Category Archives: national park

city, history, national park, travel, USA

West to East

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So on arrival back to San Diego, I found that the juveniles had got a plea bargain & pled guilty to chasing me with the baton & stealing my money (a much lesser charge than bashing Andrea’s face & attacking the other guy). I needn’t have arrived home a day earlier, rats. But it didn’t matter too much as I had the next leg of the journey to prepare for. The next few days were pretty cruisy doing mundane stuff – haircut, posting maps, return of rental car (over 3000 miles in eighteen days), pack up bike, order a whole heap of bike stuff to meet me in Pennsylvania (things I’d been putting off replacing until I got to the cheaper shops of USA – shoes, Camelbak, chain, tyre, grips, small tools & so on; I think I saved about thirty to forty percent) – & also took the Turners out for a large authentic Mexican meal & spent a bit more time down at the Cass Bar.

The day before I left San Diego was the final pack & also a little thing called Independence Day. As my bike was packed up & the car was returned I didn’t have too many means (except a long walk) to go & check out the crazy crowds down at the beach – but I didn’t have the inclination to be swamped by people either. Beverley & Chris put on a BBQ for about ten people – great food & red, blue & white cup cakes & also root beer floats for a bit of tradition. From the deck, we could watch about ten different fireworks displays down towards San Diego & Ocean Beach. I’ve seen some pretty big & impressive fireworks before (Sydney, New Year’s 2000 springs to mind); but I haven’t seen so many displays in such a short period of time before. Lots of big explosions & also some pretty cool shapes made by the pyrotechnicians; the only drawback of being able to see so many displays at once was that the distance somewhat muted the bangs & one couldn’t feel the wave reverberate through one’s body. To bed relatively early (11.30) to get up again in five hours…

Beverley & her friend Bronwyn kindly got up & took me up to LAX, I tried to stay awake. Uneventful check-in, even though my bike was oversize; on the flight to Philly I enjoyed looking down at all the canyons & then peeking down to the cropping plains as we got further east – the plains, or what I could see of them, were greener than I could see (& obviously a lot greener than the environment I’d been used to over the previous four weeks). Approaching over Pennsylvania, I could begin to see a few more details – a nuke plant, a few quarries, a lot of golf courses & once again, generally a lot of trees & woods. Then down over the Delaware River to land more than half an hour early, bags straight off the carosuel & Jessica waiting right outside – smooth. Jessica & Doug (American friends I meet in Palmerston North in 2004 while they were on sabbatical) live in a small town thirty or so miles north of Philly – we had to pick up their two kids (2 & a bit years & 5 months) from Jessica’s sister’s place on the way home. Once off the freeways & driving down what the English would call B-roads in to small subdivisions I was impressed again by all the trees & lush green grass (apparently June provided a lot of unseasonal rain for the area). Clearly a lot more water available for growing things here than in California. The house that Jessica’s sister & family live in, while also I would say is a typical American house – it was completely different from the Turners’ in San Diego. For the climate I suppose – steeper roof, two storied, huge basement, large garage, lush lawn, Stars & Stripes flying, & strangely (to me) no fences or hedges between neighbouring houses (I would soon get used to seeing a lot of this) – hard to describe just how familiar (too any movies & TV programs) it seemed. After spaghetti & meatballs & letting the kids run around the soccer field chasing balls it was off to my home for the next few weeks.

Doylestown is a very quaint little town with a lot of old row houses & has a nice town feel to it (as opposed to a series of subdivisions with a strip mall plonked somewhere near by) & some nice skinny streets. D & J live not far from town in another very nice leafy area. Saw another fireworks display (postponed from last week) & in to bed after a long day of travelling (lost three hours along the way, but getting up at 4.30 I wasn’t too fussed). Monday was a recovery day & a orientation around Doylestown – drive around, check out the college Doug is a professor at, meet a few people, assemble most of bike (still waiting on package to arrive with the chain) & plan a few things. I’m off to New York City on Friday for five nights – can’t wait.

Tuesday (today) was up too early, despite the alarm not going off, & on the train in to central Philly (the express takes about seventy minutes). Today was to satisfy my history bent walking around the Independence National Park – lots of historic buildings to do with the drafting, signing & proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, rooms that housed Congress & the Senate once upon a time & being the Monty Python fanatic that I am – how could I not visit the Liberty Bell? Although, when visiting the bell, Sousa’s tune was playing – so the whole place seemed a bit silly after that! A great day wandering around (a lot – sore feet again) looking at all sorts of all things & enjoying the parks & very pleasant weather.

Some trivial, & some not so, differences from CA I’ve noticed so far – the traffic lights have yellow housings, there are far fewer SUVs & pickups and the predominant minority has changed from Latino to African-American, unfortunately there are nowhere near as many mountain bikes on cars going to trails (although there is still the group in the city devoted to fixies). Home in time for dinner & fantastic dessert Jessica was trying out the recipe for – a sherbert & frozen cream-cheese mixture – how to describe taste? There wasn’t a whole lot left.

Except for the little mugging episode (which I escaped relatively unscathed), my time in California was fantastic – I did a lot of cool sightseeing things, but it was mostly made by all the various people I met. All the very generous mountain-bikers who took me places & showed me some great trails & scenery – but most of all the wonderful hospitality of the Turners in San Diego & getting to know them eighteen years after they left Papamoa & New Zealand. Thanks all.

national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

Yosemite, but no Sam

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Up again too early, checked out & on the road north by eight. Was driving north to get to the east entrance to Yosemite National Park. Was great driving up the side of the Sierras – I was surprised to see snow still up there, but I suppose they are reasonably high – they are quite spectacular in places. Once again tried taking photos out the car window (which are now a lot filthier after all those great gravel roads over the weekend)

Started the long & winding road up to Tioga Pass & almost got to ten-thousand feet again. As I opened the window to pay to get in (I’ve now been to so many National Parks in the last week, that it was cheaper to upgrade to an annual pass – although what exactly I’m going to do with it now, I’m not sure) I was attacked by also sorts of horrible biting insects. So on the next few stops at picturesque lakes I covered myself in repellent & stunk for the rest of the day. The drive from the east of the park to the west (where Yosemite Valley is & where most of the tourist & vacationers go) was absolutely beautiful – nice Sequoia forests, reflective lakes, impressive granite peaks. By now I was up amongst a little snow – not something I was expecting from my Californian summer road trip.

There were plenty of cars parked on various verges & lots – many people going for quite a few days hiking in Yosemite & I can see why. Joined the masses driving in to the valley & then the masses already there. Another shuttle system here to enable so many people to move around. Unlike Zion, there were plenty of people staying here in lodges or tents & having an extended stay – also saw a lot of people hiring small inflatable rafts & floating down the river. Took a small walk up to Mirror Lake – after the small mountain lakes I had seen on Tioga Pass it was rather disappointing. All the waterfalls in the park come from snowmelt – so at the start of summer they are still going. Yosemite Falls are the fifth highest in the wall & the largest in North America.

I had to take a photo of this little guy because I keep forgetting to say that I have seen so many squirrels scurrying off the singletrack on my rides – this one must have been used to people as I walked right past him & he hardly flinched. The granite cliffs were spectacular (although I preferred the rock at Zion) & the largest granite monolith in the world is in Yosemite.

Yosemite is the number one big wall destination for climbers in the States & apparently if you looked closely you could see them up there camping out half way up the El Capitan (1000 m) – I can’t have looked closely enough.

Rest of the day spent driving two hundred miles to stay with a friend of Anna-Marie’s in Berkeley. It got nice & warm (110 oF) driving from Yosemite (funny to think I had just been in snow), but I was surprised as how much cooler it was in San Francisco. But apparently the place is known for not having the weather I’m used to in San Diego & other southern California places.

national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

Knock, knock. Deatharrrrrrgh

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Up nice & early for the 450 mile drive to Kernville to go camping & riding for the weekend. On the road shortly after seven & soon I was in Arizona & it was back to half past six. Rather than go as far as I could on the I-15 & through Las Vegas again, I decided to skirt around LV & then head west so I could go through my third National Park in as many days – Death Valley. It added only twenty or so miles to my trip, but the roads were slower than the interstate. Pulled in to another small town, Beatty (pronouced Bate-ie by the only person I heard say the word) & it was getting hot at 9.30 & I was tired from the big day before & driving too much. Had a nice nap in the car waiting for the town museum to open at 10 – only to find that it was temporarily closed.

Into Death Valley & I took a small side road up to Rhyolite – a dead set ghost town. It was a big mine town in the 1900s (peaked at 10000 people), but funding for mine expansion dried up near the end of the decade & now the town looks like this:

This is one of the best preserved bottle houses in the world.

A few hundred yards down the road there was quite a few outdoor sculptures – this of course was my favourite:

It was back on the road to head in to Death Valley – the lowest, hottest & driest place in North America (curiously, it is only just over 100 km from Mt Whitney – the highest place in the continental States). The roads were a lot of this:

But over those hills, I descended to look out at the low spot:

Naturally, it was getting quite hot (about 110) & I eventually made it down to sea level, before starting another big climb over another pass (the poor Dodge has done a fair bit of climbing over the last week – & more to come).

Once out of Death Valley & climbing another pass, I passed veritable forest of Joshua Trees – strange looking things, they were everywhere.

I made it to Kernville, the camping rendezvous, about two & a half hours early – lounged around on the village green (found free Wi-Fi), went to the local museum & so on.  Irmina & Bill turned up, it was off over the road to another microbrewery for good food & beer & get to know each other a bit.  We pushed off for the campsite at about eight.  Apparently, we were trying to get to pitch tents before night fall – that turned out to be a bit hopeful.  As I followed the others in the Dodge, it became apparent that it was forty miles away & a few more thousand feet of climbing on windy, gravel roads.  I watched with increasing nervousness as the fuel gauge dropped, the light came on & the needle continued its plunge.  Night fell & we twisted around more & more turns as we climbed to the stars.  It was much relief that we pulled in to a vacant campsite (who else would drive this far?).  As we pitched tents, I was surprised as to how cold it was (it dropped to about 40 that night ~ 5 Celsius) & it was great that I had brought my Fairydown sleeping bag all the way to the middle of nowhere in the Californian summer.  The stars were out in full force – easily the best I have seen in the northern hemisphere – & I went to sleep listening to the stream running down to Big Meadow.

bikes, MTB, national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

JEM & Zion

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Up early on Thursday to go & ride before it got too hot on the JEM trail – one that came highly recommended. At the trail head just after seven, a couple from San Diego (of all places) – Mike & Annie – pulled up & had the same riding plan as I did. I waited around a little so I had some riding company & we took off up the first part of the loop – Gould’s Rim Trail. This climbed a bit up on to a plateau & as the sun was still rising (no daylight saving in Utah) the spectacular scenery was cast in even better light than I had previously seen it.

While the map we had was great, unfortunately some of the trail markers were annoyingly absent. We skirted around the side of a canyon & it was mostly nice twisty, but not too difficult single track.

There was one really rocky & gnarly downhill section – Annie must have been feeling it on her hardtail. As we got closer to the highway, we lost the trail again – we split up, they went down & I went up a dirt road trying to find the JEM trailhead. In the end, I did a few extra miles uphill & couldn’t make it across to the highway so had to backtrack – unfortunately I never saw Mike & Annie again. I made it up the highway & hit the JEM. What a fantastic trail! It was on another exposed plateau, but overall it lost altitude. It was more of the same great single track that weaved around, but it had plenty of little rises to hop off, plenty of bermed corners & was generally a big chainring flowing singletrack. The most difficult bit was when it plunged down in to a small canyon with a series of very tight & rock singletrack.

As I was beginning to discover & appreciate with a lot of the riding I was doing in the Southwest & California, babyhead rocks could appear at any time & completely change the trail. One thing I will say about the fireswamp – it definitely keeps you on your toes. Near the end of JEM, I joined the Hurricane Rim Trail – it basically followed the top of the gorge formed by the Virgin River back to Hurricane.

It was starting to get a lot warmer by now & there was quite a bit of climbing considering I was following the river down – but there was still the odd cool downhill & rocks to negotiate (they always make the climbs more challenging than back in NZ – it’s always nice to conquer them). Due to my little detour, I ran out of water with about four or five miles to go – how I wish they were the much shorter kilometres! I eventually made it back to my car – another great high-twenty mile ride under my figurative belt. Back to the motel to clean up & then off to explore Zion National Park.

Once again, I joined the masses at another popular national park. Due to its popularity, the park has a great shuttle bus system – you park your car at the bottom & hop on & off for free as the whim takes you. The day had clouded a bit (when I left the motel, I couldn’t believe the amount of cloud that had come from nowhere & how much the wind had picked up), but the canyons on either side of the Virgin River (upstream tens of miles from where I was riding earlier in the day) were still vividly red-brown. Every twist in the road or path showed a different side to them & I was enthralled. I went on a few little walks, some only five minutes or so to get a bit of elevation to look out at something, one about an hour loop that took visitors up a side stream to a series of rather tranquil ponds & stunning waterfalls. Completing all my little walks, it was back in the mighty Avenger to drive to the east edge of the park. The geology here was a little softer, with some nice patterns in less steep cliffs. There was also a very impressive 1.8 mile tunnel that was blasted out in the 1920s. As awesome as the Grand Canyon was (& I really liked it) – for some reason, Zion was that little bit more enjoyable – perhaps because at Zion you are in the bottom of the canyon looking up at the immense rocks above you. Back to Hurricane to do some much needed washing & have an early night – big drive the next day to meet up with some more MTB internet friends back in California for a weekend of camping & riding.