In the Belly of the Sequoia

 

One of my most mystical experiences so far? Sitting in the belly of a giant Sequoia tree the size of a small hut, meditating amid the deep, hushed silence of the old Giant Forest at Sequoia National Park. It was so quiet and still. I tried to record the sound for you, but there was, literally, nothing to capture. 

The famous General Sherman tree 

We saw several famous trees, most notably the General Sherman tree. While it's not the oldest Sequoia (which is estimated to be 3,200 years old), it is the largest tree by volume - and still growing. Behind the Sherman Tree are the General Grant, President, Lincoln, and Stagg trees. All named after men of course, though the tree itself is "monoecious" (a word I just learned, thanks Google), meaning each tree produces both male and female pinecones. So not as crazy as snakes in captivity impregnating themselves, but still pretty mind-boggling.

 

Belly of a sequoia - perfect spot to just breathe

Hard to capture their size, but these trees are, like, Trump-massive

So peaceful...

What most wowed me about these trees is how resilient they are. Everywhere, there were signs of fires, recent and not-so-recent. One 2,200 year old tree that had been cut down in the 1950s (and whose cross-section of a trunk was on display like someone's posthumous X-ray) had survived no less than 80 fires. And it would have likely still been alive today had someone not chopped it down because it was leaning too close to a park cabin. (Note: The park states that such a heinous act is not likely to happen again.)

Looking up inside the fire-ravaged Sequoia

Deer. They were everywhere and so cute.

Cool. But coming up to noon, the Giant Forest trail was getting packed and the silence was eroding quickly from screaming and skittering children. So we headed to a nearby trail called the Moro Trail. Technically, you can drive there, but the road was closed so we hiked our way in and climbed nearby Hanging Rock.

Hanging Rock. It really does look like it's "just hanging on" and the tiniest shove would send it over the ledge.

Looking into the valley from Hanging Rock.

We descended from Hanging Rock to find out that the park had opened the road. Now a hoard of cybertrucks (I see them everywhere now) and other packed vehicles disgorged multitudes young, old and in between, all eager to climb the famous Moro Rock.

Moro Rock from Hanging Rock

We joined the crowds and climbed the 350 stairs to the top. The view - Sierra Nevada peaks to the East, San Joaquin Valley to the West - is breath taking (literally for some). What impressed me most, though, was the work the park corps put into building the steps all the way to the top, right in the natural crevices of the rock face. The original stairs from early in the century had been wood, and decayed relatively rapidly, so had to be replaced by stone.

The climb was seamless and aesthetically pleasing at the same time. The stairs were a tight squeeze, yes, what with people going both up and down, but they had a landing halfway up for those afraid of heights or dizzy from altitude, and nearly everyone who tried was pretty much able to tackle it - even the elderly gentleman sporting an oxygen tube in his nose. Now that's engineering.

The Moro stairs.

At the top of Moro Rock looking West into the San Joaquin Valley.

Seeing the sequoias and the Sierra Nevada views did generate the awe the park pundits promise visitors. Ivan and I certainly gained some perspective on our own short lives, their success and tragedies both big and small. But my favourite day in Sequoia? Day 2, at the park's Lake Trail. 

Talk about perspective.

Looking out on Pear Lake at the peak

Four hours of steep climbing, gaining over 3,000 feet. Very few souls encountered, human or other. The sweet sound of babbling brooks of glacial melt underfoot. The terrifying "thock, thock thock" of a boulder falling from a peak somewhere overhead that stops us in our tracks, worried more might follow. (Fortunately, none do.) Hot sun melting the snow underfoot, ice still hiding dangerously in the shady cracks. Lakes so clear you can see the tiny fish swimming around the sunken trunks. Everywhere, the smell of pine and melt and sun. 

Can't escape the snow, even in California

Heather Lake

Lakes was my kind of trail. Like a good mentor, it was tough but rewarding, and I wanted to stay there forever, but the van was calling. (Note: if you ever go, you can stay overnight; they even have a washroom at two of the lakes. Really, the amenities in these American parks blow me away.)  To round out the whole experience, I fell asleep that night to the distinctive hoo-HOO-hoo-hoo of the Great Horned Owl. Heaven.

But our luck and time had run out. Our last morning we awoke to rain, a dying van battery and a maybe-scorpion in the women's washroom. Westwards and onwards. Only two days to the Pacific, and our much anticipated view (finally!) of the ocean.

Rose-Gold Canyons and Dive Bar Dramas

The American west is ... big. Very big. And there is a whole lot of amazing between a whole lot of nothing, as we noticed driving away from the Arches. Not like Canadian prairie nothing, but close to it. I have to give it to Americans,  though, there is a lot of free camping available if you can manage the roads and navigate the four-wheelers.

Driving down the dirt "Main Street" towards our dispersed camping site

First stop outside of the Arches, we got ourselves a dispersed camping site in Gooseberry Mesa, managed by the Bureau of Land Management. It rained briefly, though most of the weather passed us by, leaving rainbows and beautiful sunsets.

Full rainbow from the back of the van after the rain

Doing cactus by a cactus!

Our camp on Gooseberry Mesa

Sunset view

 Next day we headed to Zion national park, and if we thought the Arches were busy we did not know American-park-busy until Zion. With no fees, and no timed permits required owing to the government shut down, the park and rides were full before 9 am. We and the other "late risers" had to shuttle in to town to jostle up and down the steep switchbacks among hordes of hundreds.

But we lost the crowd after Scout Lookout and snuck off onto a ledge where we were practically alone. There, a massive condor flew just 100 m across from us, at eye level. So close, we could hear him fly towards us. Ivan likened to the sound the ocean makes, dragging sand out to sea after the waves crash. 

The climb up: switchback after switchback

The condor, flying away

The view across the canyons

View from near the top

At the top!

Next day we decided we'd do a route called the Narrows, which is basically wading through glacial streams up a narrow canyon bed. We rented sci-fi dry suits and boots, were handed a Gandalf-thick walking stick and sent with the multitude into the canyon.

I have to admit, the beginning was not fun. Clad as we were in uniform grey rentals, marching rank and file along the river into the canyon, it was like we were part of a thousands-strong Welsh miner's strike, rather than the intrepid explorers we (all thousands of us) imagined ourselves to be.

Wading upstream

But once we hit the canyon, it was magical. The light was rose-gold. Everyone looked dusted pink. And the way the light hit the walls, it was like they were made of pure gold, streaming with molten silver water. The light shot laser beams through what cracks it could find, and the stream gurgled melodically.

Pink and rosy glow!

Ivan trying to capture the magic, but I'm eating

Still eating...

 and STILL eating...

So Ivan just gave up and took a photo for you guys

Sharing a well deserved beer at the Zion pub

Goodbye Zion, hello Nevada! From on high, to on low - in many ways of speaking. We made our way to the much anticipated Death Valley, the lowest point in North America, only to discover that the roads were closed and the main roads were shut down owing to major flood damage - which was not what I was expecting in the Mojave desert. 

So instead, we took in the lauded attractions that we discovered in a pamphlet: the ghost town of Rhyolite and the nearby (literally next door) Instagram-famous Goldwell museum. 

Let's start with the ghost town, Rhyolite. The town literally blew up at one point, having three trains servicing the area, a full school and three banks, only to practically disappear two years after its peak. Usually, in famous ghost towns, there are roads and remnants of buildings side-by-side, carefully preserved. But this is the desert, and wood and other building materials are scarce. So much of the town's buildings were scavenged or picked up and moved elsewhere. Only the station and a few other buildings remain.

Abandoned building

Abandoned chimney near a fenced-off mine shaft

Faded "Closed" sign on the station wall

Just down the road from Rhyolite is the Goldwell museum, an outdoor art project created by Belgian artists. Seven huge art installations perch on the hill in the middle of nowhere, and an obscure memorial plaque to "Rhyolite's District of Shadows", a fictional alternative version of the actual town. Check out the link. I still don't quite understand what it means - if you do, please let me know. 

Below are some of the other installations. I will let them speak for themselves.

Best part of the trip? Driving by the "crazy" steampunk, yet-to-open Exchange Club in "the middle of nowhere" (read Beatty). I so want to go there when it is open!

Historic Exchange Club in Beatty

In keeping with enjoying only the best Death Valley has to offer, we stayed the night at the Harvest Host's self-described dive bar, the Hubb Bar and Grill. It was literally the last stop before Death Valley. 

The bar was full of locals and the occasional stranger. One couple came in with the woman dressed as an alien in a silver jumpsuit, silver wig and flashing antennae, and her partner dressed as a masked, curly mustached man with a cape. (We were very close to Area 51.)

The bar filled the room and at every seat was a gambling station, though I never saw anyone play. Spots at the bar were few. Drinking, it appeared, started around 5. We got great food, though the waitress (with some hesitancy) told me that the chef had put "the purple stuff" in my coleslaw, after hearing how much I loved coleslaw. She waited for me to taste it to make sure I didn't want to exchange it for the macaroni salad - she did not seem a fan of purpose cabbage, though I loved it.

We watched a live band, the BipolarXpress, who took requests from Patsy Cline to Ozzy Ozborne. Altogether, and some pretty fun people-watching, followed by a remarkably quiet star-filled night by the horseshoe pits.

Inside the Hubb at 5 pm - already full at arrival

Band, the BipolarXpress

We're now in Sequoia (will save that for the next post) and can report that we are finally getting a bit warmer... Mexico is getting closer. Have a great night!

The Arches

 

As we left the Rocky Mountains to drive towards the Arches National Park in Utah, our plan was to go through the mountains via the tunnels, saving an hour's driving time. But a car caught on fire in the tunnel, the result of a car and semi-trailer collision. And so, as the old children's "Going on a Lion Hunt" song goes: if you can't go through it, you have to go over it.

All  traffic was as diverted over the Loveland Pass ("the highest mountain pass in the country that stays open through winter" as featured in dangerous roads). As we inched our way through the snow and sleet, it made me realize that I won't be home for ski season, and I was suddenly sad. So we cranked the John Denver Aspenglow, crawling behind the trucks chugging up, up, up, and then - finally - down, down, down the continental divide. 

Sign marking the continental divide

Seemingly suddenly, we went from this . . 

Goodbye Colorado

To this...

Hello Utah

The sun started shining, and the awesome, overwhelming vistas of endless, undulating desert and rock outcrops starting rolling by. We had arrived in Utah, "life elevated".

We'd hoped to boondock at a dispersed camping, but Canadian Thanksgiving Monday fell on Columbus Day, which turns out to be a popular camping weekend here, so we stayed at a local campground backing onto miles of desert trails. The site offered free showers and laundry - two things that were becoming pretty necessary anyway.

Given the holiday (and a very dark sky threatening thundershowers) we skipped the national park and instead hiked the Navajo Rocks, a famous mountain bike area. Barring a convoy of jeeps and a few clusters of bikers, Ivan and I pretty much had it to ourselves. We were able to make our own adventure, scrambling up the rocks and making our way through a hidden valley deep between towering hoodoos.

At the Navajo Rocks

Ivan on top of the rocks

In celebration of Thanksgiving, lacking turkey, we ate beef stew with juniper berries that Ivan had picked from the Rocky Mountains. Our first "foraged" meal, you might say. 

Thanksgiving Dinner

Then again, you might say most of our meals are foraged these days. Finding produce has been tough. I'm stunned at how expensive and tough it is to buy basic groceries on the road - and amazed that you can't find a decent cream, but you can choose from 18+ styles of bottled BBQ sauce that occupy a whole aisle floor to top shelf. 

One morning, I have to confess: we had a hot dog for breakfast. There was nothing else resembling food that cost less than $12 US. Even the chopped onion for the hot dog came out of a squeeze bag. 

I do not recommend. 

The experience gives me a whole new understanding of a "food desert", and how hard it must be for many people to feed their family affordably in some areas. 

Our one great discovery so far? Meat in a can. Only three ingredients: meat, salt and pepper. Does not look pretty but turned out pretty delicious in the stew above. Looking forward to opening our can o' chicken pieces...

Can o' Meat

Moving on - reluctantly - from my favourite topic of food. 

Tuesday, when the non-retired returned to work, we tackled the famous Devil's Garden Trail at the Arches national park. It was raining, which was a blessing, since I don't like crowds, but also nerve-wracking, since I don't much like skirting foot-wide wet ledges falling precipitously on each side either. 

Hiking a wet ridge

Fortunately, though they call it "slick rock", the sandstone was fairly sticky. More like walking on wet sandpaper. But I sure wouldn't do it without good footwear. 

While most of our trek was spent in drizzle, the sun did peak out every once in a while. And when it did, it was like the heavens were opening. Glorious.

The sun streaming over the arches

Ditto

The trail had us scrambling up mountains and sliding down cliffs on our butts. Ivan had to catch me at the end of one slide, like you do with kids. He also had to talk down a panicking, shaking stranger across one of the steepest inclines, and help another down a steep rock slide with his pole. We had to ford a stream near then end. The water reached past my knees, and I crossed the creamsicle-coloured stream barefoot with my boots slung over my shoulder while Korean tourists wearing new sneakers and clutching umbrellas gave me the thumbs-up. 

Ivan on the Double O Arch

Juniper Trees

Dark Angel

Even though it was raining, the arches were spectacular. Here's just a few of them...

View through an arch

Double O Arch

Sideview of the Double O arch

Though All Trails didn't given a time estimate for this trail, it took us a total of 8 hours - and we barely stopped for lunch. Though ranked hard (for reasons noted above), I highly recommend the trail for anyone in OK shape, so long as you put your big-girl or big-boy boots on.

We've since left the Arches and made our way towards Zion. I hear fall is settling in back home. If it makes anyone feel better, even though these photos look like they come from a warm place, the temperature where we slept last night was the exact same as what you experienced in Ottawa. But we do hope eventually to hit more seasonal temperatures as we continue westward, and southward.

Have a great night!