Goodbye Utah

We ended our time in Utah with a swing down the South East taking in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks then down to a great free boondocking campsite in Goosenecks State Park. We then bid farewell Utah with a drive through Monument Valley.

Monument Valley was memorable not only because of the neat landscape but because we were witness to a bunch of old cars zooming by! They were all from Europe and involved in a New York To Alaska Ralley. Anne and I just parked on the side of the famous road and watched all the vintage autos cruise by and wave, it was a fun afternoon.

 More Pictures click here

Since Utah we have been driving everyday to escape the heat!! Ever since we came down from the higher elevation of Utah it has been baking hot. So hot we have had to get up at 4:30 am and drive until its too hot for the truck to lug our trailer up the hills at the same time as blasting the AC which is usually by 10:00 am. One stop at in Needles California just south of Las Vegas it hit over a 100 degrees and the trailer AC couldn't keep up so we had to head out for milkshakes to cool down.:) After four long hauls we have made it to the California coast near Monteray and Santa Cruz beach and the weather is nice and cool again, yay!

Check out the travel map and see the last big jumps 

Scenic Highway 12

After Bryce Canyon which is located at the start of Highway 12 in Utah we moseyed are way down to a little State Park , Kodachrome Basin State Park to check out the cool rock formations and colors there. The campground has a awesome view and it's a very pretty location. There were many hiking trails and even allowed pets so Angie got in some good hikes.

 Next stop was another beautiful national park called Capitol Reef. Wow more terrific Utah scenery was served up! During sunset the cliffs light up.

 Finally at the other end of highway 12 and a little way up highway 24 is a really cool state park called Goblin Valley. It's named that for all the interestingly shaped rock pillars and blobs the valley has. Anne and I had a good time walking amougst the goblins.:)

 This One Looks Like Oscar

More Pix Click Here 

Enjoying South West Utah

We have left Arizona behind and made our way North to Utah. First stop was Coral Pink Sands State Park for a few nights. It's a bizarre landscape of orangey pink dunes surrounded by red rock cliffs. Angie got to roam free and run and run as much as she wanted. She had a blast!

 Next we booked a week in a great RV Park right near the entrance to Zion National Park. The park shuttle bus stopped right outside the campground so it was super convenient to explore the park, and man what a park. Everywhere you look is one spectacular view after another. The canyon contains a beautiful river valley with towering sandstone walls on each side and many hanging canyons. Hiking and canyoneering are the main activities here. Not having the equipment or the bodies for canyoneering we did a ton of hiking. Most of the hikes were easy along the valley floor and the Virgin River but several were a little more intense up into the mountain canyons with some decent elevation changes.

After our week at Zion we decided to head up to Bryce Canyon National Park next and then we can drive down famous Scenic Highway 12 towards the other National Parks in the South East of Utah. Bryce sits up at over 7700 feet and some of the park is as high as 9100 feet so it gave our old Big Baby Blue truck a workout dragging the trailer up, but we made it! The Bryce Canyon is made up of very cool looking hoodoos that at sunset and sunrise glow red.,orange, pink. There are also trails down into the hoodoos but no elevator up, ack, it's a chore coming back up especially because of the high elevation. Luckily there is a road that follows the canyon rim with many pull outs to take in the amazing views.

 More Pictures click here

You can tell from the photos Utah is gorgeous country. We are looking forward to more as we head east to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks as well as many State and National Monuments. Utah is just loaded with stuff.

Off to Arizona

While heading to Arizona we had a stop over in Albuquerque. The next morning we woke up to around 6 inches of snow! What a shock after spending the previous week sunny with highs in the 80's. Luckily it was a distant memory by that afternoon. The campground was right on the old Route 66 road and had a few cool old retro trailers.

  Next we drove west into Arizona and stopped at another old Route 66 campground in Holbrook, Arizona. We stayed here so we could go see Petrified Forest National Park. It had an amazing topography of pinkish hues, they call it the painted desert. Also much of it was littered with petrified wood. They looked like real logs but are hard stone. While in the area I dragged Anne to some cheesy left over Route 66 novelty stops like the Wigwam Motel and Winslow Arizona where we stood on the famous corner from the Eagles song Taking it Easy. :)

Our favorite stop in Arizona was Sedona. We have spent the last two weeks touring, hiking and photographing the area. The place is amazing with the red rock cliffs and beautiful vistas. Tomorrow we head north to Utah and can't wait to see all the great National Parks and scenery it has to offer.

 

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In the high desert of New Mexico

We went north from west Texas and into southern New Mexico and the first stop was Carlsebad Caverns. Man what a deep hole! It's around a 700 foot decent, but they have built a concrete path down so it's not too bad. Also they have an elevator to wisk you back up, yay! Unfortunately my little point and shoot camera was basically useless down there so you will have to wait until Anne process her pix. Needless to say its way cool in the cave with lots of neat rock formations.

Guadaloupe National park is only 35 miles down the road from the caverns so we headed there and camped right in the park. When we first arrived the mountains were covered in snow as a cold front had just passed, so it was a rare treat to see snow in the desert. It only lasted a day or so though as temps got back up into the 80s pretty quick. One day we hiked out in to a nearby canyon to see an old cabin built as a homestead in the 1930s. It as only a 4.7 mile hike but at 6000 feet and in the dry hot desert it was fairly taxing, and smart Anne decided to go with a black sweater, hehe.

Next we stayed at a few New Mexico State parks on the way to see White Sands National Monument.
I can't rave enough about the state park campsites here. They are spacious , have electric, water, free showers, dump stations and generally great views for 14 dollars a night or you can buy a yearly pass for 225$ and then pay 4 dollars a night. geeshhh, back home in BC you pay 30 dollars and get a fire ring and maybe a picnic table.

White Sands is straight up awesome. Miles and miles of white gypsum dunes with a sprinkling of cacti and grasses. First day we saw it we lucked out and a local dude had his camel there, was so cool to see and it was friendly, Anne loved it. We had two great evenings there watching the sun set on the dunes, so beautiful and peaceful and when the wind quit the second night it was eerily quiet. The great expanse makes you feel really small.

More pictures here in the gallery

More from Big Bend

Exploring the area to the west of Big Bend National Park we found some more awesome scenery in the often overlooked Big Bend Ranch State Park. The park has an amazing drive along the Rio Grande river with numerous pull outs and picnic areas to enjoy the views.

Also there is the leftovers of a movie set of fake old west buildings that make an excellent photo shoot place. The place is called Contrabando and has been used in 6 different westerns. I found a reddish heart shaped Prickly Pear cactus piece and had fun placing it in many locations.

Back in Terlingua we lucked out and caught the end of the annual Chihauhau races. Check out the video. Too funny.

We did get back to Big Bend National Park a couple more times for sunsets at the Mule Ears rock formations and a hike up Lost Mine Trail in the Chisos Mountains, pant pant.

We are currently in Fort Stockton, a small desert town on the Interstate 10 hwy, restocking and resting up for New Mexico next!!! Oh we had a major thunderstorm the other afternoon with huge hail stones but after the sunset was spectacular.

More photos here

Beautiful Big Bend

After hearing about Big Bend National Park we wanted to get to it right away, but did you know Texas is very very big! Big Bend is on the the west side of Texas and we came in from the east, so a few stop overs would be needed along the way.

Anne likes the crab decor

First we headed down to Galveston south of Houston and spent 3 days at Galveston State Park right on the Gulf Coast. We walked on the beach, road our bikes and toured the historic Strand district downtown. We also had a lunch at Joe's Crab shack, a regional chain of seafood restaurants. Two thumbs up. The inside decor was really interesting, like an old fish cannery or something.

Oscar gets a much needed pee break at a rest area off I10

We next drove over near San Antonio and camped a couple of days in what's called the Texas hill country. The campground was right on Medina Lake but due to the severe drought in Texas there was barely any water in this large lake. Leaving there we headed another couple hundred miles down I10 to a little western town called Fort Stockton where we stocked up on supplies for our couple plan weeks in Big Bend. We stayed at Comanche Land RV park, a gravel parking lot basically but they had full hookups for the RV, free cable and wifi, exactly what we needed.
They also had cool giant arrows in the ground.

Finally after around 600 miles we entered Big Bend National Park and we weren't disappointed, everywhere we looked beautiful desert, mountain, rugged vistas, wow! We booked a week inside the park at Rio Grande Village camp area and explored the east side of the park. Many hikes were required to see the coolest landscapes, I think we might actually be burning of some of that southern fried cuisine from the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. :) The neatest thing is walking out in to the desert and just listening, when the wind is down all you hear is nothing, dead silence, so peaceful.

After a week on the east side it was time to move over and explore the west side, the park is so massive it's almost impossible to see from one side. We picked a little town called Terlingua to be our base. It's a funky place full of interesting characters and artists living out in the middle of nowhere. The main attraction is an old ghost town where some of the buildings have be converted into people's homes and shops. Terlingua is also home to a huge chili cook off in November. We have been in town a few days and so far did sunset photography in the ghost town, ate at the Starlight Theatre restaurant and day tripped down to Santa Elena
 Canyon.

 For a ton more photos click here

 

Today the temp went from near 90 degrees yesterday to 50 today and windy so it's upload pix and blog day... To be continued...