one of the many friends who supported The Regulators. But Billy didn't leave the area and after a couple of months Garret hunted him down again and this time he shot him dead.
We drove East to Roswell with another of those colourful sunsets behind us and our eyes open for any UFOs. (For those of you that don't know, Roswell is the place where a UFO is supposed to have crashed in 1947 and has been followed by a series of cover ups by the military and government.)
Sat 21st
We were not abducted in the night, or I think we weren't, but after visiting the UFO museum and research centre this morning I am a believer. There are so many convincing testimonies from so many different people giving such similar stories and descriptions of events. We spent a couple of hours in the museum looking at documents and photos of the 'Roswell incident' and other sightings and encounters.
We drove south towards Carlsbad and went to the Living Desert State Park in the afternoon where there were hundreds of desert plants and a small zoo with desert animals; Prairie dogs; Javelina (collared Peccary, like a wild boar); rattlesnakes; deer; mountain lions; a bobcat; a grey fox; horned owls; golden and bald eagles; tortoises; scorpions and tarantulas; centipedes and lots of birds. It was a fabulous place.
We are camped just south of Carlsbad ready to go to the caverns tomorrow. We have had a swim and a shower and are feeling warm and cosy.
From Alamagordo we drove South West about 13 miles to visit White Sands National Monument, it is a part of the Chihuahuan desert which is the largest desert in North America (incl Mexico) and also the highest. That means that we have visited the lowest (Death Valley) and the highest deserts (White Sands) in the US!
The place well deserves its name, it looks just like there has been a heavy snowfall. The sand was so white and felt really cold! At the entrance we hired a couple of circular sledges and went in search of a large steep sand dune.
We found a perfect place with the sun on our backs (or our fronts when we fell off at the bottom of the slope usually gong backwards!) and no huge bumps to force us to 'take air'; we had been warned at the hire place that this can be very painful.
We could hear jet planes in the distance (we had passed an AFB on the way) and also just to the south of us is the White Sands Missile Range where they tested captured Nazi rockets after the war and still test new inventions now. Apparently the road south through the missile range is closed a couple of times a week for a few hours as new machines are tested. (Bits of both Transformers films were filmed here in the white sands (if you're interested, I'm not!))
After a couple of hours in which we established that Tristan was the champion sledger; that sand can get everywhere; that Celso was getting a mark where his Tshirt was (horror of horrors, he likes to have 'the perfect tan) and that we were all extremely hungry; we returned to the van and ate sandwiches and drank cold ginger ale. Then we set of North Eastwards to the centre of Lincoln County where Billy the Kid had made his name.
On our journey Tristan and I spotted a road runner on the side of the road, it was tiny, not at all what I had expected from the Loony Tunes road runner! We also passed through Apache land which was completely different from both the Navajo and Ashiwi lands we have passed through. There was no rubbish, no stray dogs, there was beautiful graffiti along the roads saying things like 'Honour your people', 'Respect' and beautifully intricate native designs. I wonder why there is such a difference?
At the small town of Lincoln, that used to be the county seat and was once described as the most dangerous place in America by one of the presidents (whose name escapes me as I have never heard of him before!), we stopped to see what the Billy the Kid story was all about. The town is said to be the best preserved town in America, of course the road has been tarmacked and some modernisation was done to the buildings in the early 1900s when electricity and water arrived in the town, but the shops, some houses and the courthouse at the centre of the story are still standing and you are able to go in and have a look around. If you're not interested in the story then skip the next paragraph.
'The company', (Murphy, Dolan and Co) had a monopoly on the government contracts in Lincoln county to supply Beef to Fort Sumner, they were squeezing all the other ranchers out of business, buying up their lands and had the local lawmen and politicians in their pocket. Tunstall, a young, rich Englishman, came to Lincoln and set up a new business in direct competition to 'The Company'. Dolan trumped up charges of an unpaid debt by Tunstall and then sent a group of men with the sheriff to collect... Tunstall was murdered. The teenager Billy the kid worked for Tunstall (Tunstall was kind of the father he had never known) and he vowed revenge. The whole area took sides either with the company or with Tunstall and The Lincoln County War started, the year was 1876. Billy and co set up a group of vigilantes (spelling) called The Regulators and killed several of The Company's men including the Sheriff. It all got out of hand until the Governor of New Mexico sent in the cavalry to sort things out. They burnt a house that the Regulators were hiding in and shot them as they came out surrendering but Billy escaped. Pat Garret was made the new sheriff and all went quiet for a while, but Garret was determined to get Billy and he hunted him down. He was tried by a jury selected by The Company, found guilty of the murder of the sheriff and sentenced to hang. Whilst awaiting sentence in the courthouse in Lincoln, he managed to shoot a guard whilst on a trip to the privy, shot another that came to find out what the noise was all about and then escaped. His leg irons were removed by one of the many friends who supported The Regulators. But Billy didn't leave the area and after a couple of months Garret hunted him down again and this time he shot him dead.
We drove East to Roswell with another of those colourful sunsets behind us and our eyes open for any UFOs. (For those of you that don't know, Roswell is the place where a UFO is supposed to have crashed in 1947 and has been followed by a series of cover ups by the military and government.)
Sat 21st
We were not abducted in the night, or I think we weren't, but after visiting the UFO museum and research centre this morning I am a believer. There are so many convincing testimonies from so many different people giving such similar stories and descriptions of events. We spent a couple of hours in the museum looking at documents and photos of the 'Roswell incident' and other sightings and encounters.
We drove south towards Carlsbad and went to the Living Desert State Park in the afternoon where there were hundreds of desert plants and a small zoo with desert animals; Prairie dogs; Javelina (collared Peccary, like a wild boar); rattlesnakes; deer; mountain lions; a bobcat; a grey fox; horned owls; golden and bald eagles; tortoises; scorpions and tarantulas; centipedes and lots of birds. It was a fabulous place.
We are camped just south of Carlsbad ready to go to the caverns tomorrow. We have had a swim and a shower and are feeling warm and cosy.
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Travelling South into New Mexico 17-19 Nov
Tues 17th
We basically spent 5 hours driving south and east (with various stops along the way) into New Mexico. Of course there were fabulous views along the way, some huge red cliffs that, from a distance, looked like a huge city with sky scrapers towering up out of the desert with the sun behind them. Then, as you got closer, they turned that deep shade of red that is now so familiar to us and the intricate carving that only nature's erosion could do becomes visible. So beautiful, and yet we are all big rocked out so we hardly took any photos. We also stopped at several roadside Navajo stalls to admire their weaving, pottery and jewellery. Tristan and Celso bought a pair of earrings with dangly Kokopeli statues so that they can turn them into necklaces, should be good if Celso's other creations are anything to go by.
As we passed into New Mexico through Navajo land the poverty all around was evident. The roads were badly maintained, the houses seemed to have their rooves held on by the addition of several car tyres, dogs roamed the litter strewn streets and the cars on the roads were more battered than any we have seen so far. We got to Gallop in New Mexico as the sun went down and found a campsite with lovely indigenous statues all the way down the drive. Such a contrast to the poverty that we had just driven through.
Wed 18th
We drove south from Gallop to go to Zuni, a pueblo that still uses the houses, or parts of the houses, built around a mission in the 1600s. The Ashiwi (or Zuni) people call this place the Middle Place of the World. As it is still very much a residential area you need to have a photo permit to even wander around with a camera, so we stopped and paid $10 then walked along the streets to the tiny museum. There are bread ovens everywhere and in the museum we watched an old black and white silent film showing two Ashiwi women first making an oven and then baking in one. As we stepped out of the museum again there was one of the ovens with flames streaming out of its front; first they burn wood in the stone and adobe covered, half spherical structure; then they sweep out all the ashes; put the bread in and seal the door with wood and cloth. Further along the street we could smell bread being baked and we saw two or three other ovens in use and one being built.
We visited several stalls with locally produced crafts, some beautiful carvings in stone and antler (beyond our price range), pottery (too fragile) and jewelery and rugs. We bought some more pinyons (should have a Spanish ny letter there but I can't find one!), the cooked and salted pine nuts (Yum) and tried some sunflower seeds soaked in lime and salt (Yuk!). We then went to visit the bakery but only found a large number of dogs with several tiny puppies amongst their number. And so we left Zuni, very disappointed at not being able to try their bread.
We drove west along route 53 to visit a wolf sanctuary. We were taken around to visit all the rescued wolves and wolf dogs that they have. The cages are good and large and most of the animals are kept in pairs. There are some really awful stories as to how some of them arrived at the place but they seem to be well cared for here. A few facts we learnt:- wolves have amber eyes; they only have black noses (never with pink bits); they have scent glands in their paws (apparently that is why dogs often scratch the ground as a hang over from leaving the scent, but dogs don't have these glands anymore). Whilst we were there a couple of the wolves had a small fight, they had just been put together the day before and were still sorting out the pecking order, this caused a whole load of howling around the park as the gossip spread. It was fantastic to see the wolves sitting with their throats extended to the sky and singing their hearts out. According to the guy who took us round he can recognise many different types of howl and this was definitely a gossip howl, rather than a ' I am here and this is my plot' howl or a 'keep out' howl.
Soon we were on our way again and we stopped in Grants for the night.
Thu 19th
Today was another travelling day through more desert, (it is quite beautiful when I think about it, but during driving it just seems like one endless expanse of dry nothingness). This time we passed a famous bit of desert where the first ever atomic bomb was exploded which is now a missile range! We were heading for the centre of New Mexico to Billy the Kid Country and we will be visiting 'his' museum tomorrow.
We stopped in a shopping mall to alleviate the monotony of the drive and Celso went in search of a video that he would like to take to Ecuador. It is called 'The Gods must be crazy', and he asked the women near the videos to look in the computer to see if they had it in stock. First she wrote 'The Goats must be Crazy',
'No, no', said Celso, 'not goats - God'.
So this time she wrote 'The gold must be crazy',
'No,' says Celso again, 'Not gold, - God.'
Her next attempt was 'The Good must be Crazy'.
Celso was getting a bit anxious by now. 'No', he said, 'Not good, God. You know, Jesus!'
The woman turned to him and said 'Jesus is good?'.
Celso, by now very frustrated, pointed to the heavens and said 'Jesus, God, you know the almighty!'.
'Oh!' says the woman, 'you mean Gad!'
The problem was solved but Celso had a very difficult time keeping a straight face through the rest of their dealings!
This encounter kept us giggling for the rest of the day.
We are now holed up in a town called Alamogordo and it is warm, warm, beautifully warm. I think we shall sleep well tonight.
We basically spent 5 hours driving south and east (with various stops along the way) into New Mexico. Of course there were fabulous views along the way, some huge red cliffs that, from a distance, looked like a huge city with sky scrapers towering up out of the desert with the sun behind them. Then, as you got closer, they turned that deep shade of red that is now so familiar to us and the intricate carving that only nature's erosion could do becomes visible. So beautiful, and yet we are all big rocked out so we hardly took any photos. We also stopped at several roadside Navajo stalls to admire their weaving, pottery and jewellery. Tristan and Celso bought a pair of earrings with dangly Kokopeli statues so that they can turn them into necklaces, should be good if Celso's other creations are anything to go by.
As we passed into New Mexico through Navajo land the poverty all around was evident. The roads were badly maintained, the houses seemed to have their rooves held on by the addition of several car tyres, dogs roamed the litter strewn streets and the cars on the roads were more battered than any we have seen so far. We got to Gallop in New Mexico as the sun went down and found a campsite with lovely indigenous statues all the way down the drive. Such a contrast to the poverty that we had just driven through.
Wed 18th
We drove south from Gallop to go to Zuni, a pueblo that still uses the houses, or parts of the houses, built around a mission in the 1600s. The Ashiwi (or Zuni) people call this place the Middle Place of the World. As it is still very much a residential area you need to have a photo permit to even wander around with a camera, so we stopped and paid $10 then walked along the streets to the tiny museum. There are bread ovens everywhere and in the museum we watched an old black and white silent film showing two Ashiwi women first making an oven and then baking in one. As we stepped out of the museum again there was one of the ovens with flames streaming out of its front; first they burn wood in the stone and adobe covered, half spherical structure; then they sweep out all the ashes; put the bread in and seal the door with wood and cloth. Further along the street we could smell bread being baked and we saw two or three other ovens in use and one being built.
We visited several stalls with locally produced crafts, some beautiful carvings in stone and antler (beyond our price range), pottery (too fragile) and jewelery and rugs. We bought some more pinyons (should have a Spanish ny letter there but I can't find one!), the cooked and salted pine nuts (Yum) and tried some sunflower seeds soaked in lime and salt (Yuk!). We then went to visit the bakery but only found a large number of dogs with several tiny puppies amongst their number. And so we left Zuni, very disappointed at not being able to try their bread.
We drove west along route 53 to visit a wolf sanctuary. We were taken around to visit all the rescued wolves and wolf dogs that they have. The cages are good and large and most of the animals are kept in pairs. There are some really awful stories as to how some of them arrived at the place but they seem to be well cared for here. A few facts we learnt:- wolves have amber eyes; they only have black noses (never with pink bits); they have scent glands in their paws (apparently that is why dogs often scratch the ground as a hang over from leaving the scent, but dogs don't have these glands anymore). Whilst we were there a couple of the wolves had a small fight, they had just been put together the day before and were still sorting out the pecking order, this caused a whole load of howling around the park as the gossip spread. It was fantastic to see the wolves sitting with their throats extended to the sky and singing their hearts out. According to the guy who took us round he can recognise many different types of howl and this was definitely a gossip howl, rather than a ' I am here and this is my plot' howl or a 'keep out' howl.
Soon we were on our way again and we stopped in Grants for the night.
Thu 19th
Today was another travelling day through more desert, (it is quite beautiful when I think about it, but during driving it just seems like one endless expanse of dry nothingness). This time we passed a famous bit of desert where the first ever atomic bomb was exploded which is now a missile range! We were heading for the centre of New Mexico to Billy the Kid Country and we will be visiting 'his' museum tomorrow.
We stopped in a shopping mall to alleviate the monotony of the drive and Celso went in search of a video that he would like to take to Ecuador. It is called 'The Gods must be crazy', and he asked the women near the videos to look in the computer to see if they had it in stock. First she wrote 'The Goats must be Crazy',
'No, no', said Celso, 'not goats - God'.
So this time she wrote 'The gold must be crazy',
'No,' says Celso again, 'Not gold, - God.'
Her next attempt was 'The Good must be Crazy'.
Celso was getting a bit anxious by now. 'No', he said, 'Not good, God. You know, Jesus!'
The woman turned to him and said 'Jesus is good?'.
Celso, by now very frustrated, pointed to the heavens and said 'Jesus, God, you know the almighty!'.
'Oh!' says the woman, 'you mean Gad!'
The problem was solved but Celso had a very difficult time keeping a straight face through the rest of their dealings!
This encounter kept us giggling for the rest of the day.
We are now holed up in a town called Alamogordo and it is warm, warm, beautifully warm. I think we shall sleep well tonight.
Monday, 16 November 2009
Arches National Park 16 Nov
We awoke in our warm, cozy motel room and got up in comfort! After breakfast we went out to the cold van and started the short journey south to Arches National Park. There was snow on the ground in all the shaded parts and more incredible views through extraordinary red rock formations. We took a walk to try to climb on top of Skyline Arch which looked like quite a low arch from the road; only to find the climb impossible with the slippery snow on the rocks below it. Then a walk up to Landscape Arch took us through many shaded areas where the snow was lying quite deep and the desert shrubs and twisted trees looked glorious with their sprinkling of icing on top. Tristan collected enough snow to make a very solid palm sized snowball and to repay Celso for the couple of snowballs that had been lobbed in his direction!
It was so cold when we weren't in the sun and we finally made the decision to miss out on some of the places we had planned to see in Colorado and to whizz southwards to the sun. After a brief stop in Moab, which had an amazing variety of Kokapelli statues around its streets, we sped 100 miles south to a little town called Bliss that was about 2000ft lower in altitude and hopefully not sooooo cold! We arrived after a sunset that seemed to last for over an hour with the western sky glowing; I assume that it lasted so long as we came out from behind mountains.
It was so cold when we weren't in the sun and we finally made the decision to miss out on some of the places we had planned to see in Colorado and to whizz southwards to the sun. After a brief stop in Moab, which had an amazing variety of Kokapelli statues around its streets, we sped 100 miles south to a little town called Bliss that was about 2000ft lower in altitude and hopefully not sooooo cold! We arrived after a sunset that seemed to last for over an hour with the western sky glowing; I assume that it lasted so long as we came out from behind mountains.
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Bryce, Kodachrome and Route 12 through Capitol Reef 14 & 15 Nov
Sat 14
We woke up this morning to ice on the inside of the windows! We were snug in bed and so the blinds (and the towels we had put up over the top to stop the dawn waking us up) had done their job at keeping out the cold. We got up slowly to allow the sun to melt any ice on the road before starting off to travel about 20 miles to Bryce Canyon. Even before we got to the canyon the sights were amazing, salmon pink sandstone had been carved into a series of pinnacles and we even had to drive through two tunnels carved through the sandstone. Then on into the park itself and amazing views over a huge valley full of these multi-layered strawberry cheesecake pinnacles. We went for a hike down through some of the formations and it began to snow, great big, dry, dollops of white. It was breathtakingly beautiful down there and quite extraordinary that some trees had managed to take route in this incredibly dry place. After a fabulous walk, we drove on down the park to have a look at some more views always keeping one eye on the weather just in case in turned really nasty. We met a very disabled Spanish guy who had come over on his own and was driving around but he didn't want to make the effort of getting out of the car if the view was covered in the clouds that kept rolling in. He had an amazing pair of cameras that Celso took photos with and became very jealous and convinced that we need to buy a better camera. I think our camera is doing a good job!
As the snow came down again we left the park and moved further east. We saw a sign for Kodachrome Park 9 miles off our road so we decided to go and take a look. We found a little state park with amazing sandstone formations in reds, pinks and cream; tall sedimentary pipes (formed when ancient springs clogged with silt which formed more erosion resistant rock); and a large number of enormous hares! We also found that the campsite was open so we decided to stay the night and see if the park looked as good and colourful in the morning.
Sunday 15
Again we woke to ice on the windows and also to 3 large hares and a bunny nibbling at the grass around the van. Again we took our time getting up to allow any ice on the roads to thaw and then we had another look around the park before setting out to drive the nearly 100 miles along Scenic Route 12 that winds through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (a 91,000 acre piece of public land that protects the main watershed of the Colorado River) and ends after passing through Capitol Reef National Park. It was the most glorious drive with towering cliffs sometimes in the salmon pink; sometimes looking like huge piles of dried up concrete; some with multi coloured stripes like brown mint humbugs; and some with amazing sculpted shapes. On parts of the drive we were up above 8000 ft with snow on the ground and the view of snow topped mountains in the distance, at one point the whole mountainside was covered in silver birch trees, then fir trees covered in a sprinkling of snow with a frozen stream tumbling over rocks next to the road. At one high point the road passed along a ridge that was no wider than the road itself so there were huge drops on both sides. At many of the high points the ground was covered in football sized volcanic rock like it had just been sprinkled onto the land from the sky - perhaps it did right after an eruption though I don't know where the volcano is!?
When we were at the lower levels (below 6000 ft) the terrain was mainly desertlike but at times, when we were alongside a river, there were trees in amazing autumn browns, yellows and golds.
Every corner we turned there was yet another amazing view, so much so that we got a little blazee (how do you spell that?), it was a big case of senses overload!
In Capitol Reef National Park there is a beautiful valley that was inhabited by an early indigenous community that have been called the Fremont people after the river in the valley. They have left petroglyphs on the walls of the canyon, strange human figures plus deer and some beetles. More recently in the early 1800s a Mormon community settled here starting a town they called Fruita for fruit they grew (apples, peaches and pears) as the valley has a milder climate than the surrounding area and year round water. After the 1940s when the paved road came through the community scattered and the park was made.
Finally we turned north through the pink sanded San Rafael Desert that was punctuated with huge pink pinnacled cliffs and as the sun went down red cliffs were glowing in the distance. Wow.
We have given in to the cold weather and checked in to a motel. After a steak in a local restaurant we are now washed and warm in our room. However we wouldn't have missed all these amazing panoramas for anything... I think we can put up with a bit of cold for this, any day.
We woke up this morning to ice on the inside of the windows! We were snug in bed and so the blinds (and the towels we had put up over the top to stop the dawn waking us up) had done their job at keeping out the cold. We got up slowly to allow the sun to melt any ice on the road before starting off to travel about 20 miles to Bryce Canyon. Even before we got to the canyon the sights were amazing, salmon pink sandstone had been carved into a series of pinnacles and we even had to drive through two tunnels carved through the sandstone. Then on into the park itself and amazing views over a huge valley full of these multi-layered strawberry cheesecake pinnacles. We went for a hike down through some of the formations and it began to snow, great big, dry, dollops of white. It was breathtakingly beautiful down there and quite extraordinary that some trees had managed to take route in this incredibly dry place. After a fabulous walk, we drove on down the park to have a look at some more views always keeping one eye on the weather just in case in turned really nasty. We met a very disabled Spanish guy who had come over on his own and was driving around but he didn't want to make the effort of getting out of the car if the view was covered in the clouds that kept rolling in. He had an amazing pair of cameras that Celso took photos with and became very jealous and convinced that we need to buy a better camera. I think our camera is doing a good job!
As the snow came down again we left the park and moved further east. We saw a sign for Kodachrome Park 9 miles off our road so we decided to go and take a look. We found a little state park with amazing sandstone formations in reds, pinks and cream; tall sedimentary pipes (formed when ancient springs clogged with silt which formed more erosion resistant rock); and a large number of enormous hares! We also found that the campsite was open so we decided to stay the night and see if the park looked as good and colourful in the morning.
Sunday 15
Again we woke to ice on the windows and also to 3 large hares and a bunny nibbling at the grass around the van. Again we took our time getting up to allow any ice on the roads to thaw and then we had another look around the park before setting out to drive the nearly 100 miles along Scenic Route 12 that winds through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (a 91,000 acre piece of public land that protects the main watershed of the Colorado River) and ends after passing through Capitol Reef National Park. It was the most glorious drive with towering cliffs sometimes in the salmon pink; sometimes looking like huge piles of dried up concrete; some with multi coloured stripes like brown mint humbugs; and some with amazing sculpted shapes. On parts of the drive we were up above 8000 ft with snow on the ground and the view of snow topped mountains in the distance, at one point the whole mountainside was covered in silver birch trees, then fir trees covered in a sprinkling of snow with a frozen stream tumbling over rocks next to the road. At one high point the road passed along a ridge that was no wider than the road itself so there were huge drops on both sides. At many of the high points the ground was covered in football sized volcanic rock like it had just been sprinkled onto the land from the sky - perhaps it did right after an eruption though I don't know where the volcano is!?
When we were at the lower levels (below 6000 ft) the terrain was mainly desertlike but at times, when we were alongside a river, there were trees in amazing autumn browns, yellows and golds.
Every corner we turned there was yet another amazing view, so much so that we got a little blazee (how do you spell that?), it was a big case of senses overload!
In Capitol Reef National Park there is a beautiful valley that was inhabited by an early indigenous community that have been called the Fremont people after the river in the valley. They have left petroglyphs on the walls of the canyon, strange human figures plus deer and some beetles. More recently in the early 1800s a Mormon community settled here starting a town they called Fruita for fruit they grew (apples, peaches and pears) as the valley has a milder climate than the surrounding area and year round water. After the 1940s when the paved road came through the community scattered and the park was made.
Finally we turned north through the pink sanded San Rafael Desert that was punctuated with huge pink pinnacled cliffs and as the sun went down red cliffs were glowing in the distance. Wow.
We have given in to the cold weather and checked in to a motel. After a steak in a local restaurant we are now washed and warm in our room. However we wouldn't have missed all these amazing panoramas for anything... I think we can put up with a bit of cold for this, any day.
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Zion Park 13 Nov
What can I say, amazing, beautiful, breathtaking. You can see it all in the photos.
The first few photos were taken before a tunnel that takes you 1 mile through a mountain to get into the valley. These are all old sand dunes that were covered in a deposit of wet mud and then buried for millions of years in which time they turned to stone. Down in the valley most of the sandstone and limestone was formed under an ancient sea.
It rained in the morning for the first time in months so we were lucky enough to see waterfalls in the park as we hiked up to the lower and middle emerald pools, but the dry, desert land soon sucked up all the water and the streams and waterfalls that we saw in the morning were gone.
Absolutely incredible, I can't say more.
We camped on a high plateau on the way to Bryce Canyon with the threat of snow all around, we will have to check the conditions in the morning to see if we can continue or have to wait a day for the snow to pass.
The first few photos were taken before a tunnel that takes you 1 mile through a mountain to get into the valley. These are all old sand dunes that were covered in a deposit of wet mud and then buried for millions of years in which time they turned to stone. Down in the valley most of the sandstone and limestone was formed under an ancient sea.
It rained in the morning for the first time in months so we were lucky enough to see waterfalls in the park as we hiked up to the lower and middle emerald pools, but the dry, desert land soon sucked up all the water and the streams and waterfalls that we saw in the morning were gone.
Absolutely incredible, I can't say more.
We camped on a high plateau on the way to Bryce Canyon with the threat of snow all around, we will have to check the conditions in the morning to see if we can continue or have to wait a day for the snow to pass.
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Meteor crater, Winslow, Petrified Forest and Canyon de Chelly 10-12 Nov
Tue 10
After a lie in (since we were up so early yesterday) we made our way nearly 40 miles out of Flagstaff to visit the Meteor Crater. It is supposed to be the best preserved meteor crater in the world, not because of any human intervention or anything but because it is fairly recent and hasn't eroded. About 50,000 years ago a meteor the size of a house (perhaps 30 to 40m across) crashed into the earth on the unbroken Arizona plain at 26,000 miles per hour, that's about 7 miles per second. It is estimated to have had a mass of several hundred thousand tons and consisted of mainly iron with some nickel and traces of diamond, gold and titanium (as I said yesterday about the part of it on display in the Lowell Observatory). The explosion was equivalent to about 20 million tons of TNT and was so hot that the meteorite vaporised except for the few chunks that have been found; these chunks must have broken off the main meteor before the impact. The crater is 700 feet deep (about 200m) and 4000 feet across ( about 1250m). About 175 million tons of earth (mainly limestone and sandstone) were ejected to form the crater rim and was littered for over a mile around the impact site. A shock wave raced across the plain and devastated/flattened everything for several miles. The vaporised meteorite rose up in a hot cloud above the impact and as the cloud cooled they formed tiny spherical balls of iron and nickel that can be found all around the crater for several miles. To give you an idea of the size, the crater could hold 20 or so full sized football pitches and two million spectators could observe from the sloping sides. In the bottom of the crater we could spot a mine shaft, this is where digging took place in the 1920s in an unfruitful attempt to find the meteorite. However the drill got stuck at 1376 feet deep without anything found except for oxidized fragments of iron and nickel. We gawped at the crater for a while and then went inside where Tristan destroyed the world, then the United States and then various other places on earth on a meteor simulator where you chose the properties of the meteorite, such as speed, density, angle of impact, size etc.
A short film on meteors and impacts made Tristan even more enthusiastic about the possibilities of earth annihilation and we spent the next 20 mins on the road talking about aliens and all things spacey......... until we reached Winslow. We had to go and stand on the corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine sight to see, there's a girl, my Lord, in a flat bed Ford slowing down to take a look at me. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about then don't worry. But for those of you who like The Eagles (Take it Easy) you will be very jealous!!!!!! Another 40 minutes on from Winslow took us to the Petrified Forest where we walked amongst the stone tree trunks and admired the beauty of the colours that appeared as they petrified. The trees are thought to be a relative of the Monkey Puzzle Tree that grew in the warm tropical climates on Pangea some 225 million years ago. It is thought that a huge storm felled many of the trees that fell into rivers and streams and were transported to a flood plain where, waterlogged, they sank to the bottom of the slower moving waters. A volcanic eruption then covered the sunken logs in huge amounts of ash and silica which prevented the rotting process. The silica slowly replaced the cellulose in the plant cells and the other elements released from the cells caused the amazing variety of colours that we see in the stone today. The plain was uplifted by tectonic activity and now these ancient stone trees lie on the surface, some as entire trunks but normally broken into 2 or 3 foot chunks. On some the bark is clearly visible - amazing. We drove on through the park to to the North to the Painted Desert where Badlands' type formations are covered in brightly coloured layers. The sun was going down and the shadows were great but it was not the best time for taking photos, except of the setting sun which formed a huge red splodge across the Western Horizon. Finally we drove North, in the fading light and then complete darkness of this unpopulated region, some 100 miles to reach Canyon de Chelly (pronounced Chey) to be ready for out 8:30am start tomorrow around the park.
Wed 11
By 8:30 we were in the gift shop awaiting our transport and guide to go into the canyon. In order to drive in the canyon you must have a Navajo guide as this is all Navajo land. There is only one trail down which you can walk without a guide and we wanted to see more of the cliff dwellings and the ancient rock art. We had a fantastic day driven by a Navajo called Johnson in a 1952 ex army truck with a modified back to fit seating. Our fellow travellers were a group of 60 or 70 something Americans who all found the experience very cold; whilst Tristan sat in a shirt they were in layers of coats and scarves and covered in blankets! We spent 7.5 hours travelling up the various canyons and stopping at various points for our guide to explain some of the sites and the history of the area. In brief there are 3 known civilizations that have, at various times, inhabited these canyons. The first for which there is evidence (though they believe that there must have been people here before that) was the Anasazi from 300 to 1300AD. They are responsible for the cliff cave dwellings that are made out of fallen stone fitted together with a mud mortar, with some wooden beams driven into holes in the cliff face. The main structures that have survived where built after 1200AD but a few simpler / cruder structures do remain from before that time. The second civilization was the Hopi people, there is no evidence that they fought with the Anasazi for the territory, therefore it is believed that the Anasazi abandoned the canyon, perhaps after several years of drought, and, after a resumption of a wetter climate, the Hopi just moved in. The final civilization was the Navajo, who arrived in about 1400 and fought the Hopi and ejected them, and here they are still but after a fraught time during the early years of the United States. During the 1800s some Mexicans and Spaniards came into the valley looking for gold, they didn't find any but did find the Navajo elderly, women and children alone in their settlements as the young men were out hunting. The women and children were taken and sold into slavery in Mexico. When the men folk returned they found there families gone and, assuming it was the work of other tribes outside the canyon, they started searching amongst their neighbours lands and sometimes stole stock. The neighbours complained to the government that the Navajo were causing unrest and so in came the cavalry. Many Navajo hid out in the rocks for weeks but many others were rounded up and crops and livestock were destroyed. The captured, mainly the elderly, women and children, were taken on 'The Long Walk', a 300 mile walk in search of a settlement for the Navajo on which many of them died. Eventually after 3 years they were allowed to return to the Canyon and have been farming and raising livestock here ever since. There was rock art from all three cultures on the rocks, some carved into the rock and some drawn on the rock. The rocks themselves are sandstone, some of it very pale cream in colour and other reddish. There are dark streaks down the rocks where the water pours. In the canyon trees planted by the Civilian Corps in the early part of the 20th Century are now being removed slowly but surely by slash and burn, the trees are actually huge water users and a huge menace, but they looked beautiful in their Autumn colours. There are free roaming horses and cattle that look really fat and healthy so there must be something good to eat out there amongst the scrubby plants and cacti. There can be up to 3 feet of floodwater in the spring so I guess we are just seeing it at the driest and brownest time of year. The Anasazi grew corn, watermelon, cotton and squash here and the Navajo grow the same (except cotton), using some of the old Anasazi buildings as stores; there is no evidence for the Hopi but it is assumed that they grew similar crops. At one of the stops we made there were Navajo craftsmen with their wares, since there are only 2 tours that pass that spot it must be worth their while (we came back the same way about 1 hour later and you wouldn't have known that anyone had been there!) We tried Navajo fry bread which was like a tortilla that Cuma makes (a bread made of self raising flour and water and then fried), and Pinons which are Pine Nuts that are collected, washed and then boiled, dried and sprinkled with salt - delicious. Tristan bought a dream catcher made from deer hide and a small piece of rock art of an Anasazi fertility symbol that we have seen in lots of places. It is a small bent over man playing a flute with a corn stalk and the sun, he is called Kokopelli. He is still influential, to many pueblo peoples, in fertility and abundance, whether it be the hunt, the fields or human reproduction. It was a thrilling day with lots of rocking and rolling over the rough terrain, fabulous scenery and awesome historical sites and information. We returned windswept, happy and gasping for a cup of tea!!
Thu 12
Today we made the long journey up into Utah over some fantastic terrain. We could see the grand, towering cliffs of Monument Valley in the distance and had some close up encounters with rocks and cliffs ourselves. We crossed over windswept, high plains through the Navajo land with loose horses and cattle everywhere, and we crossed another dam across the Colorado River at Powell Lake. We are now camped in a little town called Kanab, ready for our assault on Zyon tomorrow.
After a lie in (since we were up so early yesterday) we made our way nearly 40 miles out of Flagstaff to visit the Meteor Crater. It is supposed to be the best preserved meteor crater in the world, not because of any human intervention or anything but because it is fairly recent and hasn't eroded. About 50,000 years ago a meteor the size of a house (perhaps 30 to 40m across) crashed into the earth on the unbroken Arizona plain at 26,000 miles per hour, that's about 7 miles per second. It is estimated to have had a mass of several hundred thousand tons and consisted of mainly iron with some nickel and traces of diamond, gold and titanium (as I said yesterday about the part of it on display in the Lowell Observatory). The explosion was equivalent to about 20 million tons of TNT and was so hot that the meteorite vaporised except for the few chunks that have been found; these chunks must have broken off the main meteor before the impact. The crater is 700 feet deep (about 200m) and 4000 feet across ( about 1250m). About 175 million tons of earth (mainly limestone and sandstone) were ejected to form the crater rim and was littered for over a mile around the impact site. A shock wave raced across the plain and devastated/flattened everything for several miles. The vaporised meteorite rose up in a hot cloud above the impact and as the cloud cooled they formed tiny spherical balls of iron and nickel that can be found all around the crater for several miles. To give you an idea of the size, the crater could hold 20 or so full sized football pitches and two million spectators could observe from the sloping sides. In the bottom of the crater we could spot a mine shaft, this is where digging took place in the 1920s in an unfruitful attempt to find the meteorite. However the drill got stuck at 1376 feet deep without anything found except for oxidized fragments of iron and nickel. We gawped at the crater for a while and then went inside where Tristan destroyed the world, then the United States and then various other places on earth on a meteor simulator where you chose the properties of the meteorite, such as speed, density, angle of impact, size etc.
A short film on meteors and impacts made Tristan even more enthusiastic about the possibilities of earth annihilation and we spent the next 20 mins on the road talking about aliens and all things spacey......... until we reached Winslow. We had to go and stand on the corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine sight to see, there's a girl, my Lord, in a flat bed Ford slowing down to take a look at me. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about then don't worry. But for those of you who like The Eagles (Take it Easy) you will be very jealous!!!!!! Another 40 minutes on from Winslow took us to the Petrified Forest where we walked amongst the stone tree trunks and admired the beauty of the colours that appeared as they petrified. The trees are thought to be a relative of the Monkey Puzzle Tree that grew in the warm tropical climates on Pangea some 225 million years ago. It is thought that a huge storm felled many of the trees that fell into rivers and streams and were transported to a flood plain where, waterlogged, they sank to the bottom of the slower moving waters. A volcanic eruption then covered the sunken logs in huge amounts of ash and silica which prevented the rotting process. The silica slowly replaced the cellulose in the plant cells and the other elements released from the cells caused the amazing variety of colours that we see in the stone today. The plain was uplifted by tectonic activity and now these ancient stone trees lie on the surface, some as entire trunks but normally broken into 2 or 3 foot chunks. On some the bark is clearly visible - amazing. We drove on through the park to to the North to the Painted Desert where Badlands' type formations are covered in brightly coloured layers. The sun was going down and the shadows were great but it was not the best time for taking photos, except of the setting sun which formed a huge red splodge across the Western Horizon. Finally we drove North, in the fading light and then complete darkness of this unpopulated region, some 100 miles to reach Canyon de Chelly (pronounced Chey) to be ready for out 8:30am start tomorrow around the park.
Wed 11
By 8:30 we were in the gift shop awaiting our transport and guide to go into the canyon. In order to drive in the canyon you must have a Navajo guide as this is all Navajo land. There is only one trail down which you can walk without a guide and we wanted to see more of the cliff dwellings and the ancient rock art. We had a fantastic day driven by a Navajo called Johnson in a 1952 ex army truck with a modified back to fit seating. Our fellow travellers were a group of 60 or 70 something Americans who all found the experience very cold; whilst Tristan sat in a shirt they were in layers of coats and scarves and covered in blankets! We spent 7.5 hours travelling up the various canyons and stopping at various points for our guide to explain some of the sites and the history of the area. In brief there are 3 known civilizations that have, at various times, inhabited these canyons. The first for which there is evidence (though they believe that there must have been people here before that) was the Anasazi from 300 to 1300AD. They are responsible for the cliff cave dwellings that are made out of fallen stone fitted together with a mud mortar, with some wooden beams driven into holes in the cliff face. The main structures that have survived where built after 1200AD but a few simpler / cruder structures do remain from before that time. The second civilization was the Hopi people, there is no evidence that they fought with the Anasazi for the territory, therefore it is believed that the Anasazi abandoned the canyon, perhaps after several years of drought, and, after a resumption of a wetter climate, the Hopi just moved in. The final civilization was the Navajo, who arrived in about 1400 and fought the Hopi and ejected them, and here they are still but after a fraught time during the early years of the United States. During the 1800s some Mexicans and Spaniards came into the valley looking for gold, they didn't find any but did find the Navajo elderly, women and children alone in their settlements as the young men were out hunting. The women and children were taken and sold into slavery in Mexico. When the men folk returned they found there families gone and, assuming it was the work of other tribes outside the canyon, they started searching amongst their neighbours lands and sometimes stole stock. The neighbours complained to the government that the Navajo were causing unrest and so in came the cavalry. Many Navajo hid out in the rocks for weeks but many others were rounded up and crops and livestock were destroyed. The captured, mainly the elderly, women and children, were taken on 'The Long Walk', a 300 mile walk in search of a settlement for the Navajo on which many of them died. Eventually after 3 years they were allowed to return to the Canyon and have been farming and raising livestock here ever since. There was rock art from all three cultures on the rocks, some carved into the rock and some drawn on the rock. The rocks themselves are sandstone, some of it very pale cream in colour and other reddish. There are dark streaks down the rocks where the water pours. In the canyon trees planted by the Civilian Corps in the early part of the 20th Century are now being removed slowly but surely by slash and burn, the trees are actually huge water users and a huge menace, but they looked beautiful in their Autumn colours. There are free roaming horses and cattle that look really fat and healthy so there must be something good to eat out there amongst the scrubby plants and cacti. There can be up to 3 feet of floodwater in the spring so I guess we are just seeing it at the driest and brownest time of year. The Anasazi grew corn, watermelon, cotton and squash here and the Navajo grow the same (except cotton), using some of the old Anasazi buildings as stores; there is no evidence for the Hopi but it is assumed that they grew similar crops. At one of the stops we made there were Navajo craftsmen with their wares, since there are only 2 tours that pass that spot it must be worth their while (we came back the same way about 1 hour later and you wouldn't have known that anyone had been there!) We tried Navajo fry bread which was like a tortilla that Cuma makes (a bread made of self raising flour and water and then fried), and Pinons which are Pine Nuts that are collected, washed and then boiled, dried and sprinkled with salt - delicious. Tristan bought a dream catcher made from deer hide and a small piece of rock art of an Anasazi fertility symbol that we have seen in lots of places. It is a small bent over man playing a flute with a corn stalk and the sun, he is called Kokopelli. He is still influential, to many pueblo peoples, in fertility and abundance, whether it be the hunt, the fields or human reproduction. It was a thrilling day with lots of rocking and rolling over the rough terrain, fabulous scenery and awesome historical sites and information. We returned windswept, happy and gasping for a cup of tea!!
Thu 12
Today we made the long journey up into Utah over some fantastic terrain. We could see the grand, towering cliffs of Monument Valley in the distance and had some close up encounters with rocks and cliffs ourselves. We crossed over windswept, high plains through the Navajo land with loose horses and cattle everywhere, and we crossed another dam across the Colorado River at Powell Lake. We are now camped in a little town called Kanab, ready for our assault on Zyon tomorrow.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Hoover Dam & Grand Canyon 8,9 Nov
Sun 8
We decided as we left the campsite that, in fact, we didn't want to go back down The Strip and would prefer to spend our time elsewhere. So we whizzed out of town the 30 miles or so to The Hoover Dam. We went through a very superficial search, basically an officer looked through the door of our van and made us unlock 1 of the 4 outside lockers. If we had wanted to bring a bomb it would be the simplest thing - if that is what they were looking for. There is a huge construction project going on to build a by-pass to the dam and an incredible arch is already in place above the dam. We drove across the dam and then parked above it and walked back down to look at the amazing views and admire the incredible feat of construction. Of course, Celso and Tristan were trying to find the places where some of the Transformers film was shot, (I'm afraid I couldn't help them in the slightest!). It was very crowded with everybody out enjoying the sun so we walked out past the old visitor centre to try and find a quieter spot and there we were accosted by a type of tiny ground squirrel a bit like a chipmunk. As it runs about in the sun it curls its tail up over it back, the underside is white and so faces up to the sun and acts as some sort of sunshade. I was eating some crisps which one jumped up and I had to have a tug of war with. They are obviously very used to people as they just came running up but they were so fast we took about 30 photos to get just a few decent ones. SO cute!
The rest of our day was spent driving the 200 or so miles to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We drove through desert and as the road slowly rose up it became more and more covered in plants, then bushes, then small round trees and finally big trees; it was nice to see them again! We seemed to spend the whole journey chasing or being chased by a huge lorry, we ended up waving and making signals to each other for about the last 50 miles and it passed the time as we looked out for him behind or tried to catch up with him.
Mon 9
Up at 5am we were at the edge of the Grand Canyon by 5:45 to see the sun rise. We were the first there but soon after 7am there were crowds, we were glad to have had the views to ourselves for over an hour. First an orange glow appeared over the rocks, and then, as the band of light got larger, it turned yellow, then green and finally blue. The colours in the canyon are amazing with stripes of red, pink, maroon, yellow, cream and brown. Th shadows played over the jagged landscape as the sun rose higher and higher. We took loads of photos and have left most of them to see later on the big screen. You can walk right along the rim with very little between you and an enormous drop. Of course, I was very nervous but Celso and Tristan did there mountain goat bit with me grabbing on to Tristan's shirt all the time (much to his annoyance). However, I did feel justified in my caution later when we went to the visitor centre and we found on display a book about all the fatalities at the canyon, mainly from people falling off the edge.
We drove East along the rim stopping to gawp some more at all that the Canyon had to offer and then all of a sudden the road turned south and we had to say goodbye. We passed through Navajo Tribal Lands with loads of native stalls set up on the edge of the road selling pottery and jewelery. Smaller canyons dotted the very flat landscape until everything just seemed to flatten out and fade away.
Soon we turned off the main road to take a detour through two National Monuments. The first was Wupatki which is the site of some 800 year old Anasazi ruins in at least 8 different pueblos scattered across the area. These people lived here during a time with a very similar climate to today, the land was arid and covered in volcanic pumice like rocks and red sedimentary plates of rock, that looked like paving slabs, so it is hard to believe that they cultivated the land. The buildings were made from the two types of rock perfectly slotted together with a mud, water and mystery ingredient mortar (they are still trying to work out what the 3rd ingredient was, or how it was made, though they have made a synthetic version to enable them to stabalise some of the structures). No one knows why the sites were abandoned and as yet no proper excavations have taken place, only surface finds of pottery and tools have been catalogued.
Next we drove on to Sunset Crater Volcano surrounded by the desert landscape with the dark grey of ash between the scrubby low shrubs, we drove past a small lava field with its jagged grey rocks just like in Craters of Moon National Park; then past the perfect cone of the volcano with barren grey ash sides.
We reached Flagstaff and found a campsite and then after dark we drove to the Lowell Observatory where Pluto was discovered and evidence that the Universe was expanding (red shift) was first recorded. We used the very same telescope that discovered Pluto to view Jupiter which is hugely bright in the sky at the moment. We could see 4 of its moons and the swirling brown stripey clouds on its surface - incredible. Through two smaller telescopes we also viewed a group of young stars called 'the owl' and a globular cluster of stars. Great exhibits and a shop kept us occupied for 3/4 of an hour and then a half hour film about anything and everything spacey finished our visit.
I took a photo of a 242kg meteorite that was part of the meteor which fell near Flagstaff about 50,000 years ago (and we are going to go and see the crater tomorrow). The meteor is 92% iron, 8% Nickle with traces of gold, silver, platinum and diamond!
We decided as we left the campsite that, in fact, we didn't want to go back down The Strip and would prefer to spend our time elsewhere. So we whizzed out of town the 30 miles or so to The Hoover Dam. We went through a very superficial search, basically an officer looked through the door of our van and made us unlock 1 of the 4 outside lockers. If we had wanted to bring a bomb it would be the simplest thing - if that is what they were looking for. There is a huge construction project going on to build a by-pass to the dam and an incredible arch is already in place above the dam. We drove across the dam and then parked above it and walked back down to look at the amazing views and admire the incredible feat of construction. Of course, Celso and Tristan were trying to find the places where some of the Transformers film was shot, (I'm afraid I couldn't help them in the slightest!). It was very crowded with everybody out enjoying the sun so we walked out past the old visitor centre to try and find a quieter spot and there we were accosted by a type of tiny ground squirrel a bit like a chipmunk. As it runs about in the sun it curls its tail up over it back, the underside is white and so faces up to the sun and acts as some sort of sunshade. I was eating some crisps which one jumped up and I had to have a tug of war with. They are obviously very used to people as they just came running up but they were so fast we took about 30 photos to get just a few decent ones. SO cute!
The rest of our day was spent driving the 200 or so miles to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We drove through desert and as the road slowly rose up it became more and more covered in plants, then bushes, then small round trees and finally big trees; it was nice to see them again! We seemed to spend the whole journey chasing or being chased by a huge lorry, we ended up waving and making signals to each other for about the last 50 miles and it passed the time as we looked out for him behind or tried to catch up with him.
Mon 9
Up at 5am we were at the edge of the Grand Canyon by 5:45 to see the sun rise. We were the first there but soon after 7am there were crowds, we were glad to have had the views to ourselves for over an hour. First an orange glow appeared over the rocks, and then, as the band of light got larger, it turned yellow, then green and finally blue. The colours in the canyon are amazing with stripes of red, pink, maroon, yellow, cream and brown. Th shadows played over the jagged landscape as the sun rose higher and higher. We took loads of photos and have left most of them to see later on the big screen. You can walk right along the rim with very little between you and an enormous drop. Of course, I was very nervous but Celso and Tristan did there mountain goat bit with me grabbing on to Tristan's shirt all the time (much to his annoyance). However, I did feel justified in my caution later when we went to the visitor centre and we found on display a book about all the fatalities at the canyon, mainly from people falling off the edge.
We drove East along the rim stopping to gawp some more at all that the Canyon had to offer and then all of a sudden the road turned south and we had to say goodbye. We passed through Navajo Tribal Lands with loads of native stalls set up on the edge of the road selling pottery and jewelery. Smaller canyons dotted the very flat landscape until everything just seemed to flatten out and fade away.
Soon we turned off the main road to take a detour through two National Monuments. The first was Wupatki which is the site of some 800 year old Anasazi ruins in at least 8 different pueblos scattered across the area. These people lived here during a time with a very similar climate to today, the land was arid and covered in volcanic pumice like rocks and red sedimentary plates of rock, that looked like paving slabs, so it is hard to believe that they cultivated the land. The buildings were made from the two types of rock perfectly slotted together with a mud, water and mystery ingredient mortar (they are still trying to work out what the 3rd ingredient was, or how it was made, though they have made a synthetic version to enable them to stabalise some of the structures). No one knows why the sites were abandoned and as yet no proper excavations have taken place, only surface finds of pottery and tools have been catalogued.
Next we drove on to Sunset Crater Volcano surrounded by the desert landscape with the dark grey of ash between the scrubby low shrubs, we drove past a small lava field with its jagged grey rocks just like in Craters of Moon National Park; then past the perfect cone of the volcano with barren grey ash sides.
We reached Flagstaff and found a campsite and then after dark we drove to the Lowell Observatory where Pluto was discovered and evidence that the Universe was expanding (red shift) was first recorded. We used the very same telescope that discovered Pluto to view Jupiter which is hugely bright in the sky at the moment. We could see 4 of its moons and the swirling brown stripey clouds on its surface - incredible. Through two smaller telescopes we also viewed a group of young stars called 'the owl' and a globular cluster of stars. Great exhibits and a shop kept us occupied for 3/4 of an hour and then a half hour film about anything and everything spacey finished our visit.
I took a photo of a 242kg meteorite that was part of the meteor which fell near Flagstaff about 50,000 years ago (and we are going to go and see the crater tomorrow). The meteor is 92% iron, 8% Nickle with traces of gold, silver, platinum and diamond!
Death Valley & LA 5-7 Nov
Thurs 5th
Today was a day in which we did practically nothing except to relax and recharge our batteries. We have seen so many amazing things we are feeling quite exhausted. So we only drove 30 miles closer to Death Valley to give us a better start tomorrow and then after a little bit of shopping we did very little!!
Fri 6th
Up early, we drove the 30 miles or so to the start of the Death Valley National Park. The road took us past the nearly dried up Owens Lake. Apparently it used to be a great lake for wildlife but, in the early 1900s when the mining claims round the area started failing, a man from LA conned two local land owners into selling him their water rights on the Owens River. He then built a huge pipe that transferred most of the water from the river to LA over 200 miles away to help him sell land down that way with plenty of water. Apparently there are still cases going on in the courts about the water that is still diverted to LA from the river. You can see from the photos the autumn trees around Lone Pine (where we started), they are Aspen and in the background is the Sierra Nevada Mountains (where Sequoia and Yosemite NP are). As we drove east the road become more and more desertified, with volcanic pumice boulders and course bushes. Along the edge of the road a grass with the appearance of having a yellow fluffy head (like a feather duster) grows, it billows gracefully in the wind. Soon we started to climb into some mountains and then, one by one, and then slowly more frequently, the odd shape of Joshua trees started to dot the landscape, and then all at once they were gone and we descended down into the Panamint valley and the start of the park. We crossed the 5 miles or so of the Panamint valley on a road that followed the rolling landscape, it was rather like being on a fairground ride that took you up and down and up and down. Sometimes the changes in direction were enough to make you leave your seat, it was quite fun!! We climbed the Panamint mountains, the 4th mountain range between Death Valley and the sea, which is why it hardly rains in the valley because the clouds have shed their load at each of the mountain ranges on their way in land, and then down the other side. We could see sand dunes in the distance and the terrain became incredibly flat.
We turned off the main road onto a 2 mile dirt track to go to Mosaic Canyon, a thin, winding slice through the mountains that has been carved by flash flood water. The road's wave like surface caused us to slow to around 10 mph and the van rattled and shook, we thought we might fall apart, but eventually we crawled to a halt at the exit from the canyon. A walk up the canyon showed us the power of the water; white marble (that looks like snow in some of the photos), conglomerate and other rocks had been smoothed to a shine. The walls were gracefully curved and the ground littered with smooth gravel and pebbles like on a pebbly beach in Britain. It was quite hard going on the gravel with a continuous uphill climb and the heat started to get to us quite soon, so knowing that we had more to see and do, we turned back after about 40 mins. We stopped to watch a lizard and a few crickets but other than that we saw no sign of life. The return journey was much less arduous and only took us about 20 mins
After a quick stop at the ranger station to pay the park fee and pick up the free newspaper about the park, we drove a couple of miles to stop in a huge car park by the sand dunes. As we prepared to go out into the dunes (hats, water etc) a workman approached to tell us we were the first ever people into the car park. He had been working with a crew for 3 months to build the car park and we were the first vehicle to turn in after they removed the cones. So we have named the car park 'Robayo's Place' in honour of our great achievement and it will forever be part of our empire!
The dunes were hot, too hot. We tried to do some surfing on a seat cushion from the van but it didn't work and I ended up with sand in my shirt, shoes, trousers and worse. Between the dunes were areas with a crusty, cracked layer of salt and only spiny bushes grew. We could see hundreds of tiny tracks attesting to the abundance of wildlife in the area, they were mostly lizard and scorpion tracks, but some looked like a small rodent and others a coyote (that apparently are common in the area, though we haven't seen or heard any yet). The heat got the better of Tris and I and we returned to Robayo's place, left a small pile of sand on the roadside as we emptied out our shoes and clothes and then sat and drank ice cold coke... one of the benefits of having a van over a car is the presence of the fridge and freezer. We then ate cheese and biscuits, carrots and cucumber and ate a few crisps to replace our salt loss. Celso, on the other hand, was determined to get to the top of the tallest dunes we could see about a 1/2 mile from the van. He returned about a half hour later drenched in sweat, (it was even hot for him!) and very annoyed that he had a mark (tan line)from the vest shirt he was wearing.
At our next stop, Salt Creek, Celso refused to wear a shirt to try to get rid of his tan line, we walked along a boardwalk that traversed the salty surface of the desert. This area is below sea level and used to be a huge lake several thousand years ago. It is now the site of a creek, that has a variable level of water depending on the season, that flows along ancient paths and then just disappears into the sand. As the water flows it evaporates and gets more and more saline, at some times it has a salinity 5 times that of sea water but around the edges plants grow in their hundreds. Amazingly a species of fish called Pupfish, about an inch long, survive in this creek and have done so since the lakes that used to cover the area disappeared. There are about 11 different subspecies of Pupfish that survive in several different creeks, each subspecies is slightly different as they have adapted to the varying conditions in their particular creek, some are endangered, all are protected. We were lucky enough to see a large shoal (probably 30 individuals) in the higher reaches of the creek, as well as the huge footprints of one of their enemies in the crusty bottom of the stream - an egret or heron. It was really strange to see such an oasis of life in the hottest (on average over a year) place on earth.
Next stop was at the ruins of an old Borax mine, apparently the dried up lake is full of the stuff. The mine functioned for only 5 years in the 1880's and since it was such a long distance to the nearest railroad the raw materials were processed on site and only the pure Borax hauled out of Death Valley by wagons pulled by 20 mules. They hauled the Borax out and fresh water in, each return journey taking about 30 days so that several teams were required. Mainly Chinese workers, brought in from San Francisco, dug the raw material from the lake, poured it into large vats that were heated to dissolve the Borax and let all the other materials settle out. Then the liquid was poured into huge vats and the Borax crystallised out. Horrid, hot work for which they were paid $1.30 per day, but board was deducted and they had to buy their own food. Finally we drove on to visit the park's visitor centre only to find it full to the brim with folks visiting some sort of art festival... strange place to hold it, you would have thought, in the middle of Death Valley.
So instead we went immediately to a campsite and investigated a spot where we could go for a night walk to look for critters. After a fantastic steak (that has been marinating since yesterday in a wonderful concoction that Celso makes) with baked potatoes cooked on/in a wood fire with veggies and a cold beer, we sat out admiring the stars. I got my first view of the milky way (amazing) and so many stars that it makes the mind boggle. Then we went for a walk up into the hill with torches and a UV light, we spotted a couple of scorpions which glow in UV but very little else. We will be trying again later.
No luck with an y critters later and the moon came out
Sat 7
We got up early to do some more exploring before the sun got too hot. Our first stop was 17 miles to the south and 295ft below sea level at Badwater, so called because a man trying to get across death valley in the 1800's could not get his mule to take a drink from the water, he called the spring bad water and the name stuck. In fact the water is just extremely saline. Over the millenia salts have been washed down into the valley from the surrounding hills, but then the water evaporates. Water in the aquifer below the park feeds the Badwater spring and it bubbles up into the salt. At times throughout the year there are flash floods which then evaporate leaving amazing salt crystal formations. At the Devil's Golf Course (our second stop) we managed to walk amongst these amazing salt crystal shapes which were sculpted into sharp spikes so that only the Devil would play golf there. Next we drove the 4 mile loop road 'The Artist's Drive' along the base of the cliffs that enclose Death Valley, they are sculpted into the weirdest shapes and have the most amazing pastel colours from all the different salts, reds, pinks, maroons, blues, greens, yellows, whites and creams.
A quick stop at the visitor centre explained why Death Valley is so hot, told the story of how it got its name etc.
A 30 mile trip over the mountains that form the East wall of the valley took us to Rhyolite, a ghost town, once inhabited by 10000. It was a booming town during the time that silver was found in the hills around the valley, it had 3 banks, 3 railroads, a school, about 16 stores, a post office, a jail and a brothel. Many of the buildings were erected during the period 1905 - 1907 and were posh for their time with electricity, steam heating and some were multi storied. One of the strangest houses we saw was a house built in 1906 out of bottles, it was raffled off by the builder. Another building that remains largely in tact was one of the railroad offices, that after the town was abandoned in 1920 was also used as a casino. All of the wooden houses have been robbed out because wood is such a scarce commodity around those parts, some moved in their entirety to the nearest town of Beatty. The Rhyolite population since 1920 has stayed around about 20.
We then drove for about 2.5 hours through yet another valley of desertish terrain to get to Las Vegas. The valley had much more vegetation showing that it was not nearly as hot and dry as Death Valley (perhaps because it was much higher; around 2000ft; or perhaps because the mountain chains along its edges were more broken) but it was a harsh environment none the less. The ground was full of stones and sand, and the scrubby dry bushes grew in clumps occasionally interrupted by a Joshua tree or, what I like to call, a pineapple tree - a stumpy scaly type of palm with a top knot. We passed 2 of the most enormous prisons, and a sign that advised us that it was illegal to pick up hitch hikers! As we passed the road up to one prison the sign said 'Correctional Facility' and underneath 'Wildlife Viewing', with a big arrow - we thought that was quite appropriate.
Finally Las Vegas loomed out of the desert, it had lush green grass and a ridiculous array of electronic signs. We drove down The Strip to take a look at some of the casinos - they are completely crazy, out of one came a roller coaster, others have huge statues or waterfalls, it is like being in a great big theme park with immaculate buildings in gaudy colours. When we returned having parked up the van there was even piped music playing along most of the pavements. We watched people being punted around in gondolas at the Venetian, one guy singing opera to his passengers, we walked amongst flamingos, swans, guinea fowl and other birds in a huge garden at the Flamingo casino, walked through shopping centres in which none of the shops had any prices on the merchandise in the windows and generally watched the people become more and more drunk as night fell (it gets dark around 5pm here at the moment as the clocks have just gone back). More and more lights came on as it got darker and we found ourselves, instead of admiring the lights, thinking of the cost to the environment! At one point we were walking along the pavement behind a dancer dressed up in a bright red outfit, they looked like a Cancan dancer in frilly dress and high heels. An old woman with a walking stick poked the dancer's bottom on the left and right cheeks with the end of her cane, I looked at her and giggled. She was giggling too and said, 'He's so cute!', and I replied, 'I think it's a woman!' We walked on a bit and I was right, she was a female dancer, but she must be used to it as she didn't turn or react at all to the prodding. Nice to find a crazy old bat in a place like this, that old lady has some get up ad go!
The amount of porn around is quite incredible and fairly grotesque, not really our scene, but we had to try out a casino so we went into one where Tris could play games in an arcade. Tris is allowed to walk through any of the casinos as long as he is with an adult!! I tried my hands at craps, didn't have a clue what I was doing and gave up having lost $10 which was the stake I was prepared to lose. Tris spent $10 fighting monsters and people, riding motorbike and racing cars, playing air hockey, shooting aliens and having a great time in the arcade. Celso watched and spent nothing! I suppose we should have 'done' a show or gone to one of the museums or something, but we really didn't fancy it so we were back at the van by 8pm!! That's enough of Las Vegas for us, we shall drive round the rest of The Strip tomorrow to take some photos in the daylight but then we are out of here.
Today was a day in which we did practically nothing except to relax and recharge our batteries. We have seen so many amazing things we are feeling quite exhausted. So we only drove 30 miles closer to Death Valley to give us a better start tomorrow and then after a little bit of shopping we did very little!!
Fri 6th
Up early, we drove the 30 miles or so to the start of the Death Valley National Park. The road took us past the nearly dried up Owens Lake. Apparently it used to be a great lake for wildlife but, in the early 1900s when the mining claims round the area started failing, a man from LA conned two local land owners into selling him their water rights on the Owens River. He then built a huge pipe that transferred most of the water from the river to LA over 200 miles away to help him sell land down that way with plenty of water. Apparently there are still cases going on in the courts about the water that is still diverted to LA from the river. You can see from the photos the autumn trees around Lone Pine (where we started), they are Aspen and in the background is the Sierra Nevada Mountains (where Sequoia and Yosemite NP are). As we drove east the road become more and more desertified, with volcanic pumice boulders and course bushes. Along the edge of the road a grass with the appearance of having a yellow fluffy head (like a feather duster) grows, it billows gracefully in the wind. Soon we started to climb into some mountains and then, one by one, and then slowly more frequently, the odd shape of Joshua trees started to dot the landscape, and then all at once they were gone and we descended down into the Panamint valley and the start of the park. We crossed the 5 miles or so of the Panamint valley on a road that followed the rolling landscape, it was rather like being on a fairground ride that took you up and down and up and down. Sometimes the changes in direction were enough to make you leave your seat, it was quite fun!! We climbed the Panamint mountains, the 4th mountain range between Death Valley and the sea, which is why it hardly rains in the valley because the clouds have shed their load at each of the mountain ranges on their way in land, and then down the other side. We could see sand dunes in the distance and the terrain became incredibly flat.
We turned off the main road onto a 2 mile dirt track to go to Mosaic Canyon, a thin, winding slice through the mountains that has been carved by flash flood water. The road's wave like surface caused us to slow to around 10 mph and the van rattled and shook, we thought we might fall apart, but eventually we crawled to a halt at the exit from the canyon. A walk up the canyon showed us the power of the water; white marble (that looks like snow in some of the photos), conglomerate and other rocks had been smoothed to a shine. The walls were gracefully curved and the ground littered with smooth gravel and pebbles like on a pebbly beach in Britain. It was quite hard going on the gravel with a continuous uphill climb and the heat started to get to us quite soon, so knowing that we had more to see and do, we turned back after about 40 mins. We stopped to watch a lizard and a few crickets but other than that we saw no sign of life. The return journey was much less arduous and only took us about 20 mins
After a quick stop at the ranger station to pay the park fee and pick up the free newspaper about the park, we drove a couple of miles to stop in a huge car park by the sand dunes. As we prepared to go out into the dunes (hats, water etc) a workman approached to tell us we were the first ever people into the car park. He had been working with a crew for 3 months to build the car park and we were the first vehicle to turn in after they removed the cones. So we have named the car park 'Robayo's Place' in honour of our great achievement and it will forever be part of our empire!
The dunes were hot, too hot. We tried to do some surfing on a seat cushion from the van but it didn't work and I ended up with sand in my shirt, shoes, trousers and worse. Between the dunes were areas with a crusty, cracked layer of salt and only spiny bushes grew. We could see hundreds of tiny tracks attesting to the abundance of wildlife in the area, they were mostly lizard and scorpion tracks, but some looked like a small rodent and others a coyote (that apparently are common in the area, though we haven't seen or heard any yet). The heat got the better of Tris and I and we returned to Robayo's place, left a small pile of sand on the roadside as we emptied out our shoes and clothes and then sat and drank ice cold coke... one of the benefits of having a van over a car is the presence of the fridge and freezer. We then ate cheese and biscuits, carrots and cucumber and ate a few crisps to replace our salt loss. Celso, on the other hand, was determined to get to the top of the tallest dunes we could see about a 1/2 mile from the van. He returned about a half hour later drenched in sweat, (it was even hot for him!) and very annoyed that he had a mark (tan line)from the vest shirt he was wearing.
At our next stop, Salt Creek, Celso refused to wear a shirt to try to get rid of his tan line, we walked along a boardwalk that traversed the salty surface of the desert. This area is below sea level and used to be a huge lake several thousand years ago. It is now the site of a creek, that has a variable level of water depending on the season, that flows along ancient paths and then just disappears into the sand. As the water flows it evaporates and gets more and more saline, at some times it has a salinity 5 times that of sea water but around the edges plants grow in their hundreds. Amazingly a species of fish called Pupfish, about an inch long, survive in this creek and have done so since the lakes that used to cover the area disappeared. There are about 11 different subspecies of Pupfish that survive in several different creeks, each subspecies is slightly different as they have adapted to the varying conditions in their particular creek, some are endangered, all are protected. We were lucky enough to see a large shoal (probably 30 individuals) in the higher reaches of the creek, as well as the huge footprints of one of their enemies in the crusty bottom of the stream - an egret or heron. It was really strange to see such an oasis of life in the hottest (on average over a year) place on earth.
Next stop was at the ruins of an old Borax mine, apparently the dried up lake is full of the stuff. The mine functioned for only 5 years in the 1880's and since it was such a long distance to the nearest railroad the raw materials were processed on site and only the pure Borax hauled out of Death Valley by wagons pulled by 20 mules. They hauled the Borax out and fresh water in, each return journey taking about 30 days so that several teams were required. Mainly Chinese workers, brought in from San Francisco, dug the raw material from the lake, poured it into large vats that were heated to dissolve the Borax and let all the other materials settle out. Then the liquid was poured into huge vats and the Borax crystallised out. Horrid, hot work for which they were paid $1.30 per day, but board was deducted and they had to buy their own food. Finally we drove on to visit the park's visitor centre only to find it full to the brim with folks visiting some sort of art festival... strange place to hold it, you would have thought, in the middle of Death Valley.
So instead we went immediately to a campsite and investigated a spot where we could go for a night walk to look for critters. After a fantastic steak (that has been marinating since yesterday in a wonderful concoction that Celso makes) with baked potatoes cooked on/in a wood fire with veggies and a cold beer, we sat out admiring the stars. I got my first view of the milky way (amazing) and so many stars that it makes the mind boggle. Then we went for a walk up into the hill with torches and a UV light, we spotted a couple of scorpions which glow in UV but very little else. We will be trying again later.
No luck with an y critters later and the moon came out
Sat 7
We got up early to do some more exploring before the sun got too hot. Our first stop was 17 miles to the south and 295ft below sea level at Badwater, so called because a man trying to get across death valley in the 1800's could not get his mule to take a drink from the water, he called the spring bad water and the name stuck. In fact the water is just extremely saline. Over the millenia salts have been washed down into the valley from the surrounding hills, but then the water evaporates. Water in the aquifer below the park feeds the Badwater spring and it bubbles up into the salt. At times throughout the year there are flash floods which then evaporate leaving amazing salt crystal formations. At the Devil's Golf Course (our second stop) we managed to walk amongst these amazing salt crystal shapes which were sculpted into sharp spikes so that only the Devil would play golf there. Next we drove the 4 mile loop road 'The Artist's Drive' along the base of the cliffs that enclose Death Valley, they are sculpted into the weirdest shapes and have the most amazing pastel colours from all the different salts, reds, pinks, maroons, blues, greens, yellows, whites and creams.
A quick stop at the visitor centre explained why Death Valley is so hot, told the story of how it got its name etc.
A 30 mile trip over the mountains that form the East wall of the valley took us to Rhyolite, a ghost town, once inhabited by 10000. It was a booming town during the time that silver was found in the hills around the valley, it had 3 banks, 3 railroads, a school, about 16 stores, a post office, a jail and a brothel. Many of the buildings were erected during the period 1905 - 1907 and were posh for their time with electricity, steam heating and some were multi storied. One of the strangest houses we saw was a house built in 1906 out of bottles, it was raffled off by the builder. Another building that remains largely in tact was one of the railroad offices, that after the town was abandoned in 1920 was also used as a casino. All of the wooden houses have been robbed out because wood is such a scarce commodity around those parts, some moved in their entirety to the nearest town of Beatty. The Rhyolite population since 1920 has stayed around about 20.
We then drove for about 2.5 hours through yet another valley of desertish terrain to get to Las Vegas. The valley had much more vegetation showing that it was not nearly as hot and dry as Death Valley (perhaps because it was much higher; around 2000ft; or perhaps because the mountain chains along its edges were more broken) but it was a harsh environment none the less. The ground was full of stones and sand, and the scrubby dry bushes grew in clumps occasionally interrupted by a Joshua tree or, what I like to call, a pineapple tree - a stumpy scaly type of palm with a top knot. We passed 2 of the most enormous prisons, and a sign that advised us that it was illegal to pick up hitch hikers! As we passed the road up to one prison the sign said 'Correctional Facility' and underneath 'Wildlife Viewing', with a big arrow - we thought that was quite appropriate.
Finally Las Vegas loomed out of the desert, it had lush green grass and a ridiculous array of electronic signs. We drove down The Strip to take a look at some of the casinos - they are completely crazy, out of one came a roller coaster, others have huge statues or waterfalls, it is like being in a great big theme park with immaculate buildings in gaudy colours. When we returned having parked up the van there was even piped music playing along most of the pavements. We watched people being punted around in gondolas at the Venetian, one guy singing opera to his passengers, we walked amongst flamingos, swans, guinea fowl and other birds in a huge garden at the Flamingo casino, walked through shopping centres in which none of the shops had any prices on the merchandise in the windows and generally watched the people become more and more drunk as night fell (it gets dark around 5pm here at the moment as the clocks have just gone back). More and more lights came on as it got darker and we found ourselves, instead of admiring the lights, thinking of the cost to the environment! At one point we were walking along the pavement behind a dancer dressed up in a bright red outfit, they looked like a Cancan dancer in frilly dress and high heels. An old woman with a walking stick poked the dancer's bottom on the left and right cheeks with the end of her cane, I looked at her and giggled. She was giggling too and said, 'He's so cute!', and I replied, 'I think it's a woman!' We walked on a bit and I was right, she was a female dancer, but she must be used to it as she didn't turn or react at all to the prodding. Nice to find a crazy old bat in a place like this, that old lady has some get up ad go!
The amount of porn around is quite incredible and fairly grotesque, not really our scene, but we had to try out a casino so we went into one where Tris could play games in an arcade. Tris is allowed to walk through any of the casinos as long as he is with an adult!! I tried my hands at craps, didn't have a clue what I was doing and gave up having lost $10 which was the stake I was prepared to lose. Tris spent $10 fighting monsters and people, riding motorbike and racing cars, playing air hockey, shooting aliens and having a great time in the arcade. Celso watched and spent nothing! I suppose we should have 'done' a show or gone to one of the museums or something, but we really didn't fancy it so we were back at the van by 8pm!! That's enough of Las Vegas for us, we shall drive round the rest of The Strip tomorrow to take some photos in the daylight but then we are out of here.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Yosemite 3 - 4 Nov
Tue Nov 3
After refilling our Propane Gas (that we use for cooking, hot water (very rarely) and for the fridge when we are not plugged into an electricity supply), we set off 36 miles to the entrance of Yosemite National Park. We followed the path of the Merced river weaving along a valley, at one point a landslide had completely covered the road in boulders of all sizes, and we had to take a detour on a single lane stretch over two temporary bridges, waiting first for traffic coming the other way. The dry shrub covered hills started to give way to more sheer granite cliffs but the Merced river was a constant bubbling, fast flowing body of water through rocks of all sizes at our side. The Merced actually has its watershed in Yosemite and we were to follow it all the way into the Yosemite valley and we are now camped only a couple of hundred metres from it. From its banks you can see down into deep pools through the crystal clear water, and we watched trout swimming lazily in its current. After entering the park we had to pass through a narrow one way section of road that passed between two huge granite rocks; a very dramatic entrance(!); and then we continued, following the river, as the surrounding cliffs got higher and higher and slowly the slim, V shaped river valley we had been travelling along opened out into a wide, deep U shaped valley of glacial beginnings.
We passed a spring where clear, cold water was bubbling up out of the ground and then lazily winding its way down a short stream to join the Merced. All around it was now more lush, but the trees were showing their autumn colours and the road was just one breathtaking view after the other. We turned to the South and then West to make our way up to Tunnel view, from this point (right beside a 400m long tunnel dug through the granite to allow visitors in from the South West) you can look down the whole valley to the East; the green valley floor; the white, bare, granite expanse of El Capitan rising vertically up on the North side; the snow capped Clouds Rest and darker granite mound of Half Dome straight ahead, above the valley to the East; the jagged grey Sentinel Rock and towering spires of Cathedral Rocks to the South; and, from below Cathedral Rocks, the wispy white trail of water spilling down the vertical cliff face - Bridalveil falls. Everything was so dramatic and the sky above was so blue, the sun was shining from the South and casting dramatic shadows of Half Dome, Sentinel Rock and Cathedral Rocks over the valley, we sat and ate watermelon and stared, the only interruption was from some very bold ground squirrels who decided they wanted some of our fruit! Of course, having spent so much time trying to get close to ground squirrels the other day, it was infuriating that the ground squirrels came so close (within one metre) and we had left the camera back in the van while we ate!
We then drove back down the hill into the valley stopping to take a short walk up to the base of the Bridalveil Falls where we got some excellent photos in the mist of the falls. The rocks were incredibly smooth and slippery, even the dry ones, but the mountain goat footed Celso and Tristan managed to clamber up quite high.
Then we drove along the valley floor, stopping to admire the dramatically contrasting views of stark rock, blue sky, rounded boulders in the Merced River and the autumn colours of the vegetation. We spent so much time getting to the end of the valley (about 5 or 6 miles from the Bridalveil falls) that when we got there the whole valley was already in shadow, we got a campsite and then left the van to go for a two mile walk to the visitor centre and museum. At the entrance to the campsite we were given a talk on bear safety as, already this week, there have been two sitings in the campsite, one where a pizza was taken as it waited on the table to be eaten, and the second for a pie. On our hike we tried to keep off the main paths, following some hiking trails that stayed away from both bike and pavemented trails. We met an English couple who warned us that they had just met two black bears further up the path we were just about to take, he showed us some photos of a big male (complete with tracking tags and collar) and told us that the other one was even bigger, but they had been too busy getting out of its way to take any photos; we decided to take another route even though we are dying to see a bear. On our walk under El Capitan we could see huge white granite boulders, that had fallen down from the cliffs, dotted amongst the trees, apparently this is perfect mountain lion country, but as opposed to bears, with mountain lions you should stand and face them, shout and wave your arms as they are pretty shy and should run. Mountain lion encounters are much rarer than bear encounters.
At the museum we watched an Indian woman weaving a traditional basket, they also had an Indian village with signs that told you how the Indians used to live here. Their history goes back 4000 years, their staple diet was a mush made from acorns that were pounded in pestle and mortars made out of the granite rocks and the resultant 'flour' was then soaked for hours to get rid of the bitter tasting Tannins. There was a huge rock in the centre of the village that was an original site for such preparation with smooth round hollows in it up to 6 inches deep. Most of the houses were made from Sequoia bark that resisted fire, fungus etc just like the trees do, and in the village there is a ceremonial round house and sweat lodge that are still used by the local Indian community.
In the visitor centre we watched a film showing Yosemite in all seasons and informed us about the history of the making of the National Park. The first part of it (the valley and its immediate surrounds) was declared by Lincoln during the Civil War and then the rest by Roosevelt after a chap called John Muir realised that without protecting the watersheds of the rivers then really they were only doing half the job. Now the park encompasses 1200 square miles of mountain and valley, we will be crossing over the highest road part tomorrow, the Tioga Pass, at just under 10,000ft.
Wed 4th
No bears visited us in the night nor did we see any today, in fact the road we took was very devoid of animal and bird life, everything has gone to lower altitudes for the winter I think... but what an amazing drive.
We started up through a part of the upper valley that had been gutted by fire earlier this year, it was a barren and horrific view until you stopped to look closely and then you could see new green shoots poking their heads up through the ash - amazing how fire is so important in many plant life cycles in this region.
We had amazing views of mountains in the distance and eventually got to a spot where we were looking out over the end of Yosemite Valley from a smooth rock with just a couple of trees stuck on the top. The wind was blowing in gusts but the sun was also blazing, we were over 8000ft and we could tell from our shortness of breath.
A sign informed us that at that point the snow could reach 9m in depth, the road is closed for 9 months of the year, and usually takes about 4 weeks to clear of snow because of frequent rocks that fall with the ice and snow melt onto the road.
From that point we could see the bright blue of Tenaya lake further down the road. We stopped at the lake and it was at this point that we noticed the complete absence of any animal or bird life. The water was freezing but crystal clear and the rocks around the lake edge were smooth like ice from the endless cycles of snow, ice and melt.
Further on again we came to a meadow at 8600 ft. It was covered in brown grasses and small ground hugging plants interspersed with pine trees and small shrubs. On the shaded side there was a fair covering of snow; I presume left over from last year since we had been told there had been no snowfall for months when we enquired about the state of the road before we left the valley. There were also fantastic icicles where dripping water had formed stalactite formations.
We stopped to go for a walk across the meadow (this wasn't allowed just anywhere as they are trying to ensure that the alpine plants are not trampled), and we took a path that lead us over the Tuolumne River on a wooden bridge built in 1915 to visit what was called a Soda Spring, this was an area where water and bubbles were coming up through the ground leaving a red stain around where the tiny eruptions took place. A slight smell of sulphur was in the air but the water was freezing cold. Celso decided to taste the water and he said it was fine but with a slight sulphurous taste. You will see that all the views were just fantastic... I've run out of superlatives!
Not much further on we reached the highest point in our journey at the Tioga Pass at 9945ft, at this point we exited Yosemite and started to descend down into the High Valley between the Sierra Nevada Mountains (that contain the Sequoia, King's Canyon and Yosemite National Parks) and the White Mountains that separate California from Nevada. At Mono Lake, an enormous lake with islands in the middle in the centre of a completely dry and barren looking region, we turned south. We drove between the mountains with snow capped peaks to our left and right, the landscape changing dramatically between pine forest and open hillside with scrubby small bushes. We don't know why the trees grow in some places and not others... one theory is that the treeless places were logged long ago and have never recovered, but we don't know.
We have stopped for the night in a town called Bishop and plan to move on to Death Valley tomorrow.
After refilling our Propane Gas (that we use for cooking, hot water (very rarely) and for the fridge when we are not plugged into an electricity supply), we set off 36 miles to the entrance of Yosemite National Park. We followed the path of the Merced river weaving along a valley, at one point a landslide had completely covered the road in boulders of all sizes, and we had to take a detour on a single lane stretch over two temporary bridges, waiting first for traffic coming the other way. The dry shrub covered hills started to give way to more sheer granite cliffs but the Merced river was a constant bubbling, fast flowing body of water through rocks of all sizes at our side. The Merced actually has its watershed in Yosemite and we were to follow it all the way into the Yosemite valley and we are now camped only a couple of hundred metres from it. From its banks you can see down into deep pools through the crystal clear water, and we watched trout swimming lazily in its current. After entering the park we had to pass through a narrow one way section of road that passed between two huge granite rocks; a very dramatic entrance(!); and then we continued, following the river, as the surrounding cliffs got higher and higher and slowly the slim, V shaped river valley we had been travelling along opened out into a wide, deep U shaped valley of glacial beginnings.
We passed a spring where clear, cold water was bubbling up out of the ground and then lazily winding its way down a short stream to join the Merced. All around it was now more lush, but the trees were showing their autumn colours and the road was just one breathtaking view after the other. We turned to the South and then West to make our way up to Tunnel view, from this point (right beside a 400m long tunnel dug through the granite to allow visitors in from the South West) you can look down the whole valley to the East; the green valley floor; the white, bare, granite expanse of El Capitan rising vertically up on the North side; the snow capped Clouds Rest and darker granite mound of Half Dome straight ahead, above the valley to the East; the jagged grey Sentinel Rock and towering spires of Cathedral Rocks to the South; and, from below Cathedral Rocks, the wispy white trail of water spilling down the vertical cliff face - Bridalveil falls. Everything was so dramatic and the sky above was so blue, the sun was shining from the South and casting dramatic shadows of Half Dome, Sentinel Rock and Cathedral Rocks over the valley, we sat and ate watermelon and stared, the only interruption was from some very bold ground squirrels who decided they wanted some of our fruit! Of course, having spent so much time trying to get close to ground squirrels the other day, it was infuriating that the ground squirrels came so close (within one metre) and we had left the camera back in the van while we ate!
We then drove back down the hill into the valley stopping to take a short walk up to the base of the Bridalveil Falls where we got some excellent photos in the mist of the falls. The rocks were incredibly smooth and slippery, even the dry ones, but the mountain goat footed Celso and Tristan managed to clamber up quite high.
Then we drove along the valley floor, stopping to admire the dramatically contrasting views of stark rock, blue sky, rounded boulders in the Merced River and the autumn colours of the vegetation. We spent so much time getting to the end of the valley (about 5 or 6 miles from the Bridalveil falls) that when we got there the whole valley was already in shadow, we got a campsite and then left the van to go for a two mile walk to the visitor centre and museum. At the entrance to the campsite we were given a talk on bear safety as, already this week, there have been two sitings in the campsite, one where a pizza was taken as it waited on the table to be eaten, and the second for a pie. On our hike we tried to keep off the main paths, following some hiking trails that stayed away from both bike and pavemented trails. We met an English couple who warned us that they had just met two black bears further up the path we were just about to take, he showed us some photos of a big male (complete with tracking tags and collar) and told us that the other one was even bigger, but they had been too busy getting out of its way to take any photos; we decided to take another route even though we are dying to see a bear. On our walk under El Capitan we could see huge white granite boulders, that had fallen down from the cliffs, dotted amongst the trees, apparently this is perfect mountain lion country, but as opposed to bears, with mountain lions you should stand and face them, shout and wave your arms as they are pretty shy and should run. Mountain lion encounters are much rarer than bear encounters.
At the museum we watched an Indian woman weaving a traditional basket, they also had an Indian village with signs that told you how the Indians used to live here. Their history goes back 4000 years, their staple diet was a mush made from acorns that were pounded in pestle and mortars made out of the granite rocks and the resultant 'flour' was then soaked for hours to get rid of the bitter tasting Tannins. There was a huge rock in the centre of the village that was an original site for such preparation with smooth round hollows in it up to 6 inches deep. Most of the houses were made from Sequoia bark that resisted fire, fungus etc just like the trees do, and in the village there is a ceremonial round house and sweat lodge that are still used by the local Indian community.
In the visitor centre we watched a film showing Yosemite in all seasons and informed us about the history of the making of the National Park. The first part of it (the valley and its immediate surrounds) was declared by Lincoln during the Civil War and then the rest by Roosevelt after a chap called John Muir realised that without protecting the watersheds of the rivers then really they were only doing half the job. Now the park encompasses 1200 square miles of mountain and valley, we will be crossing over the highest road part tomorrow, the Tioga Pass, at just under 10,000ft.
Wed 4th
No bears visited us in the night nor did we see any today, in fact the road we took was very devoid of animal and bird life, everything has gone to lower altitudes for the winter I think... but what an amazing drive.
We started up through a part of the upper valley that had been gutted by fire earlier this year, it was a barren and horrific view until you stopped to look closely and then you could see new green shoots poking their heads up through the ash - amazing how fire is so important in many plant life cycles in this region.
We had amazing views of mountains in the distance and eventually got to a spot where we were looking out over the end of Yosemite Valley from a smooth rock with just a couple of trees stuck on the top. The wind was blowing in gusts but the sun was also blazing, we were over 8000ft and we could tell from our shortness of breath.
A sign informed us that at that point the snow could reach 9m in depth, the road is closed for 9 months of the year, and usually takes about 4 weeks to clear of snow because of frequent rocks that fall with the ice and snow melt onto the road.
From that point we could see the bright blue of Tenaya lake further down the road. We stopped at the lake and it was at this point that we noticed the complete absence of any animal or bird life. The water was freezing but crystal clear and the rocks around the lake edge were smooth like ice from the endless cycles of snow, ice and melt.
Further on again we came to a meadow at 8600 ft. It was covered in brown grasses and small ground hugging plants interspersed with pine trees and small shrubs. On the shaded side there was a fair covering of snow; I presume left over from last year since we had been told there had been no snowfall for months when we enquired about the state of the road before we left the valley. There were also fantastic icicles where dripping water had formed stalactite formations.
We stopped to go for a walk across the meadow (this wasn't allowed just anywhere as they are trying to ensure that the alpine plants are not trampled), and we took a path that lead us over the Tuolumne River on a wooden bridge built in 1915 to visit what was called a Soda Spring, this was an area where water and bubbles were coming up through the ground leaving a red stain around where the tiny eruptions took place. A slight smell of sulphur was in the air but the water was freezing cold. Celso decided to taste the water and he said it was fine but with a slight sulphurous taste. You will see that all the views were just fantastic... I've run out of superlatives!
Not much further on we reached the highest point in our journey at the Tioga Pass at 9945ft, at this point we exited Yosemite and started to descend down into the High Valley between the Sierra Nevada Mountains (that contain the Sequoia, King's Canyon and Yosemite National Parks) and the White Mountains that separate California from Nevada. At Mono Lake, an enormous lake with islands in the middle in the centre of a completely dry and barren looking region, we turned south. We drove between the mountains with snow capped peaks to our left and right, the landscape changing dramatically between pine forest and open hillside with scrubby small bushes. We don't know why the trees grow in some places and not others... one theory is that the treeless places were logged long ago and have never recovered, but we don't know.
We have stopped for the night in a town called Bishop and plan to move on to Death Valley tomorrow.
Monday, 2 November 2009
Disneyland and Sequoias 29 Oct - 2 Nov
Wednesday 28
Not much to say today, Fort Robayo is no longer, not even a trace remained to remind passers by of that great edifice! The time had come to move camps to Anaheim, just next to Disneyland and to have a bit of a relaxing day, and so we did.
Thursday 29
We were at Disney land by 9:30am (a 15 minute walk from our campsite) and having put jumpers in a locker (to be used later when it got dark) we started our 11 hour day of adventure leaving at just after 9pm. We did not stop for the whole time except for about 15 minutes as we sat on the road side waiting for a parade to arrive. Of course we did all the classics - Peter Pan, Toad of Toad Hall, Snow White, Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio; the ones I remember from last time I was here with mum over 15 years ago - Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, the Jungle Cruise, Star Tours, The riverboat, Thunder Mountain and Honey I shrunk the Audience; and then there were some new 'attractions' that I haven't heard of before, Winnie the Pooh, Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, Autopia, Gadget's Go Coaster, Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin and Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye (the only ride we went on twice as it was so good! You rode in a jeep through an Indiana style adventure). We got Fast Passes where we could that allow you to return at a set time and bypass most of the queues and we also explored Mark Twain's island, the shops and lots of weird and wacky boxes and levers etc in Toon Town that made all sorts of strange noises as you pulled them or opened the lids. At 8pm we watched a great fireworks show over the castle from Main Street. The whole park was really themed up for Halloween with pumpkin heads everywhere and some creepy Disney characters out and about like the characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The only character that we managed to meet was the very depressed Eeyore who gave me a thumbs down when I told him to be happy!
Completely exhausted we returned to the van and slept very well.
Friday 30
We awoke late and after a shower we left the metropolis to head into the wilderness again! Up North through the San Rafael Mountains to about 3000 feet and then NE to Lake Isabella along a road that followed the contours of the Kern river valley, another winding and awkward drive. We stopped in a little Mexican restaurant for lunch and had a good plate of pork, rice and re fried beans, delicious! The hills along all of the route, once we left the built up area, are all so dry and weathered, all brown with spindly trees and lots of bare rocks, but then every so often an irrigated patch looking so out of place and rather hideous as you think of all the water it must have taken to make the vegetation so luxurious. Finally we reached Lake Isabella that was an oasis of blue amongst the bone dry hills and the moon (nearly full) was enormous in the sky above the lake. We are camped in a State Park with no facilities except for a couple of earth dug toilets (that I shall not be braving), right on the banks of the Kern River. It looks a perfect salmon river (except that it doesn't connect to the sea), with looks of fast flowing water over rocks, with deep pools, probably has trout though... Celso says he can't fish it because it is too fast flowing for the tackle he has... so he just looks at the river longingly!
Saturday 31
Celso was unable to resist any longer so he did a spot of fishing in the morning but with no luck. After breakfast we drove about 3 miles back along the route we had arrived on to visit a ranger station we had spotted last night to get some information about where we should go to see the Sequoia trees. Armed with our information we drove about 30 miles along winding roads up into the mountains. The highest point we got to was 7000 ft, but only above about 5000 ft did we start to see any trees. The landscape below that was brown and dry with hugely eroded gulches and exposed rounded boulders, it was full of spiky low growing bushes and shrubs and we spotted a few lizards dashing off the road from where they had been sunbathing as we approached. We stopped at a trail called the 'Trail of 100 Giants' and spent around 1.5 hours wandering amongst the amazingly huge, wide, red, spongy barked trees that just make you want to stop and stare more and more. We picked up several different pine cones and tried to work out which came from which type of pine tree, it brought several surprises. You will have to look at the photos.
After our walk we drove further north through the mountains and then down and west back through the the scrubby brown landscape below 5000 ft, down and down to 1000ft into a huge valley where we drove for miles through orange groves and olive trees. At one point we stopped to pick up, what appeared to be, a couple of samples from a whole load of fallen fruit at the edge of one huge grove of orange trees. They were like miniature oranges, but as Celso opened one up a foul smell started to pervade the van, it smelt rather like manure; we have two theories:- 1. these tiny fruits attract all the insects that might have damaged the main crop, 2. they are designed so that people, like us, will knick them and find out that they are foul, rather than knicking the main crop!
Then starting back up into the mountains again until it started to get dark and we are now camped in a small campground that is full of permanent caravans and some rather large hill billy like inhabitants who have a large number of cats and one tiny little dog that charges around madly chasing anything that moves. We shall see if their rather large child tries to Trick or Treat us later... I hope not!
Sunday 1st Nov
Fortunately we were not visited by any trick or treating ghouls or ghosties and we awoke to the sound of the leaves dropping onto the van, the sun was shining and the clocks had gone back in the night so we were 'extra' early. We drove the few miles to the entrance to the Sequoia National Park and stopped at the visitor centre to get some advice as there had been signs saying 'vehicles longer than 22 foot not advised'. Fortunately we were told that this was just an advisory, it meant that on switchbacks our 24 foot van would probably end up over the centre line in the road, and we should just give way to anything in the other direction before making the turn. It turned out to be a much easier road than it sounded, much easier than either yesterday, the day before, or 'the nightmare journey in the Redwoods'. It was fascinating to watch the scenery change as we rose up to around 7000ft again and to watch Moro Rock looming above us coming closer and closer. I am convinced that I saw a couple of large spiders on the road as we drove up, and later, in the information leaflet we were given on entry it said that male tarantulas would be out and about at this time of the year looking for a mate; Celso remains skeptical at my brilliant eyesight! At the top of the mountain we stopped at a museum at what is known as the Giant Forest. We learnt some new amazing facts in the museum; the cones of the Sequoias can stay in the tree up to 20 years waiting for a forest fire to dry and open them. Of every 1000 seeds released only 1 will grow to maturity. Of every 100 trees that grow to maturity only one will become a giant. The others are killed by fires (when they are still relatively young < 100), fungus or animals, or they fall over or are struck by lightening or another falling tree. It is said that a standing dead giant Sequoia has never been found, i.e. they don't die from old age but rather from one of the other hazards I previously mentioned. From the museum we hiked a 1.5 mile trail out towards Moro Rock through breathtaking woodland with the Sequoias and other pines towering above us; some parts were ravaged by fire about a year ago and the scars could be seen on the trees all around; some places were opened due to a fallen tree and many small trees were starting to grow; some places, where dappled sunlight danced through the high branches in the breeze, were covered with bracken and small shrubs. Chipmunks ran and squawked amongst the fallen logs, crows and ravens cawed and swooped, woodpeckers drummed on the tree trunks and responded to Tristan bashing on the trees with a stick - bliss. Just before Moro Rock we were distracted by a sign to Hanging Rock, so we took a 0.2 mile trail to the most glorious, breathtaking lookout area high on the edge of the mountain, with a large rock teetering on the edge and a sheer drop down over the area we had driven up. We sat and stared, and stared and sat; Tristan and Celso spotted a couple of lizards sunning themselves on the rock but they scuttled away into rock crevices; down below we could see the river we had followed into the park; the road we had driven up, winding its way up the side of the mountain; and, away in the distance, some tree covered slopes and some bare granite towering peaks.... Fantastic, incredible, unbelievable. We took a different 2 mile route back to the car through more fabulous woodland. It was an incredible couple of hours.
Then another winding road took us North and West to the biggest tree (by volume of wood) in the world, the General Sherman Tree. It is not the tallest tree, nor the widest at its base but it has an equally thick trunk all the way up, even one of its upper branches has a diameter of 2 metres! Most of the other trees we have seen get more slender nearer the top, but not this one, it was huge. Its top is dead so it is no longer getting taller, but it is still getting wider every year.
Another 25 miles along through the woods we have stopped in a campsite and eaten the most enormous wood fire grilled steaks with baked potatoes and veg. Yum. what a fabulous day!
2nd Nov
We woke up and spent an hour wandering around the Grant grove of trees. We are now in the King's Canyon National Park but it was just as glorious. The General Grant tree is the 3rd biggest tree, by volume, in the world. It is larger than the General Sherman tree at its base but it becomes slender much more quickly, though, as you can see from the photos, it does not become very slender at all. At the grove there is a giant called the Fallen Monarch, when this area was first being explored it was used as a shelter to camp in; then it was used as a stable by the cavalry who were the first people to guard the National Parks. It has changed very little since the photos over 150 years ago showing just how resistant the wood is to rot, apparently it is the high concentration of tannin in the wood that gives it this resistant property.
From the grove we drove down towards Fresno in the valley full of Orange Groves, and then from there drove back up into some mountains further north towards Yosemite. We are now camped, washed, laundered and fed in a campsite just outside the park. Our last 3 nights have been in campsites without modern facilities, just hole in the ground toilets and wildness... so it was nice to have a shower and feel clean!
Not much to say today, Fort Robayo is no longer, not even a trace remained to remind passers by of that great edifice! The time had come to move camps to Anaheim, just next to Disneyland and to have a bit of a relaxing day, and so we did.
Thursday 29
We were at Disney land by 9:30am (a 15 minute walk from our campsite) and having put jumpers in a locker (to be used later when it got dark) we started our 11 hour day of adventure leaving at just after 9pm. We did not stop for the whole time except for about 15 minutes as we sat on the road side waiting for a parade to arrive. Of course we did all the classics - Peter Pan, Toad of Toad Hall, Snow White, Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio; the ones I remember from last time I was here with mum over 15 years ago - Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, the Jungle Cruise, Star Tours, The riverboat, Thunder Mountain and Honey I shrunk the Audience; and then there were some new 'attractions' that I haven't heard of before, Winnie the Pooh, Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, Autopia, Gadget's Go Coaster, Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin and Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye (the only ride we went on twice as it was so good! You rode in a jeep through an Indiana style adventure). We got Fast Passes where we could that allow you to return at a set time and bypass most of the queues and we also explored Mark Twain's island, the shops and lots of weird and wacky boxes and levers etc in Toon Town that made all sorts of strange noises as you pulled them or opened the lids. At 8pm we watched a great fireworks show over the castle from Main Street. The whole park was really themed up for Halloween with pumpkin heads everywhere and some creepy Disney characters out and about like the characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The only character that we managed to meet was the very depressed Eeyore who gave me a thumbs down when I told him to be happy!
Completely exhausted we returned to the van and slept very well.
Friday 30
We awoke late and after a shower we left the metropolis to head into the wilderness again! Up North through the San Rafael Mountains to about 3000 feet and then NE to Lake Isabella along a road that followed the contours of the Kern river valley, another winding and awkward drive. We stopped in a little Mexican restaurant for lunch and had a good plate of pork, rice and re fried beans, delicious! The hills along all of the route, once we left the built up area, are all so dry and weathered, all brown with spindly trees and lots of bare rocks, but then every so often an irrigated patch looking so out of place and rather hideous as you think of all the water it must have taken to make the vegetation so luxurious. Finally we reached Lake Isabella that was an oasis of blue amongst the bone dry hills and the moon (nearly full) was enormous in the sky above the lake. We are camped in a State Park with no facilities except for a couple of earth dug toilets (that I shall not be braving), right on the banks of the Kern River. It looks a perfect salmon river (except that it doesn't connect to the sea), with looks of fast flowing water over rocks, with deep pools, probably has trout though... Celso says he can't fish it because it is too fast flowing for the tackle he has... so he just looks at the river longingly!
Saturday 31
Celso was unable to resist any longer so he did a spot of fishing in the morning but with no luck. After breakfast we drove about 3 miles back along the route we had arrived on to visit a ranger station we had spotted last night to get some information about where we should go to see the Sequoia trees. Armed with our information we drove about 30 miles along winding roads up into the mountains. The highest point we got to was 7000 ft, but only above about 5000 ft did we start to see any trees. The landscape below that was brown and dry with hugely eroded gulches and exposed rounded boulders, it was full of spiky low growing bushes and shrubs and we spotted a few lizards dashing off the road from where they had been sunbathing as we approached. We stopped at a trail called the 'Trail of 100 Giants' and spent around 1.5 hours wandering amongst the amazingly huge, wide, red, spongy barked trees that just make you want to stop and stare more and more. We picked up several different pine cones and tried to work out which came from which type of pine tree, it brought several surprises. You will have to look at the photos.
After our walk we drove further north through the mountains and then down and west back through the the scrubby brown landscape below 5000 ft, down and down to 1000ft into a huge valley where we drove for miles through orange groves and olive trees. At one point we stopped to pick up, what appeared to be, a couple of samples from a whole load of fallen fruit at the edge of one huge grove of orange trees. They were like miniature oranges, but as Celso opened one up a foul smell started to pervade the van, it smelt rather like manure; we have two theories:- 1. these tiny fruits attract all the insects that might have damaged the main crop, 2. they are designed so that people, like us, will knick them and find out that they are foul, rather than knicking the main crop!
Then starting back up into the mountains again until it started to get dark and we are now camped in a small campground that is full of permanent caravans and some rather large hill billy like inhabitants who have a large number of cats and one tiny little dog that charges around madly chasing anything that moves. We shall see if their rather large child tries to Trick or Treat us later... I hope not!
Sunday 1st Nov
Fortunately we were not visited by any trick or treating ghouls or ghosties and we awoke to the sound of the leaves dropping onto the van, the sun was shining and the clocks had gone back in the night so we were 'extra' early. We drove the few miles to the entrance to the Sequoia National Park and stopped at the visitor centre to get some advice as there had been signs saying 'vehicles longer than 22 foot not advised'. Fortunately we were told that this was just an advisory, it meant that on switchbacks our 24 foot van would probably end up over the centre line in the road, and we should just give way to anything in the other direction before making the turn. It turned out to be a much easier road than it sounded, much easier than either yesterday, the day before, or 'the nightmare journey in the Redwoods'. It was fascinating to watch the scenery change as we rose up to around 7000ft again and to watch Moro Rock looming above us coming closer and closer. I am convinced that I saw a couple of large spiders on the road as we drove up, and later, in the information leaflet we were given on entry it said that male tarantulas would be out and about at this time of the year looking for a mate; Celso remains skeptical at my brilliant eyesight! At the top of the mountain we stopped at a museum at what is known as the Giant Forest. We learnt some new amazing facts in the museum; the cones of the Sequoias can stay in the tree up to 20 years waiting for a forest fire to dry and open them. Of every 1000 seeds released only 1 will grow to maturity. Of every 100 trees that grow to maturity only one will become a giant. The others are killed by fires (when they are still relatively young < 100), fungus or animals, or they fall over or are struck by lightening or another falling tree. It is said that a standing dead giant Sequoia has never been found, i.e. they don't die from old age but rather from one of the other hazards I previously mentioned. From the museum we hiked a 1.5 mile trail out towards Moro Rock through breathtaking woodland with the Sequoias and other pines towering above us; some parts were ravaged by fire about a year ago and the scars could be seen on the trees all around; some places were opened due to a fallen tree and many small trees were starting to grow; some places, where dappled sunlight danced through the high branches in the breeze, were covered with bracken and small shrubs. Chipmunks ran and squawked amongst the fallen logs, crows and ravens cawed and swooped, woodpeckers drummed on the tree trunks and responded to Tristan bashing on the trees with a stick - bliss. Just before Moro Rock we were distracted by a sign to Hanging Rock, so we took a 0.2 mile trail to the most glorious, breathtaking lookout area high on the edge of the mountain, with a large rock teetering on the edge and a sheer drop down over the area we had driven up. We sat and stared, and stared and sat; Tristan and Celso spotted a couple of lizards sunning themselves on the rock but they scuttled away into rock crevices; down below we could see the river we had followed into the park; the road we had driven up, winding its way up the side of the mountain; and, away in the distance, some tree covered slopes and some bare granite towering peaks.... Fantastic, incredible, unbelievable. We took a different 2 mile route back to the car through more fabulous woodland. It was an incredible couple of hours.
Then another winding road took us North and West to the biggest tree (by volume of wood) in the world, the General Sherman Tree. It is not the tallest tree, nor the widest at its base but it has an equally thick trunk all the way up, even one of its upper branches has a diameter of 2 metres! Most of the other trees we have seen get more slender nearer the top, but not this one, it was huge. Its top is dead so it is no longer getting taller, but it is still getting wider every year.
Another 25 miles along through the woods we have stopped in a campsite and eaten the most enormous wood fire grilled steaks with baked potatoes and veg. Yum. what a fabulous day!
2nd Nov
We woke up and spent an hour wandering around the Grant grove of trees. We are now in the King's Canyon National Park but it was just as glorious. The General Grant tree is the 3rd biggest tree, by volume, in the world. It is larger than the General Sherman tree at its base but it becomes slender much more quickly, though, as you can see from the photos, it does not become very slender at all. At the grove there is a giant called the Fallen Monarch, when this area was first being explored it was used as a shelter to camp in; then it was used as a stable by the cavalry who were the first people to guard the National Parks. It has changed very little since the photos over 150 years ago showing just how resistant the wood is to rot, apparently it is the high concentration of tannin in the wood that gives it this resistant property.
From the grove we drove down towards Fresno in the valley full of Orange Groves, and then from there drove back up into some mountains further north towards Yosemite. We are now camped, washed, laundered and fed in a campsite just outside the park. Our last 3 nights have been in campsites without modern facilities, just hole in the ground toilets and wildness... so it was nice to have a shower and feel clean!
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