Ron is a tick magnet!

After leaving Death Valley we found a great camping spot in the foothills of the Sierras.  We were on the same page but didn't tell each other and instead of staying we headed for the coast.  Not terribly familiar with California we thought we would be able to find a dirt road on public land but instead found wine country with Hummer limos passing by and very expensive houses with a view.  Luckily there was a County park on the lake with space available (they had 400 camp sites) and we tucked in for the night.  After this venture we decided to try our hands at planning and found another County park (Jalama Beach) on the coast that we wanted to check out.  We had taken the Amtrak through this area a couple years ago and loved the green grassy rolling hills with great views of the ocean.  The ranger quickly pointed us to a beach side campsite that had just been vacated.  Turns out that it was the most expensive night of camping we had ever had but the site was just too amazing to turn down.  We lounged in the sun all day and read, but once we had dinner and the wind had turned to gale force, we decided to go for a nice walk on the beach.  We saw a lot of sand in transport and a sea otter fighting the blowing spray off of the waves.  We continued our drive up Highway 1 to Big Sur only to find that a landslide had closed the road.  Ron knew that I really wanted to see this section of the coast and we drove as far as we could.  The vistas of the steep cliffs and ocean were unbelievable.

                      



Our next venture was a backpack trip in the Ventana Wilderness.  We were not able to locate a map of the area and after some extreme difficulty we were able to access the hiking trails without paying a daily usage fee.  With photos of our atlas for a map and photos of the trail signs, we headed out for what we thought would be three nights.  Ron had developed a rather ambitious 40 mile loop to a ridge overlooking Big Sur.  Three miles and two stream crossings (which we thought were cute and fun even though the water was thigh deep and moving quickly) into the hike we ran into a guy who looked as though his spirit was crushed.  He told us that he had started his hike at 8 am that morning and had done 30 river crossings.  We quickly realized that our ambitious plan would be cut short.  After trekking through tons of poison in flip flops, Ron discovered that we had an added hazard.  He found a tick attached to his belly.  Luckily it was not nibbled too far in and he was able to pull it out.  We ended that day after 7 hours and 8-ish miles.  You may think that after the first tick we would have been a little more vigilant about checking for them, but this was not the case.  Ron found a second tick that made his ribcage its home.  This one was a bit more entrenched and took some swiss army knife surgery to remove.  In the morning we decided to vastly scale back our hiking plan.  We followed the sign post to a trail that looked promising at first.  It turned out to be more of a route climbing over/under logs and shrubs through fields of poison oak (in the photo of Ron, he is surrounded by primarily poison oak) with ticks on all vegetation and rain showers.  There was no trail for the most part, just pink flagging, and our motivation came from the fact that we did not want to turn around and retrace our steps.  After reaching the main trail (three miles and almost 5 hours later), it was smooth sailing to a camp that was surrounded by the largest Ponderosa Pines we have ever seen.  The remainder of the hike contained a slight detour and alternating fields of poison oak and ridges covered in ticks.  Sometimes the poison oak was covered in ticks.  We estimate that we brushed at least a hundred ticks off of us between the two of us. 



We then headed to Erin and Beth's house in Santa Cruz to reorganize and hang out for a bit.  We are very lucky to have friends that are willing to share their house and washing machine.  Our tour of Santa Cruz included taco Thursday, playing pool, becoming one with a very comfortable couch, and eating fabulous tuna and steak.  We are now off to do a backpacking trip along the Lost Coast Trail near Shelter Cove.

Backpacking the valley of the shadow of death

Acting on a little research and a tip from a friend, we decided to put together a two night backpacking trip through Cottonwood and Marble Canyons in Death Valley.  The geology and plants kept us entertained until we reached the first of multiple springs in this area.  The valley was filled with beautiful green cottonwood trees which was a great contrast to the brown desert.  It also meant that we didn't have to carry much water which was really nice.  Marble Canyon had some great narrows to explore and more petroglyphs to add to our collection.  





Once we completed our trip, we headed to Stovepipe to call a couple friends who said that they might want to meet up with us.  Something about Death Valley really makes you want to eat ice cream, even when it is only 90 degrees.  We enjoyed some refreshing treats and beverages and found that our friends Erin and Beth would meet up with us the following day.  In the meantime we did a tour of the underground of Scotty's Castle which is literally a castle that was built in the 1930's by an engineer.  Amazingly enough, the park still uses 80 percent of the original infrastructure.  We also did a quick tour of a ghost town where we saw the standard decomposing buildings, a 40 foot tall statue of a miner and a penguin, a Lego lady, and a real man with a silver box on his head taking a picture of a car.  Awesome.



Erin and Beth met up with us and all of us being geologists, we decided to head for the racetrack to analyze some theories regarding rocks (some up to 400 pounds) moving across the playa.  The rocks are at the south end of the almost 2 mile long playa but we decided to park at the north end and walk the whole playa.  All of us were a bit giddy about what we would find (maybe this is a testament to just how dorky geologists really are) and we ended up spending four hours out there.  The only reason it was cut to four hours was due to lack of food and water.  Satisfied with our geology tour we headed to Teakettle Junction for some camping and to get close to our mine tour the following day.  The mine turned out to be pretty extensive with some really deep vertical shafts that could only be described by us as "deathy".  We hiked up to the top of a hill for a great vista of the racetrack playa with the Mt Whitney in the background.  Erin and Beth decided to tour the remainder of Death Valley since Erin had never been here before and Ron and I decided to take the road less traveled out of the park which consisted of a dirt road over a mountain pass.  In one place it was one lane, going up at a rather steep angle, and a thousand foot drop on one side (mom - I'm sorry if you're reading about this).  After a week of Death Valley we decided to venture into the rest of California...

Zion to Vegas

We left Alexis's parents place early to go hiking at Red Canyon.  We hiked through snow and mud for a couple of hours before deciding that it was not yet quite spring and headed towards the hopefully warmer and drier Zion.  Both Alexis and I separately remember some free camping just outside of the park, after searching around a bit I realized that my, somewhat sleep deprived at the time, memory was wrong and the site Alexis was thinking of had been wiped out by a recent flood.  As it was rapidly getting dark we called around to campgrounds, no luck thanks to all the springbreakers, then headed for the hills.  We drove up Kolob Terrace and found a great spot in a patch of BLM land surrounded by park.  The next day we were going to drive to the end of the road but winter got in our way again.  Not far along we ran into a road closed sign and a snowmobile trailer... so we retreated a bit and went for a hike in Hop Valley.  Was a gorgeous hike with hardly anyone around, an area we want to return to for a backpacking trip.  We then drove to the north of the park and checked out the Kolob Canyons road and took a hike up the South Fork of Taylor Creek (again ran into snow). 





After all the snow and cold we decided that we should head to warmer climes so we made towards Vegas by way of Valley of Fire.  Spent a very windy night at the valley and went for several hikes including Mouse's Tank where we found some great petroglyphs.  Over the years we have built up a pretty extensive photo library of petroglyphs; we stopped at a museum in Overland and looked through a book of petroglyphs and realized that we had seen almost half the sites and glyphs in the book!  We had some exciting drunk neighbors in the campground who were blasting Mexi-pop and oscillating between having a blast and yelling at each other.  It was like a really entertaining soap opera that kept us entertained until the ranger showed up.



Headed into Vegas to visit with Alexis's brother Garrett.  He graciously allowed us to cleanup and get a bit organized at his place for the next leg.  We decided that we had enough of cold weather (it snowed on us on out way out of Vegas) and made a break for Death Valley.

We finally finished up all of our errands and headed for the Vermilion Cliffs.  It was evening by the time we got to our camp site at an old ranch and we very much enjoyed the scenery while we cooked dinner and contemplated our new house for the next seven months.  Ron had built a platform system in the back of the Tundra complete with hatches we can open and store things inside and enough crates/Tupperware to store all of our kitchen/food items.  We made cushions to go over the platform and with the shell on the truck, we are tucked in and comfortable.

We woke up early (we need some curtains to keep the sun out) and went for a hike to find some petroglyphs in House Rock Wash.  Before we left the truck a bunch people pulled up and commenced a discussion on whether the ravens flying around were condors or not.  Not much after they left we spotted 6 condors flying at the top of the cliffs.  The condors were a nice sight until we were up a couple of cliff bands and they were hanging around waiting to see if we would be their afternoon lunch.
    
          



The weather was beautiful so we continued to head north along House Rock Wash and then through Cottonwood Canyon where we did a couple hikes through slot canyons.  We made it to Kodachrome Basin for a hot shower and a good night sleep.  We woke up to the sound of snow on the truck shell, we decided to check the weather report.  It looked cold, windy, and snowy.  We decided to veto our other plans and tuck into my parents house near Bryce Canyon for a couple days then head to Death Valley, via Zion NP and Vegas, where it would be warmer.  It was a bit of an ambush on my parents since we were 5 days early and could not call them due to cell service until we were about 3 minutes away.  Luckily my parents are awesome and were excited to see us anyway.  We enjoyed a tour of the place they are staying, dinner, wine, a tour of Bryce Canyon (you can see their RV from the Bryce Canyon overlook!!), and some homemade soup and pie.  We are currently setting in to watch the NCAA finals.  As a side note, this is the most up-to-date this blog has ever been; it will not stay that way...

Flagtastic!

We were quickly relieved of our anxiety in dealing with real life after seeing and talking to our friends and it was really good to be back for a bit.  We prepped the trailer for sale and tucked into Mark and Amber Adams house for a two week stay (we really want to thank them for letting us stay for such a long time! and letting us put all of our stuff in their garage!  and letting us park our giant trailer outside their house!).  Ron had to work for two weeks and dropping him off at the USGS that first day was a little strange since we had not been more than 50 feet apart for 4 months.

I did a backpacking trip in the Superstitions near Phoenix with Lisa Skinner over the weekend.  We did a loop around Weavers Needle, saw a big horned sheep, had a fantastic time, and it was amazingly beautiful.  Lisa's dog Cinder acted as our guard dog and even though we really tired the dog out, she still managed to bark at a night hiker and scare him to death.



The trailer was sold after two weeks and we moved over to Brent and Paige's house (thank you, thank you, thank you!!!).  Ron did a lot of skiing, I did a little.  It was really great to see everyone!!  We ate some delicious Golden Dragon Bowl and managed to pack up the truck for  Phase II.  With no real plan except to see my parents in Utah, we left Flagstaff.

This post is really late...

In our mad dash across Texas, we drove from Fredricksberg to Bahlmorhea State Park.  We had spied this state park on our trek east and decided it would be necessary to stop on the way back.  There is a spring here which was excavated back in the day to provide a VERY large swimming pool.  The water is crystal clear, the bottom of the pool is limestone, and swimming companions include ducks, fish, and turtles.  From here we headed north into New Mexico for another go at Carlsbad Caverns.  Neither of us had been inside the main cavern since we were kids and we did not expect it to be as big or bigger than we had remembered.  We really enjoyed the tour; however, the food court and gift shop at the bottom were quite surreal.


The winds were really picking up and made our driving pretty exciting.  Turning west once again we found ourselves in the mountains near Riodoso.  We stumbled onto the town of Lincoln and once inside the museum there we realized that this was the site of the Lincoln County Wars and Billy the Kids big escape from jail.  The museum had a fantastic display and the ranger informed us that the doc had taken her tonsils out on his kitchen table.  She also said that she didn't even get ice cream, just some crappy pudding. We wandered through the jail that held Billy and saw where he shot the two deputies to escape.  We meant to camp before we got to Riodoso but ended up ditching the mountains and stopping at Three Rivers Petroglyphs.  The brochure said that they had over 20,000 petroglyphs and we questioned their count until we started looking around.  There was literally a petroglyph on every rock.  They may have underestimated the count.  We also did a big hike up a beautiful canyon to a grass covered peak to take in a great vista.  We saw another couple who asked us if we had seen the mountain lion in the den next to the trail.  Somehow we missed this but were not eaten.

Our last ventures included a stop near the New Mexico/Arizona border and our last night was spent at Fool Hollow Lake in Show Low.  It was pretty surreal to see the peaks again!