Salt Flats 100

A week after we got home Leo flew back to Utah.  Why? Salt Flats Endurance 100 Mile Run on the Bonneville Salt Flats where they do the racing car speed trials.

Leo checked out the venue the day before and took this photo showing view of the salt flats and mountains which they run around on the Saltflats 100. 

In an ultramarathon prerace nutrition is very important

This restaurant had lots of Bonneville Speed trial photos and memorabilia.

Original course with 10 miles on salt

Because of this year's cold and wet the conditions the race course, which usually includes 10 miles on the salt flats, had to be altered since the salt is still wet.

Revised course 

Leo started running at 6 am yesterday morning (Friday).  The cutoff time is 36 hours.

I received this email at 9 am this morning:

Am back in motel.  Very cold and windy.  Done in 25:23.  Wore almost every piece of running clothes i had.  Five layers of tops plus garbage bag

Hugs

Leo

Fun Times

Around the campfire at Bryce Canyon

Our fellow camper Van (on left) shared with us some night photos he took.

Our trailer at night

 Unfotunately, the stars don't show up very well once I reduce the size of the photo.

Back in our own Country

From Superior we drove across Idaho and stopped in Spokane, WA, to have our last meal in the United States at Frank's Diner, recommended in our Roadfood book.

It's a real railroad car diner, and is very popular with the locals for breakfast.  We sat at the counter and watched the cooks prepare mountains of hash browns on the grill. (The cooks all looked Hispanic, and once again I wondered, if they kick out all the Mexicans, who will feed America?)

Leo had a giant corned beef and hash with biscuit, while I continued my quest to eat every pumpkin flavored item in the world and had a pumpkin waffle.  👍👍

Then we headed west to the Grand Coulee Dam and north through Omak and Oroville and crossed into our own country at Osoyoos.

We stayed overnight at Swiws (formerly Haines Point) provincial park.  We were appalled to see the camping fee was $32, but then the park attendant asked if either of us was over 65, in which case it was half price, $16.  Score!

 The next morning we changed the gps over from miles to metric, and then the kilometres just melted away, and before we knew it were pulling into our driveway.  Home at last!

Superior, Montana

Another, longer, day of driving.  We meant to stay in Missoula, Montana, but their Walmart doesn't permit overnighting, and the campgrounds aren't open yet so we are parked near the fairgrounds in the small town of Superior.

After supper in the Durango BBQ restaurant and casino, we thought we'd look for public access to the Clark Fork River.  We found it at the Superior Assembly of God church (not a very humble title for a Christian church, I think), just as the very friendly minister and his wife were returning from walking their dog. 

They pointed out a beaver lodge across the river and said that they have eagles and osprey as well.

No photos today so I'll leave you with photo of Bryce Canyon

Leo hikes the Peakaboo Loop

Long Drive Home

After 3 days in Bryce Canyon, we did some arithmetic and realized we had three days left before our health insurance ran out and we'd have to be over the border.  So we had some heavy driving ahead of us.

The first day we drove to Willard Bay State Park, just north of Salt Lake City.  We'd stayed here two years ago but it was much busier on this Easter weekend, full up.  We went for dinner at the Idle Isle restaurant in Brigham City, a town so Mormon they have two tabernacles across the street from each other.  They did serve coffee and tea at the restaurant though (Mormons don't drink caffeinated beverages).  It's an old fashioned diner with a soda fountain.

It fits in very nicely with their very nice old fashioned main street, still full of real stores (no olive tasting bars in Brigham City), but I did notice a storefront advertising tarot and palm readings, so perhaps it's not as Mormon as it looks.

Brigham city is also :

The gateway to the World's greatest waterfowl refuge

and after dinner we did the driving tour of the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. 

But after driving most of the day, a long drive around the one way loop was a bit much and we (perhaps for the first time ever) got a little weary of looking at birds by the time it was over.

Also, there was a crazy amount of gnats, which made focusing the camera difficult:

That's an American avocet behind the gnats.

Bird Quiz:

What's the difference between a western and a Clark's grebe, and which is which?

It's not a Canyon, it's an Amphitheater

That's all very well, Bryce Canyon National Park, but I hiked it, and it felt like 200 canyons.



We spent 3 days in the park, hiking a different loop trail every day.  I could bore you with hundreds spectacular shots of red rocks because there is a photo op at every turn of every trail. But I'll try to restrain myself.



Our favourite trail was the Fairyland loop, which took us 4-1/2 hours right from the campsite and dropped down into the canyon and then back up and down over and over.

On the first night the campsite was full soon after we arrived.  A young fellow walked up to us and asked if he could put his tent up in our campsite.  We wound up having a great 3 days hanging out in the evenings with Van, a data analyst and rock climber from Washington, DC, and our other neighbour, Laurent, a Corsican (French) who lives in San Francisco and is trying to see as many National Parks as he can before his visa runs out next year. 

My sister Dorothea had recommended Willis Creek Slot Canyon as an excellent hike in Utah, and when I finally got around to googling it, it turned out to be just a few miles away from the small town of Tropic, the site of our favourite coffee stop and the only real grocery in the vicinity.



As we rattled our way down the dirt road in the middle of nowhere we wondered if we misread the directions, but then we turned a corner and there were 20 cars parked.  Nevertheless, the canyon was long enough that we were not overrun and often found ourselves alone with no one in sight. 



My definition of overcrowded is if I get tired of saying hello to everyone we pass, it's too crowded; this didn't happen in Willis Canyon. Bryce Canyon certainly didn't pass the test, but it is a National Park during Easter week, and definitely less crowded than Grand Canyon, and reportedly Zion this week (reported Laurent, who as I said was trying to visit every National Park, so drove there for the day after we told him the campsites were all booked up).

The slot canyon went on for several miles, then spread out into a wider canyon.  We turned around after an hour and walked back.  Really a great hike!

 

Lake Powell, AZ

We planned to head for Zion next, but a quick scan of our website showed that the entire park was full up for Easter, so instead we thought we'd try our luck at the Wahweap campsite in Page, Arizona, on Lake Powell.

We were thinking, hohum, a campground in a parking lot at a marina.  And the lady at registration informed us there was only self-contained camping available.  Overflow parking lot for sure we thought.  Instead we got a nice spacious campsite with a beautiful view of Lake Powell.  And the weather was pleasantly balmy.

View from our campsite.

We headed right off to Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River.  It was crazy busy with bus loads of Chinese visitors arriving.  A woman we met told us she had been here 20 years ago and there had only been one other couple there.

 But a magnificent view of the bend.  There were a few boats below, and two empty campsites.  You can put in at Lee's ferry and boat up the river.

Our next stop was a short hike to the hanging gardens.  There were only 10 cars here, much more manageable.  We hiked across Zion - like rocks

to a seep where ferns were growing out of the cliff.

After supper we walked down to the beach, a few hardy souls went swimming.  It was COLD, they told us.

All and all we were very impressed with the area, we hope to come back some day and paddle Lake Powell.

Grand Canyon -No Room at the Inn

Our dream of hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon has once again been foiled by our poor planning or perhaps our refusal to plan.  We weren't too worried about getting a backcountry permit, since apparently there are always lots of cancellations if you can wait around a few days.  And the last time we were here, though the park campsites were full there were plenty of sites in the commercial rv park.  But somehow we managed to arrive on Easter week and when we got to the rv park they told us they only had two sites left and only for one night. 

So we set up camp and then drove into the park for an afternoon of sight seeing, and to try to get a glimpse of a condor.  The park was crazy busy, but we managed to get a parking spot in the last parking lot, and we walked the rim for a few hours, but no luck, condor wise.


Obligatory selfie shot

The sheer masses of people from all over the world was kind of fun for a while, but eventually it wears you down.


Some of the masses, many of them eating ice cream cones, brrrrr

But the canyon itself was as vast and beautiful as ever, especially as the sun dipped lower in the horizon.



It was cold!  Quite a shock after a few warm days in Cottonwood.  We had to run the furnace all night to keep the plumbing from freezing.

Cottonwood

Just down the road in Cottonwood, there was a marathon this weekend so that was our next destination.

We were pleasantly surprised by Cottonwood, it was a small town that seemed to be managing it1s expansion quite well compared to Prescott.  Or maybe because every big box store known to mankind had set up shop half an hour away in Prescott there was no need to open up in Cottonwood.

They have a nicely preserved old town (from the thirties and forties) that is lively and full of restaurants, brew pubs, wine shops and galleries.  No real stores though. 

We walked from where we'd parked the truck and trailer at Safeway to the rec centre to pick up Leo's race package and discovered there is a giant lava rock quarry splitting the town in two.

A race volunteer recommended we have lunch at Hogwild, and so we did have excellent BBQ sandwiches there.

We checked into our RV park along the Verde River only to discover the water was high in arsenic (!), the rv site wasn't level, the wifi was useless, and half the washers weren't working in the laundry.  We paid 42 bucks for this!

On the plus side, we were facing the river, the bathrooms were clean and the repairman came to fix the machines and gave us 2 free dryer cycles.

The next morning Leo's race started at 6 am, so we were up at 4.  After Leo took off, I walked into the old town and checked out the shops.  Then when the cafes opened I had second breakfast at the Red Rooster Cafe.

Then I walked the trails along the river where among other birds I found a hummingbird on her nest,


My camera doesn't do closeups as well as Leo's

And two cooper's hawks in their nest.

Leo planned a slow run and figured he'd be done at 11, but as I walked to the finish line at 10 am, he caught up to me and passed.  First (and only) in his age class;

Leo accepts his award

  It wasn't a very big marathon though the half marathon and 10 k were well attended.  It was a great course though that followed the Verde River and wove by Cottonwood's highlights - Tuzigoot National Monument, Deadhorse State Park, Oldtown, and of course, lots of the namesake cottonwood trees.

In the afternoon we continued our quest of getting the most value out of our national parks pass and visited Tuzigoot National Monument. 



Tuzigoot is a large Pueblo built on a hill ideally situated near the Verde River and surrounded by arable grasslands.  The ruin was excavated and reconstructed in the 30's to provide employment and to create a tourist destination for the region.  Much of the museum interpretation revolved around the different approach to preservation and restoration in comparison to today. 

There was a great quantity of pottery excavated from the site, the archaeologists at the time described them as crude because they were undecorated, but as a retired potter myself, I can attest to the skill required to handbuild the large, symmetrical pots they made.

The monument also includes a marsh and on the trail we met two boys handling a small green snake with bright orange underside - we later id'd it as a regal ring-necked snake. 


Not a full ring on this one's neck

The one boy was quite a snake whisperer, a few feet away he noticed quite a large rattler in the ditch next to the path where we'd just walked by. 

Leo got a photo of it before it slid into a culvert under the sidewalk.  Note to self, do not stick hand into a culvert without looking first!



Closeup of rattle and striped

Also lots of wildflowers in bloom along the trail.

Yaeger Canyon

The next morning we returned to the trailhead for the Yeager Canyon Trail.  Again we saw lots of pronghorn on the grasslands; in fact, we may have seen the same three pronghorn close to the road. This time I got pictures.

There was another car already parked at the trailhead, but we did not see them on the trail; fora change, we had it all to ourselves. We started by switchbacking up the side of Little Yeager Canyon onto a rocky hillside covered with oak and juniper agave and beargrass.

Not really a grass nor the lily-like plant they call beargrass in the Rockies, but a kind of narrow-leaved yucca.

In an hour we reached the rim of Mingus Mountain and moved into ponderosa forest.  Here we saw lots of birds, a bluebird nesting in a dead juniper, mountain chickadees and bridled titmice, painted redstarts, and a bird we've been looking for since we visited our first conifer forest in Arizona, the bird of the day - the pygmy nuthatch.  Of course, once we saw one, they were everywhere, and we've been seeing them ever since.

At the higher elevations there were lots of very large, very old junipers.

We walked through pine forest till we reached Yaeger Canyon and this was the best part of the hike.  We had great views as we descended steeply through changing rock layers with great views of the Prescott grasslands below.  We were serenaded by Western scrub Jays and then we heard the descending call of the canyon wren. 

Eventually we reached the canyon bottom and walked through cottonwoods full of warblers, including a pair of black-throated grays.

Not much blooming yet up there, but I did find two very tiny wildflowers. blooming.

Bisbee of the North

We meant to hike one of the loop trails from our guidebook this morning.  We headed north on Route 89A that goes Noth into the mountains.  On the way we passed through grasslands.  Leo mentioned that it looked like pronghorn habitat, and just then we both saw pronghorn herds on both sides of the highway.  Three of them tried to cross the highway in front of us, changed their minds and slid under the barbed wire fence!

The directions were sketchy and we just kept driving uphill looking for a trailhead till we came to the mining town of Jerome perched on the mountainside, so we abandoned our plan for a hike and looked for a likely coffee and goodie stop.

Jerome is like a slightly downscale Bisbee, a little more falling apart, the art stores a little more hippyish.  It is also literally more falling downish, a portion of the town had recently slid down the slope, including the public restrooms indicated on the city map, which were no longer in existance.

Quite a few buildings were only hollow shells, missing one or more walls.

We had coffee and apple cobbler in the Mile High Grill, so named because Jerome is a mile high in elevation.

One our way back we found the trailhead, just an inconspicuous, unsigned pullout on the side of the highway, which we saved for the next day.

Instead we walked the Walker Creek Preserve full of ducks and migrating warblers and tall cottonwoods.

Lynx Lake

Lynx Lake is not very large, so we thought it wouldn't take very long to accomplish today's project of circumnavigation the lake, but it ended up taking a large portion of the day because we wound up following the inlet upstream seduced by all the birds singing in the cottonwoods.

The bird of the day was the house wren, a first for this trip, but it wouldn't cooperate for a photo so here is a gadwall,

inconspicuous from a distance, beautifully textured in closeup.