Topskys Out West

Here are some of our favorite quotes from the trip: "Shush it! The poodle lives!" - Caroline "Flat, he said; paved, he said; easy, he said." - Judith and Caroline "No, nope, you took the vow of pistachios." - Caroline "Oh, look at that beau- oh, pfft, sorry it's fake." - Dad "Wait, an overlook? Does that mean I have to walk?" - Judith "I think I'm going to catch on fire." - Mom Mom: I'm sure the driving in the Rockies will be better. Dad: I'm sorry, did I just guffaw? "Wait, watch out! There's a road coming! I mean a car." - Dad "...naked butts as big as cathedrals..." - Judith, reading a quote from Major John Wesley Powell "It's buttes, not butts!" - Mom "The trail gets a little weird." - National Parks of the American West "I'm sad that I know what day it is." - Dad "The organic kale you bought and left in your car? It just tur...

12 hours of driving back to Louisville. Finished unloading just as Spinelli's delivery pulled up!

The girls were great travelers. They had a number of adventures!

Nature towered around us. Literally.  In order below: Rocky Mountain National Park, Arches National Park, and Bryce Canyon National Park.

So many times during our trip, I was amazed by the feats of engineering that people have accomplished, whether to build houses in cliffs, to put in a trail allowing us to hike up a cliff, or to build a road that took us to the top of a mountain.

The wildflowers are what I will remember most about the Rockies. The mountain meadows are full of colors - yellow, red, white, pink, purple. This morning, we hiked about 5 miles to Cub Lake and back. The rocky trail started at a beautiful mountain stream and wound through a wetland full of small ponds and pools. We saw areas recently scarred by fire; although green was already creeping back, it will be years before evidence of the fire is completely covered. Cub Lake was beautiful - a mountain lake covered with water lilies & their yellow blooms.  Thunderstorms were once again threatening when we got back to the campsite, and we had to scramble to get the tent and the rest of the gear packed. We made it just before the rain started.  These afternoon thunderstorms have been pretty regular, so we decided to head back home a bit early. We'll spend the night in Hays, Kansas, then drive the rest of the way to Louisville tomorrow.

Yesterday, we spent most of the morning driving into Rocky Mt. National Park via Trail Ridge Road. This is the highest paved road in the US, and it's only open during the summer - this year, I think it didn't open until late May. The side of the road is lined with tall poles that puzzled us until we realized they marked the edge of the road for snowplows. We took our time, stopping for a couple of short hikes and making frequent stops at turnouts to take in the amazing views of the Rockies. We passed a surprising number of cyclists on the road, and even met a cyclist from Louisville. These folks are tough. Along the way, we crossed the Continental Divide again & encountered the Colorado River for the last time - a small stream not far from its headwaters in the Kawunechee Valley. The highest point of the road is at 12,183 feet - more than 2 miles above sea level! After being in the desert it was weird to stand next to snowdrifts and feel a chill in the air. T...

Today we arrived at the Rockies. We went on a scenic drive with many twists and turns before we got to our campsite. Next to our campsite is a bear box. You have to put everything scented or edible in it. That included food, toiletries, and about almost everything else. Apparently they will break into your car if you leave stuff in there. This was a good incentive. We got the tent set up and a little later it started to rain. It got windy and apparently this is normal. It rained on and off for the whole afternoon, sometimes storming a little here and there. Overall, nothing's too bad.

We were supposed to camp tonight at the Stillwater Campground beside Lake Granby. The site was gorgeous and right on the lake; the only problem was that it was already raining and we could see sheets of rain moving in from the mountains. Even worse, the gusts of wind were turning the tent into a kite faster than we could stake it down. We decided to opt for less risky lodgings and headed back up the road to Granby, where we're now at the Trail Riders Motel (whose sign says, "If you're lucky enough to be in Grand County, you're lucky enough"). The drive today was beautiful, but took a couple of hours longer than we expected. This was mostly because of a hair-raising stretch of highway 40, which offered magnificent scenery as well as an seemingly endless series of short, sharp switchbacks both ascending and descending.  We followed the Colorado River for almost the entire drive - the last time we saw it, it was just a small stream running through green...

Things are turning green!

What a great town. It's a lot like a beach town--lots of cute shops and locally owned restaurants. We found the perfect breakfast spot, the Jailhouse Cafe. Jeff and I shared ginger pancakes with apple butter. Yum. Now on to the Rockies and cooler weather,  so we hope.

Every once in a while, we've met other tourists who offer to take a photo of the four of us together. Here's one from yesterday at Canyonlands, when we were all relieved that we were at the top of the overlook rather than on the rugged four-wheel drive road in the canyon below.

It seemed as if everywhere we looked today, we saw another arch, so I'll share one other photo.  We got to Arches National Park around 7:30 am, so the light for taking photos was just right.

Jumping back briefly to our drive to Moab yesterday. We hadn't planned to visit Capitol Reef at all, so it was a treat even to get to drive through. The drive wound past large, red sandstone rock formations - a largely arid landscape until we entered the Fremont River Valley. This river valley was the home of a Mormon settlement called Fruita that was established in the late 1880s. The park service has restored the Gifford Farmhouse as well as the tiny 1-room schoolhouse. As you drive along the river, you pass the orchards the settters planted over 120 years ago.  That green doesn't last long once you leave the park. The drive east of Capitol Reef passed through one of the most desolate landscapes I've ever seen: we drove past gray piles of earth that looked like every living thing on Earth had been burnt to ash.

Canyonlands is the most remote and inaccessible of the parks we've visited. Most of the park can only be accessed via a 4-wheel drive vehicle on rough roads, and it's a raw, forbidding, and arid landscape. A lot of the activity here seems to involve off-road driving and river rafting - you would need to be a seriously self-sufficient backpacker to hike very far in this wilderness. We spent most of the afternoon driving through the Island in the Sky, the northern portion of the park. Island is a large mesa bounded by the Green & Colorado rivers, which come together further south.  What impresses about Canyonlands is its scale as well as its wildness. From viewpoints on the top of the mesa, you can look down 1,200 feet to the sandstone layer of the White Rim; the rivers have carved canyons another 1,000 feet deep below that. The air here is pristine; from the mesa, you can see almost 100 miles to the horizon.   Even the limited walking we did...

This afternoon we traveled to Canyonlands National Park. We went to many overlooks and saw many beautiful sights. At one overlook we saw a road with such steep turns you had to back up to turn. Fortunately, we did not have to drive on it. At another one we saw the Green River. In the middle of the park the Green River and the Colorado River meet, one brown and the other green. Above is a picture of the Green River in the middle of a flat plain.

We had a great morning hiking at Arches. The plan was to be out early and back to our room by lunchtime, which allowed us to hike before the worst of the afternoon heat. The drive into the park winds through a jaw-dropping series of red sandstone formations, huge slabs of rock like tables tilted on their sides. These are accompanied by monoliths that jut out of the earth like fingers and hoodoos that look like boulders stacked on top of each other.  We decided to hike in the Windows section, which has the park's highest concentration of arches. This was a fantastic hike that took us by Turret Arch and the North and South Windows. Our final destination (above) was Double Arch, where twin arches soar far overhead. Once again, I'm struck by the scale of all this - not only the arches themselves, but the vast landscape they inhabit. Looking at all this, you can't help but feel very small.  On our way back, the trail passed through a sandy...

Ah, world, sometimes you are so good to me. Ever since the Grand Canyon have I been promised wild cows, and ever since them I have been denied them. But yesterday, while driving here to Moab, I hear the glorious shout of: COOOOOWSSS!" In the forest! Wild! : )

This morning, we decided to avoid the highway and take the longer and (so we heard) more scenic route along Highway 12 to Moab. This turned out to be a great decision - today's drive was long but took us through a wide variety of incredible landscapes. Shortly after leaving Bryce, the road took us into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monent, a 1.9 million acre preserve that is one the largest and most pristine wilderness areas in the US. The road here really has to be seen to be believed: winding in short, sharp turns along breathtaking views of the gigantic, rounded boulders that dominate the landscape. A breathtaking but sometimes nerve-wracking drive.  Then it all changed. After leaving the National Monument, we entered the Dixie National Forest and began to climb, eventually reaching the summit at 9,800 feet. Within minutes of driving through the town of Boulder (no, not that one), we had left the rocky landscape behind and were driving through a pine and birch forest so...

Amazing hike down into the Bryce amphitheater this morning. The Navajo Loop Trail winds down into the canyon, so you're often walking at the foot of the hoodoos that tower overhead. The hoodoos are tall, thin spires of rock that have been carved by wind and water into fantastic shapes. The Paiute used to tell a story that the hoodoos were bad people that Coyote turned into stone, and it's easy to see the figures of people and other things (including poodles and reclining cats) in the stone shapes What makes Bryce so amazing are the vivid colors in the rock - softer and more delicate than at Zion. When the light is right, the rocks glow with pink, orange, red, and white. The trail ends with a narrow passage between the sheer cliffs of Wall Street - a location that Caroline especially wanted to see. Below, the kids stand by the twin pines that mark the entrance of the passage. This is an amazing and special place that almost seems too wondrous to be r...

Soooooo... let me tell you a story.... So I'm in the Zion Lodge parking lot, minding my own business, when I hear, from a shuttle window: "Caaaaaroooliiine Toooophaaaammmm!" So I'm thinking, "What? What the heck?" when who should step off the shuttle but the Pollitts! Turns out they were in Zion at the same time! : )

Others in our family will surely want to post about the hoodoos in Bryce Canyon, so I'll title this Part 1.  The hoodoos are rock formations formed by wind and water and Bryce is filled with them. Here's a shot from our first night at Bryce of one hoodoo named Thor's hammer. 

Just checked into the Big Horn Lodge in Moab. We're here 2 nights before heading into the Rockies. We had originally planned to stay 3 nights, but  it's been HOT here for weeks, so afternoon activities outside will be pretty limited. Luckily, there's a pool.

Here are a few of the troubling places we've passed so far today: Hell's Backbone State Park Box-Death Hollow Wilderness Dirty Devil River Goblin Valley State Park Dead Horse Point State Park

The best kind.