The day we arrived here in Moab, we saw some heavy wind and
a little lightening. Last night, we saw
it again, but this time with rain. I
told Amy that this was the monsoon season here, but she had a hard time
believing that there were monsoons in a desert.
And I can’t blame her for not believing me; an example of one of the many stories I
have told her was that McDonald’s Shamrock Shakes were made from actual
Shamrocks. So I am not always the most credible
source. But she would see by the end of
today that I was not kidding about this whole monsoon thing.
Despite the wonderful Mexican dinner and electrical storm
last night, neither of us woke up very energized. The wind really picked up last night and
falling asleep was hard. It also kicked
up a fine layer of dust which coated everything this morning, both inside and
outside of the tent.
We got on the road heading south for The Needles region of
Canyonlands National Park. The ride is
only about an hour and a half from Moab, but gas stations are not plentiful
outside of Moab, so with the detour needed to fill up, it ended up being close
to two hours. When we drive, we usually
do a mix of iPod and NPR (when a station is available). Southern Utah has a strong NPR signal, so
today we were listening to the news.
Included in the now daily updates about the civil war in Syria, the
economy, the campaigns, and the Olympics was the tragic news out of
Colorado. Without TV, newspaper, or easy
internet access, we are kind of out of the loop, so we hadn’t heard about the
tragedy until today. Despite the fact
that these things seem to be happening more and more frequently, it is still
incomprehensible that something like that could be done by one human being to
another. I really don’t have anything insightful,
intelligent, or relevant to say about it, so I will just transition awkwardly
back to the trip.
We arrived at The Needles visitor center and we were the
only ones there. We spoke to the Ranger,
and she said that the Peek-a-boo trail we wanted to do was a great one and one
of her favorites. Going into the trip,
we didn’t have set plans for today, but in Jackson Hole, so fellow rafters told
us about Peek-a-boo, so now that we had two people telling us it was a good
idea, we had our plans for the day.
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| Off our trail, but still on a trail. |
Our previous record for losing a trail was 10 feet past the
trailhead in the Badlands. We beat it
today. I don’t think we were ever on the
trail today. In less than 5 feet, we
were off, although luckily this time it was just on a different trail and not
wandering in no-man’s-land like our Badland’s experience. Fortunately, the other trail we got off on
went in the same general direction as our chosen trail, so after .3 miles when
we realized our mistake, we were able to take a .5 mile trail spur back to
where we had intended to be.
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| The beautiful (or not so beautiful depending on who you ask) desert scenery. |
As we started hiking, one of us became energized, while one
of us did not. I won’t say who was
which, but let’s just say that as we went on, I promised to Amy that: 1) our
next vacation would be to the ocean, 2) we would go swimming tonight, 3) we
would have our own pool if we ever moved to the desert, and 4) we would never
move to the desert (at least until retirement).
Quite the progression. I guess
someone is not a fan of the desert.
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| Yuca, cactus, juniper, oak and many other types of vegetation filled the washes and river beds. |
Once we got on the trail, the hike started by going through
flat desert. As there were numerous
washes and (currently) dry river beds, the vegetation was actually quite
lush. In addition to becoming a rock nerd,
I’m also becoming a flower nerd, so check out the “Flowers” tab for more pictures
of vegetation (I’ve also developed a thing for dead trees, which would explain
the overabundance of dead tree pictures).
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| The multiple layers of sediment visible in the sandstone formations and slickrock. |
We left the flat desert and began scrambling over slickrock
until we got to the rim of a canyon.
From there, we made our way around the rims of a series of connected
canyons. If you can, picture a set of
U’s, that are all connected like – UUUUU. We stayed on the rocky “U” part, while in the
space below was the sandy canyon floor full of various types of vegetation
ranging from cactus, to sagebrush, to oak, to juniper tree, and much more. The rock formations were incredible, with
fascinating shapes and striations of color.
It is so neat to look up a canyon wall and literally see all of the
years in each of the layers, like looking at the rings of a tree trunk.
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| A look out from the center of one of the "U's" |
Towards the end of the hike out (it was an out-and-back
hike, not a loop) I heard a plane above.
It was incredibly loud and I thought it may be some sort of military
cargo plane. I searched the CRYSTAL CLEAR BLUE SKIES and was
not able to locate it. We continued on
for another twenty minutes until we almost hit the end of the 5 mile
trail. We say the ending spot below and
not wanting to climb all the way down just to climb back up, we decided to turn
around.
As we did, we noticed that those skies, which had been clear
and blue 20 minutes earlier, now showed think black and grey
thunderclouds. And they were moving
right at our path. Suddenly my claims of
a monsoon season in the Upper Sonoran Desert didn’t seem so ridiculous. This was bad for a number of reasons. First, rain + slickrock = slickerrock. Getting a foothold on slanted, dry slickrock
is not hard, but it takes some concentration.
On wet slickrock? Not good. Second, high winds + high ledges =
yikes! The hike put us into some mildly
precarious positions, but definitely not places I’d want to be in during high
wind. Finally, high exposed places are
not where you want to be in an electrical storm. And if we’ve seen one thing, it’s that these
storms pack quite the electrical punch.
So we had two options: we could go back the 5.3 miles as quickly as
possible, hoping to get to the low desert part before the storm hit. Or we could go to the campsite at the end of
our trail and hike back the 12+ miles along the road.
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| Impending doom. |
We had already used
up 3 of our 8 water bottles, so trying to do 12+ miles in 100°+ heat with only five
water bottles seemed like a worse idea than trying to outrun the storm or
hoping it missed us. The campsite also
appeared unoccupied, the road to it was a seldom used dirt road, and we had yet
to see anyone else out on the trails who may have been able to help us
out. So we went back around the
“UUUU”’s as quickly as possible, the
storm appearing to head north of us for a while before reappearing on our
backs. We came down from the rim circuit
into a low wash, but we still had a few large mounds, including one that
required the use of a ladder, that needed to be crossed. This is when the rain hit.
It came down pretty well for a few minutes while we took
shelter (I use that term loosely) under a fir tree of some sort. The cool rain felt great, but also slicked
everything up for the rest of the hike back.
It also had the sauna effect of pouring water on hot rocks. You could feel the steam coming off of the
stone and the humidity increased noticeably.
More storms continued to form behind us so as soon as the
rain let up a little, we took off again.
We made it back to where we first met up with our trail and then took
the correct trail back to the trailhead.
It was there we saw how quickly we got off course.
By this time we were hot, thirsty, sweaty, and in no mood to
do anymore exploring, so we headed back to the campsite for some swimming. The pool was busy and had an odd haze to it,
but the water felt great. Still being
over 100° and
with more threatening skies developing, neither of us felt like doing any
outside cooking. So we decided to head
into Moab for dinner.
Dinner was at a place called Buck’s and it rivaled Irma’s in
Cody as our best dinner of the trip so far.
As we were being seated, it started to pour. the hostess remarked, "Yeah, it's like that here during monsoon season." See, I wasn't lying (this time)!
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| Buck's Kobe beef hot dog with Southwestern toppings. |
The restaurant advertises contemporary southwest cuisine focusing on
steak, but we decided to split a few of their none steak dishes instead. First, we split a spinach salad with goat
cheese, red onions, blueberries, a balsamic vinaigrette, toasted almonds and
get this – duck bacon. Wow. Out of this world good. Next, we split a quesadilla stuffed with jack
cheese, poblanos, and buffalo chorizo.
It was topped with a salsa verde.
Again, incredibly good. The
buffalo chorizo tasted fantastic. The
final dish, the coup de gras, was a kobe beef hotdog with refried black beans,
queso fresco, avocado, onions, and tomatoes on a cibatta roll with sweet potato fries on
the side. I just had to send my dad a
picture of that one.
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| Another long night for the tent appears to be in store. |
Our decision to not try to cook/eat outside proved to be a
good one as a big storm hit while we were at dinner. We got back to cmap and saw that part of our
neighbor’s tent had collapsed. Our tent
was still up and intact, but taking a beating from the heavy wind. The wind is still whipping around us and it
will probably rain more. Hopefully that
will keep the dust down.
Tomorrow, we pack up and leave Moab to head for western Utah
for a few days.
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