A Full-time Life

PLANET WATER

FOR MICHELLE'S NATURE NOTES and NATURE FOOTSTEPS-WATER  (Thank you!)

Visiting the Everglades during the dry and then the beginning of the wet season provided a quick and obvious lesson on the importance of water to the health of our environment.   On our most recent visit, we noted one sign reminding us that our planet is seventy-five percent water -- it suggested that this third rock from the sun might better be named "Water" instead of "Earth."  

The Everglades is all about water, in seasonal cycles of rain and drought.   

 The above picture  and the next one are from an earlier trip we took by boat.  This one is the edge of Lake Okechobee, the major source of water for the Everglades.  The next picture is a lock on Lake O.

The information in italics under each of our pictures is taken from National Park Service explanatory signs in the Everglades.  

 

Historically Lake Okechobee overflowed with rain each spring.  But today, humans have engineered nature, disrupting the flow that nourishes the Everglades and its wildlife.  

 

The entire Everglades food web has evolved in pure low-nutrient water. Changes in water quality due to nutrient contamination (the introduction of phosphates and nitrates) threaten the natural glades.  (Sawgrass, seen above, is a sedge-like plant  that grows naturally in low-nutrient water.  Stands of cattails seen elsewhere in the park are not natural, they are growing as a result of nutrient contamination.)

 

Increased public awareness and support offer the hope of restoring natural conditions.  Park managers, working with other agencies, are restoring portions of the ecosystem that will help protect this "River of Grass"  -- from its headwaters in Lake Okechobee to its exit into the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Bay.  

 

"Here is land, quiet in its tranquil beauty, serving not as the source of water, but the last receiver of it.  To its natural abundance, we owe the spectacular plant and animal life that distinguishes this place from all others in this country." President Harry S Truman, dedicating Everglades National Park, December 6, 1947 .

 

BLACK IN BLACK

 

FOR WEEKENDS IN BLACK AND WHITE

 

These pictures are from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.  It was a stop on our summer roadtrip that I posted about here. 

But because it fits this meme so well, here are couple more pictures from this magnificent place.

These dainty white wildflowers are plucky! 

Not everything could bloom in this rocky environment. 

 

GREAT BASIN NATIONAL PARK -- part two

This post is linked to WATERY WEDNESDAY.  It is a continuation of the previous post about our visit to Great Basin National Park.

Upper Lehman Creek campground, where we stayed, is a meadow area, on this lovely creek.  The snow only recently melted and there were lots of spring wildflowers.  

 Starting near the campground, Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive climbs along the shoulder of the Mountain, ending near the treeline.

 In 12 miles, the drive gains 3,400 feet in elevation,passing through several enviromental zones to its bristlecone pine forest and view of Mt Wheeler.  The picture below is Aspen woodlands part way up the drive.

   

The Great Basin is actually a series of basins between ranges of mountains from California's Sierra Nevada to Utah's Wasatch Mountains.  Water in these basins have no outlet to the sea and so it collects in shallow lakes and marshes that dry out in the dry desert air. 

You know you're in the Basin area (not necessarily in the National Park) when you drive through what seems like oceans of sagebrush ...and then look up to see beautiful mountain ranges at the skyline. Plants and animals that couldn't survive on the lower desert live up there.

Congress created the National Park in 1986 to protect part of the Basin.  The Park encompasses the South Snake Range, a desert mountain island  on the Utah-Nevada border.

This is Mt Wheeler.  The road was still closed to traffic just behind where these people are walking. 

 

There are several good hiking trails in the park, including a trail up Wheeler Peak.  We walked at lower elevations -- it was COLD up here on top of the Drive!

 





 

GREAT BASIN NATIONAL PARK, part one

 

For THAT'S MY WORLD --  Our visit to Great Basin National Park was part of our world during our just-completed summer roadtrip... and  is still part of it as memories (almost the best thing about travel) remain!

       

Bristlecone pines are an icon in this cold high-desert area.   We learned at the Visitor Center that the trees grow at altitudes between 9,500 and 11,000 feet.  The information says that they endure bitter cold and winds that twist and mold their shapes and still they live up to 3,000 years.  They grow slowly, a branch at a time and the  oldest ones grow near the treeline, where survival is most difficult.   In lower, less extreme altitudes the trees die at younger ages, at only 300 or 400 years.

We camped in this park many years ago before it actually became a National Park.  (It was named one in 1986).  But I don't really remember the bristlecones.  Probably their survival story means more the older one gets!

 

    (More about Great Basin tomorrow). 

BLACK CANYON OF THE GUNNISON NATIONAL PARK

 A summer roadtrip stop for SCENIC SUNDAY.    Beautiful places there ... click the links! 

 

Usually the scenery in Colorado involves looking UP!  But at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison the breathtaking view is definitely DOWN.    This was the 37th National Park we've visited.  It's small  as National Parks go but the geologic history and beauty are well worth a visit. 

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The Gunnison River has an average fall of 95 feet per mile.  This gives the river the energy to cut downward faster than other kids of erosion can widen it.  

The view from Tomichi Point welcomed us to the South Rim. 

 There are eleven viewpoints from here to the end of the six-mile South Rim Road. 

Most involve a short walk to the viewpoint.   

 

The sand-castle-like shapes are called Pegamite Dikes.

 

Molten rock was squeezed into these shapes and colors over a billion years ago. 

 

 

 

Each layer of the rock cliff marks a span of geologic time.   The thin brown layer is called entrada and it is young rock -- only about 165 million years old!  It rests directly on rock that is almost 2 billion years old.  This marks a gap in geological history (somehow the rock that should be between these layers eroded).  It is called an unconformity.  

There is no evidence of human occupation in the depths of the canyon, although the Ute Indians have lived in this area since written history began.  The lands below the canyon rims have been designated as National Wilderness to preserve the ecological conditions.   

 

 

 

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

 This post is linked to Skywatch Friday.  We had beautiful blue skies and beautiful blue water in Maine!  Enjoy other skies all over the world by clicking on the Skywatch links.

 

This is Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park.  It's the park's highest elevation and provides a lovely viewpoint.  At 1500 feet, it is also the highest point on the United States Atlantic Coast.  If you stood here at dawn, you might be the first person in the Country to see the sun's first rays.  (The sun had been up several hours when we were there.)

 

The views WERE lovely and it was fun being up there.  (But we just have to add that in the Western part of the US, we would call 1500 feet a hill.)

 

Cadillac Mountain was named for Antoine Cadillac, the Frenchman who was granted possession of this land in the late 1600s by King Louis XIV.  He later founded Detroit -- where we had a car named after him!

 

From the Mountain you can see Frenchman's Bay with it's many islands, Schoodic Penninsula, Seal Harbor, and beyond that the open sea.
 

 

 

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK - ROADTRIP FEBRUARY 2010

THAT'S MY WORLD for beautiful photos from all over our world. 

One of the great advantages of the RoadTrek over the truck and Fifth-Wheel is that we can take little side trips if there is something we'd like to see -- or visit scenic attractions off the main road -- without finding out in advance whether there is adequate parking or turn-around space. 

Between Redlands and our next overnight stop (which was Quartzsite Arizona)  we exited the freeway to spend a short while at  the Cottonwood Springs area of Joshua Tree National Park.  We've visited JOSHUA TREE several times in the past and neither of us quite understands why we love this Park so much since we're usually drawn to watery places.  There's just a peacefulness to the place and something about those trees growing in this unlikeliest of places that appeals to us. 

We thought there might be more water than usual in Cottonwood Spring because of the recent rains on the desert, but it was almost completely dry.  Bill spied a little trickle of water after looking very hard.  Still, the sky was blue and clear and it was a very pleasant place to take a break from the freeway. 

CHACO CANYON REVISITED (Sunday Favorites)

 

Click here for more Sunday Favorites.  Thank you to Chari for providing this sharing site. 

 

 

This is a re-run for Sunday favorites.  It's about our 2006 trip to the ancient Pueblo culture center of Chaco Canyon.  This National Monument is in New Mexico, near the beautiful Four Corners area.  Since most of our recent posts have been about watery places, I thought it would be fun to see something from the dry part of the country, with its very different beauty and history.  We still hope, just as we stated in the original post, that we can spend some more time in this area sometime.  

 

Chaco Canyon was the first place to be made a National Monument (not a National Park).  We just learned about that from the PBS series.  I'm sure that bit of history was mentioned in the Monument's visitor center.    But there is so much to look at and so much to learn in these beautiful places that it takes more than one exposure to get it all.  Here's the original post:

  
 
The Four Corners area is high on our list of places to go back to, because we didn’t see nearly enough of the area during our first visit.    We did get to explore Chaco Canyon, a National Cultural-Historical Park. 

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The Chaco buildings were a center for Pueblo cultures  about 850 to 1250 A.D.  It was during that time that the Anasazi (ancient ones) began to settle into a more urban culture after what had been a nomadic existence.  Tree-ring dating establishes that there was a severe drought in the area beginning in 1150; by 1250 the buildings and area were abandoned.  Nobody knows for sure what happened to the Chacoan people, but Pueblo Indian people of today trace part of their ancestry to Chaco.  The area is a spiritual center for Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, Zia, and other Rio Grande Pueblo people.

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In the visitor center, we learned that archaeologists working in the Chaco buildings have uncovered evidence of advanced engineering and astronomy projects as well as artistic and architectural achievements. 

We toured Pueblo Bonito, a 600 room Kiva (ceremonial structure).   All of the rooms were for public use.  It was built over the course of 300 years.  Nobody really knows where their homes were or where the people went when the area was abandoned. 

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Some of the doorways that we went through were very small, so exploring the Kiva can be a little bit daunting.

 

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Here are some close-ups of the Kiva construction.

OUR NATIONAL PARKS

We're looking forward to seeing the Ken Burns series on the National Parks which starts tonight on PBS.   So I wanted to post something on one of our National Park visits for Sunday Favorites.  But then I couldn't decide which one to re-post, so I made this collage of favorite pictures from all of them that we've visited.  (  click here for the link to the PBS series webpage.)

  

You can click on the National Parks category on the sidebar to see our posts about some of the National Parks we've visited.  Some of these Parks we visited years ago -- before blogging, before digital cameras -- we'd especially love to re-visit those.  And we look forward to seeing the ones we haven't visited.  

Meantime, we'll watch the series to learn more about the history of "America's Best Idea"  and to look for familiar views and new ones to plan on seeing someday. 

The Parks really are something for America to be proud of and we love visiting them.

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK (Friday Flashback)

  

We've visited Joshua Tree several times over the years.  It isn't one of those National Parks that is universally loved.  To some, the rocky soil and twisty trees seem bleak and lonely.   One friend, from the Northwest, said "you know those Joshua Trees aren't even real trees at all."  Well, they definitely aren't the same as, say, a Redwood or a Douglas Fir.  But the trees are real survivors.  Each one is unique, bending in the wind and growing in the scant soil.  We admire them.

These pictures were taken on a November 2005 visit; even in this desert terrain you could get a glimpse of Fall color. 

Barker Lake is one of the few places in the Park where there is water.  It is unexpected and so it is even more appreciated.

 

 

The Park preserves the Keys Ranch, where pioneer settlers lived before the area was made a National Park.  It must have been hard to make a living here, but they stayed for years. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stayed at Twenty-Nine Palms CA the first time we visited this Park and on other visits we have driven there from the Desert Hot Springs or the Salton Sea area. 

The picture below is from the top of Key's View.  It illustrates the one major problem with Joshua Tree NP -- it is too close to Los Angeles.  The rangers said that there used to be a clear view from this viewpoint every day.  Now it is very rare to be able to see at all.    There is actually some danger that the smog will destroy parts of the park. 

None of the pictures on this post are color-adjusted.  When we go back next time, I hope the colors are more like the first pictures and not like this one.   Even more, I hope that our grandchildren will be able to enjoy the beauty of this Park when they're our age. 

Here's what the National Park Service says about the Park. 

DEVIL'S TOWER WYOMING (FRIDAY FLASHBACK)

Except for the beautiful Yellowstone/Grand Teton corner, Wyoming has never really been near the top of our favorite-places list.   We just haven't found much of the rest of it to be our kind of place.  But we kind of forgot about the national monument called Devil's Tower.  To be more accurate, we didn't actually forget, we just forgot it was in Wyoming.  Because when we went to see it, we were staying in Sturgis South Dakota.  It was an easy day-trip from our RV Park, through farmlands and plains and across the pioneer Bismark Trail.

The Tower rises 1600+ feet above the Belle Fourche River, and so we were reminded about our 2004 visit just this past spring, when we stayed one night in the town of Belle Fourche, South Dakota.  We remembered that we'd stopped there before on our way to the tower.  We'd wondered then how to pronounce the name. ( Click here to see how and to read about our adventure there.)

President Theodore Roosevelt named Devil's Tower the first National Monument in 1906.  The Park covers over 1300 acres of pine forests, woodlands (a rarity in this part of the country) and grasslands.  As you can imagine, it is a prime location for rock climbers. We don't climb, but we hiked the 2-mile trail around the base, admiring how the Tower view changes on every side.  

The Tower is a sacred site for regional American Indian tribes and it is closed during the month of June when there are ceremonial tribal gatherings.  We were there in August  and saw remnants of the prayer cloths used in these ceremonies.

Devil's Tower was an interesting and educational place to visit and a perfect day trip from Sturgis. 

And I really feel bad that we've never given Wyoming credit for this scenic corner until until now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK REDUX - SUNDAY FAVORITES

 

Recently I came across this nice post-sharing site called  Sunday Favorites.  A blogger, Chari,  created it to share old favorite posts that might otherwise be forgotten.  Seems like a great idea.  So I'm reposting this one to remind myself and everyone else to watch the Ken Burns series "The National Parks" which starts on PBS the end of September.  And because we loved our 2006 visit to Big Bend, one of the more remote places we've stayed.  Click on National Parks in the the right-hand Category column to see posts on some of the other National Parks we've been lucky to visit.  These are all some of our favorite places and we can't wait to watch the PBS series.

It would be fun someday to say we'd visited all of our National Parks.   Even if we don't ever get to all of them, we are glad to have spent time in the most remote and least visited one in the lower 48 states.  This is Big Bend in southwest Texas.   There are 800,000 acres within the Park's boundaries.  The scenery provides wonderful contrasts.  It is in the Chihuahuan Desert, surrounded by the Chisos Mountains. 

The Rio Grande River forms an international boundary along the south edge of the park (for 118 miles).  The River is narrow and you can see Mexico on the other side.  We really hope that by the time our grandchildren get to visit the park they will still be able to see this view instead of a fence or wall.

We hiked down the spectacular Boquillas Canyon.  It's a narrow section formed by the River when it meandered through the desert eons ago. 

The river level was low when we were there and we easily explored the bottom of the canyon by foot. 

Before 9/11 there was a soft crossing here into the Mexican village of Boquillos Del Carmen.    Tourists could be ferried across the river and experience a bit of what was like to live in a remote village in Mexico.  That's no longer possible because of security concerns.  By road, the village is 100 miles from the nearest legal crossing to the US, so these changes have almost completely cut off the village's source of income other than subsistance farming.  While security is certainly a problem at some more metropolitan border cities (such as El Paso), it is hard to imagine how it could really be so serious way out here. 

Vendors still wade across when they can get away with it, keeping an eye out for Border Patrol.  The stand shown here is on the Mexican side of the river. We purchased these walking sticks.  Made from stalks of the sotol plant which grows wild everywhere, they are light and quite strong.

Humans have lived in the park area since prehistoric times.  The little dwelling in the picture below is called Luna's Jacal.  It is a rare remaining example of a building from the region's early settlement period.  Luna was a Mexican sheepherder and he and his wife raised a large family (10 or 11 children) in this house.  A jacal is a type of dwelling with upright posts chinked with mud.  It had a thick mud roof that kept it cool in the desert heat.  You can see that the roof is disintegrating.  This points out a major problem with all national parks and especially this one, I suppose because it is so remote.  There isn't enough funding and staff to keep up the archeological sites in the park or even to properly catalog all of the historic sites and structures.

Big Bend Park is in Brewster County which is one of the most sparsely populated areas of our whole country.  Only about 13,000 people live within its 6,000 plus square miles.  We stayed in Alpine, which is 100 miles northwest of the park headquarters and then moved to the tiny village of Terlingua which is a gateway community to the park.  These are both remote, quirky communities.  We had fun exploring around the towns as well as within the park.

BEAUTIFUL CRATER LAKE

Oregon may not have 10,000 Lakes like another state we visited on this road trip, but it has this one.  It's deep, it's beautiful, it's blue, it's Oregon's only National Park.  It's Crater Lake. 

We hadn't been here for years and years.   We are happy we took the time to see it this time.

Enjoy our pictures and  CLICK HERE to read all about the geology and history.   I can't explain it better than the National Park Service can.

Go see it!

 

Wizard Island

Phantom Ship - still a trace of snow, even though it was quite warm and sunny the day we were there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pinnacles (on the East Rim Drive around the Lake)

Pumice Castle

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Lake View.  Who needs Kodachrome?

Vidae Falls -- another one for the Waterfall collection.

What a beautiful day.  I'm so glad that our route from Colorado to Fern Ridge Shores took us through this area.   

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH JUNE 2009

Our son and daughter-in-law moved to Longmont, Colorado about the same time we started our most-time (then Full-Time) RVing, so we've been coming to the Loveland-Longmont area once or twice a year for a decade.  By now, it is another place that feels like home and it's good to be back again.

A week ago on Saturday, Geoff and Lisa picked us up for a day trip through magnificent Rocky Mountain National Park.  It was a beautiful day.  Sunshine, snow (but none on the roads), elk, and the closest we've ever come to a moose (mother and baby).   Scroll through the pictures -- they really say it all. 

 

Yup, it's beautiful Colorado in June.  We're lucky to be "home."

THEODORE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK

 

 

 At this point in time, our Spring road trip is winding down and we're ready to get back to places that feel like home and people we miss.  As a result, we really didn't give ourselves enough time to thoroughly explore Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  But we loved what we did see.  The entry to the South unit of the Park was about 30 miles from where we were staying in Dickenson.  When we got within a couple miles of the entry, the terrain changed from the gentle, flat farmland that is most of the State of North Dakota to beautiful rocky formations and chasms.  The Missouri River did a pretty darn good job of carving here.

We took some easy hikes and saw some beautiful scenery.  This is a view of Painted Canyon just on the Park's edge, near the town of Medora.   In the distance are the North Dakota badlands.  (The South Dakota Badlands are another National Park.)  We took a short trail hike here.

We also stopped at several other places for short hikes. This Park has the clearest air of all the National Parks.  (I wonder if this might not be true of the whole State of North Dakota as well.  Not too many people and not too much industry here.)  

 

 

 

We saw some wildlife.  There are quite a few prairie dog villages and  several herds of wild feral horses whose ancestors have roamed these lands for centuries.  (The one below is standing in the Little Missouri river bottomland.) 

We also saw quite a few bison.  (But nothing like what we saw last year at Custer State Park, in ND's neighbor to the South.)  (Click on the blue if you love bison/buffalo pictures as much as we do!)

We learned some history.

This is the cabin where Teddy Roosevelt lived during his time in North Dakota.  The cabin has been moved to the Park's main visitor center from its original location, the Elkhorn Ranch unit of the park, which is less accessible. When he lived at the Elkhorn, Teddy led a simple rancher's life.  He learned about the badlands and nature and let the beauty and quiet of the area heal him from the recent death of his wife and mother at their home in New York.   Roosevelt came to North Dakota to recover.  He said later that he would never have been President if not for the time he had spent in North Dakota.  As President, TR was instrumental in establishing National Park legislation.  He wanted all Americans to experience some of what he felt about these beautiful spaces.

 

We are always happy when we can see another one of our National Parks and we'd like to explore this one again sometime.

 

THE EVERGLADES

Yesterday, we took a day trip to the part of Everglades National Park that is closest to Ft. Myers.   It was a two-hour drive to Everglades City, the park's western saltwater gateway.  Everglades is the third largest National Park (after Yellowstone and Death Valley) but much of the acreage here is water -- and islands.  Nothing in the whole park is more than eight feet above sea level.  We took a guided boat tour to explore the part called Ten Thousand Islands in Chokoloskee Bay.

South Florida is not very old in geological terms.  It surfaced during the Ice Age and is built on rock which is only 6,000 to 8,000 years old.  On the first part of this tour, it was easy to see examples of this sedimentary rock where the channel to the harbor was dug. The  brackish water here is stained brown from the tanin in the mangrove leaves that are dropped.

As we got further out, the water began to get bluer.  It was deeper and there was more salt in this water from the Gulf of Mexico.  We could see where the sandbars and low islands are built up into larger islands by the action of the mangrove trees.  These are also called Florida Walking Trees because of the way their branches seem to wander out into the water.  They form roots which provide stability for the trees, allowing them to absorb needed water from the saltwater.  They also trap sediment which builds and enlarges the lands.  These islands provide feeding grounds and rookeries for sea life and birds and reduce water and flood damage.  South Florida is the only place in the US where the conditions are right for mangrove trees to grow.  

There are so many of these islands that it is almost impossible to tell where you are.  It is said that people have been lost forever among them.  Good thing our boat pilot knew the area.

Pioneer conservationists called the Everglades "River of Grass."  The grass river still flows toward the bay and the Gulf of Mexico, but it is threatened.  This National Park was the first one created to protect a threatened ecological system.

Water management is a critical issue for the Everglades.  Canals and other water controls outside of the park disrupt the natural flow.  Agricultural runoff could cause the Everglades to die.  There are ongoing efforts to save it, including the recent purchase of a huge sugar plantation which will soon be taken out of production and returned to swamp land.

On our way home from the Park, we stopped at Turner Creek.   This is an excellent place to see birds and Florida alligators (one is in the picture below).   So it was another National Park for our "life list" and a great day trip from Ft. Myers.  

 

 

 

SOAKING UP SOME HISTORY (HOT SPRINGS NATIONAL PARK, 2008)

Hot Springs is quite an unusual National Park.  Water -- for bathing and drinking -- is the main attraction.  The Park is a developed area in the small city of Hot Springs, Arkansas.  Some beautiful scenery surrounds the city, but the main part of the National Park is located along one street in downtown Hot Springs called Bathhouse Row. There is also is a series of walking paths through a park area behind the Row.  This is the Buckstaff Bathhouse, seen from the path behind it.

Hot Springs isn't a volcanic region.  The water began as rain that fell over 4000 years ago.  It is heated by a combination of rocks that lie deep in the earth here and then it surfaces in springs on the slopes of the Hot Springs mountains.  It gets hot because of gravity compressing the earth and by certain elements decaying the earth crust. When it gets to the surface it is an average temperature of 143 degrees F. 

Many people believe in the therapeutic powers of the spring water.  There are free fountains fed by springs throughout the town and we saw people collecting it by the jugful to carry home.   The water has no taste or odor at all.

There are records and pictures showing that various American Indian tribes bathed in these springs in the 1700s and probably their ancestors used them before that.  People soon began to build shacks and wooden covers over some of the springs.  After several disastrous fires, the government took control of the springs in the 1870s and began to license private bathhouses.  The area was promoted as "the Nation's Health Sanitarium."  Water therapy was one of the few treatments available for many diseases.  In the 1920s and 30s, the area was a hugely popular health and vacation destination and a major rail travel destination.    

But as medical advances provided a surer way to cure disease and car ownership made it easier for people to travel for longer distances, Hot Springs began to decline as a vacation/health destination.

By the 1950s, only one Bathhouse was still operating and some of the others were left to become eyesores.

After years of decline, the National Park Service began working to restore Bathhouse Row and preserve it as an historical attraction.   The Foredyce Bathhouse is where the Park Visitor Center is located.  It has been restored to the glory of its hey-days and there is a self-guided tour.  The room pictured here was part of the men's bathing room.  The women's side of the bath house was not as elegant. Taking the baths was quite the social occasion in those days, as well as being therapeutic.

Now there are eight preserved bathhouses along the row, but only a couple are operating.  The Park Service regulates and supervises, but they are run by private concessioners.   Others are still in the process of being renovated..   

We felt like it would be a shame to be in a National Park and not sample its main reason for being.  So we went to the Buckstaff, which is the one that has been operating continuously since 1912.   It isn't quite as glamorous as it used to be, but being pampered felt great.  Ahhh!  Who would ever think that taking a bath would be a part of a National Park experience. 

What a fun way to "soak up" some history.

ON TO YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK

We left San Diego with some reluctance, because we had fallen in love with our spot there.  We have stayed in other places that feel like home, but at the others there are weather-related reasons that make it easier to move on.  (It is either going to get too hot or too cold -- or too rainy -- in a short while.)  San Diego doesn't have either of those disadvantages, and It was easy to imagine living there.  But we weren't really ready to give up our full-time roaming life, even for San Diego.   Our first planned stop when we left there was to visit Yosemite -- a new National Park for us.  So that made it easier to get back on the road.   

We had missed seeing Yosemite on all of our previous trips to California.  This was a great time of the year for our first visit.  It was still spring, the waterfalls were all active, crowds were minimal and the weather was great for exploring.  Unexpectedly, we found that this National Park has wonderful bike trails throughout and we took full advantage of them. 

 Cars weren't allowed in some parts of the park, which is a good thing because of the huge crowds this park attracts, especially in the summer.  (That's the reason we had never visited the park before.)  There are shuttle vans between scenic stops and we used those as well as our bikes. 

This Park was incredibly beautiful and even the visitor centers were well done.  Having a lot of visitors pays off.   Like everybody else, we'd seen the iconic scenery in movies and pictures but it was more stunning than we had expected.  We are so glad we got to spend some time there. 

The downside, though, was that we had to stay about 50 miles away, so we spent a lot of time on the road that week. I don't think another trip to Yosemite is in the cards any time soon unless we find a way to stay closer.  The hundred-mile daily round trip would spoil it now.  (We were younger and diesel was cheaper back then.)

Below are a couple more pictures of this beautiful park:

 

ARCHES, CANYONLANDS and MOAB

There was only one thing wrong with our 2006 visit to these two beautiful national parks -- we didn't get to stay long enough.  We hope we get to go back.
We visited both parks at least twice during our time in the area.  Does everyone know about the National Park's lifetime Golden Age Pass?  It's absolutely the best travel buy going for anyone over 62 (I think it was 55 when we got ours.)  We've had ours for years (well, duh) but I just checked and the current price is only $10.00.    You get in to any National Park and most other National Recreation areas without further cost.  I can't even begin to add up how many times over we've gotten our monies worth.  Get one if you're eligible!

The vistas at Canyonlands and Arches are awe-inspiring.   And the walking is great  -- once you recover.  The Visitor Centers at both parks were helpful in providing an overview of the history and geology of the areas.    

    

We stayed in the nearby town of Moab -- touristy, but still charming.

  

Geoff drove over from neighboring Colorado to join us for a couple days of our stay, so we were able to explore some back roads with his Jeep. (Part of trail pictured below).    It's a rite of passage toward acceptance of middle- (or greater) age when you can trust your life to someone whom you taught to drive!  But once you get over this angst, it's a great feeling.  We loved the ride.

At one stop on the trail, we met some people from the Netherlands.     It was their first visit to this country and first time to drive a Jeep (they had a rental).   They'd been watching and following us (at a good distance).  We were happy that we -- and they -- hadn't had any trouble. 

Bill had to walk in front a few times to  a guide Geoff, because he couldn't always see the travel line through the rocks we encountered. 

 

 

 

The huge balanced rock was beside a road out of Moab.  It looks like Bill is trying to find the best way to move it.    

 

 

 

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Just before we got to Moab, we stayed for a few nights at Bloomfield, Utah, only about 200 miles away.  It was from there that we visited Chaco Canyon.  http://travelingrainvilles.typepad.com/traveling_home/2008/02/chaco-canyon-ju.html

We really hope to go back to this area.  We'd like to revisit all three of these beautiful parks and see the rest of the Four Corners area.

CHACO CANYON, June 2006

The Four Corners area is high on our list of places to go back to, because we didn’t see nearly enough of the area during our first visit.    We did get to explore Chaco Canyon, a National Cultural-Historical Park. 

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The Chaco buildings were a center for Pueblo cultures  about 850 to 1250 A.D.  It was during that time that the Anasazi (ancient ones) began to settle into a more urban culture after what had been a nomadic existence.  Tree-ring dating establishes that there was a severe drought in the area beginning in 1150; by 1250 the buildings and area were abandoned.  Nobody knows for sure what happened to the Chacoan people, but Pueblo Indian people of today trace part of their ancestry to Chaco.  The area is a spiritual center for Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, Zia, and other Rio Grande Pueblo people.

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In the visitor center, we learned that archaeologists working in the Chaco buildings have uncovered evidence of advanced engineering and astronomy projects as well as artistic and architectural achievements. 

We toured Pueblo Bonito, a 600 room Kiva (ceremonial structure).   All of the rooms were for public use.  It was built over the course of 300 years.  Nobody really knows where the homes were or where the people went when the area was abandoned. 

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Some of the doorways that we went through were very small, so exploring the Kiva can be a little bit daunting.

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Chaco is one of the few places where our RV is too big.  It was 50 miles from the RV Park where we stayed (in Bloomfield, New Mexico) -- and then a very rough road down into the canyon.  There is a small RV park near the monument, but ours wouldn't have fit into the spaces.  It would be nice to stay there and have more time to explore and less on the road.    But you can't have everything, and 99% of the time, our home is perfect for us.

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Here are some close-ups of the Kiva construction.

LIST MANIA - THE NATIONAL PARKS

Geoff included a list of all of the National Parks in his comment on our Big Bend post.   And he is right -- to our surprise, we actually are on our way to seeing all of them.  Counting up, we found that we've visited over half (31 of 58).  This picture is from Joshua Tree NP.   We've talked to a lot of people who don't understand this park at all, but we love it for the serenity and the fanciful desert atmosphere. It's quite a little bit different from the Northwest. 

There are a few Parks we've missed, even in those states we've visited often.  And we really do want to take the Northern route to pick up Minnesota and North Dakota and the East Coast.  And then there's Alaska and Florida.  Not so coincidentally, since we're talking about lists, those states are among the dozen that we haven't "lived in" yet.  And then there are the ones in Hawaii and Samoa (probably not RV adventures, those last two). 

Some of the Parks we can "check off" we visited years ago on camping trips, but not since we started on our retirement RV travels. We'd like to go back to those again (as we did with Yellowstone a couple of trips ago).  It would be nice to have pictures too -- those earlier camping trips were definitely before the days of digital cameras (or any camera at all usually).   

So many beautiful places still to see (or to visit again), but how fortunate we are in the memories we have!   Here are just a very few of our favorite National Park pictures.

Canyonlands and Arches (that's Bill gazing out at the mesa landscape and Geoff with me at Keyhole arch -- he met us for a long weekend when we stayed near these two amazing parks.) We were on our way back to the Northwest from Texas in June of 2006.

                                                                       Saguaro National Park, near Tucson AZ - Winter 2005-06

                  

Yosemite, Spring 2004. 

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And below, with Geoff and Lisa, on the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, on one of our trips to beautiful Colorado.

BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, April 2006

It would be fun someday to say we'd visited all of our National Parks.   Even if we don't ever get to all of them, we are glad to have spent time in the most remote and least visited one in the lower 48 states.  This is Big Bend in southwest Texas.   There are 800,000 acres within the Park's boundaries.  The scenery provides wonderful contrasts.  It is in the Chihuahuan Desert, surrounded by the Chisos Mountains. 

The Rio Grande River forms an international boundary along the south edge of the park (for 118 miles).  The River is narrow and you can see Mexico on the other side.  We really hope that by the time our grandchildren get to visit the park they will still be able to see this view instead of a fence or wall.

We hiked down the spectacular Boquillas Canyon.  It's a narrow section formed by the River when it meandered through the desert eons ago. 

The river level was low when we were there and we easily explored the bottom of the canyon by foot. 

Before 9/11 there was a soft crossing here into the Mexican village of Boquillos Del Carmen.    Tourists could be ferried across the river and experience a bit of what was like to live in a remote village in Mexico.  That's no longer possible because of security concerns.  By road, the village is 100 miles from the nearest legal crossing to the US, so these changes have almost completely cut off the village's source of income other than subsistance farming.  While security is certainly a problem at some more metropolitan border cities (such as El Paso), it is hard to imagine how it could really be so serious way out here. 

Vendors still wade across when they can get away with it, keeping an eye out for Border Patrol.  The stand shown here is on the Mexican side of the river. We purchased these walking sticks.  Made from stalks of the sotol plant which grows wild everywhere, they are light and quite strong.

Humans have lived in the park area since prehistoric times.  The little dwelling in the picture below is called Luna's Jacal.  It is a rare remaining example of a building from the region's early settlement period.  Luna was a Mexican sheepherder and he and his wife raised a large family (10 or 11 children) in this house.  A jacal is a type of dwelling with upright posts chinked with mud.  It had a thick mud roof that kept it cool in the desert heat.  You can see that the roof is disintegrating.  This points out a major problem with all national parks and especially this one, I suppose because it is so remote.  There isn't enough funding and staff to keep up the archeological sites in the park or even to properly catalog all of the historic sites and structures.

Big Bend Park is in Brewster County which is one of the most sparsely populated areas of our whole country.  Only about 13,000 people live within its 6,000 plus square miles.  We stayed in Alpine, which is 100 miles northwest of the park headquarters and then moved to the tiny village of Terlingua which is a gateway community to the park.  These are both remote, quirky communities.  We had fun exploring around the towns as well as within the park.

Autumn in the West 2006 -- Yellowstone

Last year, we almost stayed too long at Yellowstone National Park and Autumn morphed into what comes next.  (This was taken in mid-September, 2006, on the Upper Loop.) The snow wasn't permanent yet though and we had mostly sunny, cool days.   

We had been to Yellowstone a couple of times previously on summer camping trips with our four kids.  That was way back when (in the 60s and 70s).  This visit brought back lovely memories of our camping trips -- we wouldn't want to have missed seeing the park with the kids.  The park has changed some in the intervening years -- better roads, fewer bears.  And certainly it's a different experience in the fall, when the park is relatively quiet.   

Since our retirement, we've been to several other National Parks for the first time.  We'd love to be able to visit them all and we were really happy to get to come back to this one.