Alex Raterink - Southwest Roadtrip

Southwest Adventure #2

I know I've posted about a "southwest camping trip" before, but this was different! Before, we traveled and explored west through southern New Mexico until reaching the Grand Canyon as our turn around point; we stopped in Flagstaff and Painted Desert, Albuquerque and Carlsbad along the way home. All with our trusted home-on-wheels (the pop-up camper). This time however, we tent camped and decided on destinations a bit further out - heading north to Great Sand Dunes in Colorado, then west to Moab and Zion, momentarily breaking the peace in Las Vegas before going back east and camping in the heart of New Mexico for a night. Instead of many medium length drives dispersed throughout the trip, we tried a different strategy: GTFO of Texas (and later GTF Home). We essentially stayed in Dallas the night before leaving - thanks Paula and Gabo, that was super nice - and then drove the 12 or so hours to Great Sand Dunes. On the way home, we left El Malpais, New Mexico around 7am and returned to the Houston area about 15 hours later. We were anxious about such long drives, but I don't think they were too bad. With the help of audiobooks, podcasts, so many albums, and of course your best friend, 10+ hours in the car is surprisingly bearable. Plus it made the rest of the days relatively short drives!

I decided I'd write about this adventure in a chronological sort of way - maybe it will make the story more cohesive and force me to write more. If you are a person that for some reason happens to read this site, let me know what you think.

Part 1: Colorado

Technically the story begins in Dallas, but the summary of that section can be seen in the images at top: Paula has a GIANT dog. Like literally the biggest dog I've ever met. Anyways, I'll get on with the story.

Our first night camping was at Great Sand Dunes National Park (GSDNP). I had long heard about the epic scene; solitary desert hills hidden inside the Colorado mountain range. My hopes were surpassed. Imagine on one side of you there exists lush green mountainsides topped with the jagged grey rock of the Rockies, and upon performing a 180 degree turn all you can see is the dry oscillations of sand dunes sprawling into the horizon. Well, you just imagined GSDNP. It was insane! The only natural precession to such an event is the obvious climb the dunes.

The quintessential hike at GSDNP is a fairly self-guided one, in which you hike about 2.5 miles up to the highest dune. I'm sure the true highest dune fluctuates with the wind, but the trailhead supposedly points to the winner. Or you can just kind of guess and make your way up, either way works. On this day, Auva and I learned a cool new equation: SAND + WIND = PAINI know, it may seem obvious to the more desert-inclined of you, but to us this was new. I highly recommend covering every part of your body that you can if you plan on undertaking this a hike up these dunes. My bare legs were constantly attacked by flying blasts of sediments, our ears and eyes penetrated at any crack in the imperfect seam made by hat, beanie, and sunglasses. Hiking up loose sand is also extremely difficult - by the end of our road trip, we both still classified this hike as the hardest one. Despite all of this, the view at the top was astounding, and we hung out in a zone of minimal wind for a bit before heading down to rinse off in the outdoor showers (COLD) and make dinner.

The next day we packed up and left, our foe defeated and our hunger for sand quenched. We had previously decided we wanted to summit a peak, or at least get close, while we were in the Rocky Mountains. So we found one, and endured the 8 mile round trip hike to the saddle point in the mountain; not the true peak but good enough for us. We could look north or south, either way our altitudinal superiority was evident.

Our next destination was somewhere a bit more peaceful; we drove deep into the canyon of White River National Forest and camped in between the high red cliff faces and beside the meandering cold river. A fairly uneventful night besides a slight fear of bears inspired by a sign that read "LAST BEAR ATTACK: 5 DAYS AGO"located at the entrance to our campsite. We played it smart with locking up our supplies and leaving out no interesting items. The site was pretty, and in the morning we walked by the dam and enjoyed dew on the grass, preliminary rays of warm sunshine, and neighboring children jumping in the surely chilly water. Then, west towards Utah.

Part 2: Moab

First of all, I am required by good faith to mention Colorado National Monument (CNM), which we stopped at along the way to Moab. A short detour off of the main highway, CNM provides a scenic drive up to beautiful cliffs and views of the surrounding landscape of valleys and canyons and more distant mountains. There was an easy hike along the canyon edge, and at the tip Auva and I enjoyed lunch with a great view.

Our campsite in Moab was a bit different than those that came before it. It was sort of a communal situation, with a public kitchen and shared spaces, tent campers, RVers, and even a few hotel-type rooms available. It also had laundry services available, and a nice shower. All this at a decent price and great location. Ok I'm starting to sound like an ad. You get it, it was great. After arriving and setting up, we found a nearby lake which was almost certainly man-made but certainly beautiful and necessary as well, inflated the paddle board, and floated out into the middle to enjoy the perfect sun and high walls of the Moab vallley. Auva and I debated whether there was snow on the far-away mountaintops.

Sleeping in a bit longer than planned, we packed our day bags and left for Arches National Park. Since we were staying at the campsite another night, it was a stress-free morning. Once through the entrance station and the initial tight curves of the entryway, the full-blown immensity of Arches widened before us. We planned to drive out to the end of the road and hike Devils Garden, but we exhibited no rush along the way. Seemingly impossible rock structures dotted the land to our left and right; the sweet ombré of weather-beaten sandstone tempted the driver to look away from the boring road, a reminder of the insignificance of our pitiful human creations (that was a bit much I know, but I've been reading Desert Solitaire).

We eventually made it to Devils Garden, where we trekked through the 8+ mile looped hike in the increasingly unpleasant heat. They say bring more water than you think, and they're right. Auva and I got a little lost at some point, because the trail is marked by little piles of rocks and we were mislead by some chaotic evil-doer. I'm thankful to them of course, because we did end up in a section of the park probably unvisited by most travelers. It did however add a mile and an hour to the hike, and subtract a cup of water from our bottles, but in the end we relocated the proper trail and made it home just fine. Too tired to explore more of the park on foot, we drove to the viewpoint to see Delicate Arch, and left back to Moab. After some downtime we managed to get back up and go on a hike to find a secluded waterfall along a nearby stream, and placed our sore feet in the cool water and forgot all about the heat of the day under the chill of evening.

Canyonlands was the following morning's endeavor. Still tired from the previous day, our courage only allowed for a short 2-mile hike to see a giant crater with a sharp rising formation inside, Upheaval Dome. They say it was made either from a meteor impact or erosion of a salt cavity and subsequent slamming together of rock. The scale and perspective was mind-boggling; Auva and I couldn't decide whether it was 100 feet down to the bottom or if 3 football fields were in our way. Next we drove out to some scenic views of the canyon, and once again the scale was insane. You look out over the distance to see a crack in the ground, far below, colored white. The signs tell you it is around 1000 feet below you. Then you notice below that, inside that deep crack, is a river, meandering its way south and west all the while taking tiny amounts of sand along with it. The sign tells you the river is another 1000 feet below the white rim of the intermediate rim. I truly cannot warp my mind around the proportions of this landscape; to me it was like the Grand Canyon's immensity multiplied by ten. Not its beauty necessarily, but surely its grandiose.

Part 3: Southwestern Utah

That night after seeing Canyonlands, we continued west until arriving at our remote campsite near Bryce Canyon National Park, deep in the Dixie National Forest. Here, embraced by the comforting density of green junipers and pines, the desert had left us and the heat as well. After dinner, we heard a hearty-sounding voice accompanying the strums of an acoustic guitar, so we wandered over to find two old pals around a campfire, one with his guitar and vocal chords moving. They told us to join, so we grabbed our chairs and drinks and my guitar and did, and played music and laughed heartily under the stars and above the flame. We talked about each others' travels, and about the Dam Jam where they were going soon, where hundreds of people gathered in northern Utah and played music and had fun and camped for a week; Auva and I decided we had to go one day. Eventually we realized we had to wake at a respectable hour, so we said our goodbyes and got cozy in our tent.

Later that night, I was awoken by a suspicious noise, and after many minutes of listening I decided it was possible it was a bear near our tent, so I awoke Auva. Needless to say, she was scared, I was scared, we were scared. We tried scaring it with my car alarm, but it wouldn't go off, so we resorted opening and closing my trunk and flashing the lights. These attempts momentarily hushed the creature but it was always only temporary. I began to suspect it was not, in fact, a bear but likely a smaller mammal perusing around our campsite, but Auva was not convinced. We tried sternly talking to the creature: This is not where you are supposed to be. We are humans, and we are asking you to leave. You must go now. Eventually I unzipped the tent and looked, only to find a plastic bag we had hung on the nearby tree rustling about: inside was a shrew, certainly scared shitless.

Bryce Canyon

I had visited Bryce before, but it had been awhile and the magic certainly didn't disappear. Hoodoos of gradient color sprout from every coordinate in the canyon; the scenery looks truly like a painting. First we drove to the end of the road in the park, did a small hike around the rim, and then drove back to the main hike while stopping at each viewpoint on the way. The main hike, its name evading me, passes down into the canyon between high walls of rough orange and beneath endless blue sky, each rock structure paradoxically infinitely unique but perfectly conforming to the surrounding canyon. We opted for the shorter loop of the hike, and it turned out a good choice as the hike back up was hard enough as it was.

Our sleeping location that night was in Kodachrome State Park, a beautiful shallow valley tucked inside the red-white walls of mounds that teetered on the boundary between mountain and hill. Despite the endless onslaught of flies, this campsite was lovely, and certainly had the nicest showers.

Zion National Park

The next two nights were spent at Zion. We were lucky (or prepared) enough to land a campsite within the park, even though after leaving I can say it isn't the nicest campground out there - no showers for one, but more inhibiting was the lack of shade. There was simply no escaping the heat those days in Zion. Well, except for when we hiked the Narrows, the thin crevice between high walls, formed by a shallow river which one can follow upstream for miles. Roughly four miles is how far we followed it, culminating in a (slightly disappointing) waterfall. Auva wanted to turn back earlier for fear of nightfall and missing the shuttle back, but I selfishly convinced her to let us continue onward till the falls. She loves me, that's for sure.

We hiked Angel's Landing the following morning. Despite stories of hikers falling a thousand feet to their deaths, we decided it was worth the risk. I was scared. However, it really isn't that bad. The chains are essentially always there to grab onto at the sketchy parts, and even so for the most part the footing is flat and the edge fairly distant. I wouldn't bring my children though - I don't know how so many parents there were. To cool down afterwards we found a small hike to a secluded waterfall, where we enjoyed the shade and water for a bit before returning to camp. In dire need of a shower, we headed to the town Springdale and showered at an outfitter there, and then got drinks at a bar nearby. It was our first civilized event on since Dallas, and it felt good to be in air conditioning drinking a cold beer.

Part 4: Vegas

Leaving Zion, we passed through timezones to get to Red Rock Canyon where we hiked into Icebox Canyon. I had done this hike a long time ago as a child with my brother, and in my memory it was EPIC. It was still cool, but it did not live up to the hype. It was also a really hot day and the strain of the trip was catching up to us; the promise of AC and a bed at the hotel in Las Vegas that night begged us to speed the day forward...

Which we did: checked into our hotel, the cheapest near the strip, took a two-or-so hour nap, went to get dinner at an amazing vegan place led by Chef Kenny, lied down again, rallied to get up and go to the strip, walked around the smoke-filled strip where people spent more money than they should on things they don't need or may never have. We stayed sober. Clearly, Las Vegas is not my scene.

Part 5: El Malpais and Home

The morning leaving Vegas, smog blurred out the sky until a couple hours after dawn, and alerts on phones and billboards warned against extended time outdoors and exposure to dangerous levels of air pollution. Lovely.

The evening however was a completely different atmosphere, driving through Arizona and midwest New Mexico before arriving at our campsite at El Malpais. We didn't even go exploring that night; our campsite was perfect and we just wanted to relax in the satisfaction of our last night on the trip. It was one of my favorite locations of the trip, where Auva and I simply felt lucky to be on the road together again.

Our final day consisted of driving through Albuquerque then east and south all the way to Houston. Before we knew it, we were home and yearning to be out in the country with one another soon again.

A simplified schematic of our journey. Not labeled but just as important are Arches National Park and the Canyonlands (near Moab), Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, and Kodachrome State Park (southwest Utah), Red Rock Canyon (west of Vegas). I think the total hours measured by my car ended up in the 70s.

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