Tag Archives: USARoadtrip11

roadtrip, travel, USA

Antelope Canyon & Horseshoe Bend

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After yesterday’s busy day & a slight time change (AZ doesn’t do Daylight Saving – unless you work for the federal government or are on a reservation) we had a much less jam-packed day today. Which was just as well as that horrendous wind was back. They must really be copping it in tornado alley again, or are about to.

We had a 10.30 tour of Upper Antelope Canyon. Waiting around the parking lot the wind really picked up & all the sand it carried was soon stinging eyes & skin. After a ten minute drive in a Suburban up a wide sandy wash (flood water route) we were at the entrance to the canyon, at ground level.

We walked in to the quite skinny canyon – it is carved from Navajo sandstone by flash floods. With the sun high enough in the sky during the summer months, there were great shafts of light peeking through from above. With all the sand that the floods carry, the surface of the stone was smoothed & contoured in really nice ways. Unfortunately, with all the wind above it rained sand on us & our cameras quite a bit. Even I managed to get some nice pictures.

After lunch, we took a short trip out to Horseshoe Bend in the Colorado. Finally, after the sediment settling in the reservoir, the river is clear. It was even windier out here (about a one kilometre walk) & all the sand being blown around stung a lot – short, T-shirt & flip-flops/jandals wasn’t a great idea. I felt like I’d been (mildly) sandblasted & afterwards was in need of a human dedust system (shower sufficed). Still, the river was a deep green & very pretty as it made its big turn three hundred metres below us.

Wider angle would have been nice

The best thing was we didn’t get blown off the edge. On the off chance anyone else in interested in the vague route we are taking – the SPOT link at the top right of the page may interest you. I usually activate it at each new overnight stay, & occasionally at other significant places. When we sit still for a while in San Diego, I intend to compile a route map proper.  That is all, I need to develop my crazy plan of riding around part of the Grand Canyon (north) rim tomorrow & work out if it’s feasible.

roadtrip, travel, USA

4 Corners & Monument Valley

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Cortez being in the south-west of Colorado is not all that far from 4 Corners – the only place in the States where four states meet in one place.  For some reason, I expected the area to be flat & desert – but we were soon driving up towards more small canyons.  We managed to get there before the rush & spend a bit of time mucking around in four states at once.

While Valerie perused the various stalls (the monument is on a Navajo reservation) of handmade jewelery, pottery & various other do-dads I had a look around & read up about the surveying history & why the state lines are where they are. Very interesting, but I would think that.

Our next stop was supposed to be Monument Valley, but we got a little distracted. First by Gooseneck State Park – where the San Juan River bends back & forth a bit. I could only think of gas plant changes, but I think I’ve lost all my NZ Steel readers – so that won’t make much sense to anyone. There were three or four good bends, but I couldn’t get them all in one shot so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Our next distracton was a little drive through the Valley of the Gods. Just off the highway, this dirt/gravel road was a great little adventure. It had some ridiculously little steep drops & climbs & got a bit skinny (of course, when we met the big pick-ups carrying little RVs on their trays). It was a fun drive & once again I was pleased to be in an Outback, not a minivan. The big rocks rising out of the valley were spectacular (I was too busy driving, so these pictures will have to suffice).

Back on the highway, it wasn’t long before we got some great views heading towards Monument Valley. I managed to get a few iconic shots, while not getting run over while standing in the middle of the highway.

The wind was really starting to pick up & we could see a haze of dust accumulating on the horizon. Monument Valley stradles the Arizona/Utah border & is also on a reservation, so we paid our fee, checked out the Visitor Center & then went on the seventeen mile self-drive tour. The road was orders of magnitude worse than the Valley of the Gods road, probably because it has so much more traffic on it. There were tour pick-ups (with bench seats on the back under a canopy – it was like being in Kenya on safari), some RVs, some buses & many little cars & SUVs. Bouncing around & getting out in the wind was OK for a while, but then got tiresome.

There were a lot of tumbleweeds blowing around – this is a small one, the car got sconed a few times by much bigger ones

With still a fair bit of driving to do, we headed off for Page, AZ. Only because Valerie had heard Antelope Canyon was good & Page was close by. Early on, we passed under a huge belt conveyor coming off the hills & crossing to a big silo. From then on we ran alongside a electric rail track (haven’t seen one of those since Europe) – I was intrigued. Well outside Page, I spotted one, then three, big stacks on the horizon. Turns out it is the Navajo Generating Station & the belt & railway is solely for the coal (8 million tonnes annually). Those stacks are 236 metre high, big ones & the station generates 2.3 GW (at least one of my readers may be interested).

For the first time, our tactic of pitching up in a town & then looking for a motel got a resounding thumbs-down. It turns out Page is next to Lake Powell (second biggest reservoir in the States after Lake Mead) & is very popular – especially in the middle of Memorial Day Weekend (the public holiday that signals the start of the summer vacation period). Everything was booked & there aren’t really any other towns nearby (Flagstaff is two hours away). Somehow Valerie came up with a plan of accosting strangers in church parking lots & soon Harriet & Bunny (I kid you not) were busily phoning all sorts of people. Eventually we got a room in a delightful small B&B – it’s called Rose Walk Inn & there are roses when you walk in. Smelling roses always reminds me of my (paternal) grandparents & their garden. It’s so nice to be staying in a home for a change & the oatmeal & buttermilk pancakes were fantastic (as was the buttermilk syrup).

bikes, GPS, MTB, roadtrip, snow, travel, USA

Telluride & some riding out of Dolores

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Not wanting to spend two consecutive days looking at ancient holes in the ground & so on, we went for the suggestion of a nice drive to somewhere “starting with T with a gondola up from town” – at least, that is what Valerie described it as.  I went for Telluride, about a seventy-mile drive north east of Cortez, mostly following the Dolores River – this worked well, as I wanted to ride at Dolores in the afternoon.

The mid-morning drive up the valley was just stunning with the sun really bringing out the contrast between the dark green ponderosa pines & the bright yellow-green of the deciduous trees lining the valley above the fast flowing river.

We climbed up to over 3100m/10000ft to get over Lizard Head Pass & then down to Telluride. I didn’t know too much about the town, except it was once a big mining town & is now a big ski resort/mountain town (sounds vaguely familiar).

Apparently their winter is holding on a bit, with two feet of snow a fortnight ago – but today was a stunner & I was excited to learn there are bike trails at the top of the (free) gondola that runs up to another little town (Mountain Village – possibly the least imaginative name in Colorado, what a shocker) & most of the ski lifts.

My bike got its first ride on a gondola – been on plenty of chairlifts.  That’s Telluride down there.

Alas, the visitor center was wrong – the bike trails were closed due to too much snow. So we made up for it with a very pleasant ride along the San Miguel River that runs through town. There is a Mountain Film festival on this long weekend, so town had a lot of life to it. We didn’t have long, but I really liked Telluride – looks expensive though, Valerie saw one 5 bedroom, 7 bath house priced at a cool nine million.

The drive back down the valley was just as pretty & I was riding by four o’clock. With four loops to choose from, I went for the longest & hardest option – to make sure I got my money’s (not that I had to pay anything) worth. The riding was mostly at 2300m around a mesa top in more pine forest – it was nice to be riding in trees again. I’m not sure there was anything advanced about this intermediate-advanced level trail & the trail obviously wasn’t as well designed as yesterday’s ride at Phil’s World. Since when is routing the trail down the middle of a creek a valid trailbuilding option? Occasionally there was a little bit of interest, but mostly it was pretty hohum – the surface was often rutted out by bike tires or six-inch deep horse hoof holes. Still, I got a fair bit of climbing in & time on the bike is time on the bike – I may be getting a little fitter as I did the first loop (2-4 hours) in 1.40 then went on to the adjoining beginner loop, hoping for some views of the mountains – but was disappointed. The highlight was the beautiful grassy meadows, different summer flowers, the very loud croaking of frogs & seeing some eagles gliding around – fantastic. After over 100 km of mostly singletrack riding in three days, I might have a day off the bike tomorrow as we go to Four Corners & Monument Valley.

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

Mesa Verde & Phil’s World

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Mesa Verde came recommended by Alex as a completely different national park experience. She wasn’t wrong. Only about ten minutes’ drive east of Cortez, we started a beautiful drive up to the top of Mesa Verde. The Visitor Centre was a good half an hour in to the park, we stopped here to purchase tickets for two ranger guided tours around some of the cliff dwellings. For Mesa Verde was home to a large number of dwellings (some 4700 separate sites have been found so far) since the sixth century. On the top of mesa (which is not actually a proper mesa due to its sloping sides) we were up around 7000ft/2500m – what possessed ancients to come & live up here is beyond me. Still, it must have been sustainable, as they stayed until about 1300 & then packed up & left leaving a lot of houses.

Our first tour was of the Cliff Palaces – not really a palace as they had no king or queen, but about 450 little dwellings perched in an alcove near the top of the cliff. We had to climb down some pretty steep steps (some metal, some set in to the cliff side) & gradually got to walk across the front of the area while listening to the ranger explain it all. I’ve absorbed a lot of history today, so don’t feel like repeating much of it here. There was a lot of grain storage areas, little houses for families, & sunken circular family meeting areas. It was pretty neat seeing the progression of their building skills from the bottom (early) layers to the top (later) layers – there were a lot of square edges & some of the towers went right up to the alcove ceiling.

After lunch was the more difficult drop down to Balcony House on another ranger-guided tour. I have no idea how the original residents got in – maybe they had a massive ladder too.

This area was smaller than the Cliff Palaces, but no less intruiging. There were a lot of balconies (in various states of disrepair) & some of the tiny rooms were still intact.

To get out, we had to crawl twelve feet or so through a skinny little tunnel on our hands & knees & then up another ladder & scramble up a steep rockface – good fun. Above the tunnel on the internal side, there were various staggered platforms for defending the area by throwing things at invaders (cows, ducks & so on I expect – prompting cries of “crawl away, crawl away!”).

We spent another hour or so driving around other sites before heading back to Cortez rather historied-out.

But that didn’t matter as I had another ride planned. A rather nice mountain-bike guide I was chatting to during the walk down from Delicate Arch on Sunday insisted that I ride Phil’s World if I was going to Cortez. I duly obliged – the trail is only four miles east of town. It was fantastic. I did all of the loop options, save one last five mile one at the end as sunset was fast approaching. It’s all purpose built singletrack (unlike most of what I’ve ridden recently) & it’s a super smooth surface, with the odd rock feature thrown in. I managed 24 km in an hour & forty & it was all at a beginner-intermediate level. There was nothing technically challenging in it for an intermediate rider like me – it was just plain fun, flowing trail. It was all easily done in the middle ring – as they didn’t have a lot of altitude gain to play with. I was surprised when I checked that I was over 2000m – but my lungs weren’t screaming, so that was good. Dusk was a great time to ride – I didn’t see another rider on my trail – the light was good & I was joined by a lot of singing birds, lizards & some big jack-rabbits (they have ridiculously large ears – to help cope with the heat). A very pleasant evening ride – if I had this on my doorstep, I’d feel like Postman Pat (a really happy man). I got my trip up to 32 km with a nice big-ring ride into town towards a blustery wind & the setting sun.

Rib Cage was the best section of the loop – many, many steep downs followed by short ups & then little jumps with nice landings at the top. The trail was in fact so smooth & well made that I didn’t notice my rear shock was locked out fully until the end of the ride – oops.