Of the 63 National Parks in the US, I have only visited 15 of them. On my fuzzy list of things to do after retiring, visiting more of them seemed obvious. How hard could it be, really? They are all within driving distance, right?
In 2023, I started mapping a trip to visit Arches, Zion and Bryce Canyon. A quick glance at the map showed me there were many more parks, National and State, within a few hours of each other than I anticipated. It was also clear that getting to that area would require over 1000 miles of driving, probably stopping in two different spots to overnight. It was somehow surprising to me that an area that seemed so close could be a little bit hard to get to. Add to that my desire to camp most of the trip and it got complicated pretty quickly.
Asking friends and family if they had made a similar road trip, I found I wasn’t the only one who had somehow managed to not visit some of the most spectacular and famous National Parks west of the Mississippi. There wasn’t time in 2023 to make the trip. I penciled it in for summer of 2024. Those of you who have made the trip are probably laughing at my first obvious mistake – Utah in July?! But here’s the deal, I would be in South Africa March-April-May, travel the Northwest from friends from Germany in June and planned to leave for Spain in late August. I wasn’t going to let a little hot weather deter me from finally experiencing these amazing places.
Trip Prep and General Angst
As the departure date drew closer, there is a quiet, under-riding sense of anxiety lurking just beneath my conscious awareness. It’s like the emotion I feel when not quite awake and still in the dream-state after a scary dream. I want to call out, reach out and ask for help but there isn’t anyone there and there isn’t actually a threat, just an imaginary tiger lurking in an imaginary jungle.
Turning to face it, what do I see?
That is the question to explore on this road trip.
A few days ago, I asked myself this question – If I knew with absolute certainty that everything is just as it should be, what would occupy my mind?
The answer was a sense of calm. Recognizing everything is as it should be releases the brain from problem solving. It can be more peaceful. There is no “should” and things are what they are. The difference is in accepting or not accepting.
The possibility of Trump being elected is terrifying. I don’t feel there is much I can do to influence that event. There are many bigger factors I will never even see, let alone change. Watching the question of whether Biden will remain the democratic candidate is painful and scary. All of that is threatening, a train wreck out of my control. Act or do not act, fretting is pointless.
My road trip feels a little scary – will it be too much work, too much driving, too much heat?
At the same time, being home is not interesting. I sewed, I cleaned, I painted. All good, but not enough.
I need to decide on a project that gives structure to my thinking. Writing is the obvious choice. It’s not location dependent, I have the tools, I have the time, it might make money but doesn’t need to. I need to just shape the project and give it a go.
So, off I went, driving my trusted Subaru from Vancouver, Washington to Boise, Idaho to stay with my nephew, Carl, for the first night of my latest adventure.
Carl and family
Arrived at Carl’s house to find their friends with kids over, having a pool party. Carl had warned me that the dates had gotten mixed up and they had invited friends over for the evening I was staying with them. It was really nice to hang out with young families, again. What was a surprise was that Mich, Carl’s wife had fallen off a ladder a few days earlier and was in pain, waiting for a knee surgery. It was awkward to arrive as a guest and feel a little like I was making things harder. We did have a nice visit, trying to remember when we had last seen each other and I got to meet their two young children, Everett and Caroline. What a lovely family! This is a group that knows how to travel the world. They have lived in India, London and now Boise. They traveled to Morocco for fun when Everett was just 3 months old. And they are the nicest people. I am so in awe.
They live in a very interesting house in Boise. It looks like something from a different era, Tudor, maybe. There was an in-ground pool in the backyard that is heated with geothermal. In the winter, the geothermal can be re-routed to run under the sidewalk that leads to the garage, keeping the sidewalk free of ice and snow. How cool is that!
In the morning, after a leisurely coffee and some book reading with Caroline, I hit the road. I did have a chance to color the Dino coloring book with Caroline, just to see how she went about coloring in it. She liked to take turns with me, to color sections of a page. A very mature 4-year-old approach.
Provo
Stopping in Provo meant I had only a 5.5-hour drive from Carl’s house. I arrived at the Wyndham just after 3 pm with lots of time left in the day. That was sort of a downside of the hotel solution – had it been a campground, I would have been busy setting up camp. Hmmm. Trying to settle on a campground en-route proved overwhelming and I eventually gave up and settle for a hotel.
Had a short rest in the dark and dingy hotel room, then headed to Utah Lake State Park- opted to not pay the $10 entrance fee so late in the day, then found a nice shoreline path not far away. Mentally, I was stuck in the pre-trip anxiety, not fully present. Getting out to walk was more of a duty than a calling.
Devil’s Garden – Arches
Arrived at Arches National Park in the heat of the afternoon. After entering the park, the road makes a few steep switchbacks through the most amazing red rock walls. The speed limit is 15 mph which was perfect because I just wanted to gape at the sights unfolding in front of me. A Celebration of Rock became the theme for the next few days. All of the anxiety about making the trip evaporated in the grandeur of these rock formations, and I hadn’t seen a single arch, yet. I was immediately grateful for the opportunity to be in this park.
I drove through to the campground which is located at the end of the road on the far end of the park, taking note of the key attractions along the way. I was anxious to ask the camp host if there was a spot I could set up camp in for the two-night stay. My reservations were for different campsite for each night and I was hoping to fix that.
The host was sympathetic but unable to help. She did let me shift to a site closer to the second night site to make the move easier. She expressed an oddly intense distain for site 54 where I had the reservation for night 2.
It was so hot when I arrived that I decided to set up the new gazebo to make some quick shade. It was a bit like wrestling an alligator (or so I imagine) to get the thing open with only one person. I had practiced the set up at home so all I had to do in the 100+F heat was remember where everything went. Less than ten minutes later, I was sitting in a nice bit of shade. That work well in the moment.
With camp sort of set up, I left to go back to the visitor’s center to get my pass for the Fiery Canyon guided hike the next day. Arches has a really nice visitor center, located right inside the park entrance. There was a big gift shop, big bathrooms and water bottle filling stations. With the summer rules for timed arrivals, the wasn’t much of a wait to get into the park. Because I was camping, I didn’t need an arrival pass, just my campsite reservation info and my Lifetime Senior Access pass.
Let me tell you what a great deal that lifetime pass is! I bought the pass in 2019 in South Carolina when I was going into a Revolutionary War Memorial Park. I didn’t really know what it was but I like to support the parks, so I paid $60 and received the pass. It looked like a credit card. The Ranger who sold it to me very clearly stated – DO NOT LOOSE THE PASS. It can’t be replaced without paying again. Ok, message received. Five years later, presenting at the parks in Utah, I had free entry. The Park fees ranged from $25 – $35. Thank you, South Carolina Ranger, for clear instructions. The pass also gets me 50% off on campsites book through Recreation.gov. I feel so thrifty!
By the time I collected the Firey Furnace Tour pass and chatted with the Ranger, it was nearly 6 PM and had cooled off to less than 100 F, plenty cool to hike the Park Avenue trail. At each trailhead over the next few days, there were signs that said simply HEAT Kills! Take 3 liters of water/person. The signs were larger than a standard realtor sandwich board and placed right in the middle of the path. At this date in July, three people had died in National parks from heat. Two more would die before my trip was over. Despite the signs, I saw people on every trail with little or no water. In the spirit of seeing other people’s flaws as a mirror to my own, I wonder, what am I doing that I have clearly been cautioned against doing? Hmmm. In the spirit of being helpful, I wanted to say something like – Did ya see the sign about water?? That never felt like the right thing to do.
Each time I went hiking, I dutifully filled my double bladder turtle-back to have my 3 liters, packed my snacks, sunscreen and emergency provisions and went my merry way.
At Park Avenue, I descended the steps to join what the Parks call RUSTIC trails – those without pavement or many markings, that led through an amazing little valley at the base of red rock. The face of this set of rocks looked like buildings along a wide avenue, thus the name Park Avenue. It was so hot; I was still trying to stay in the shade which wasn’t really working all that well. The mantra – a celebration of rocks – continued to echo in my head. The rock formations at Arches are so much more than just the arches. They really need to be experienced in person to fully appreciate the grandeur.
I returned to campsite 46, to find the gazebo on its side in a mess. That answered the question of whether I would try sleeping in the gazebo. I took the gazebo apart and set up the tent, staking it with everything I had AND added the sandbags from the gazebo for added stability, I hoped. The wind blew hard throughout the night with even harder gusts through the canyon behind the tent. It was like sleeping inside a lung during a marathon, or at least that’s how I imagined it.
Before bedding down for the night, I went to hear the park Ranger talk and returned to the sounds of a happy, energetic family of five. It was already well after 9 pm. The dad did a very kind thing. He asked the kids to listen so they could hear how close the neighbor was (that was me). I gave a howdy-hi. Over the next half hour, they grew quieter and by 10, it was lights out, no sounds at all. Amazing!
To be continued…
