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Published: April 26th 2007
The Colorado River near Moab
We joined the wide Colorado River, shrouded in swirling mist.Motorhome News from North America 41 13th April - 23rd April 2007
The Great Canyons of Utah and the Colorado River
Snow covered the ground when we woke at Colorado National Monument. Visibility was down to 50 yards and thick grey clouds threatened worse to come. We left early to avoid being snowed in, wending our way down to the valley floor, heading for Utah, 100 miles across wide open flats, out beyond Grand Junction into the sparse grasslands, a sea of white as far as the eye could see in the brightening sky, the first rays of morning sunlight striking the mountains to the north. We sighted only two dwellings over the next 70 miles along the freeway; enormous ranches no doubt, but no signs of cattle, and roadside warnings; ‘No services for 56 miles’. Utah was barren at first sight, as barren as the deserts of Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado.
Turning south off the highway towards Moab, the rhythm of the landscape quickened, rolling hills and mustard-coloured buttes gathered by the roadside, red sandstone pinnacles and mesas appeared ahead, a lonely pronghorn watched us pass, and, quite unexpectedly, at the turn of
Arches
A geologist's dream a corner, we joined the wide Colorado River, its rust - red waters steadily sculpting the banks, ever deeper, forging its way through the vertical canyon walls, their tops shrouded in the swirling mist. Following on the heels of stunning sights of the past few days, the spectacle was almost too much to take, our eyes already weary, our minds bombarded with scenic masterpieces; we had anticipated a restful day, a short drive and an afternoon peacefully strolling the streets of Moab. But how could we possibly tire of such majesty and splendour? It has become part of our staple diet.
The Colorado River rises in the State that gives it its name, high in the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, but it hastens westwards and southwards, a lazy serpent, the ‘colour-red’ River, carving its way through the majestic canyons of Utah, along the Arizona border with Nevada and California and on into Mexico and the Pacific.
Lower now, at Moab, we returned to clear skies and short-sleeved shirts, the only visible snow on distant jagged peaks. Moab - yes, another town, another long wide main-street, sitting in the lee of a great sandstone wall several
Arches
Janice deserved a medal for that one! hundred feet high. This is the southwest’s outdoor playground for the active and adventurous - like us! Our campsite brimmed with tents and cabins bustling with thirty-somethings and their fancy kit: smart 4X4’s with personal plates, white-vans crammed with climbing gear, rubber rafts and motor bikes, mountain bikes and fancy racers, ATV’s piled high on trailers - and lots of Lycra everywhere. We’ll stick to our tried and tested walking boots and hiking poles!
Moab’s popularity is enhanced by its close proximity to Arches, a geologist’s dream, crafted from salt and water over 300 million years, leaving salmon-pink sandstone mesas of apartment block proportions, fifty storeys high, layered with creamy white stripes, narrow fins, balancing rocks, and spire-like pinnacles. Great arches have been formed out of the ‘fins’ through acid erosion and frost over the centuries, leaving a breathtaking spectacle of outstanding natural beauty. The arches vary from the delicate to awesome: one crosses a span of 303ft, the length of a football field, at one point no thicker than six feet. We stood in wonder, beside American, French, Russian and German tourists, wide eyes held high into the deep blue sky. A tough hike took us far out across
Canyonlands
No scale could possibly measure the immensity of the area the rocks, way above the canyons along a narrow ridge, (very!) walking, stooped against the gale force wind, sensing the danger of a tightrope walker crossing Niagara Falls, sand in our hair and in our mouths as the wind picked up speed along the valley. Janice deserves a medal for that one!
Friday the 13th came and went with no sign of the promised storms. Perhaps the US weather bureau lives in fear of being sued if it fails to issue a warning before the event. The cold nights continued, but the days started bright for our few days in Utah’s Canyonlands. Not since the Grand Canyon, more than a year ago, have we experienced that chilling sense of awe, the tingling spine, bewildering disbelief that rises from incomprehension. No scale could possibly measure the immensity of the area, stretching out across red canyon after red canyon to a horizon 100 miles distant - and deep below, 1,200ft below, winding between the rocks, the Colorado and Green Rivers, gouging the canyon floor as they have for the past 6 million years. There is no chart to describe the rapture of colour: the red sandstone backdrop, the deep green of
Canyonlands
The Colorado River way below pinyon pine, grape-green juniper bright in spring and sage brush, grey, against the yellow and orange of the desert soil, all boldly chasing a clear blue sky. That’s raw beauty, nature’s purest art form in shape and colour.
It's a 35 mile drive into the 'Needles' at Canyonlands - and it’s the same distance out again, but every mile is generously rewarded. Candy-striped sandstone pillars and pinnacles rise from the desert floor as powerful monuments, towering Roman temples, fortresses in the sky, silhouetted against the skyline like mysterious figures on Easter Island. There were signs of new life in the desert too. Our lips were dry, our skin flaking in the dry climate, but spring was in the air; the desert flowers were blooming for us at last: red, yellow, blue and purple.
Many outlaws retreated into the depths of Canyonlands whenever the kitchen got too hot and the sheriff and his posse too close. It would be easy to get lost here in the Wild West. The desert is vast and the distance between population centres equally immense, often fifty miles or more, with little or no sign of any dwelling between. This is John Wayne country
Flowers of the desert
The flowers were blooming for us at last - and some. I spoke to a lady in the supermarket in Moab - as one does when trolleys collide at the turn of an aisle. “Please,” she said apologetically, letting me pass. “Go ahead. I’m in no hurry. I’ve been driving for 1½ hours to get here and I’m not expected back until tea.”
US State and National Parks provide good access to the public lands they administer. There are adequate car parks at all viewpoints and trailheads and well-staffed visitor centres at most park entrances. Unlike many of our landmarks in the UK, this is public land. There are no ice cream stalls, tea vans, souvenir shops, or fish and chip vans. Car parking is free though there are sometimes charges to visit; the customary modest Park entrance fees. Lands End, Cheddar Gorge and the like come to mind as typical of the commercial rape of our heritage in private hands back home.
News reached us of the terrible massacre of 32 students in Virginia on Monday. America’s gun culture appals us all, I’m sure, but it will take some changing and the stronger will of a President than on offer today. This tragic event will
Canyonlands
The Needles be quickly forgotten here; swept under the carpet until another deranged individual chooses to set the standard higher. Where is the man or woman with the courage and determination to challenge this whole nation to come to its senses?
Finally overcome with curiosity and desire, we ventured onto hallowed ground and passed through the welcoming doors of a Harley Davidson dealership. A mature and pleasant salesman chatted to me as I drooled at the array of gleaming toys.
“Where are you from?” he enquired. I told him the story.
We talked about motorcyclists and the ridiculous habit of riding without helmets in most states. “It’s a matter of personal choice,” he proclaimed, his grey moustache twitching with a hint of a smile. Clearly he was on the side of personal freedom, the headless, and the dead.
“And how are you liking our country?” he continued. “I hope you’ve found our people friendly and welcoming.”
Thinking about the Americans we have met, it must be said we have found all Americans friendly, welcoming and generous; particularly so in the west; happy to chat and proud to tell us they’ve been to ‘our little country’, naming every town
they visited and the places they loved. Recently, we met two friendly widows travelling together in another Minnie Winnie the same as ours. They were having trouble retracting their TV aerial and unscrewing the sewer connection on the motorhome, so I popped over one evening and helped to resolve the issues. The following day, the two Mary’s arrived at our door bearing gifts: wine, biscuits and nuts, all tastefully wrapped and accompanied by a card of appreciation. That’s American generosity. To our dismay, we discovered in conversation that Mary Ann is one of the many in this country who find it necessary to tote a gun ‘for protection’. That, also, is personal choice. In all our travelling here, we have never felt threatened in any way as we certainly would in parts of Europe I could name.
Janice was eager to return to Mesa Verde, which she last visited in the 70’s, back across the border, back into Colorado, completing our storm-evasion circle, out beyond the high agricultural plains. I thought I had seen it all at Canyon de Chelly in Arizona last year: but the enigmatic sight of cave dwellings built into the golden sunlit walls across the
Mesa Verde
The enigmatic sight of the Anasazi Cave-dwellings canyon at Mesa Verde have left a lasting impression, a stark image of ghosts past, living people from a bygone age. Yet Mesa Verde has this and more in terms of scale. The Anasazi (or Ancestral Puebloans as they are known today) built their homes high on vertical sandstone walls in the shelter of overhanging cliffs a hundred feet below the rim of the mesa, a high flat-topped ridge, around AD1200. Why they chose to live in such an inaccessible place we shall never know. The summer hoards of tourists have yet to arrive in Mesa Verde, but there were sufficient people to dull the edge of our experience - just a little. A still day, a veil of silence and a light mist shrouding the valley below would have allowed us to truly immerse ourselves in the presence of these ancient people!
An internet check on weather conditions to the north and access through passes in the National Parks forced yet another change of plan. The snow is still too deep and the temperatures too low in Yellowstone and Grand Teton, our ultimate goal. That’s the problem with living continuously above 6,000ft. To give the weather time to
improve we decided to head northeast, cutting across the mountains to Aspen and Vail, west of Denver to the Rocky Mountain National Park and up to the Badlands of South Dakota, only previously a vague outline on a map.
Each day now, we anticipate little. Surely there can be nothing new, nothing we have not seen before, no sight as great as the last - or the one before that. And yet, we are always rewarded with a fresh experience; a new flavour on an old theme perhaps, but nonetheless, a touch of icing on the cake, a sweet red cherry on the last fruit bun. Let me show you what I mean. 'Come with us today. Take off your jacket and your shoes and sit comfortably by the dinette. There are two seat belts under the covers. Coffee will be served at around 10.30 - if we remember that is, most days we forget and it’s lunchtime already.’ But before we move off, there are one or two jobs to be done.
Our water supply froze overnight; from the campsite tap to the motorhome tank connection. No problem, we have a tank full of fresh water and a
12volt pump to keep the systems running. We’ll need to ‘do a dump’ though, before we leave the campground. ‘Doing a dump’ in motorhome parlance is not quite as nasty as it sounds. With Winnie, it’s a matter of connecting a 2 1/2 inch hose to the sewer outlet and placing the other end in a hole in the ground - at what is aptly called ‘The Dump Station’. When connected, we pull a lever to release the ‘black water’ from the toilet, and then another to release the ‘grey water’ from the shower and sinks - like that. The process takes but a few minutes every three or four days. It’s a rubber glove job, quite hygienic and it lightens the load when travelling, saving fuel in the process.
That done, we’re going to take you along the San Juan Skyway, leaving the desert behind at last, climbing up from Cortez through the 10,000ft Lizard Head Pass out to the northwest. Behind us the great mesas rise from the desert floor as we travel up the Dolores River, showered with sunlight, sparkling bright.
On higher ground, bright open grassland, horses in paddocks, alpine farmsteads and small communities, broad green
meadows, a flash of yellow as meadowlarks spread their wings, golden willow on flooded marshes, tips of cottonwood white by the water, dark pines pointing skywards on sun-kissed hills and swathes of aspen breathing the pure air at 8,000ft (close your eyes and dream of autumn). On, between the red-walled canyons, avalanche warning signs at mile post 60, dripping icicles on seeping rocks, down along the twisting road - then, above us, snowy peaks and snow by the river, dazzling white - wow! So beautiful; a stunning picture in green, white and blue. Still we’re climbing, climbing to the brim of the pass; there’s Mt Wilson to your left, 14,246ft to the top. A classic alpine scene and fair competitor for Europe’s Alps.
Skiing features strongly here in the Rockies. Telluride at the top of the pass is a chic little town offering world-class skiing, with colourful toy-town chalets for the super wealthy, and palatial homes for the superstars, away from the public glare of Vail and Aspen. It’s a smart town, born of the days of strike-it-rich silver, gold, lead, copper and zinc in the mid 1800’s. No small wonder that Butch Cassidy came here to rob
the bank in his heyday! Most of the shops and hotels were shut down for the season, leaving out-of-work young pretenders walking the streets awaiting the coming of mid-May and the new jobs of the summer season. I picked up a free copy of the Daily Planet in the café where we had lunch. We looked around, checked out every man in horn-rimmed spectacles, but Clark Kent was nowhere to be seen.
The road dropped steeply from Telluride, following the stream through the V-shaped valley, red as rust: beavers busy building dams and cowboys rounding up cattle on grassy plains. We’ve seen few cattle until now, though here the steers graze across the hills in large herds and cows crowd the feeders in battery pens. There are few cowboys in evidence anymore. The days of cattle drives are long-gone. There are no big ranches that can’t do their ranching by four-wheel-drive truck, and gargantuan trailers now hit the road direct to the abattoir. Today’s cowboy now drives a big GM truck and lives somewhere in the suburbs. No more campfires or sleeping under flea-ridden horse-blankets.
At Hotchkiss, we were forced into another change of plan; this time completely
Aspen
Come on you reds! England were playing The Rest of the World for the St George's Day trophy.
Spot Winnie in the background. unscheduled. We missed a sign somewhere and found the mountain road to Glenwood Springs closed. “A rock the size of a gas station slid down the mountain and moved the road,” a full-timer told us when we eventually arrived at our camp near Aspen, after a 130 mile detour round the mountain. Not the best of days, but we were rewarded the following morning with the sighting of two Lewis’s woodpeckers - at last! Birding was somewhat bleak in the desert, but we’re happier now.
We’re not skiers, but Aspen offers some exceptional skiing, we’re told. You will have seen it on TV of course - and we just had to go to see the slopes, previously only fleeting glimpses on the small screen. The rich and famous live up here when it suits them and that explains the prices they charge for everything. I’m not a film star (yet), but I still have to pay their prices it seems - for camping and muffins in particular. It was early on Saturday morning and what tourists there were had yet to rise after a heavy night in the clubs and bars, but we found ourselves parked by the local
Vail
Some stunning runs! football pitch and England were playing The Rest of the World for the St George’s Day trophy! Not a serious affair by any means, but the Bob the Builder Brits were putting up a good show for the charity event by the time we left; St George 1, Dragons 0. The goalie, a Scouser, amused himself throughout by shouting instructions to all the other players - and the Irish referee, as you might expect. Aspen delighted us both. It’s another Carmel or Banff: chic, clean and fresh, designer stores, smart shops and cafes on leafy walks, historic buildings and spectacular mountain scenery. Doubtless it’s at its most beautiful under a few feet of fresh snow, those hairy slopes filled with dancing skiers and the après-ski nightlife in full swing.
Skiers will tell you there’s good skiing - and there’s great skiing. A few miles on, that other great, Vail, spans 7 miles of mountains from Outer Mongolia to Game Creek Bowl, with 34 ski lifts and 193 trails on what is claimed is the greatest snow on earth. The locals were there in their hundreds for the last day of the season and the fresh snowfall overnight, skis and
Vail
The locals were there in their hundreds for the last day of the season snowboards over the shoulder, marching booted from car park to lift, smiling faces, lads and lasses, the very young and very old. (I really must try it one day, but not here in the USA; the medical costs are astronomical!) Vail is compact, though considerably higher density than Aspen. Tyrolean condos and lofty chalets are clustered together in village settings, but with 5,289 acres of skiing on offer there’s space for everyone and it’s the top US ski resort. A new development is taking shape in Lion’s Head where we sat for coffee watching the crowds. The complex offers a nice penthouse for sale. It’s a snip at $14, 250,000. If you can’t find the sort of cash to live in town, you will have to drive there in your Subaru, the most popular car by far in this neck of the woods, closely followed by Audi and VW.
Weather continues to influence the pattern of our day. Snowstorms are now forecast for tomorrow and we have decided to batten down the hatches and stay put until it clears. It is important for us to convince ourselves that the views will be even more beautiful cloaked in white. This
has been a week of mind-boggling spectacles comparable with our Arizona experience last year, with vistas beyond our, now somewhat tired, imagination. We leave you at the gates of Rocky Mountain National Park, with the jagged white peaks of the mountains momentarily lost beyond a cloak of hailstones the size of freshly plucked peas.
David and Janice. The grey-haired-nomads
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