Chama and the railroad

Moab adventures

So it's been about a week since I visited Moab, but time to catch up. I had four days off, which really translates to three days with travel, but I managed to jump from the Ephraim area to Moab area. I was still pretty tired after a full night's rest in a hotel, so when I made it to Arches in the afternoon I did more driving than hiking.

     I've been here before, because I remember taking pictures of some of the landmarks. But unlike Kirk and the Enterprise I don't always have to keep boldly going to brand-new places. Saw lots of col fins, petrified dunes, and (of course) arches. I ended up puttering around the Windows, walked up to the North Window and the Turret Arch. Turret Arch is definitely my favorite, mainly because to me it looks like the entrance to a Hutt Palace or some sort of hole-in-the-wall hideout from a Zane Grey.

Three Sisters at Arches

Turret Arch at Arches

North Window with a troop of people

After Arches I camped out on BLM land north of Canyonlands' Island in the Sky entrance. Island in the Sky is the most accessible of the Canyonlands' three districts, so there were people but not really a crowd like at Zion or Bryce Canyon. Again took it easy and focused more on the scenic drives and overlooks, absorbing the sprawling views and that eerie sense of depth that never really makes it through the pictures. Saw the Mesa Arch and enjoyed a breakfast of graham crackers at Grand View point. Packed it in after the afternoon got scorching and had the near mythical salad for lunch in Moab.

Two tailed side-blotched lizard near a Canyonlands overlook

Near the Mesa Arch overlook

Buck Canyon at Canyonlands

     In the evening I meandered down south and took another hotel in Monticello, setting up to trek into the Needles district the next morning. Didn't realize until I got down there that there's actually another National Monument down there, Bear's Ears, which was only created during the Obama administration. A park with already a weird and tangled history, it's new enough not to have any visitor center or facilities. So I ended up skipping it for now, and hopefully it'll survive current policies.
     Anyway, next day I took a leisurely morning drive into Canyonlands' Needles. It's a curious area that focuses less on the wide view and more on the up-close-and-personal view to the formations. I did way more hiking, saw an old granary at Roadside Ruin, skirted under mushroom rocks and an abandoned cowboy camp at Cave Spring, and clomped around the slickrock hills around Pothole Point. After picnicking back near Elephant Hill, I drove back to check out Newspaper Rock, a fascinating and detailed example of rock art.

Needles of Canyonlands, near Elephant Hill

Newspaper Rock

     So those are my park forays. Afterwards I was able to get in contact with the other techs and hold a rare, blue moon of an event. With all of us roving around it's almost impossible for all of us to be close enough and off work to meet up, and this time we actually managed it for half a day. It's kind of nice to be able to talk and get drinks and hang out with humans again after a couple of months of semi-isolation. We picked a helluva mosquito-ridden camping spot, but the rest was pretty good.

     Now I'm off again for a day and an office day, just enough for a shower and a soft bed. After this, I've got six transects to go. The end draws near...

Tough hitch

Since I'm a little behind on posting, I'll make this a quick set of posts. In brief, my past hitch was short but exhausting. All the sites needed a steep walk-in at way too early in the morning. Also plagued by high winds during the day and oppressively hot nights. I was to do one more grid before taking some days off, but after driving two hours over hair-raising roads I got stymied by one bad rocky slope. Couldn't get my car over it after rearranging rocks and retrying approaches, and in reflection if I hadn't been exhausted I wouldn't have even tried. Impractical to walk in from there, so I backed off and saved it until the next hitch.

View from campsite at Steve's Mountain site

Columbines at Steve's Mountain

So before that I managed to do some pretty grids, Steve's Mountain and Thickets. Steve's Mountain, from the shots above, was a nice break from the heat, getting me up into deciduous forests, fir forests, and montane meadows. Also oak thickets and steep slopes. And my backup grid to the impassable was Thickets, which also granted a nice camp spot on top of a sage ridge. Not actually that bad thicket-wise, but again with tortuous slopes mixed in with a little shrubbery, which does not go well.

Sage ridge from Thickets campsite

Wild roses (Woods' rose?)

Anyway, I did finish the sites, got a vacation, and currently back to work. I'll post about the vacation days when I can.

Three parks, three days

So I've managed to get a few days off unhindered by car repair. So what does a birder with spare time in southwestern Utah? Visit national parks, of course. So first on my list was to see Zion. Originally I'd planned to spend a few days exploring, but for all its beauty and majesty it's also incredibly overcrowded. The Park Service manages by restricting visitors to using shuttles, but it can still be a bit like waiting in lines at Disney World. Still a worthwhile trip. Saw a lot of big rocks, got some great views of mule deer, rock squirrels, yellow warblers, and waded a little into the park's main summer attraction "the Narrows". Finally ditched the crowds and meandered back to the visitor center on foot, and then ate a giant burger and drank a nice porter.

Zion's Court of the Patriarchs

Zion, heading along the Virgin River to the Narrows

Rock squirrel!

Mule deer near the Riverside Walk

So like I said, I was going to go back the next day to hike some of the longer trails. I could mostly blame the crowds, but I was also seized some laziness. Instead I slept in, and then journeyed north. I'd been around Cedar City, but I turned east on a little winding road up into the mountains to see Cedar Breaks National Monument. It's not a big place, and certainly not famous. They're pretty limited up there by the snow, so much so that most of the trails and the campground was still being fixed up or still snowbound. But it's a charming little place on the top of the world, cool air and alpine meadows and spruce, amber sand slopes and snowdrifts. I walked a little of the Sunset Trail, climbed over a couple of snowdrifts anyway. Spent a nice afternoon away from the heat of the dry desert valleys, and then headed out toward Panguitch and Bryce Canyon, camping the night near Red Canyon in Dixie National Forest.

Spruce forest in Cedar Breaks NM

The snow-covered slopes from Sunset View overlook

And today I finished the triad by touring Bryce Canyon National Park. I spent the morning hiking the Rim Trail to see the sights of the Amphitheater, where all of Bryce is laid open for the eye. It's been described as a cave without a roof, and there's certainly a merit to that. The "hoodoos", or pillars of curious sandstone, take on fantastic shapes. They are the forms of chess pieces, of trees, of bridges and arches, with names like Thor's Hammer and Queen Victoria. Afterwards, I had a picnic lunch and drove up the scenic drive, reaching the highest views in the park. The crowds and the thunderheads were rolling in later so, satisfied, I wandered the backroads to Cedar City. After a few days of adventure, I think I'll take the last day to be rather ordinary and get things ready for my next birding hitch.

Me and my face blocking the best of Bryce Canyon!

Bryce Canyon from Sunrise Point

Hoodoos of Bryce Canyon from Inspiration Point

North with the birds

I'm back in civilization again after a nine grid spree. After having fixed my tires and gotten things straightened out in St. George, I hit the road. Started out with a challenge, the first one I needed to backpack into. Although there were roads to get close, after awhile they deteriorated into tracks only a hard-core ATV or something could handle. Anyway I packed up everything I needed and hiked into the site the evening before. Not all that far, but two miles uphill wasn't exactly what I wanted to do at 3am in the dark. Set up with my bivouac bag and sleeping bag, and with the weather cooperating everything turned out fine.
     After that I started heading north, working in some hilly country outside of Kanarraville and Cedar City. The one in Cedar City had some crazy steep canyons, but on the plus side I could hang out in the library with all the other weird vagabonds. After that I headed out to Parowan Gap, remnants of an old waterway that became a library of petroglyphs. Lots of beautiful views and rolling sagebrush.

Petroglyphs at Parowan Gap

View of the Parowan Gap from one of my points

     I've been getting better at navigating hillsides, but it helps that I also ran into some good luck in grids. Parowan Gap, Lund Desert, and Desert Rat Grasslands all have been pretty flat and open, plenty of sweet sage.

Sunrise over the sage at Desert Rat Grasslands

My farthest ranging trip was out toward the Nevada border, not so far from Great Basin National Park. The drive to the Needles took me past old mining town, mountain ranges, and open country. Once in the Needles, I got back into pinyon-juniper slopes.

Pinyon-juniper slopes way out in the Needles

A species of buckwheat out by the Needles

     After a couple more near Beaver, which I got to name after fictional planets from an obscure science-fiction TV series (Ral Parthea and Tarn Vedra anyone?), now I'm relaxing in St. George. I've got four days off and plan to explore Zion, so more pictures should be forthcoming!

Weirdly, how I feel after changing a flat tire

The field technician's credo...