July 26, Day 41: Le Verken UT to Oceanside, CA

Neither of us slept particularly well; we were ready to go home. We popped out of bed at about 6;30 and began our packing process. Although we originally thought we might leave about eight, instead we were pulling out of the driveway at 7:15. Our gracious host, Valerie, came and waved us away into the morning from her driveway. This is been a great stay, and now we were ready to be home.

A beautiful highlight in the beginning of the drive was the Virgin River Gorge. This was in the extreme north west corner of Arizona. Here the highway cuts through an amazing gorge. The Virgin River is the same one that cut the Zion Canyon, that we had seen several times the day before. This is one of Dick’s favorite drives and we enjoyed the beautiful colors and interesting towering rock formations.

The two hours to Las Vegas went quickly, as we ate our sack breakfast. We were a little nervous as we went through Vegas at 8:30 that we might hit some rush-hour traffic, but traffic was just fine and we went through without incident.

However, not too far outside of Las Vegas, as we approach the California border, ominous dark clouds appeared on the horizon. As we continue to drive towards them we could see these were storm clouds filled with rain. As we reached the town of Primm,  traffic suddenly slowed down nearly to a stop and the rain begin to fall, almost as a wall of water. We both reflected that we had never driven this stretch of highway between Vegas and home when there was any rain falling, let alone hard rain with scary dark clouds. The driving took a lot of focus from Dick as his ability to control the car was at times difficult and sometimes we were even hydroplaning on the highway.

We drove for nearly 2 hours in the rain… Most unusual in the areas where we live in Southern California.

You might ask, what ever happened with that license plate game you all were playing? We are now down to only two states that we hadn’t seen the plates for: Hawaii and New Hampshire. Looks like this time we’re going have to go with having found the license plates for 48 states, and due to the border closing with Canada, no Canadian provinces.

Shortly after 1:00pm, driving through fog, but no more rain, we left highway interstate 15 for the final time of this trip. It was a wonderful trip with the opportunity to see a lot of family, friends, national parks, other interesting sites. And, we can both feel deep in our hearts, it’s great to come home. So we pulled  car into its parking spot outside our house in Oceanside, California. Hey it’s good to be back home again even if some of the plants had turned the yard into a jungle. Some plants really grow when you leave them for six weeks and still keep them watered. After unloading we will have to tame the yard.

July 25, Day 40: Zion National Park

We got up and enjoyed a delicious hot breakfast made for us by our host, Valerie. Our goal for today was to enjoy as much of the beauty of Zion National Park as we could while avoiding the record-breaking crowds at the most popular places in the park. Our understanding is on a typical summer day more than 20,000 people are squeezed into 8 miles of the park, the main canyon. That just didn’t sound fun to us.

So, we took local counsel and spent the morning on a beautiful very much uncrowded drive up a road called Kolob Terrace. This well-maintained road took us in and out of Zion National Park, but in a very lightly-traveled area. There were many trail heads off this road back into the park, and about 16 miles up the road we decided to check one out. This was a trail head going into Wildcat Canyon. Our first thought was we would maybe go 20 minutes down the trail, but it was delightful and we had to continue. We walked about an hour and a half off from the trail head and experienced some of the best wildflowers we had seen in years. A highlight was when we watch a California Condor circling out of the canyon before us.  Wow! That is a huge bird.

In large meadows we often saw carpets of flowers in yellows and whites and pinks and blues. There is also a lot of Indian paintbrush with its orange color. And also lots of sage brush and then many beautiful trees including large Ponderosa Pines. We walked and walked and occasionally met another individual or small group also having a wonderful morning. We all felt congratulatory of ourselves and each other at finding this off the beaten path way to enjoy Zion away from the crowds.

When we reached the end of the trail, at a couple of places we got fabulous glimpses of the red rocks and sand stone formations and mountains so common in this area. We also saw pinks and reds and whites in limestone and other beautiful large rock foundations and walls. Such beautiful views. The temperature was in the mid 80s and very pleasant. We so enjoyed walking and walking and finally turned around, eventually getting ourselves back to our car having walked 4 miles on a beautiful trail.

By this time we were hungry and headed to little further up the road to a trail known as Lava Point. This had also a wonderful overlook  and a great picnic area where we dug into our cooler and had a feast sitting in the shade at a picnic table overlooking the park. Beautiful beautiful beautiful.

Time to head down the hill and we decided although we wanted to mostly avoid the crowds, we would make a short trip through the main park, still avoiding the highly crowded areas where one needed to travel only by shuttle bus.

We waited only a few minutes to go through the main gate and then joined the cars who were driving across the park and up through the 1 mile tunnel through the mountain. This was a great example of engineering expertise, completed in 1930. Going through the dark of the tunnel was interesting, well broken up periodically by windows that allowed us to have a view into the canyon. On our way back through, we cheated a bit and stopped  to take a couple of photos through those windows. Boy, those people who made these roads and tunnels through these mountains did some astounding work!

Our goal was a walking trail called Canyon Overlook which was quite short, only about a mile round-trip, but built along the walls of a canyon. It had a long series of stairs and rails and walkways to help us gain quite a bit of elevation where we could reach the top overlook and see far into the main canyon and gorges. Patti felt a little anxiety at times of how high we were and how precarious she felt in some of the areas. But it was quite safe. At the top, we celebrated with others who had worked and came up to enjoy the beautiful view. We were above the large arch that we had seen as we approached the tunnel. Of course we had to engage in getting our pictures taken and helping others record these moments above the beautiful canyon.

We trudged back to the car with our eye on the sky. Our cell phones were buzzing with emergency flash flood warnings. During the latter part of our hike we had watched the clouds build to the north and now they were looking very ominous.  Such a threatening storm is not something we are used to seeing with living in San Diego County, where we get only 10 inches of rain or less per year. We felt like we were in a bit of a race against the storm to get out of the park and back down to our Airbnb home.

We watch the storm roll in with increasingly black clouds behind us as we made it back to La Verkin. We made a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up some food for dinner that evening and reached the Airbnb home just as it was beginning to sprinkle. With our hosts, we watched the storm come in. Their house was far enough outside the park and the mountain area that we only got a little bit of rain. But we could see there was a lot of rain happening in the mountains to the north and west of us.

We did a collaborative dinner with our hosts, Valerie and Paul, and spent some time chatting with them into the evening.

Our thoughts said already begun to focus on our trip home tomorrow, and we opted to have Valerie pack us a sack breakfast that we could have ready for the morning. We did some packing and headed off to bed knowing this was our last night away on the trip. It had been a very good trip, and now we were ready to go home.

July 24, Day 39: Tremonton, Utah to La Verkin, Utah

Because we unexpectedly drove 200 miles last evening, we had a more reasonable drive headed down I-15 towards Zion National Park. We checked out of our hotel, had a nice breakfast at Denny’s and then were off.

We got through Salt Lake City and through many of the other larger and smaller cities and towns along I-15. We made the whole drive with the Wasatch Mountains on the left. As we reached the southern part of our travels we could see dark storm clouds over the mountains. It was easy to see that there was serious rain already falling.

We made very good time, and so arrived being able to stop at a much lesser known part of Zion National Park: Kolob Canyons. This is an area that we had driven by many times as we had traveled Interstate 15 and always thought “someday, we should stop and check that out.“ So, today was the day. We stopped in and had a nice chat with the volunteer who was giving information at the visitor center. We had hoped we might get an a small hike, but the volunteer agreed that the storm was blowing in, and we would be best off to more do the scenic drive up the mountain.

It was a scenic drive indeed, with very beautiful rock formations, some classic Utah red sandstone, And beautiful pull outs where we could get out and admire the lovely views.

As we got to the top overlook area, we could see the storm clouds really rolling in from the north. We had a chance to chat with a couple local people who gave us a great recommendation of another area to hike the next day. As we were watching, we could see the rains moving over the cliffs across the canyon and the lightning and hear the thunder. We decided to pop into our car just as the rain started really coming down. We watched it for a while, enjoying the thunderstorm. In San Diego, we have all too few opportunities to experience a good rain. And almost never a thunderstorm. We drove carefully down the mountain and out of this area hoping to return again someday to go on the lovely hikes available there.

We had gotten away from the rain and drove another half hour or so to our Airbnb home for a couple of nights in La Verkin, just outside of the main Zion National Park entrance. There, we met our hosts, Valerie and Paul, who have been Airbnb hosts for a couple of years and really enjoy sharing their home. They told us they treated their guest like family, and they really did. Over the next two days we would have an opportunity to chat with them and especially hear some of Paul’s stories and experiences having been a structural engineer working on many interesting projects around the world.

We headed off to bed knowing the next day would be a fun one enjoying Zion National Park. 

July 23, Day 37: Grand Teton National Park to Tremonton, Utah

Another early morning day headed out hiking and wanting to make sure we got a good parking spot. In this busy, busy park getting a parking spot is no easy matter. We’ve noticed that later in the day sometimes people are parking a mile or more away from the activity that they want to be at. We really prefer to save our hiking for the actual hiking trails and not walking down roads.

The arrival near String Lake took us to Dick's favorite view of the Tetons, the Cathedral Group.  He has a large version of this perspective on his office wall, just above his desk.

Today’s hike was going along String Lake to Leigh Lake, and back. Especially String Lake is popular with Paddleboarders and Kayakers. Our last two days had a lot of elevation gain in hills, and this route was mostly flat, going along these beautiful lakes that are right at the base of some of the most beautiful mountains in the Tetons. The walk started a little chilly, with the temperature reading about 55°. It was a delightful walk with almost no wind for a big part of it, so the reflections of the mountains and the trees in the lakes were fabulous.

One of the things that we so enjoy is the friendliness of people who are out on hikes. Especially those who go further than just a few hundred yards from the parking lot. We had several really delightful conversations with families who had small children along, seniors who spent several months each summer in the Teton area, and just random hikers who had cheerful things to talk about. One family was happy to share and show photos of their close encounter with a bear and her cub. Luckily, the bear was far enough away and they didn’t get too close to the club. So it was more of an exciting story, rather than something that was too scary.

We also had a great conversation with one of four fathers who were taking their eight sons on a camping trip. They had canoed and kayaked over to this so rather remote campsite. We had a very delightful conversation which ended with them fixing us a cup of hot cocoa to take down the path.

We walked about 4 miles and then knew it was time to turn around. We found a private spot along the side of Leigh Lake and ate our snack in solitude. We were so struck again that even in a park that is so busy that they are having traffic jams, once you get not very far off the parking lots, there are so many fewer people. We were so glad that we were able to enjoy some private quiet time in such a beautiful place.

Coming back, we started feeling the pain in our legs. Both of us were really glad when we were finally at the parking lot where our car was. Maybe we overestimated a little bit walking 8 miles today.

We wanted to get one more fabulous view of the mountains and so drove aways up to Signal Mountain. On a clear day, you could see all of the Tetons and surrounding mountain ranges so well. However, we found there is smoke from the West Coast fires in the air here. We’re grateful the fires are not in this direct area, but you can see the haze of the smoke the further away you get away from the mountains. In fact as you got further away the less distinct the mountains are. So it was a little disappointing that it wasn’t a great view from the top.

However, we did have our cooler with us and put together a great picnic lunch sitting in our car. We were too tired to even try to walk and find a picnic table.

We drove back to our campsite ready for another afternoon nap and then to start thinking about packing up our things because tomorrow we were scheduled to leave the Tetons.

However  when we got back to our campsite we were confused. We drove to our site our tent and screened in porch were missing. We thought maybe we made a mistake, so we drove out and came back in again, still missing. We then went up and talked to the young woman whose tent was now in our campsite. She explained when she arrived she saw there was some people’s things already in the campsite.  Then the camp host came and packed up all of our things and carried them away leaving a note for us. The note informed us that we were supposed to have checked out at 11 o’clock this morning and they have taken all of our stuff.  We should go to the entrance and get our things back. Our recollection was that we were checking out the next day on Saturday. However, when Patti pulled out a reservation form, sure enough it had us checking out today at 11. We really messed up!

So we had to go humbly and confessed we had made an error. The staff was really nice, but unfortunately the campground was entirely full. There was no empty spot for us to go. So we had to go and quickly reclaim our belongings which had been carefully packed up and locked away in a storage shed. They had treated our belongings very nicely which we appreciated. However, we need to do very quickly in the next half hour pack things altogether including putting our tents in bags and rolling up sleeping bags and putting food and clothes in the back of the car as quickly as we could do it. This was not really what we had in mind for getting ready to leave.

Our lovely former neighbors offered to allow us to put our tent up in their site, but we decided it was time to start heading south towards home. We were able to pull into a McDonald’s parking lot where we tried to hook into the free Wi-Fi which didn’t work. We finally were able to get our laptop hooked into our personal hotspot for the phone and found a hotel room about 3 1/2 hours south in Utah for the night.

We knew we had thousand miles more to drive to get home. The plan was to do 600 of them tomorrow, but instead we would do 200 of them on Friday night. And then 400 miles tomorrow. Luckily the drive was gorgeous driving through beautiful river valleys and with pine covered mountains on either side. We both decided there was no sense in getting too upset about making an error. It just becomes part of your adventure. And if you can’t follow with some things with flexibility, you probably shouldn’t head out on a grand adventure.

So, headed down the road, working on the blog and really reflecting on our wonderful time that we had at the Tetons. We actually were ready to leave. But it wouldn’t bet been nice to of done it in a little more orderly manner.

We were glad we were able to snag a semi-affordable room in a Motel 6 in Utah. Ready to sleep in a real bed and take a shower tonight. Sometimes the things you don’t remember you should be grateful for you get reminded of it again.

July 22, Day 36: Grand Teton National Park

And we woke up to an overcast morning, which was disappointing because we were headed off for a 8:15 AM float trip on a raft down the Snake River in front of the Teton mountains. We gathered our things together and headed off to meet our crew of people who would be going on the river raft with us. We ended up sharing a raft with a very nice family, there were eight of them. Our rafting guides was named Alex and this was his sixth year guiding tours on the Snake River.

We were taken by van 10 miles up the river to where we would put in for our rafting trip. There were lots of instructions and safety tips. And then quite quickly, we were on the water. We both found that we were actually very grateful that they made us wear lifejackets. It was windy and cold out on the water. And even though we both had jackets on, we could’ve used even another layer.

The rafting was relaxing and all on board were keeping our eyes out for wildlife. We saw an eagle, and a couple eagle’s nests, white pelicans, Canadian geese, our guide saw a badger even though nobody else did, and a mule deer mama in three little baby fawns.

Dick was watching closely how carefully Alex steered our boat on the water. He paid such attention to the river, how the water was flowing, and made sure that we went down the right channels when there were choices. He did it all very smoothly. And periodically, he would throw in some information about the park, or the wildlife,  and the river. He was very knowledgeable and happy to try to answer any questions that the group had.

All too soon, the raft trip was over. We noted with some irony that almost as soon as our trip was over the sun came out and it started warming up. The later tours of the day probably would’ve been much warmer. And the mountains would’ve been in the sunlight. Oh well, you do your best in signing up for things and then you make the best of it.

We visited the Visitor’s Center and had a chance to see some of the really nice new exhibit they had there about the geology, the wildlife, and the people who had been involved in this land that is now the Tetons National Park.

Then, we went over to a lovely spot: The Chapel of Transfiguration. This is a small Episcopalian chapel that rather than having artwork or stain glass behind the altar, had a simple picture window that framed the Tetons right behind the cross. It is stunningly beautiful peaceful place. And we were glad to spend a little time pondering the beauty that is there  and feeling the spiritual connection of it all.

We had our lunch along, and decided to eat it on the one picnic table near the chapel. You couldn’t have picked a more scenic spot to eat lunch out of the cooler. It was so so beautiful. Yes!

We decided to take advantage of this sunny afternoon by doing a hike to Phelps lake. This was in a quieter section of the park. They had only a very small parking lot, so we had to wait about 20 minutes for a parking spot to open up. But then we went on a beautiful walk alongside a creek through beautiful forests and were especially delighted in the wildflowers. Columbine flowers were especially plentiful in many different colors.

At the top of our climb was Phelps Lake. This is a beauty alpine lake and many people stopped there to rest. We had some great conversations and exchanged a photo taking with several people. However, we started to notice the storm clouds were moving in. We made a decision it was time to head back downhill and started our race with the rain. With about 20 minutes to go the rain really started coming down. We walked as quickly as we could knowing that all of our rain gear is safely in their other backpack in the car. We manage to get down without getting too wet. And as soon as we were down the sun came back out again. Wouldn’t you know it!

We drove over to the town of Jackson and went through some very heavy rain on our way there. We wondered how much rain was falling at our campsite. We made a quick stop for a cup of delicious hot cocoa and then headed back to our camp. There it appeared a tiny bit of rain had fallen earlier in the day, but it was mostly dry and hot now. We were trying to take a nap in the sun was beating down on our tent. Dick finally had a brilliant idea of taking our screen porch that we put over the picnic table down in walking it over to put shade above the tent. This was so much cooler.

Another camp dinner and a beautiful fire. This time we just ate the Girl Scout cookies; didn’t try to heat them up in aluminum foil. It was a really lovely lovely day with so many different types of weather. But that’s life in the mountains.

July 21, Day 36: Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

We got up very early to go over to the most congested part of the Tetons: Jenny Lake. This is the site of one of Dick’s fond memories from all the way back to 1957, when he first visited this national park. This is a lake at the base of the main Teton mountains, and is very, very deep: over 250 feet deep in the middle. The reason that we came so early was so that we could find a parking place, which we barely did, and so we also could get a ticket to ride the boat across the lake to some of the most popular hikes in the park. Despite arriving at 7:45, there was still quite a long line for people waiting to get on the boat (30 minute wait). The boat ride is quick, in about 15 minutes but it saves almost 2 1/2 miles of walking around the lake to begin the hike. And we wanted to save our walking energy for the actual stupendous hikes themselves.

The first popular hike was up to an area known as Hidden Falls. This is a beautiful falls about a half mile from the boat dock. This is the most popular place for people to come, and many photos were taken. The next spot was another half mile, this time nearly all uphill on a very rocky trail. At the top of this climb was Inspiration Point, which gave a lovely view over Jenny Lake and Jackson Hole beyond it. Most people stop after either Hidden Falls or Inspiration Point. But, Dick knew we wanted to continue on for the main event: Cascade Canyon. The crowds quickly thin out for this beautiful hike going further into the mountains. There was minimal elevation gain on this trail, because we had already climbed a long ways with the other two hikes. 

We had such a nice morning walking along catching beautiful view after beautiful view. There were so many wildflowers, and very friendly happy people to chat with about the Tetons.  We had to make a decision how far up into the canyon we would hike. What really impacted us was the fact that we were again hiking at elevation, much less oxygen in the air. Once we were in the Canyon, we were well over 7000 feet. We had recently been back in the lower elevations again and hadn’t had much of a chance to acclimate ourselves. However, we walked as far as we were able and then we’re a little sad to turn around to head back down the canyon. We had a chance to talk with people who were going to be hiking much farther up, or who were backpacking in this beautiful area. We listened with a little longing to their stories, but knew we had done the right amount of hiking for us. The trip down is always quicker than the trip up.

We were happy to catch a boat back across the lake. Then we went back to our campsite and laid down for a well-deserved nap. It sure was good to be back in this beautiful area again.

So we cooked dinner, built a fire, and roasted Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies over the fire. Dick especially enjoyed meeting and chatting with a number of fellow campers about their experiences. This campground was filled with lots of families and very friendly people. It was a great day in the Tetons.