Life in Ouray

We loved being in Ouray, and spent six days there, the most we've stayed in one place in our motorhome.  It was exhilarating to be in that clear thin air and to look up at the beautiful green mountains surrounding us, some still with snow on top.  The downtown, just a few blocks from our campground, has a nice feel to it.  There are several restaurants, a bookstore, a grocery, a little hardware store.  Small town America, friendly people.  Ouray is a tourist destination, but the nearest ski area is Telluride, some miles away, so it's low key and unpretentious, and it made us happy.  We could almost imagine ourselves living there, except that it might be a little too isolated.

Ouray has a number of hiking trails.  Nancy and I took one to the impressive Box Canyon Falls.  The next day I decided I could do the Ouray Perimeter Trail, a four mile hike all the way around the outskirts of the town.  Nancy declined the oppportunity.  The trail began with a long run of railroad tie steps going up, up, up the mountain opposite the Visitors' Center.

A dirt trail then continued the upward tradition.  At over 8000 feet elevation, I got short of breath and even a little dizzy and had to stop often to catch my breath.

I kept on trucking and eventually reached a beautiful waterful on the side of the mountain.

The Perimeter Trail was a spectacular two and a half hour experience, and the young couple from Kansas City with whom I shared part of the hike were impressed that a man of my longevity had survived it.

Later, walking our dogs in the permanent resident section of our Ouray campground, we passed a red double-wide trailer, from which a woman emerged.

"That little dog of yours brought a tear to my eye," she said. "I've never seen one that's such a spitting image of the Shih Tzu we buried in our back yard. I loved him so much that we tried to find one just like him. Come on back here and let me show you."

I wasn't sure if she had a photo or a statue or had had her dog stuffed. It turned out to be a little live dog that had the exact coloration of Sophia - pure white and golden tan. But this one was hyperactive, straining against the leash to be pals with out dogs, and the woman admitted that she had bought him because he looked so much like her previous dog, and his personality didn't turn out to be what she had hoped for. There's a lesson in there for all of us.

Nancy and I drove about an hour to Telluride, a ski area in a magnificent setting that we had visited many years back, at a time when most of the sidewalks on the main drag were wooden boards.  Telluride has changed a lot, naturally, and the real estate prices had soared when it became a trendy destination.  But it was surprisingly recognizable, and we found the condominium we had stayed in all those years ago.  We did feel that the people in the shops were efficient but overall not as warm as those in Ouray and the rest of Colorado, probably an effect of tourism.

Back in Ouray, the winds picked up and almost seemed hurricane-like for a couple of days.  The weather service reported gusts of 60 mph.  Our motorhome was literally rocking at times.  Sophia was almost blown over as she took a dump.  (Sophia is a dog, for those not familiar with our family situation.)

Million Dollar Highway to Ouray

When we told people at our campground in Durango that we were going to be driving our rig over the mountains to Ouray, Colorado, they said, "Are you sure you want to do that?"  That road has a reputation as one of the most frightening drives in America.  We were told that it's a narrow two lane highway, with no shoulders, no guard rails, switchbacks, and dropoffs which if taken send you straight to eternity. 

But, I thought, how bad can it be?  In fact, I'm pretty sure that Nancy and I drove it forty years ago in the little motorhome we had back then, without incident.  Not far out of Durango, heading north, the road narrowed, and the edges sloped away to nothing, but it didn't seem too bad.  Most likely the dangers had been overstated.  I asked Nancy, "Are you skeered?"

"No", she said, "but if a fly starts buzzing around, I'm not handing you the flyswatter."  She was remembering some erratic driving last year when I tried to terminate a pesky insect loose in the motorhome at 60 miles an hour.

Then we reached Silverton, an old mining town halfway to Ouray.  And the road - the so-called Million Dollar Highway - became more treacherous - narrower, with near vertical cliffs falling away just past the outer edge of our lane.  Nancy said that she had to stop herself from looking down, because she was getting dizzy and a little nauseated.  It wasn't so bad for me, the driver, near the center line, but at one point there was road work, down to a single lane, and I had cold chills as I looked down the precipice to my left, no more than a foot between us and a plunge to the river a thousand feet below.

Then the switchbacks began.  At one point there were four of them linked together.  Many were so sharp that it was difficult to keep the motorhome and towed vehicle within the lines, and once the back end of a big truck approaching us was in our lane.

Three times we climbed above 10,000 feet in elevation, and once above 11,000 feet.  This is where we had a motorhome lunch at one of those mountain passes.

I was proud of our engine.  It was noisy going uphill, and many times we were limited to 25 miles an hour, but it never faltered, never overheated, never exploded. 

Finally we headed down into Ouray, a beautiful little town in the prettiest natural setting I've ever seen. 

Our campground was just a few blocks from the main drag.  We took the dogs for a walk into town and were charmed by the small town atmosphere - the warmth and friendliness of the people, the cute stores and shops, the magnificent vistas. 

Ouray is at 7792 feet elevation, which means that you get a little short of breath as you walk uphill, but it also gives you a quite wonderful clarity of vision.  It's as if the mountains and everything else are in high definition.

Hiking back to our motorhome, a little boy in an upstairs window of the RV park office dropped his pants and mooned us, and he repeated the performance for each car that drove past.  Nancy considered telling the campground owner, but I was hesitant to restrict the artistic expression of a young person.

I don't have a photo of that incident.

Durango and Mesa Verde

Queen of the Trailer Park

On the road from Moab, Utah to Durango, Colorado the wind was incredible, tossing the motorhome around and raising dust clouds that made the distant mountains hazy.  But Durango was flawless - lush and green and surrounded by pretty hills, and we stayed there a few days at a pleasant RV park a few miles out of town. 




Queen of the Trailer Park washing the Princess

The second day in Durango we left our dogs in the motorhome, air-conditioning turned on for their comfort, and drove in our little pickup truck to Mesa Verde National Park, about an hour and a half away.  I have a vague memory of visiting the well preserved cliff dwellings there with my parents when I was a kid, and loving it.  The drive from the flat valley floor to the Visitors Center was an extreme upgrade but beautiful.  We bought tickets for a guided tour of Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling community in the park - and in fact, the largest in the US.  A park ranger gave our group a safety talk and then led us down a challenging series of steep steps to the level of the cliff houses.  Not everyone enjoyed the descent.

The ranger told us that the native Americans called Anasazi lived at Mesa Verde from 600 AD to around 1300, and transitioned from hunter-gatherers to an agricultural society.  They most likely settled there because of good spring water, and on the plateau above the dwellings, they farmed corn, squash, yucca, and other crops.  They abandoned Mesa Verde, probably for better opportunities, after a twenty-year drought.

Back in town, we attended "A Taste of Durango".  Durango has a number of fine restaurants, and many of them had booths on Main Street. 

After mingling with the young hardbodies at the event, we decided to hang with the older, fatter citizens - our people - at the local Walmart, to stock up for the road.

Durango was fabulous.  Colorado looks like our kind of state.

Moab, Utah and Arches National Park

The drive from Bryce Canyon National Park took us through the edges of Capitol Reef National Park. The views of the high sandstone cliffs we passed were jaw-dropping. Squint your eyes hard and you could see a long row of beautiful cathedrals at the top, mile after mile. But don't do that while you're driving a motorhome.

Our campground for the next three nights was in the town of Moab, Utah, which is an interesting place.  This is sandstone country, and two major national parks are nearby - Arches and Canyonlands.  The town itself is surrounded by high sandstone cliffs. 

We drove into Arches National Park, so named because it supposedly contains over 2000 sandstone arches.  Near the entrance are monumental cliffs and beautiful rock formations, like the following: 

Some miles later we reached the Devil's Garden, trailhead for a hike to Landscape Arch, perhaps the park's most spectacular.  The trail was sandy and biblical, and at the end we saw Landscape Arch, but not up close, for the safety of the park's visitors.  A Visitors Center movie told us that erosion of the park's features continues, and back in 1991 some large pieces fell from it, captured, amazingly, by a movie camera, at a time when not everybody owned one.  (A different arch collapsed completely in 2008.)  The evolution of Arches' geology continues.

Later Nancy and I went on a self-guided tour in search of Native American wall paintings.  With difficulty we found walls with interesting images carved into them, but disappointingly, graffiti was present, too.  But a couple told us about beautiful wall paintings free of graffiti a few miles away, so off we went.  The road became terrible as we descended into an amazing canyon, but we finally found a huge rock with amazing Native American artwork.

Moab has quite a history.  The area is one of the richest sources in the world of dinosaur bones and footprints.  Butch Cassidy and the hole-in-the-wall gang hid out nearby.  In the 1950's, a rich vein of uranium was discovered here, and during the nuclear years uranium mining dominated the town's economy. In 1949 John Ford filmed Stagecoach, perhaps the first important western movie, in the area, and the motion picture industry has used the natural scenery there for many films since - The Greatest Story Ever Told, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, City Slickers II, Mission Impossible II, Star Trek, and a number of others that we all have seen.  Johnny Depp is currently filming The Lone Ranger there and is rumored to be staying in the outskirts of Moab.

The high-end Red Cliff Lodge is fifteen miles outside Moab, and the drive to it is within another beautiful canyon, with scenery that I'm sure has been the backdrop for many movies over the years.  Downstairs at the lodge is the Museum of Film and Western Heritage, which was interesting, and we also did a tasting at the Castle Creek tasting room on the grounds. The grapes are grown in Utah and the wines were fairly good, considering.  On the way back we saw a sign that let us know that we weren't in California any more:

Bryce Canyon National Park

Our campground near Bryce Canyon National Park was at 7777 feet in elevation, half again the altitude in mile-high Denver.  In one day we had moved from a climate requiring the air conditioner all day long to one in which we ran the electric fireplace-heater all through the night.  But aside from low grade headaches, dry mouths, stuffy sinuses, and shortness of breath on exertion, we felt fine.

Bryce Canyon and Zion both have impressive sandstone formations.  But at Zion we were on the canyon floor looking up, and at Bryce we walked the rim, looking down on fantastical stone sculptural elements.  It's another of those situations where it's hard to imagine how random natural forces had resulted in such variety and beauty.  The first day there we hiked with our dogs along the edge, and made plans to descend tomorrow, just the two of us, into the depths.

The next morning Nancy wasn't feeling too well.  But she insisted that we hike down into the bowels of Bryce as planned, like the superhero she is.  And it wasn't so bad descending.  The columns and arches and weird formations were beautiful, especially standing beside them and looking up.  By the time we retraced our steps, the sun was bearing down, and it was a strenuous climb back to the top.  Overall a very cool experience.

The Visitors Center is isolated and at high altitude, and those are perfect conditions for minimal light pollution after dark.  They conduct Night Sky programs several times a week, and Nancy and I attended one.  It began with an hour's lecture about astronomy, including a description of the major constellations, the types of galaxies, and the distances involved, including a show-and-tell using volunteer children to represent the zodiac constellations.  Nancy was enthralled.

Then as darkness fell, the audience, numbering nearly one hundred, moved outside, to an area behind the Visitors Center.  Aside from a few dim red lights, there was about as much illumination as in a coffin.  The sky was truly spectacular, with more stars than I'd ever seen before.  Several park rangers and volunteer astronomers had set up powerful telescopes in that field to look at Saturn and other heavenly bodies.  So we tried to assemble into groups, one at each telescope, and form lines, but we could barely see each other.

The astronomer for the group Nancy and I joined told us that the mechanism that ordinarily tracks stars automatically on his telescope was broken, so he'd have to readjust it after each viewing, because of the Earth's motion.  He also felt that it was important to look at some of the more obscure objects, not just the important and interesting ones, so we'd be viewing a distant galaxy, if he could find one.  After a few minutes he located a sombrero galaxy, said it looked like a smudge, and hoped we would be able to identify it as we looked, one by one, through the viewfinder.

By this time Nancy and I knew that we had made a mistake and would prefer changing to a group with a working telescope and a sexier celestial object, but in the dark we weren't sure we could locate another group, and if we got separated, we might never find each other again, so we stayed where we were.  Those ahead of us took turns looking into the viewfinder, saying that they thought they saw the galaxy, after which the astronomer slowly readjusted the telescope to bring the galaxy back into view.  Nancy and I took our turns, thought we saw the smudge, and decided enough was enough.  We stumbled blindly back toward what we thought was the parking lot, found our truck, and returned safely to the campground.

We loved both parks.  Bryce Canyon had one fabulous site, a fairyland of sandstone shapes, and Zion was larger and more varied and grand.  Different strokes. 

Zion National Park

Southern Utah is an almost featureless desert, except for a number of spectacular national parks and monuments.  Zion National Park, on the western side, is one of the biggest and best.  We stayed several days at Zion Canyon Campground, which is just a few minutes from the entrance to the park, in the nice little town of Springdale.  The temperature was pleasant in the mornings and evenings but quite hot during mid-day.

Many of the main attractions of Zion are available only by shuttle.  We left the dogs in our air-conditioned motorhome, drove our pickup truck to the Visitors' Center, and climbed aboard a bus.  As we rode along, a recorded voice told us how the landscape we were seeing along Zion Canyon was formed.  Over many millions of years in the distant past, seas and lakes deposited vast quantities of sand there.  Pressure from the layers above, along with minerals from various sources of water, compressed the sand into sandstone, whose color varied according to how much iron oxide it contained.  At one point what is now called the Virgin River began flowing through the area, eroding the sandstone and creating the incredible walls and rock formations we were seeing.  We were on the canyon floor, and beautiful limestone cliffs rose to the sky, with awe-inspiring sheer walls and peaks all around us.

Nancy and I were determinded to give a better account of ourselves on this trip with respect to hiking and exercise than we did in our initial motorhome tour of the country last fall.  Our first hike was on the Emerald Pool and Grotto trails.  They were relatively easy, except for some strenuous climbing at the top, where Nancy uttered a few words of complaint.  That was embarrassing, since there were many plus size hikers and some with obvious knee and hip disabilities and one fellow with an artificial leg, and I heard nary a peep from any of them.  Maybe they were out of breath.

Back in town, we located a state liquor store (the only kind allowed in Utah) inside a gift shop.  There were a few Utah wines but they weren't highly recommended by the salesman.  He did tell us that a polygamist Morman compound is only twenty miles or so from Springdale, and that he used to visit it when he was a nurse certifying the children for the WIC program.  A little local color that you won't find outside Utah.

The next day Nancy and I hiked the lovely Riverside Walk trail, which follows the Virgin River to the point where the canyon narrows and can be accessed only by wading through the river.  We didn't do that part.  Squirrels along the trail were so accustomed to humans that they sometimes sat in the middle of the trail as people walked by, or darted in and out among the hikers.

We also explored other sections of the park, including the magnificent Kolob Canyon, on our way to Bryce Canyon National Park.

The Wilsons thoroughly enjoyed Zion and heartily recommend it.

Spring 2012 Trip to Utah and Colorado

After wintering at our hovel in Ben Lomond, Nancy and I and our two dogs prepared to begin our second major Thor Challenger motorhome trip.  We planned to visit the magnificent national parks in southern Utah and explore the beautiful scenery of Colorado.  This would be a more modest circuit than our tour of the entire country last year, and we felt that we were both more prepared than before and more capable of slowing down and smelling the roses.  Naturally, the projects we had put off to the last minute took longer than expected, and our onboard preparations didn't go as quickly as they might, so we departed on Saturday, May 5, about a week later than originally planned.

Motorhome travel allows you to commune with nature, to be as one with your environment, to channel your inner John Muir or Henry David Thoreau.  So our first important stop was Las Vegas, Nevada.

Ah, Vegas.  Where what happens, stays.  Where a giant billboard promises to deliver hot babes to you, phone 696-9696.  Where a storefront advertises "half-price lawyers".  Where real estate prices have fallen so precipitously that we drove by apartments showing pictures of rotweilers and advertising "big dogs welcome." 

When we first visited Las Vegas around forty years ago, the business of the town was almost entirely casino-based games of chance.  It was cheap to stay and eat and be entertained there, and those low prices were intended to lure gamblers.  I remember seeing Jerry Lee Lewis and Count Basie in casino lounges for the price of a couple of drinks.  There were almost no gourmet restaurants back then, but plenty of inexpensive buffets.

Times have changed.  Every celebrity chef has multiple restaurants in town, and you can eat very well in Las Vegas, but the prices are as expensive as anywhere in the country.  (We had our one dinner out at Firefly, a great small plates restaurant.)  With some exceptions, hotel accommodations aren't cheap.  Every casino has a lineup of shows, but nobody was playing during our visit who would have been a headliner during the early years - no Sinatras or Streisands or even Wayne Newtons - in fact, no high-priced star power.  There were multiple Cirque du Soleil shows and nudie reviews, and a number of second-tier musical programs, and I'm sure that many of them were entertaining, but I didn't see any shows that would draw me to travel to the strip.  So obviously the Las Vegas power players decided along the way that there was a lot of money to be made in the tourism industry, and they began charging accordingly.

The architecture is, of course, astounding.  Some is chintzy, but much is beautiful.  We walked up and down through the new Aria hotel-casino and it looked state of the art, inside and out.  Next door the even newer Cosmopolitan was extremely pedestrian in appearance, and it's difficult to understand how the investors could spend such massive capital without hiring a brilliant architect.

One thing that didn't change was that one or two days in Vegas was enough for us to be ready to move on.

Leaving Las Vegas, pulling off the freeway to fill up our motorhome with gas, a couple of liquor bottles mid-coach fell out of a cabinet, spilling a little of their precious product.  Not only that, but as we were getting ready to pull into a service station, the smoke alarm went off.  Nancy removed the batteries, but it continued screeching.  The dogs were frantic.  We searched for a second smoke alarm but couldn't find one.  Finally we noticed a blinking red light in the little carbon monoxide alarm panel near the floor.  Pressing the button gave relief for only a few seconds, then the beeping began again.  Nancy had the brilliant insight that it might be the fumes from the spilled alcohol that were triggering the alarm, and that turned out to be the case, most likely, even though the unit was supposedly designed to sound off only for the presence of carbon monoxide or propane.  Those maddening beeps went on for the twenty minutes it took to fill the gas tanks, and for some time after, with Nancy sitting on the floor by the alarm, pressing a button every time it began again.  Eventually it stopped, and since you're reading this blog, we didn't die as a result of carbon monoxide or propane poisoning.

We've concluded that a good motorhome trip doesn't really start until your first onboard disaster.  So we've gotten that out of the way.  Next stop, Zion National Park, in Utah.