Chapter 21: Zion, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon
June 16, 1998
6/6 We drove up Zion Canyon after dark, and parked at the end of the road in the Temple of Sinawava. It's a wonderful time to be there. Very quiet and peaceful, no traffic, no parking problems, no artificial lights. The cliffs glow gently in the light of the full moon. A fox, caught in our headlights, freezes and stares curiously at us; another fat, squat animal waddles slowly off the road into the dark shrubbery. Not a raccoon. Porcupine? Badger? A pair of tiny lights wink, high on a cliff - climbers bivouacking for the night, part way through the multi-day climb up 1500 feet of vertical rock. We wonder what it's like trying to sleep up there on the rock face, suspended over all that emptiness below. Bats flutter silently across our peripheral vision in the moonlight, hard at work reducing the insect population.
Daytime scenes: A hanging garden along the river walk, fed by a year-round seep of moisture down the cliff. Delicate Maidenhair fern alternates with large yellow columbines and showy blue and yellow shooting stars, adhering to the cliff anywhere that roots can grab a tiny flaw in the rock. Later, on the Overlook Trail far above: another hanging garden, in a different climate. The Maidenhair fern is still the dominant foliage, but now, subtle heleborene orchids poke up through the ferns. Later, east of the tunnel: We stop along the road, to investigate an inviting little canyon, and clamber over the slickrock, following it upward. A few hundred yards up, we find a hidden pool, with dozens of frogs clinging to the vertical rock face a few feet above the water - some sort of powerful suction cups on their feet. We climb to within a few feet of them to take pictures, and only one loses courage and plops into the water. The rest cling, motionless, staring at us, willing us to go away.
Frequent Sego Lilies up here - showy, the state flower of Utah. Bright blue Spiderwort - the first we've noticed, competing with several varieties of Penstemons - red, purple, white. A profusion of gaudy-flowered opuntia - a pink/purple and a yellow/green variety intermixed, with some of the flowers are 4" across. Along here, the two kind of pinon pine co-exist - one with a single round needle, and the other with a pair of flat needles in the cluster.
The long view from the Overlook, back down the valley to the main Zion canyon in the distance - the arched vents from the Highway 9 tunnel looking very foreign in the cliff face to our left. Just at dusk, a young mule deer buck with velvet-covered three-point antlers ambles past our trailer, nibbling leaves from low hanging branches.
6/7 Angel's Landing is a sandstone monolith rising 1600 feet from the center of Zion Canyon. Three sides are sheer cliffs all the way up. The 4th side is connected to the west side of the canyon by a narrow rib of stone extending half a mile northwest, dividing Zion Canyon from a hanging canyon called Refrigerator Canyon (it is reputed to have a cool breeze blowing down the canyon on hot summer days).
Today, Helen and I hiked an impressive trail leading up from the canyon floor, through Refrigerator Canyon, up "Walter's Wiggle" (a steep series of switchbacks cut into the cliff face), and then across the narrow top of the connecting rib to Angel's Landing. It is a strenuous hike, but worth the effort. Walter's Wiggle involved a tremendous construction effort - hundreds of vertical feet of trail cling precariously to the liff face. The walk across to Angel's landing is not recommended for acrophobes. Almost the entire distance is narrow, with dropoffs on both sides. At one point, the trail is on a flat spot less than 3 feet wide, with a vertical 1600-foot drop on one side and only about an 800-foot drop on the other side. Near the end, the trail becomes quite steep - approaching a 45-degree slope in places, still on the crest of a narrow ridge. Footholds have been cut into the rock in these steep places, and heavy chain has been strung as a handhold. Helen stopped at this point. I continued on to the summit, obtaining a spectacular panoramic view of Zion Canyon
Part way up, we could look across at the cliff face and see tiny specks of color - rock climbers, part way along their multi-day climb up the cliff.
On the way down, I came around a corner on the trail and surprised a fat three-foot rattlesnake sunning itself on the warm path. It slithered quickly into the brush beside the trail - didn't coil or rattle, but simply tried to hide.
Much of the trail has been paved, at various times, with various materials. It's is a splotchy patched-up job, undoubtedly built by poorly paid, inexperienced, summer student slaves. And the materials were probably carried up there laboriously, by hand. Some of the travail of building the thing in such a location was embodied in the three sets of mule deer tracks that were permanently imbedded in about 50 feet of concrete.
Driving back out of the canyon, we had to slow for a turkey, which was ambling along the edge of the road, and didn't seem interested in going into the thickets beyond the shoulder of the road.
6/8 On the advice of other RV-Talk folks, and to see new road, we took a slightly indirect route down to the Grand Canyon. We backtracked to Hurricane, then took SR 59 south to the Arizona border, and then continued on 389 and 89A to Jacob Lake. We stayed at the Kaibab Lodge Camper Village, just south of the crossroads called Jacob Lake, and within sight of the actual Lake. This "lake" would hardly qualify as a pond back east. I suspect I could throw a stone all the way across it at any point. But any water is a welcome sight here, and the lake is a magnet for wildlife. The campground is in a Ponderosa Pine forest, half a mile down a gravel road. The sites vary in size and shape. Ours was quite large, had full hookups , and we looked directly out into the open park-like forest. The park is very modem-friendly, with a modular phone sitting on a desk on the covered porch of the office, available 24 hours a day. On the other hand, there are no showers and only vault toilets - water is very scarce everywhere on the Kaibab plateau.
The drive down to the North rim is about 45 miles - rather tedious after doing is several times. But the National Park campgrounds were constantly full and provided no hookups, and the DeMotte Park National Forest campground, about 20 miles closer to the park, seemed to be permanently closed.
Numerous boondocking opportunities exist in the National Forest along logging trails, much closer to the National Park Entrance. We drove some of these jeep trails and found several campsites that would be accessible to our large trailer. Some folks on RV-Talk have expressed concern about this kind of boondocking. We stopped at the Kaibab National Forest Visitor's Center and picked up their literature. One can camp free, anywhere that is out of sight of a paved road and 1/4 mile from a water source (so as not to interfere with wildlife access to the rare water).
But we are near 9000 feet above sea level and nighttime temperatures have been hovering around freezing. Leata is with us, and she likes to sleep outside in a tent, and greatly prefers long hot showers. So we chose full-service private campgrounds where practical. Even when a guest sleeps on our pull-out bed in the living room, cold-weather boondocking is awkward. The furnace uses a lot of electricity, straining the capacity of our batteries. Our flameless catalytic propane heater (which requires no electricity) keeps the trailer comfortably warm, but it can't heat through a closed door, so we have to choose between privacy and heat in the bedroom and bathroom areas.
The Grand Canyon is hard to describe to anyone who hasn't been there. The scale is so huge that it is hard to comprehend. In the other parks, a canyon with sheer walls a few hundred feet high is very impressive. But the canyon in front of us is over a mile deep, and there is nothing to give it a sense of scale. The cliffs are generally not intricately carved like those at Bryce or Arches or Canyonlands, but they are immense. And the immediate drop-off just at our toes, which by itself is impressive is only the first of many such cliffs, each terminated by a little plateau or talus slope before merging into another sheer drop.
The main canyon is barely visible in the distance. From most vantage points, the view is of one of the many branching side canyons. This region of the North Rim has the Colorado River on three sides, as the river makes a huge detour out around the highest portion of the Kaibab plateau. Yet there is only one point where a tiny portion of the river itself can be seen, barely identifiable, 10 miles or so away, and over a mile below us.
Standing on this rim is a great place to contemplate the wonders of geology. The layers of rock in front of us are a cross section of millions of years, during which this portion of the earth's crust has rippled up and down several miles. The top-most layers are long gone - reduced to silt and filling the low deserts to the south. The next layers are sandstone, shale, and limestone - often containing fossils of sea animals from when this almost-two-mile-high plateau was below sea level. Far down in the inner canyon, the bare bones of the core of the earth begin to appear - stark black primeval basalt. We can't really see the basalt from here, but remember it from our dory trip down the Colorado many years ago. I highly recommend the dory trip - the best way to absorb the canyon is from the bottom looking up.
Most of our time was spent driving to various lookout points and just walking along the rim absorbing the ambience. One evening, we had a good dinner in the Lodge, an old and impressive building right on the rim. The dining room has huge picture windows looking out over the canyon. The food preparation and service, like many of the National Parks, is provided by Amfac, and seems somewhat institutional - a bit bland and lacking in polish and imagination. But it was adequate and didn't detract from the overall ambience of the place.
As we walked the forest trails, we kept watching for the Kaibab Squirrel. It looks much like an eastern gray squirrel, except it has tufts of long hair on its ears, the body is dark charcoal gray, the big bushy tail is pure white, and there is a white stripe down the middle of its back - it's easy to mistake for a skunk. We looked, and looked, and didn't see one until we were driving away from the park for the last time, when Leata got a fleeting glimpse of one along the road. Fortunately, the Forest Service Visitor's Center has a stuffed example, so we were able to get a close look at this unique animal which lives only on the Kaibab Plateau.
One day, we screwed up our courage and started down the Kaibab Trail, which is the only maintained trail from the North Rim down to the River. At the River, it meets the Bright Angel Trail which goes up to the South Rim - a total trip of something like 23 miles, over two miles of which is vertical down and back up. The rangers recommend that it be done as a three-day backpack trip, and we saw a quite a few hardy backpackers on their way down or up. Sensible people do it riding on mules, who only rarely mis-step and fall off the cliffs. Helen and Leata went down to the Coconino Overlook, about 1.5 miles round trip. Dave made it only to the Supai Tunnel, about 4 miles round trip (and about 1500 feet of vertical). I don't like trails that start out down hill - it all seems so easy until it's time to turn around. At Supai Tunnel, I still felt fresh and was tempted to go on down to Roaring Springs - a spectacular river flowing out of the cliff, 3400 feet of vertical down into the canyon. I was still feeling the effect of a cold, and decided to be conservative. I turned around, started up, and within a few hundred yards, was speculating on the sanity of anyone who voluntarily does such things.
Being down in the canyon and up close to the cliffs (even just this little way down) gives a much better feeling for the immensity of the whole thing. I recommend it - and a little suffering is good for the soul anyway.
On the way back up, we were passed by seemingly endless mule trains - it seemed like half the mules in Arizona were on their way down the trail, each carrying a slightly nervous-looking passenger for an afternoon's adventure - none of this group were going all the way.
Time to move on to Bryce Canyon! Leata's limited vacation time means adhering to a schedule, unlike our usual wandering.
6/11 After finding almost no services within a reasonable drive of our North Rim campsite, we weren't sure what to expect at Bryce, so we stopped at Kanab (the only town on our route that had more than one street) to stock up on groceries and refill a propane tank. It's been cold, is supposed to stay cold, and we're going through a lot of propane. We arrived at Ruby's Inn Campground in mid-afternoon, and set up camp quickly in a large pull-through site. While checking in, we were told it was below freezing at the campground last night! After multiple trips along the 40-mile drive from our Grand Canyon campsite to the North Rim, it is a pleasant change to be about two miles from the Park entrance, and to have the first of the canyon overviews only a mile or two beyond the entrance.
We drove through one of the three campgrounds in the National Park, and found, to our surprise, that they weren't full. We're still happy to be at Ruby's with full hookups.
6/12 All three of us have colds, and we're not ambitious. Leata and Dave did one short hike, taking our time. The Navajo Loop Trail winds down into the canyon among the Hoodoos (the local name for the vertical columns, eroded into weird shapes and sometimes standing 100 feet or more high.) We see Gothic cathedrals, Norman castles, a grouping of hoodoos that reminds us of Rodin's "Burghers of Calais", and many other imitative shapes among the thousands of rock formations. The soft sandstone is mostly white until exposed to air, after which it turns a warm tan. Some sections remain white, creating an interesting contrast. Occasional outcroppings are slightly different rock, with purple and green hues.
At the top, a noisy group of Clark's Flycatchers were competing for bread offered by a German tourist. Feeding the wildlife is strictly prohibited, but it didn't stop me from watching the show, and it was my first opportunity to see these interesting big black, white, and gray birds up close. Nearby, a pair of Stellar's Jays waited for an opportunity, not nearly as aggressive. The chipmunks and ground squirrels also were obviously used to being fed, and made a nuisance of themselves. One chipmunk stood up on its hind feet on Leata's boot, stretching upward and begging.
Now that we've seen all 6 National Parks in this area, we find that they still have six distinct images in our minds.
Grand Canyon (from the rim): the long views, with the other side of the canyon slightly hazy, 10 to 20 miles away. We have to absorb the immensity of it in layers, one piece at a time: the 1000-foot cliffs directly in front of us; then, small plateaus and talus slopes, then another deep canyon, opening out eventually to the main canyon, barely visible, with (if we happen to be standing in exactly the right place) just a glimpse of the Colorado River at one point.
Zion: The view is up, from the bottom. What sticks in my mind is the huge monoliths of sandstone along the sides of the canyon, 2000 feet or more high, in some places very smooth and almost crack-free. The view down from the narrow summit of Angel's Landing was also spectacular. Zion Canyon is somewhat like Yosemite Valley, but is much narrower, and has quite a different feel. We didn't get into the upper canyon - it was filled with water from wall to wall in places, and was running too deep and fast to wade. So we'll have to come back. We also didn't drive into the northwestern section of the park - a separate entrance, 100 or more miles away. Yet another reason to come back again.
Bryce: The view is down from the top, into a wonderland of wind- and water-carved rock. Thousands of hoodoos (vertical spires) of all shapes and sizes. We hiked one short trail down among some of these structures, and would like to do more hiking down into the canyon. The high south end of the park drive gave us a chance to hike back to a small grove of bristlecone pines - thought to be the oldest living organisms (although the really old ones are elsewhere)
Arches: The name of the park says it - dozens of huge (some hundreds of feet across) sandstone arches.
Canyonlands: The view is out over an immensity of colorful canyons, as far as the eye can see in several directions, where the Green and Colorado rivers join. Not as deep as Grand Canyon, but huge and somehow different. Next time, we'll rent a jeep and do the two-day 100 mile jeep trail which drops down into the canyon and follows the inner rim.
Capital Reef: A fascinating geological structure - a huge uplifted fold in the earth's crust, 100 miles or more long. It is cut by several interesting and fairly accessible canyons with several good hikes in the washes between cliff walls. Up on top, the hard sandstone cap rock has been eroded into basins which trap water long enough to have a specialized ecology of tiny organisms, which somehow survive the long dry periods. For us, Cathedral Valley (the northeast portion of the park) was perhaps the most impressive part of the park, although relatively few people get to see it, since it is at the end of 25 miles of very bad desert road - a high clearance vehicle is needed. We remember Glass Mountain - a mound of pure Gypsum (?) crystals, some as clear as glass. We remember a rampart which appeared to be a mile long, hundreds of feet high, and only a few feet thick, with window eroded through it, giving views of an amphitheater behind.
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6/14 Finding an extra day available with Leata, we decided to spend a night at Cedar Breaks National Monument on the way back to Las Vegas. For some reason, perhaps a premonition, I called the park before we started out. Good thing I did! The campground is still under 4 feet of snow. The road just opened last week. Several of the observation points are still inaccessible.
We went anyway, but made alternate camping plans. State Route 14, from SR 89 across to I-15 is a very interesting drive. It starts out with a series of very intimidating signs, saying "Semi-trailers not recommended", "10,000 foot pass ahead", "8% grades and sharp curves ahead", followed immediately by a well-labeled truck turnaround. We charged confidently ahead. It's a beautiful drive, and not nearly as challenging as others we've seen. The road is lined with magnificent Spruce-Pine forest. Nearing the summit, we began to see black lava fields along the road. At the turnoff from SR 14 toward Cedar Breaks, there was a convenient large paved turnout.
We dropped the trailer there, and continued up into the National Monument, soon passing through large snow banks along the road, some taller than the truck. With no hiking trails open, there was little to do but enjoy the views down into the 2500-foot deep amphitheater. The cliffs are the usual alternation of hard limestone, which formed bright white vertical cliffs, and softer reddish sandstones, which had eroded into fantastic arches and hoodoos, and formed gentler cliffs. Seeing these cliffs striped with brilliant white snowdrifts made them even more impressive. The visitor's center, at an elevation of 10,300 feet, is a small but cozy log building, heated by a hardworking little cast iron wood stove. It's perched right on the edge of a cliff, with a picture window looking west over the deep canyon. We talked to the Ranger about the thick gray black layer appearing uniformly about half way deep in the snow cover, visible wherever roads and walkways had been cut through the drifts. A really strong windstorm apparently hit here sometime in December, blowing dust and gravel up from the cliffs below, and covering the snow with a thick layer, which eventually got covered by several additional feet of snow. It's hard to imagine a wind strong enough to carry these large grains of sand and little pebbles, but there they were. I'm glad I wasn't there.
After a couple of hours of sightseeing, we headed back down, picked up the trailer, and drove on to Cedar City.
Best Western Town & Country RV Park is hardly a "park": it is an extension of the parking lot of the motel. The sites are long, graveled with smooth round stones, with small trees planted between sites, which will someday provide pleasant shade. The $16.57 (with tax) rate includes full use of the motel facilities - a large pool, large hot tub with air jets, and a very nice free continental breakfast for the three of us. A plug for modem hookups was provided in the lobby.
6/15 The drive to Las Vegas was fast and uneventful. I-15 through The Virgin River canyon is very impressive. We descended something like 2500 feet going down the north side of the canyon, and climbed hardly at all, coming out of the canyon onto the low flat desert. Helped by an hour time change, we arrived at our campsite (Silverton RV Park) in time to drop the trailer, set up camp, and head off to tour Hoover Dam.
It's remarkable that this 65-year-old engineering achievement is still a major tourist attraction (it was crowded on a weekday) - perhaps indicating just how far ahead of its time it was when it was started in 1931. (Helen also cynically suggested that perhaps it's a major tourist attraction just because there is very little else to do in the Las Vegas area when you want to get out of town).
In the evening, we had a good (and cheap) buffet dinner in the Silverton Casino - a few hundred yards from the RV Park. None of us were interested in gambling - its recreational value to me seems about on a par with watching paint dry. We did spend a few interesting minutes watching people frantically stuffing coins and bills into slot machines, and speculating on their mental state.
6/16 The roller coaster on top of the New York - New York Casino is incredible. I'm not enough of an aficionado to know how it ranks in the list of the world's great rides, but it's got to be right up near the top. It has both a 360-degree loop and a 360-degree barrel roll. I was very glad for the padded bolsters snugged up against both sides of my head, as the car made several-G turns right and left as well as vertically. This thing must give a little bit of the feel of a dogfight in a jet fighter.
Other interesting rides are found in other casinos along the strip. One place has a vertical wind tunnel, for indoor sky diving. Another has indoor bungee jumping. Another has a water slide that falls at a 70-degree angle. We didn't try these - maybe next time.
The wind increased all day, until by early evening, there were reports of traffic lights out all over down, and the radio was urging extreme caution in driving, with gusts to 60 mph reported. A trailer parked two rows down from us had a large awning up when we left in the morning. This evening, it was ripped to shreds. The frame seems to be undamaged, but the fabric had failed and disintegrated. The owners were apparently gone for the day, and will get a rather unpleasant surprise when they return this evening.
The wind has shifted 180 degrees in the last few hours, and a black bank of clouds is appearing in the north as I write this. We, and our neighbors, have been going out every few minutes to stare at the clouds. The radio is still not issuing any warnings, other than strong winds.
The temperature at Las Vegas and at Hoover Dam yesterday was only a little over 100 - they explained that they are still in the middle of an unusual cold spell. Leata flies out tomorrow, and we'll be out of here, heading north, so fast you won't believe it. We'll get this edited and sent out soon, and the next chapter will be written from Idaho or Montana.