Southwest Road Trip: Cedar Breaks National Monument

 As we headed through the mountains to our next destination, dark clouds started gathering. We arrived at Point Supreme Campground in Cedar Breaks National Monument and knew we would have only moments to set up some shelter before the downpour. It's a big tent with a lot of complicated parts -- it usually takes us about an hour or so to get it all set up. This time, running at full speed we managed to get it completely set up in less than 30 minutes -- a new record!

Which was a really good thing, since we had only a minute or two to spare. As soon as we were inside, it started pouring and didn't stop for about two hours! Luckily I'd grabbed our bags with our e-readers so we could at least do some reading while we waited for the rain to subside.

Once the skies cleared, we did a little bit of exploring by car to see the views into the amphitheater. Cedar Breaks is near the top of the "Grand Staircase" -- exposed layers of rock that begin at the base of the Grand Canyon, up through the formations of Zion National Park, and ending up at about the same elevation as those at Bryce Canyon. It really does look like a smaller (and less crowded!) version of Bryce Canyon because both parks are part of the Claron rock formation. The rocks are a similar orange-red, and the same weathered "hoodoo" formations can be seen at both parks.

We just happened to arrive at Cedar Breaks for their Wildflower week -- it seemed like the entire park was in bloom with a huge variety of wildflowers. We made sure to go on a ranger-guided wildflower walk so that we could learn all the names of the flowers we were seeing everywhere.

Which I promptly forgot, of course! I did look this one up -- it looks like a Variable Checkerspot butterfly pollinating some kind of yellow Cinquefoil flower.

There were so many flowers that even our ranger was stumped for the names of some of them. The only one I still remember without looking it up is the Colorado Columbine. On other hikes we saw lots of white ones and even a few lavender-blue ones.

We did two long-ish hikes while we were in the park. the first one was the Alpine Pond loop trail. While it didn't have many views of the canyons or ridges, there were tons of trees and wildflowers to look at. And as its moniker would suggest, it did lead to an alpine pond.

On our second full day in the park, we did the more strenuous South Rim Trail to Ramparts Point. From this hike we had spectacular views of the entire amphitheater. It was truly breathtaking and one of my favorite hikes.

One other unique feature of the Ramparts hike was walking through the ancient Bristlecone Pines at Spectra Point.

Bristlecone Pines are some of the oldest living things on Earth -- some of the trees here are over 1500 years old. They thrive in the most extreme conditions where other trees can't grow -- windy, arid areas with poor soil.

Cedar Breaks is definitely one of the hidden gems of our National Parks system. It gets less tourism attention than the larger parks in this part of Utah (Bryce Canyon, Zion) but it was well worth a visit and we really enjoyed our time here.

Southwest Road Trip: Capitol Reef National Park

From the Grand Canyon we drove north to Capitol Reef National Park, one of our very favorite parks. We've visited before, but this was our first time staying at the Fruita campground within the park. We had one of the nicest spots in the campground, right next to an enormous shade tree. The Fremont river is just on the other side of the tree.

Visible from the campground is the Gifford Homestead. During the 1880's this area alongside the Fremont river was settled by Mormons who worked the land and planted fruit orchards (hence the name of the town/campground). The park service has preserved both the homestead and a nearby one-room schoolhouse as a living history museum.

The park service also cares for the 2500 fruit trees in the orchards along the river. Inside the Gifford farmhouse, they sell fresh fruit pies and other baked goods. The best kind of souvenir, in my opinion!

We hiked part of the Cohab Canyon trail and were able to get a good perspective on the fruit orchards. The lush landscape along the river is a drastic contrast to the arid desert land on either side of the river valley. You can see why the Mormons would choose to settle here.

Of course the Mormons weren't the first human inhabitants of this area. From about 600-1300 A.D., Fremont tribes and Ancestral Puebloan people lived here. They lived in pit houses and left many artefacts of archaeological significance, including some amazing petroglyphs.

Humans aren't the only residents in the park. Some of our campground guests included wild turkeys and a small herd of deer.

The last time we were here we only had limited time for hiking. But for this trip we were excited to be able to explore a bit more. One of the first hikes we did in the park was to Cassidy Arch.

Cassidy Arch is named for Butch Cassidy, the famous outlaw who grew up in this part of Utah. His boyhood home is not far from the park. The area near Cassidy Arch trail would be the perfect place for outlaws to hide out from the law -- lots of twisting canyons and interesting rock formations.

The Cassidy Arch trail is one of the most popular hikes in the park. But because of an extra-early start, we only encountered two other hikers while we were on the way up (they were on their way down, so they must've had an extra-extra-early start!).  By the time we got to the trail summit we had the whole arch to ourselves.

Coming down, we encountered many more hikers. It was still pretty early in the day, so we decided to hike partway into the nearby Grand Wash as well. There were many narrow slot canyon passages.

Once we got back to the parking area, we could see gray clouds and lightning on the horizon. We did not want to be in the narrow canyon during a storm so we got back in the car and headed back to the campground. This was June 23rd. There was a rainstorm in the afternoon and a flash flood did come through the areas of Grand Wash (where we had been hiking) and Capitol Gorge, stranding hikers and destroying vehicles. Luckily no one was hurt. We spent most of that rainy afternoon safe and dry in the tent, but after the rain stopped we could hear the rescue helicopters working late into the evening bringing people out of the wash to safety. For the rest of our three-day visit, most of the popular hiking trails were closed for safety reasons due to the storm damage. We did manage to hike part of the Cohab Canyon trail to the Fruita viewpoint (as I mentioned above) and we also hiked to Hickman Bridge. The Hickman trail was a lot more crowded, probably because it was one of the only open trails in the park. We loved our time at this park and I am sure we will return again in the future.

After a week of traveling, we stopped in the nearby town of Torrey to do a quick load of laundry. Then we headed up the road to Teasdale where we had splurged on a one-night stay at the Red River Lodge.

What a place! It's a huge working ranch, over 2000 acres, and the lodge is luxuriously furnished.

There are 15 guestrooms, and we loved the vintage theme of our room on the third floor. It felt like we were living in a movie set.

This was a wonderful place to hang out and relax. We spent the afternoon lounging outside watching the sun move over the red cliffs nearby. And Kevin made a friend. We hope to stay here again next time we head to Capitol Reef.

Southwest Road Trip: Grand Canyon National Park

 On a sweltering Saturday in June, we loaded up our car (and I really mean loaded -- our 4-door sedan was literally packed to capacity with camping gear) and headed out on a multi-week trip to some of the least-crowded National Parks in the southwest. At least that was the original plan. However, a wildfire on route 89 near Flagstaff forced us to change our route a little and kick off our trip at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon -- usually one of the most popular and busy National Park sites. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that although there were crowds, it was nowhere near as crowded as we'd expected for the middle of summer.

As mentioned, we'd originally planned to drive straight to the North Rim but the Pipeline and Haywire fires forced us to take an alternate and longer route. So we were lucky to be able to reserve a room  for one night at the Kachina Lodge, right in the heart of the Grand Canyon Village. We couldn't do any hiking because we'd arrived too late in the day, but we did have a nice dinner on the El Tovar patio and a pleasant walk along the South Rim to enjoy the spectacular views.

The next morning, after a very scenic drive through the Vermillion Cliffs area, we finally arrived at the North Rim. It was much less crowded, and we had no problem finding some lounge chairs on the terrace at the lodge.

We discovered that dining options were much much more limited on this side of the canyon! We stayed in one of the cabins near the lodge and quickly realized that the lodge had only a small deli and the main dining room for dinner options. There was a mini-mart over at the campground, but our cabin did not have a refrigerator or microwave for cooking anything. I had only made one dinner reservation in advance for the lodge dining room, and we were informed that it was pretty booked up for the other two nights. Luckily we were able to charm the host into giving us two other reservations (one very early around 4:30, one very late at 9pm). The food was just so-so for the price, but it was pretty much the only game in town. We did love the views from inside the lodge -- the picture windows in the lounge next to the dining room had expansive views of the canyon.

For our first morning, our number one priority was to get up early and hike a bit of the Kaibab Trail down into the canyon. We knew the trailhead parking lot would fill up so we got an early start around 7am. An added benefit was that the weather was still somewhat cool for the first part of the hike down. We took a brief break at the fantastic Coconino overlook.

We decided to hike down about two miles and turn around once we reached the Supai tunnel. Kevin is in great shape but I am not quite as fit and I wanted to make sure I had enough energy to hike back up!

It is always so much easier hiking down than up, right? Coming back the trail was steep and relentlessly uphill. While we were at the Supai tunnel, we crossed paths with one of the mule trains. As we hiked back upward and the day started getting hotter, I felt a small twinge of jealousy that those tourists got the same views we did with a fraction of the effort!

Over our three day visit, we did a few other less strenuous hikes including Transept Trail (beautiful and uncrowded) and the dizzying walk to Bright Angel Point (not for the faint of heart!). We also took the scenic drive to Cape Royal. It was such a gorgeous drive that we did it more than once! One of our favorite spots was the lookout near Point Imperial. We brought a lunch, our chairs, and our books and just sat for a few hours reading and admiring the view.

There is nothing like the Grand Canyon at sunset. This is dusk at the Angel's Window formation near Cape Royal.

From the Cape Royal viewpoint, we enjoyed watching the Wotan's Throne rock formation change color as the sun slowly set. So beautiful! This was my first time to the North Rim and I enjoyed every moment; hopefully we will be lucky enough to come back up here again someday!

Midwest Road Trip leg 2: Ohio to AZ

 After spending a week visiting family in the Chicago area, we headed over to Ohio to visit our friends who had just moved to the area.

They took us to the Gervasi Vineyards and Winery. Vineyards...in Ohio? Yep, who knew?! We sampled the wines, which exceeded our expectations, and took advantage of the beautiful weather to stroll the grounds.

Our friends live near Chagrin Falls, which is a charming small town with a very cool main street area.

We enjoyed our visit together and loved walking around town and seeing the namesake waterfall.

We decided not to retrace our steps so we took a different route on the way back West, which took us through Omaha, Nebraska. We didn't have a lot of time in town, just long enough to eat dinner, visit one of the largest candy shops we've ever seen, and "meet" one of the town's most famous residents -- Warren Buffet.

We then moved on and had one night in Boulder, Colorado and made the most of it. I had never been to Boulder before but I loved the pedestrian-friendly Pearl Street. The weather was perfect for dining on the terrace.

We chose the restaurant based on the name, obviously. We didn't even bother to look at the Yelp reviews -- how could we go anywhere else?

As it turned out, the restaurant building used to be the local undertakers. We didn't find this out until after dinner. I would still recommend Salt -- dinner was delicious.

On short notice, we managed to get an admission time slot to Rocky Mountain National Park while we were in the Boulder area.

We didn't have much time at the park, but we managed to do the scenic Trail Ridge Road drive, which took us up above the treeline into the tundra.

We enjoyed seeing some of the local wildlife, too, like this adorable little marmot.

After the park, we had a wonderful visit with some friends who we met when we were living aboard "Solstice". Like us, they are landlubbers now, with a beautiful ranch in some of the prettiest mountain country we've ever seen.

And, a bonus for me -- horses!

Our last night on the road was spent in the historic town of Silverton, Colorado.

The most popular thing to do in Silverton is to ride the famous Durango & Silverton narrow gauge train. Unfortunately we just didn't have time for a train ride on this visit. But we did stop by the museum so that I could pretend to ride the train at least.

We made time on the drive back to Phoenix to stop at the Mesa Verde National Park. Within the park are many well-preserved ancient Puebloan sites. The area has been inhabited since 7500 BC. The earliest dwellings were pit houses dug into the ground.

But the park is probably best known for the cliff dwellings built in the 12th century. I would have liked to tour inside one of the cliff dwellings but several were closed for restoration and in the end we just didn't have the time. It was time to get home to Phoenix for a brief rest before our next road trip!