Water Levels in the Southwest

 We passed by a number of reservoirs in our Arizona trip this year.  With record breaking snowfalls throughout the Southwest I was wondering how it was affecting the lake levels after so many years of drought.

Shasta Lake in Northern California:

When we drove by in February, Lake Shasta was at about 960 feet in elevation. Last year the maximum elevation was 980 feet.  Today it is 1060 feet, 100 feet higher than in February and 8 feet below maximum capacity.

Lake Havasu:

Lake Havasu is a balancing reservoir between Lake Mead and the water's destination in Los Angeles so its level only fluctuates by 5 feet during the year.  Though Lake Powell and Lake Mead are currently at 23% capacity, because LA gets so much water, Lake Havasu stays full.   So if you want to go boating on the Colorado Reservoirs this is the place to go.

Lake Roosevelt:

Lake Roosevelt reached a record breaking 106% of capacity at the end of March. They have been releasing water and are now down to 105% of capacity.

Lake Powell and Lake Mead:

Despite the Colorado River snowpack reaching 160% of normal this year, lake levels in these two lakes are projected to rise only from 23% to 26% of capacity this year, presumably because most of the water will flow through to be used for irrigation and domestic use.

Sun Run!

 

Photo thanks to Sue!

We made a quick trip to Vancouver so Leo could run the Sun Run 10 km.

It was rainy all weekend so we didn't do any outdoor activities.  We stayed with our friends and went with them to watch their daughter play recreational hockey on Friday night.  It was a nail biter but they won!

The next night we watched their son-in-law in his recreational curling finals.  They did not win and it was not a nail biter, but we were much warmer watching from the bar.

It was still raining Sunday morning so Leo ran in his fashion-statement garbage bag.  We walked down to Burrard Street to watch him run by.  We got to watch the masses pour off the Burrard Street Bridge.

He came in 3682th out of 25,322 runners.

More impressively, he came in 6th in his age class, not too shabby.

We weren't there at the finish line, but fortunately we can steal photos off the internet.

Victory!

Somewhere along the route the garbage bag came off.

Leo had a singing gig on Monday so after the race we hopped in the car and Leo drove us all the way home.

Thanks to Sue and Ken for being excellent hosts as usual.

We are Going Home

Sabino Canyon, Tucson

We were off the next morning on the road home. I guess we were on a mission because we took no pictures for rest of the trip.

We drove all day, mostly in the rain.  We drove north through Idaho and stopped at a rest stop just over the Oregon border.  It was right on the outskirts of Ontario, OR, so we were able to go for a walk when the rain stopped and have supper at a Burger King.  But first we had to walk through a block that was seriously on the wrong side of the tracks.  We passed by several lots that were packed with many old cars and decrepit RVs as they could possibly fit.  Then the next block was the strip with fast food joints, budget hotels, tire stores and marijuana dispensaries.  It was like the last bastion of the rural boondocks was about to be squeezed out by suburban expansion.  

We slept surprisingly well despite the Interstate traffic and semis idling all night. The next morning we continued through northeastern Oregon.  At one point Google maps sent us on a "shortcut" on a narrow windy road through a gully between rolling hills and past old homesteads.  Picturesque but not the best when towing a trailer.  We continued to struggle with Google maps all day, but finally we stopped at Bridgeport State Park on the Columbia River by Chief Joseph Dam. (I believe he's the guy that crossed the Columbia on the backs of the salmon, so I'm not sure he'd be thrilled by his namesake. There is a hatchery there too.)

Well, it was a balmy 20 degrees out!  A very nice park with green lawns.  There were only two other RVs here and the camphost. We went for a run and came back and sat outside in the sun afterwards, something it had been just too cold to do for most of the trip.  And there were free showers with lots of hot water.  The only hitch is that the motion sensor lights went out halfway through, plunging you into pitch darkness.  You had to run naked out of your cubicle to get it to turn on again.  Fortunately, a) pitch dark, and b) noone in campsite.

The next day was gloriously sunny, and we retrieved our passports from their hiding place and dug out our Canadian money.  I hard boiled the remaining eggs so I wouldn't bring any pathogens into Canada, and we drove north towards the border at Osoyoos.  The customs agent didn't ask us about the eggs, of course, and let us right through.  We stopped in Oliver at Tim Hortons for tea and Timbits.  Leo wasn't able to get hot tea at any fast food joint in the US.  We chatted with our neighbours about the lovely weather.  They had been freezing their butts off near Palm Springs all winter.

We drove as far as Kamloops, went for a walk in Kenna Cartwright Park and had a quiet night in the Costco parking lot as the Provincial parks aren't open yet.  And shortly after noon on March 31st we pulled into our driveway.  We were home.

Lake Powell

Where in the World are Connie and Leo?

Iceland? Svalbard Island off Norway?

Nope.  Antelope Island on Great Salt Lake.

When we left Zion in the morning we were worried by the weather report forecasting snowstorms in Salt Lake City.  In the end the snow was mostly melted until we neared the turnoff for Antelope Island State Park north of the city.  Here there was 6 inches of snow (roads were clear though). Would we be camping in the snow?

Once we turned off, however, the snow gradually disappeared as we dropped down to the lake.  We drove across the causeway to the island passing large flocks of American avocets and other shorebirds.

Our campsite was huge.  There were only a few other campers widely spaced apart.

As wexset up were greeted by singing Western meadowlarks.

Blurry photo of the Bird of the Day

The scenery was stunning with snow covered mountains in the distance.  

It was a long, cold and blustery walk down to the lake.  Great Salt Lake has reached record low levels due to the drought in the Southwest. Hopefully it will go up some when this year's record snowfall melts off those mountains.

We hiked up to a rocky knoll where

we were greeted by a cheeky rock wren.

We did not see any of the namesake pronghorn or the bighorn sheep that live here, but we did see 6 bison in the distance.

We really liked this state park and hope to come back and spend more time exploring when the weather is warmer.

Update April 24:  Recent newspaper articles report that the level of Great Salt Lake has risen 3 feet since Utah's record breaking snowpack has started to melt.  Boats are returning to the lake's once stranded marinas.  They predict another 3 foot rise in the lake level this year.

 

The Watchman

We'd managed to get 2 more days reserved at Zion so our first job in the morning was to move our trailer over to our new site in the A loop.  Quite an upgrade as here the sites were paved and gravelled.  Seems we forgot to take a picture , but this meant no more puddles, no more mud.

And the view was just as fabulous.

It was Saturday the busiest day of the week so our strategy was to pick the least popular hike to avoid the worst of the crowds.  We chose the Watchman Trail as it left right from our campground and my reasoning was that most people would want to hike in the main canyon.

A good strategy but because we had to wait to move our trailer we were a little late.  Still busy but not crazy making.

And still muddy.

Our destination was this flat spot with a nice view over the valley.

We had to navigate past several recent rockfalls.  

Big rock waiting to crush someone.

What has Leo spotted?

A scrub jay!

Here Leo poses with a cool rock.

 We made it to the top for the obligatory pose.

Our photos somehow managed to make it look like we were the only ones on the hike but someone had to take this picture.

Our view back to the campground.  

Leo looking for our trailer. He can't see it for the trees.

Made it back down the hill only slightly worse for wear.

-

Not so Emerald Pools

We woke up to the sound of snow falling on the roof and this view: 

It rained all morning so we stayed in till noon and then caught the shuttle bus to the trail to the three (lower, middle and upper) Emerald Pools.

It was pretty darn muddy.  But great views across the canyon.

We were hiking up amid the juniper and pinyon pines so we had our eyes peeled for pinyon jays, but no luck.  No wonder, we heard from a park ranger yesterday that the pinyon Jay population has fallen by 80 percent!

But we did see scrub jays

 

Towhees, a golden eagle, a says phoebe and ravens.

The rest of the hordes of visitors also thought this was a great hike to take.  Frankly, it was nuts.  

Some of the hordes.  We're walking behind a waterfall here.  I'm getting dripped on.

We spent all our time stepping aside to let people pass or rushing ahead to get out of someone's way. You really couldn't enjoy the scenery.

Then when we got to the Emerald pool

it was not very emerald due to all the flooding and because of the high water the destination had been reduced to this tiny platform.   

See my look of anguish?  Aagh get me out of here!

And there were another 150 people in line to stand on that spot.  

Waterfalls were pretty spectacular though.

In normal times you could probably hop over the creek, but we had to wade across it.  It did wash the red mud off our shoes.

They did provide a chain to hang onto to avoid getting washed over the falls, but we declined to Ford this crossing.

Then back through the mud to get down to the shuttle.

Xx

To Zion

We managed to snag a 2-day reservation in Zion National Park when someone cancelled so that was our next destination.

 These red rock formations looked lovely covered in snow on our route from Lake Powell to Zion.  But then it started snowing hard.

But the snow never stuck to the roads. Just before the entrance to Zion National Park we saw turkeys foraging along the highway. 

 At the entrance to the park they measure your RV.  If you're higher than 11 feet or wider than 7 feet you have to pay a $15 fee and they stop the opposing traffic to allow you to drive down the middle of a tunnel.  If your RV is higher than 13 feet or longer than 40 feet or your truck and trailer measure more than 50 feet combined, you have to turn around and take a longer route.  Our trailer is 8 feet wide so we had to pay up but we were able to carry on.

The road winds down into Zion Canyon past some spectacular rocks.

We navigated the tight turns without incident and made our way to our campsite.

In the shadow of the Watchman peak.

By noon we were set up and we headed over to the visitor centre to catch the shuttle bus up the canyon.  When we last visited they hadn't instituted the shuttles yet.  We drove down the canyon but couldn't stop till the very end because there were no camping spots.

We took the shuttle to the very end for the Riverside trail.

Busy!  Quite a change from our hikes at Roosevelt Lake. Saw a rock squirrel.

Ordinarily you can hike the Narrows by wading up the river from the end of the Riverside Trail.  But it was closed because of high water levels.  Usually water seeps through rocks but now it was shooting out.

We managed to evade the crowds for a while on the walk back by following an unpaved path along the Virgin River.

I swear there are more Steller's jays in Zion than anywhere in the world! 

Bird of the Day!

Unlike our BC birds, southwestern jays have white streaks on their faces.

On our shuttle back we walked up the short trail to the weeping rock.

More of a spouting rock today.

You can walk behind the waterfall.

 

See?