Water - and the Radicalization of an Easterner

Kings Pool - Restored Spring at Ash Meadows

If I had a shot of whiskey for every time in the last few months, the months we've been traveling out west, when someone told me, "Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting over" I'd have been drunk half the time.

And while it's a foreign concept back East, it does appear that water out west is for "fighting over." It's certainly something I've been thinking a lot about, pretty much ever since we crossed the Missouri River in South Dakota.  Not so much the fighting, or the whiskey, but the water.

From July through October it was all about the drought. And while folks seemed less than happy when rain was in the forecast, they mostly talked about snow pack. Water out west, generally doesn't

Irrigation Control Gate

come from the sky, it comes from the ground and from rivers. The rivers and aquafer get charged by the winter snows high in the mountains. Up and down the west coast, from the Cascades of Oregon through the Sierra's of California, there hadn't been much if any snow for the last two winters. Lakes were low, rivers only a trickle. People were arguing about where they should get more water. Could they dig deeper wells? What about cutting back on the dam releases? Sure the Salmon might die but the crops would be watered...and so on. 

Meanwhile the concept of water conservation seems total foreign. Farmers and ranchers are irrigating crops mid-day, spraying the precious water into the air, half of which evaporates in the dry air before reaching even plant leaves, let alone the roots. Where they don't spray they rely on the ancient and inefficient practice of flood irrigation. Cheap to install and maintain, but highly inefficient water use. The town aren't much better. Desert dwellers water suburban lawns, have no idea of what a low flush toilet even looks like, refill their pools daily and don't own covers that would cut down on evaporative loss.

On the Eastern side of the Sierras, in the Owens valley, 120 miles from Los Angeles we learned more and more about the ecological devastation caused by the Los Angeles water grab. It was a hard, sad read but "Cadillac Desert" lays out the story of how water from the Sierra's, the Colorado River, etc has all been diverted from their original courses and sent on to agriculture and far away cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix. From looking out the car window we could also see how so much of that
water was just wasted. It was a drought, but more than half of the water was still just wasted! Sometimes I needed that whiskey just to calm down.

The Endemic Ash Meadows Sunray

And then, in October, we came to Ash Meadows, walked into the bathroom and read an Edward Abbey quote on the wall:

"There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be."

Hayduke rides again! After living at Ash Meadows for two and a half months, western water issues are even more obvious - and even more worth fighting over. Ash Meadows is a wildlife refuge located along the Amargosa River watershed, and on top of miles-long faults.  It was created in the mid 1980's to save the very special ecosystem created by water in the desert. The result is 50 natural, mostly warm springs pumping out 11,000 gallons of water per minute. 50 little oasis-es and their resultant outflow streams. Along with the endemic and endangered pupfish there are 27 endemic species, plants and animals found nowhere else in the world.  All in the Mohave desert. Ash Meadows is really all about water.

What could have been - this alone makes
me want to drink

But not everyone is thrilled about the refuge or its "waste" of water. Locals resent the loss of 20 farm jobs, and/or the lost income from a potential housing development. There have been and continue to be campaigns against the refuge (and other wildlife refuges, national forests, national parks, etc). A "Kill the Pupfish" bumpersticker was produced - by the local town commissioner. Like the spotted owl for the lumber industry, the pupfish are the anti-symbol of agri-business. The feeling seems to be, if there's water here, people have the right to use/waste it. To hell with the species that have occupied the land for the past thousands of years, to hell with biological diversity.

Living at Ash Meadows, and being out West have changed all that for me. If some says that the need to pump all the water out of the springs for a few jobs, the ability to flood the desert or spray water into the air and grow some crop that would more economically be raised elsewhere is greater than the need to set aside precious acres in order to let special, endemic species live and to allow  people from all over to world to enjoy the beauty of the springs and appreciate the diversity of the unique environment, not to mention giving those rare and endemic species a safe place to thrive. Then I say - pass the whiskey, them's fighting words.

New Mexico - Here We Come

Ignorance may be bliss, but is it a good way to start a new adventure? Knowing next to nothing about 'the land of enchantment' we're heading to New Mexico next week to learn more, and maybe, just maybe be enchanted? (And find out what the flag is all about too)

Here's what I do know. I don't know enough Spanish. There are aliens in Roswell. Bats at Carlsbad Cavern.  The southern-most peaks of the Rockies are there, rising out of the desert. There are trees. After two months in the desert, S.D. is looking for trees. Big trees.  And chilies. Chilies seem to be ubiquitous in and with New Mexico.  After Nevada, I'm lusting for good food. Towns and cities include Albuquerque (which means an annoying Partridge Family song will be running through my head for most of the month), Taos and Santa Fe.  Willa Cather wrote a rambling, almost boring novel, "Death Become the Archbishop"

about it. And last but not least, Georgia O'Keefe painted awesome works there.

S.D. and my two and a half months at Ash Meadows have been awesome. We've both explored a lot, and relaxed. We've also installed a water pressure tank and solar panels with the idea of spending more time off the grid and out in the wild. So we are ready to go.

Suggestions and tips for what to see and do in New Mexico would be highly appreciated!

Wildflower Hunting, History Finding

Not as uninhabitable as it would appear

Our first weeks at Ash Meadows were spent exploring the dirt roads, seeps and springs of Ash Meadows looking for what we thought were elusive signs of past human history. Looking out over the landscape, this place, like most deserts seems desolate, uninhabited and uninhabitable. What we slowly realized however was that the real challenge was to find one spot that had not been altered by man. And that is proving elusive.

Man's hand is everywhere here. Prior to the white man, Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute cultivated and harvested willow, mesquite and other plants. Hundreds of years prior to them others lived here. No one is sure what changes they made to the land but pottery shards and chert blanket the bluffs and sand dunes.

One of those bluffs is also one few known locations of the rare, endemic, February-blooming Ash Meadows Milk Vetch. Early one morning we rode our bikes North on Longstreet Road, one of the five maintained Refuge roads towards the bluff. Aside from the chert remains we expected the area to be free of other signs of man. Ash Meadows Milk Vetch is delicate and does not like disturbed soil.

All along the five mile road we saw the imprints other 20, 30 and 100 years old roads. We also saw
the remains of one of the hundreds of irrigation ditches left over from the industrial agriculture era in the 1960s.  Three miles in we passed a huge flat turn off behind which rose the tailings from a clay mine. Ash Meadows has been mined for peat (yes peat), clay, borax and zeolite. While not evident to the casual observer, the hills still conceal three massive clay pits left over from the early to mid 1900s. The clay from these mines was used to filter oil. The only current mineral mined in Ash Meadows is zeolite. The small mine in-holding is located at the southern end of the refuge.

Turning West after the old clay mine road we rode by an improbably flat plain, glittering with glass shards. The bulldozed remains of the clay miners camp. This across the road from a deeply furrowed, barren field once used for flood irrigation.

Parking our bikes a little further down the road we walked south toward the probable location of the Vetch.

Middle of nowhere and yet

The soil under foot was really sandy, maybe some clay and alkaline, and it was uneven, even rolling, almost naturally so. Several hundred feet off we noticed a small mesquite grove and headed for that. Mesquite usually means water but this bluff was dry. Several hundred feet beyond that we say another mesquite grove. The trees were taller and strangely enough in the middle of that was a tall, wooden pole? A few more minutes of walking and we found that the pole was really the top  of some sort of water derrick? Beside the pole was a truck frame? and some piping. A little further on a big, now empty, hole that probably, once held water. A slow trickle of water seeped from beneath the derrick. Looking all around in all four directions we saw no other sign of man. No road leading to the derrick, no other structures, not even a probably irrigation field. But here, where we had hoped to find undisturbed land and endemic wildflowers was unmistakably yet another sign of man's activities, and impact at Ash Meadows.

Intrigued by the mysterious purpose of the derrick but disappointed not to find the wildflowers we turned around and started heading back to our bicycles. This time walking a little bit further to the west, more along the edge of the bluff, just in case. The area looked even sparser than that which we'd walked through on our way in but there was no sense in returning exactly the same way.

And that's when we found ourselves walking through chert. Obviously flaked pieces of hard rock. We'd heard that these types of place existed at Ash Meadows. Areas where the first Americans had worked stone into tools. We were amazed at the extent and the beauty of the flakes. However it was more sign of man's impact. Still no wildflowers.

A few hundred feet further, over a sandish bluff, and into some truly alkaline, dry soil and there we found the Ash Meadows Milk Vetch. Not only were they blooming, but they were surrounded by some of the other endemic plants of Ash Meadows, the Sunray, the Ivesia, and more. I don't know what it is about this place, but it touches me. There is a zen garden-like quality to it's sparseness. The area is amazing for its resilience. It's been farmed, mined, drained, stripped, totally re-arranged in some places, and still the springs flow, and the endemic plants grow and bloom in a seemingly inhospitable place, but a place that hides more life, and more diversity than any other place in the United States.

Other desert wildflowers

Wilderness may be the preservation of man, but diversity is the preservation of wilderness. 

Nevada Crayfish Boil: Save the Pupfish

Both pricey delicacies and bug-like garbage eaters, crustaceans are weird creatures, but tasty. Lobster, the most well known of the family, crawl along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Eating anything their big fat claws come upon, including garbage and other lobsters, they only come up in lobster traps and are thankfully, promptly boiled.

Crayfish, a smaller member of the crustacean family that originates in warm southern waters, are lobster's smaller cousins. The eponymous star of the Crayfish boil, Louisiana supplies 95% of the crayfish sold in the United States. In 2007, the Louisiana crayfish harvest was about 54,800 tons, almost all of it from aquaculture. Crayfish were introduced to the warm springs and outflows of Ash Meadows in the early twentieth century. Strangely enough they weren't introduced as a human food source but as food for the introduced bullfrogs. Bullfrog legs were popular in Las Vegas and since bullfrogs eat anything and eat a lot, the populations of endemic pupfish and speckled dace weren't enough to fatten then up. Enterprising farmers introduced the fast reproducing crayfish (which also eat pupfish and dace) to feed the introduced bullfrogs.

Restoration efforts have been very successful in bringing back the pupfish and speckled dace, and

relatively successful in eradicating the bullfrog. Crayfish, not so much. A few days ago I stood on the boardwalk alongside the Crystal Spring outflow and watched helplessly as a crayfish took down, and ate a beautiful blue pupfish. And that brings us to Cold Springs.

Located close to the center of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife refuge, between the eastern mountains and the western Carson Slough, Cold Spring is far from the fault line from which the warmer springs rise. Possibly that's why the water from this spring isn't warm. It's cold, and hence the name. Never-the-less the spring still pumps out huge amounts of water into the desert and as such was a prime candidate for human appropriation. Sometime in the mid 1960s the spring head was enclosed in concrete reservoir, pumps were installed and any native fish life was pumped out onto the alfalfa fields.

Today Cold Spring's water is no longer used for agriculture, but the spring has not yet been restored. The water flows up out of the earth and into that concrete box. The box is crumbling, full of wind blown dirt, lumber, algae and crayfish. Lots of ugly, fat pupfish-eating crayfish. Looking into that murky water, seeing those beady eyes, and spindly pincers wave menacingly back, I thought of the only appropriate response. Nevada Crayfish Boil!

A Night at the Opera - Ash Meadows, a Cultural Meca

What do opera, Edward Abbey, robot girlfriends, and international travelers all have in common? If you guessed Ash Meadows, you're right!

Last Wednesday night we went to the opera. Yup there is an opera house here, a mere 15 minutes drive to Death Valley Junction, CA. The Amargosa Opera House was founded in 1967 in the former social hall of Pacific Coast Borax Company by a professional dancer from New York.

The performance we saw wasn't actually an opera however. It was a solo ballet pantomime and a very memorable experience. Also memorable was the inside of the Opera House itself. Painted by Marta, the dancer from New York, the walls are pictures of an 16th century audience. It's a surreal experience to be watching a ballerina perform with a renaissance audience, in the social hall, of a Borax Company, in the middle of no where, in the Mohave desert.

Marta's first performance at the Opera House was in 1968. During that year and the prior one, 

Edward Abbey was writing the final chapters of Desert Solitaire  "in a bar serving a legal house of prostitution at Ash Meadows, Nevada." Less than 10 miles from Marta. The bar was at Ash Meadows Sky Ranch. Consisting of a small motel, bar, brothel and as often accompanies Nevada brothels, an air strip, the Ranch was a popular desert oasis. The brothel and resort closed in the 70s and the land was eventually enveloped by the Refuge. There is no official access, but occasional refuge employees and volunteers do check up on it.

And then there is Cherry 2000. Soon after Sky Ranch closed a film crew showed up to make a movie. Cherry 2000 is a B-rated sci-fi movie, starring Melodie Griffin. The plot is pretty silly for an action movie: "In the year 2017, a rich man travels to the ends of the earth to find that the perfect woman is always under his nose." But hey, it was still filmed here. We haven't seen the movie yet, but the popcorn is ready.


And then there is today's international appeal of Ash Meadows. A little less than half of the visitors come from countries other than the United States. Last week alone we talked to travelers from Japan, Australia, Germany, Canada, and Brazil. It's great to hear about their enthusiasm for the Pupfish, the Meadows, and how much they appreciate the preserved and wide open spaces of the United States.

When you come right down to it, it is the wilderness, or at best the preserved and shared wide open spaces that are one of our greatest cultural treasures.

Volunteer Life - In the Desert

Sunset Over Ash Meadows

This morning it occurred to me that the closest Starbucks, even the closest latte-serving coffee shop is more than 30-40 minutes away.  Less than a year ago, just to get to work, I passed 6 Dunkin Donuts, 4 Starbucks, 3 Au Bon Pains and countless local cafes.

Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, where we're volunteering is located along the Nevada / California border, 30-40 minutes from the closest town, and 31 miles from Death Valley National Park. The refuge is home to, and famous for, being the home of several endemic species including the Devil's Hole and Ash Meadows Pupfish. The Refuge tag line reads "Where the desert springs to life."  I prefer - "Come for the Pupfish, Stay for the Springs".  Sure the pupfish are cute, but there are 50 crystal clear warm springs here putting out a total of 11,000 gallons a minute, and they all are amazing! Some are

Crystal Spring

accessible by boardwalks, some are hidden away in the folds of the rolling desert hills. But again, all-in-all an amazing oasis in the middle of the Mohave desert.

Volunteer life, even without lattes, is pretty sweet. This morning I woke up, took a walk alongside a desert stream, and strolled 3 minutes to 'work' at the Ash Meadows Interpretive Center.  Yesterday I helped collect pupfish DNA samples next to a crystal clear, hot spring. 

Inquiring minds have asked for more details on exactly what it is we are doing, so here it is.  For the months of January and February (and if I can convince SD) some of March we will be living and volunteering at the Ash Meadows Wildlife Refuge in Southern Nevada.  Volunteering requires that we work three, eight hour days (Thursday, Friday and Saturday). During that time we are responsible for staffing the visitor center as well as keeping it clean.  Once a week we also empty trash, recycling and clean pit toilets at the boardwalks.  On slow days we can also get out on the refuge and help with habitat rehabilitation projects, maintenance or just do roving interpretation.

Longstreet Cabin and our New Bikes!

The four other days of the week we get to explore. There is a lot to see and do on the Refuge, and our new mountain bikes were the perfect addition to help us do that. There are miles of dirt roads through the rolling hills. Even on our first day here we took a quick ride up to the Longstreet Cabin and Spring. Less than 4 miles to the north of the trailer pad the spring and cabin have both been restored. The cabin being built more than a hundred years ago is one of the oldest structures in the Amargosa Valley. The Spring, like many others here. had been destroyed by over pumping and aggressive irrigation in the 60's and 70's.  With the establishment of the refuge in the 80's and the subsequent projects to bring back the springs and provide living habitat for the endemic Amargosa pupfish, Longstreet spring was restored in the second round of projects, about 10 years ago. Today it, along with Kings Pool, and Crystal Spring and the three gems of the refuge. Riding to Longstreet the first day was the perfect introduction to the Refuge.

In addition to exploring Ash Meadows, there is also many places within a two to three drive that we

Dates - really for harvest

also want to check out including  Death Valley, Red Rocks Canyon, and Desert National Wildlife Refuge. For our first trip we drove about 50 miles south to the China Date Ranch. While the name conjures images of cowboys rounding up four legged fruits, the 'ranch' is really a date plantation. Everything around here is a ranch, even the brothels are called ranches. The Date Ranch is located in a hidden valley of the Amargosa River. The river creates a lush habitat for dates and for all desert plants and animals. We took a brief walk along the riverside trail. It's still winter here and most everything is dormant but it was wonderful. The dates are really cool too, and some were still being harvested. The ranch shop had about 8 different date varieties all available for sampling. They were all good. Some would be better for cooking, and some were sweeter, juicier and excellent just as they were. We had planned to get lunch a little cafe in Shoshone, CA but the day we went was the day of the 1.3 billion dollar powerball and the parking lot (and the entire town) was packed with cars of people buying tickets. The line must have been 1/3 of a mile long. With stomachs still full of dates we headed home for a late lunch.

It's coyote time!

And where is home you ask?  We are living in our trailer on a trailer pad at the refuge. There is another couple here and occasionally government folks stay in the bunkhouse next door. The bunkhouse has a washer and dryer which we can use. There is a TV but no cable. There is also wifi, both in the bunk house and in our trailer. At night, heck even during the day it's quiet. Sometimes the coyotes get a little loud but SD enjoys their company.  I enjoy the quiet. The sunsets, sunrises, surrounding mountains and desert continually surprise us with their beauty.

Last Month in Arizona

We're in Nevada now and for the next two months, but last month we toured the Western deserts of
Arizona. Arizona, the land where rocks float, giant trees sink and the winter desert blooms with RVs.

We started our tour way back at the end of November at Lee's Ferry, and I already blogged about

Colorado River @ Lee's Ferry

that. Not sure however that the post included the fact that there, as in many places in the southwest and especially Arizona, the ground is covered with pumice, porous volcanic rocks that weigh very little and actually float. Scattering a handful out onto the Colorado was like sending a hundred seeds downstream. These light weight rocks are everywhere and I still get a small thrill from easily picking up a big one.

From Lee's Ferry we headed south to Flagstaff. We spent a week or so exploring along RT 40, and where it still remained, RT 66. First we headed west to Williams, with a days detour to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and then east to Homolovi State Park, and the Petrified Forest National Forest.

Looks like a log, sinks like a stone

The Petrified Forest is one of those places like the Grand Canyon, that is more than photos or written description can do justice. I'm certainly not going to try but I will say that hiking the Blue Mesa trail through the 'forest' of log rock chips and finding giant petrified trees eroding out of bluish purple sand dunes was amazing. Also amazing was picking up a piece of one of those magnificently colored 'tree' pieces and feeling how really heavy it was. Really, really heavy. Certainly heavier than the floating pumice stone, maybe even heavier than granite. If that rock/piece of wood ever came close to water it wouldn't float for a second.

Blue Mesas

From there we headed further south and a bit west to Dead Horse State Park in Cottonwood, just west of Sedona. Sedona generally gets all the attention but the Verde Valley, in which Cottonwood sits, and through which the Verde River runs is stunning, in a the way only a river-running-through-the-desert can be.

One of the many magnificent
finds at the Quartzite swap meet

Heading further South, and almost to Mexico, we drove to Quartzite and spent a few days satisfying our curiosity about this legendary RV mecca. We wanted to know why every year, from January to March, millions of RVer's descended upon this barren desert outpost. Was it because of the thousand acres of free BLM camping? Was it just of the climate and companionship of other RVers? Was it the lure of the hundred acre swap meet, rock and RV show? Even though it wasn't peak RV season, still the desert sprouted RVs of every kind for miles along the road, and it was easy to imagine the place with wall to wall campers.

We were glad we had visited Quartzite off season. It was interesting, but just not our thing.  We then headed North, back to the Colorado River. Camping at Buckskin Mountain State Park along the shore of that awesome river. This time a ways downstream of the Grand Canyon and a few dams. From there we continued North, stopping at Lake Havasu to see the London Bridge, which we drove over while arguing about where it was. Then a night in Bullhead City visiting family. The next morning we drove on to Nevada and the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. We'll be in Nevada for a few months but are looking forward to going exploring more of Arizona this spring.

2016 : From Pupfish to Grizzly Bears

2016 is promising to be an extreme year, in an extremely good way!

In January and February S.D. and I will be volunteering at the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Southern Nevada. July and August we'll be at the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge in Tok, Alaska.

Ash Meadows is the home of the small, endangered and endemic pupfish, the cutest-named fish on the planet. Pupfish live in only a very specific environment and the crystal pools at the Refuge are one of them. When S.D. and I visited the Refuge back in September we took a walk down to the pools. We didn't catch a glimpse of the famous fish but we were amazed by the beauty, and diversity of the crystal clear water and shoreline. What's even more amazing is that the Meadow is less than an hour from Death Valley. That's only 60 miles from a barren salt flat to an oasis.

Tetlin has plants and fish too but it's more well known creatures are a bit furrier a bit larger, and cute only from a distance. We weren't able to stop by so all we know about the place is what we've read online and learned from talking with the supervisor, but we do know that there are bears, black, brown and grizzly. Our campsite will be at Deadman Lake, mile 1249.3 of the AlCan (Alaska Canada Highway), and it's remote. The nearest town/store is Tok, Alaska - 70 miles to the Northwest, and we won't have cell phone coverage or reliable internet. At the same time, there is plenty there to keep us busy.

All 560 National Wildlife Refuges throughout the United States are dedicated to... After traveling around for over half a year, S.D. and I are really looking forward to hanging out in two of these special places and getting to know these places, their animals,fish, fowl and plants in detail.

Except for the fact that we have to get from Nevada to Alaska, and then from Alaska back to the lower 48, all other stops and travel routes are still up in the air, that too promises to be a great adventure!

Arizona - Above the Mogollon Rim

Our travel plans are often influenced by three factors, the calendar, meteorology, and geology. For the week and a half after our 'release' from St. George those three factors were the Thanksgiving holiday, the coming of winter with an exceptionally southern cold front, and the Mogollon Rim.

The Colorado River at Lee's Ferry, AZ.
Our campsite was just above this.

The Mogollon Rim is an escarpment approximately 3000 to 4000 ft high that runs east to west (approximately a few miles south of I-40) across the upper third of Arizona, about a three hours drive north of Phoenix. Generally speaking, the land to the south, and closer to Phoenix, is at around 3000 to 4000 ft above sea level. The land above the rim is significantly higher, and significantly colder. This works out well for the city folk in the summer as they can leave Phoenix on a 100 degree day, drive three hours north and up the rim, and enjoy some awesome 70 and 80 degree weather. In the winter, and say for Thanksgiving holiday, they stay below the rim.

Our truck was finally released, for the last time, from the auto-body shop on Thursday, November 19. The thought was to leave St. George the next day and head south into Arizona. Not wanting to run into all the holiday travelers, and actually not sure if we could find room to camp, we did not want to go below the Mogollon Rim until the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

That left 9 days for us to get from St. George to roughly, just south of Flagstaff AZ. 301 miles. Plenty of time to enjoy the high desert county in between. Except...there was this cold front coming, and the weather guesses were guessing snow around Thanksgiving.

The Paria river valley just north of the where it
empties into the Colorado River

The first leg turned out to be pretty easy and sweet. We left early Friday morning, headed east on 89, up to North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and then along the bottom of the Vermilion Cliffs. Within three and a half hours we were camped at Lee's Ferry Campground. Our site overlooked the Colorado River to the South. The Vermicelli Cliffs rose to the North and the Paria River ran to the east. It was one of the most spectacular camps. With the new RV, and it's full window dinette, we could even enjoy the scenery from inside. Which we did, when the temperatures dropped into the thirties.

To hike up the Paria River you have to
wade across the river a number of times.
I think we did it 5-6 times in two hours.

We also had some great hikes there up along the Colorado and Paria Rivers. It was such a great place that we even decided to stay longer. That was until the check engine light on the truck came on, and that only after we had to try about 12 times to get it to even turn over. With sadness in our hearts we packed up Sunday morning and headed South to Flagstaff, the nearest Dodge dealer.

To make that story short, the truck turned out fine. But now we were already on the Rim, with 7 days to spare and the cold front, now with below 30 degree temps and possible snow was still coming. The good news is that the new RV is insulated, and has thermal windows so we weren't worried about the system freezing. We were more concerned about how to have fun in the colder temps.

With all that in mind we drove west along I-40 to Williams, AZ. From there it was an easy day trip to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, but it was a little warmer and we could stay in an RV park that had power (and use our electric heater).

Our route from Hurricane Utah to Flagstaff, AZ

The Grand Canyon was awesome. Cold and windy but just as awesome as ever. Williams, the town, is neat too. Billing itself as the last town to be by-passed by I-40, and hence the last town on RT 66, it has lots of great RT 66 stuff. The cold front came through yesterday with 40 knot gusts, a low of 27, but no snow.

Today, we're heading east, along I-40, back through Flagstaff and on to Homolovi State Park. It should be a little warmer, but it's still above the Rim, so shouldn't be crowded...and there are some great hikes there along the Little Colorado River.

Sunday, as all the city folk head back to work, we're driving down to the Verde Valley.

Our New Home : the Creekside 20FQ!

Cabin Replica (wikipedia)

While writing this post it has occurred to me that I'm fulfilling (an other) childhood dream. Ever since reading "Walden" I've wanted to go into the woods, live simply and write. That dream was far from my conscious mind last May when we sold the house and hit the road. Way back then, almost six months ago, S.D. and I had more ambitious, more Spartan, plans of backpacking. With time those plans softened. We decided to keep car camping, then bought an R-POD, a very small trailer. When that was totaled in a car crash we decided to go slightly bigger.

Friday the 13th of November was our lucky day. Around noontime we picked up our new home, a

Our Little (Portable) Cabin!

Creekside 20FQ (20 foot, front queen bed). It should really be called the Creekside 20 Awesome. We're what's known as "full time RVers" so while we want an RV to have everything we need to live, we also wanted it to have a small footprint, provide an outdoor living experience, and be comfortable year round. The Creekside does all that!

The 20 FQ measures 8'x20'. 160 sq ft, plenty of space for two people. Coincidentally, Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond measured 10' x 15', or 150 sq feet, and he was the sole occupant.

The 20FQ is compact, and really comfortable. Luxurious even. The bedroom is just big enough for a fluffy queen bed and adequate space to walk around it. Over, beside and under the bed are various storage spots. Enough for clothes, hiking and biking equipment. There are even bedside tables on each side, each with a 110 electrical outlet. Although these outlets won't work unless we're in an RV park.  Day-to-day life off the grid is strictly 12 volt.

The bathroom is also compact, but more than adequate. Unlike Thoreau's outhouse which was more spacious but unheated and without plumbing, the Creekside facilities are similar to a yacht "head" (bathroom), with a foot-pedal-flush toilet angled in next to the sink, and just 20" from the mini tub/shower. The medicine cabinet, vanity and small shelves nestled in next to the toilet provide just enough space for toiletries and cleaning supplies.

The kitchen is bigger than a lot of kitchens we saw in similar sized RVs, and it's layout is even more efficient. Along with a gas oven and three burner stove there is an almost full-sized refrigerator, a microwave, pantry, two bowl sink, spice rack, three drawers, two large cabinets, counter space and an-over-the-sink window. We haven't found enough stuff yet to fill all the spaces and we suspect that even if we stock up enough food to be on the road for two weeks, we'll still have plenty of storage room left over. Needless to say, Thoreau didn't have a kitchen, often slipping over to Emerson's house when he wanted a solid meal.

But I saved the best for last. The rear dinette! Taking up the entire back of the RV, measuring 8'x 6', is the perfect living, dining, wildlife viewing area. The three surrounding windows are so big that sitting on the big bench seat is not only comfortable it's the next best thing to actually being outside.

But wait, there's more. Because the 20FQ is so compact we can be outside more, and with a very small environmental impact. Being only twenty feet long allows the RV to be towed with a relatively small truck. It also allows us to camp in most of the National State Parks, close to all kinds of great

Just one, of the places we'll go

hikes. The RV is also well insulated and has thermal pane windows, saving energy usage. Right now it's 25 degrees outside and with very little heat, it is very toastie inside. The lights are all LEDs which are more than bright enough and also use very little energy. But there's also a solar panel that helps keep the batteries charged.

The low resource usage along with 2 propane tanks, 2 six volt batteries, a sixty gallon water tank and ample food storage space makes living entirely off the grid and out in the wilds possible for weeks at a time.

Thoreau:

"went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

With slightly more luxury, less-Spartan, and even less space per person, the Creekside 20FQ allows us to do just that, and to do it all over the country. Next stop - Arizona!

Does a Person Poop in the Woods?

While the question of whether or not a bear poops in the woods may be rhetorical, it's not so easy when it comes to people. Yes people are in the woods, and sometimes, like other creatures, they need to eliminate, but when, if and how are matters of debate and in some cases, regulation.

It was on our recent hike to Calf Creek Falls that I began pondering the question most seriously. (Hiking leaves lots of time for serious contemplation!) The Falls, the large catch basin beneath is and the small surrounding field are an oasis in a desert. Reached by a short, level three mile hike they are also a destination for lots and lots of people. People who apparently feel it's not only a good place to swim, and picnic, but also poop.  So much so that the Forest Service has had to put up a no poop sign - directly opposite the falls.

(note the small black pile)

There are places in the wilds where no person should poop. For folks well-acquainted with backwoods pooping protocol and the reasons therefore,  the need for a sign was pretty surprising.  We know that human (and all animal) waste leaching into water is one of the leading causing of giardia, and that all eliminations should be done at least 300ft  away from any water source.  But apparently not everyone know this and hence the surprising but rather witty sign. 

While in the Sierra's  we also learned that people are also not allowed to poop (or rather leave their poop) on Mt. Whitney. The reason is not so much the water quality but the quality of the overall environment. While poo is organic, the harsh, cold climate does not allow the material to decompose and whatever is left there, stays there.  Historically the summit was the place to go. Until 2007 there was actually an enclosed stone pit toilet on the summit. Every year the Forest Service had to fly in a helicopter and fly out the 'stuff'. Now "All Mt. Whitney visitors must pack-out their solid human waste. Pack-out kits are distributed with wilderness permits. You must carry the waste bag back down the mountain to the poop disposal box at the trailhead."  

WAG
(toilet not necessary)

The referred to pack out kits are technically known as WAGs (Waste Alleviation and Gelling) Bags, Brian's Backpacking Blog has a great description on wags you can check out if you want to know more.  WAGs are now sold at most outdoor stores including REI and we've been seeing them in a lot of places. They can be purchased or homemade.

Mt. Everest is a good example of what happens when lots of people eliminate in  an environment where things don't decompose and WAGs aren't used.  The Huffington Post article "Mt Everest is Covered in Human Poop." explains the dirty details. It all goes to show that you can and often, should take it with you.

So when and how can a person poop in the woods?  Ideally you find a composting toilet. If one isn't  available, you're more than 300 ft from water and there is plenty of other organic matter in the area, dig a six inch deep hole, do your business, cover it over first with dirt and then with leaves, etc. Within three to six months the whole thing should be gone.

So yes, while bears just go randomly where every they happen to be,  a person can poop in the woods, but only in way that no one would ever know.  Now if we could just figure out the whole tree falling in the forest thing.

Mini Break to Grand Staircase Escalante

Snow at Bryce

Since the collision three weeks ago, we've spent most of that time in St. George. Weekdays are generally quiet and the local trails relatively empty. Every weekend however, there are numerous events and the place fills up. Considering that there are over 35 large hotels in town, that's saying something. One Saturday morning we woke up to discover that the entire hotel was booked by the Montview Marching Band. They and 30 other high school bands were in town for the Regional Marching Band finals. The air was tense at breakfast on Saturday. Sad and quiet on Sunday. Aside from Marching Band competitions there have also been bicycle tours, senior athlete games, and a huge art and craft show. On top of all that there are thousands of Utahians that just to go St. George for the weekend. Since we like life on the quiet side we decided that for our fourth weekend we'd leave...and happened to discover another reason everyone goes to St. George.

Grosvenor Arch

Our destination was Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Our hotel was in Cannonville, UT. The Grand Staircase Inn and Country Store is the only business in the small town. Located 12 miles east of Bryce Canyon, 6 miles north of Kodachrome Basin State Park, and 36 miles west of Escalante it promised to be quiet as well as the perfect location for exploring one the most awesome National Monuments in the country. The weather called for cold nights with temperatures in the low 30s, and daytime temps in the 50s. Every day sunny and clear.

The drive from St. George to Cannonville is only two and half hours. We left on Friday and took the
scenic route through Zion. Saw some bighorn sheep and buffalo. Stopped at Bryce Canyon for a little walk along the rim. Only two hours out from St. George and some differences were already clear. The rim of Bryce Canyon is around 8000 ft above sea level. St. George is 2880. We were wearing shorts when we left St. George, there was snow and ice at Bryce. Also, strangely enough a lot of the hotels, stores, restaurants and gas stations on the way in were closed. There were people around but you could tell from the number of empty spaces in various parking lots that there were a lot less than would be there at peak season. We didn't mind, it was great having the place mostly to ourselves.

Slot Canyons!

After a walk around we headed east and down to Cannonville passing through the town of Tropic. It's a larger town than Cannonville and since it was the only one of the two with restaurants, it was where we'd planned to eat. That flaw in that plan became evident as we noticed all of the restaurants (4 in total) were closed for the season.

Arriving a few minutes later at the Inn, and checking in at the grocery store located beneath the rooms, the cashier confirmed our observations. He also informed us that the grocery store was closed on Sunday. With no restaurants, and only the kind of food stocked in a small town store it became depressing clear that this was not going to be a weekend of good eating. I thought back wistfully to the Hawaiian Poke that folks in St. George would be enjoying.

With peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as our main staple we did however enjoy some excellent hiking over the weekend. Friday afternoon we hiked through the Willis Creek slot canyons. A series of four slot canyons along a mile stretch of the creek, the hike was the perfect start to the weekend.

Calf Creek Falls together!

Saturday we drove east, stopping at the Escalante office of the Grand Staircase Monument. They have some great exhibits there on the local wildlife, and the soil. Yup. The soil. Cryptobiotic soil  is everywhere in the southwest. Composed of lichens, mosses, algae, microfungi, and bacteria that hold things together making the soil crust are like a woven mat. The woven mat then helps control erosion and support other life. Continuing east and dropping down to the Escalante River we stopped at the trail head for the Lower Calf Creek Falls trail.

The Lower Calf Creek Falls trail deserves a blog entry of its own. Coincidentally I have already written that and you can, and should read it! Both S.D. and I have already hiked it, but if you are in the area, it is too beautiful a hike to miss and doing it this time with the most wonderful man in the world made it that much better. We enjoyed our peanut butter and jelly luncheon in a sunny spot by the creek watching the trout swim and dive under the rocks. We saw a few other hikers on the trail, but not so many as you'd expect at such a wonderful place.

Driving home we stopped for gas at the one station that was open but where the 'pump was cold' and so took about 15 minutes to fill the tank.

Under Powell Point

Sunday, the day everything was closed, we packed up another round of PB &Js and drove east again. This time S.D. had suggested that instead of hiking along the bottom of a canyon that we climb up and go for the long views. We chose the "Below the Point" trail. It was an excellent choice, and surprisingly while we had the best views of any hike, we didn't see another soul the entire time.

Monday morning we drove back to St. George. Back to open stores, restaurants, fast gas pumps, sixty-degree temperatures and lots of people. We now know that folks flock to St. George on weekends because not much outside of town is open, but we also know that makes the rest of southern Utah a great place for solitude and hiking...provided you have your own food and housing. The perfect place to be if you had an RV!

Living the dream, how we got here

Another guest blog entry by SD: Silent Dave.

The most common comment we get is still "wow, you're living the dream."   As I explained in a previous post (http://kellytimetoo.blogspot.com/2015/08/living-dream-will-take-some-getting.html) it needed some getting used to.  After five months of living on the road I can say we are definitely getting used to it and at the moment we would have serious issues with going back to our previous life style.  Another question we often get is how we did it.  In a couple of entries I'm going to address that one starting with how we got ready for this adventure.

A casual wedding

One of the best things I did was to find (after more than 50 years of looking) a great partner.  It might not be completely necessary to have a great partner, but it sure makes everything better.  KD tells me that on our first date she thought I was trying to scare her away by relating how I would like to get a van and hit the road and how that did just the opposite as she liked the idea.  It took a while to hit the road, eight years or so, but its worked out great.  We had lots of adventures in those eight years, now culminating in the KDT.   We keep looking forward and planning where it will take us next.

Yoga with snowshoes on, I'm not the most
 graceful even with out the winter coat and
snow shoes on! 

Another important aspect to getting ready for this adventure was staying in shape.  I always joked that going to the gym during the week and heading out for bike rides or hikes in New Hampshire was just enough to keep us from dying before we really started our adventure.  Sure we struggled with this and working in sedentary jobs made it tougher.  But it kept us close enough to being in shape that when we did hit the road, after a few weeks of all day activity killing us, now we can hike and bike and not feel like its killing us.  Being in shape, as an old work colleague told me and I completely buy into, means having strength,endurance and flexibility.  Cardio and lifting takes care of the first two, yoga takes care of the last.  In addition to hitting the gym after work I was also lucky to have a yoga class a couple of times a week during lunch hour at work.  It not only kept me flexible, well I'll never be flexible but I'm a lot better than I would have been with out it.  I was fortunate to have a great yoga instructor who keep pushing just enough to keep me getting better the more I practiced.

Additionally staying in shape meant keeping to a good diet, trying to stay away from junk food and all that and eating lots of fish, veggies and fruit.  A good chunk of dead flesh cooked over the grill never hurts either!        

This is what my hips look like now.

And lets hear it for modern medical science too.  Actually without the benefits of great surgeons I wouldn't be here as I was a hurting unit for a while there.  In the two years before hitting the road I had both hips replaced and arthroscopic knee surgery.  I was lucky to have a couple of great surgeons in Beverly who made it possible for me to hit the KDT.

Lastly I'll mention that having some cash also helps.  I've been putting money into retirement accounts, IRA's and the like, since I was in my 20's.  The only retirement I have is from 6 years as a Fed and that almost pays for our health insurance.  Almost.  Fortunately I've made some good investments in mutual funds and bought and sold a few houses over the years that were profitable.  One of the problems that KD foresaw was my thriftiness might be a problem.  But after saving for 40 years I've made the transition, with a little bit of hesitation, to spending.   In a few years I'll be able to collect Social Security, that'll help too.

After all, aren't you supposed to spend your last dollar the day you leave this mortal coil?  I'm working on that.

This is a quick primer on how we keep ready to take the plunge.  Next I'll go into the first phase of taking the plunge.

St. George Sojourn

Lee's Pass Trail

This Wednesday marks the third week since the Collision. During that time we've been living mostly at the St. George Inn and Suites, sorting out details with GEICO, travel trailer shopping and getting outdoors whenever we have a spare moment.

Somewhere in Snow Canyon

St. George is a pretty nice town. Considering that it's the winter destination for Utah, the climate for October and November is pretty mild. There are even palm trees outside the door of our hotel room. Further down the street, and two blocks west we discovered the Hawaiian Poke Bowl, a Poke restaurant run by a native Hawaiian. Poke is marinated fish served over rice and it is good! It's funny but we've eaten more fish the two weeks we've been in St. George, UT than we did the entire month we were on the Pacific Coast.

Taylor Creek Trail

 GEICO, our insurance company has also been pretty great. Although it seemed like forever to patient folks like S.D. and I, it only took one week for them to approve repairs to the truck and get it in the shop and two weeks for them to settle on the R-POD. During that two weeks we'd been busy researching our next travel trailer so that when they issued the check S.D. and I drove down to Las Vegas to pick it up and the next day drove up to Salt Lake City to put down the deposit on our new home, a Creekside 20FQ. It's a small travel trailer, but it has everything we'd ever want in a home...and it's easily trailerable. Now we're just waiting for the truck to get out of the shop so we can turn in the rental car, check out of the hotel, get our stuff out of storage, drive up to Salt Lake City, pick up the Trailer and head back outside.

Looking down into a slot canyon on the tail to
Observation Point

After six months of living mostly outdoors in wilderness it's been strange to be living inside, and in a town. Luckily it's a town that is surrounded by awesome hikes. Twelve miles west of town in Snow Canyon State Park,a canyon carved from the red and white Navajo sandstone. Trails run along lava flows, up petrified red dunes, and into slot canyons. Thirty miles west is Zion National Park, the park is a busy place but once we were a mile up and into the eight mile hike to Observation Point no less amazing. I last visted Zion in 2006, BD (before Dave) and have apparently been annoying him with its effusive praise ever since. A little bit into the hike S.D. understood, and agreed.

More Snow Canyon awesomeness

But more Zion surprises awaited us both. The North entrance of the Zion National Park leads to Kolob Canyon. Here we hike two other awesome trails. Taylor Creek and Lee's Pass. Taylor Creek is a lovely four mile hike along the creek between canyon walls so red that the light itself has a redish tinge. If that isn't amazing enough, the canyon ends at a huge cave/arch. Lee's Pass is a very long trail of which we only hiked about six miles. This trail also follows a creek but is very different from the Taylor Creek Trail. The creek bed is much wider, the canyon walls neither close nor as steep. But still amazingly beautiful. I never tire of the variations and intricacies of the various microclimates around here.

Word has it that the truck will be out of the shop 'this week'. Hopefully next week we'll be off and exploring new places in Eastern Utah.