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We went to Bend for our anniversary again this year. It’s such a nice town and our trip coincided with their art/craft festival again. One of the Eugene fiber-arts gurus was there, and I was glad for the chance to introduce her to BN, since every time she sees me she says something about how I don’t even look old enough to get married. Now she’s seen my husband with her own eyes! From a hatmaker from Washington I purchased a sun hat for our trip to Hawaii, handmade from some natural fiber that looks like a straw hat but is soft and squishable so it’ll be good for packing and travelling.

For our day trip we went to Sparks Lake, one of the lakes we’d visited two years ago on our trip with my family to the Cascade Lakes area. It was a perfect day to go swimming, the water was very cold but refreshing. The Cascade Lakes mosquitos are pure evil. They are huge, and the bites I got swelled up into quarter-sized welts that turned purple like a bruise. And itched like mad!

We made several visits to Townshend’s Tea, a really-and-truly tea shop with no coffee at all. Wish they’d open a location in Eugene.

For our last overnight in the Arches area we stayed at a motel in Moab – for the double bonus of showers and a load of clean laundry. Bright and early Wednesday morning we headed off to Canyonlands National Park. We were blessed with good fortune in the first-come-first-served department during our time in Canyonlands. We arrived at the campground just as several sites were being vacated, so we scored a great site within the park. At the visitors center, BN went to the backcountry office to try our luck at getting some backpacking passes. We got 3 nights of reservations for backcountry campsites, beginning the following day. Score! The ranger talked us through the features of the area, the rules and regulations, and informed us that there were no water sources out there so we would need to pack in all of our water for the 3 days. They recommend a gallon of drinking water per person per day… That’s six gallons… That’s 48 pounds of water…

That afternoon we took it easy and wandered around Pothole Point, which was a lot prettier than it sounds. It was like a garden. We saw lots of cryptobiotic soil, which we had learned about in Arches. A symbiotic mixture of bacterias and algaes lives in the sandy surface, creating a sculpted, bumpy crust that is akin to the large rock formations but in miniature. Learning about this vital part of the desert ecosystem really taught us to watch our step! The very dirt is a living thing here.

After dinner we scrambled up on top of the rock bluff next to the campground and hiked out to a good sunset-viewing spot. It was a pleasant and scenic way to end the day.

Thursday morning we spent loading up our backpacks. An icy, biting wind made it hard to concentrate on what we were trying to do – decide what to bring in addition to lots and lots of water. Brrr. I sorted and re-sorted the food while trying not to let my teeth chatter too much. We had about 10 Nalgene bottles, a collapsible “Platypus” water bag, and 3 large plastic containers full of water that had been frozen, in use in our cooler up till now. It was about 5 gallons all told. Finally we were packed and drove to the trailhead.

When we got there it was snowing. It was a very dry, corn-like snow but plenty cold! We strapped on our packs, adjusted our hiking poles, and hit the trail. It was a 4-wheeling trail for the first bit and we were passed by several groups in Jeeps testing their mettle on the rocky “trail.” Parts of it were like a giant stone staircase, I was astonished to see how the vehicles were able to climb like that. Riding probably felt like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. It was challenging terrain on foot, what with our overloaded packs. Luckily we had those hiking poles – I literally don’t think I would have made it 3 miles to our campsite without them. By far my heaviest pack load ever!

The sun peeked out a few times on our way but when we arrived at the site it was snowing again. The loose, dry snow was in tiny pellets that blew into the crevices and collected there. We saw snow on a cactus! We set up our tent, walked around a bit, and then BN hurriedly cooked dinner which we ate in the tent. The wind was so cold! My sleeping bag is a “15°” bag and it’s kept me quite warm in the past. I dozed for awhile, but kept waking up cold and put on more clothing. By the time I fell asleep for the long term I was wearing everything I brought, including my parka and I still was faintly chilled. Wow, it was cold. When we woke up in the morning our water containers were frozen.

Our site was in “Devil’s Pocket,” a grassy little valley surrounded by pinnacle-y rocks. In the morning it was cold but crystal-clear.

We packed up our stuff and hiked to our next stop, Chessler Park, where we’d been assigned a first-class camp”suite.” It was backed by a sheltering rock wall, and contained several trees which were perfectly shaped to act as kitchen counter and living room couch. We had a wide, panoramic view and we were the last site on the row so no other people were around. After our short-but-weighty hikes we needed to just be lazy for awhile so we set up the tent without the rainfly and let the sun pour in. If it had been a little bit warmer it would have felt like summer. Later we took a walk to a big rock in the middle of the field and climbed on top of it. We had a good view of the “bay” where the campsites were – ours is down around the left side of this “cathedral.”

On Saturday, our day hike (read: no packs) took us through a dry, sandy riverbed to Druid Arch. We saw some caves (with an overhead slit open to the sky), lots of cool rock formations, colorful gravel on the wash floor, a make-your-own mini rock cairn project, and even some puddles of water. BN found a sheet of ice on one of them. BN got some great shots of the desert plants.

Druid Arch was SO cool. What a striking shape, with that slit-opening on the right. One of my favorites for sure.

Back at camp we enjoyed a clear, still evening. Our campsite was just around the bend from an historic site, a cowboy camp. There was a wall of graffiti, a collection of bitsy artifacts, and an old cast iron stove.

One interesting thing about backpacking is it really brings the importance of essentials into sharp focus. You realize how little you really need in the way of stuff. On this trip, we obviously learned about how much water one needs and how heavy it is! I tend to look forward to dinner all day. Mmm, dinner. Our best dinner was a freeze dried Beef Stroganoff. We boiled a whole Nalgene of water to reconstitute it, and ate 4 “servings” between the 2 of us. On this trip I wish we had brought more cheese. I get mighty tired of dried fruit and nuts. Good quality dried dates, though, are as good as a cookie or muffin.

The greatest thing about backpacking is getting out to the really good scenery that only the few get to see. You get to see it at all times of day, and really take time to LOOK

On Sunday we traveled to our next stop, Arches National Park, near the town of Moab. We camped outside of the park on the bank of the Colorado river. The first sites we saw along the river weren’t very inviting – newly planted trees and dry, dusty plots of ground. I was worried about wind and dust – there was nothing to break the wind and prevent it from blowing dust right into our tent, as had happened in Lassen. We kept driving, and found a different campground where there were low trees and bushes to provide a bit of shelter. Much nicer! We set up our tent and headed into the park for the day.

I never understand why natural wonders are named after the Devil. (Devil’s Lake, Devil’s Postpile, Devil’s Kitchen…) As far as I can tell, Utah is God’s sculpture garden. Arches is an especially wonderful area in this category, with fantastic skylines of intricate shapes and monumental valleys that remind you of ancient ruins. I absolutely loved it – I never got tired of looking at the red sandstone carved in bold facets with palette-knife gouges, or wind-smoothed with series of tiny (or huge) pebble-holes. I felt dwarfed by this enormous gallery, with no captions or glass cases to distract from the art.

After wandering around a bit, we hiked to Delicate Arch. This is the famous one, you’ve seen it on Utah license plates among other places. The classic photos are all brightly sunlight with the landscape in clear view beyond. But on this day, the wind was picking up as we hiked and rustling up a significant sandstorm!

Delicate Arch is HUGE. No wonder it’s an icon, since it’s unique among most of the other arches in that it’s free-standing and up on top of a rock-hill. The wind was so strong up there that it felt a little scary like the wind might blow you right off.

I’m glad I noticed the interesting formations and wall-garden elements on our hike up to the arch, because on our way down I had my hat pulled down over my face, with just a peephole to watch BN’s feet, and still sand was blowing into my eyes. Later we wondered if the kids we saw wearing goggles as we were hiking up were locals… they certainly had the right idea.

Things weren’t much better back at our campsite, though luckily our tent was still in place – we had staked it down firmly in a little hollow that got some shelter from low trees and bushes on the riverbank. We tentatively started to work on dinner, but as BN was unpacking the stove and gusts of sand blew across our site, we realized this was not a good night for outdoor cooking. Back to Moab we went, where we had lunched earlier in the day, to find some dinner. Happily we ended up at Baja Grill, where we enjoyed excellent Mexican food in the comfort of their space-heated semi-enclosed restaurant.

On Monday it was a bright, sunny day with lots of interesting clouds in a bright blue sky. In the morning we visited some easy-access features such as the Windows and Double Arch.

In the afternoon we took a hike out to the land of domes, with scenery that was reminiscent of Star Wars.

We saw Broken Arch and lots of other cool stuff. We spotted a rock with a face in an oblong “hood” that we dubbed “the Teletubby.” Freaky!

Tuesday we got up early and arrived at the Devil’s Garden trailhead just as the sun came up. After a quick breakfast of yogurt and granola in the parking lot, we set out for our best day yet.

It was really nice to get there so early before the crowds, and the trails were undisturbed and we saw lots of animal tracks in the orange sand. We saw a rabbit in the shrubbery, out for his morning hop. So cute.

Landscape Arch is another iconic one. I feel lucky to have seen it, it seems so fragile that chances are it will collapse in our lifetime? In the early 90’s a huge chunk fell out from that thinnest area…

I haven’t mentioned the plant life yet. Carpeting the land around these monumental rocks is a wonderful carpet of high-desert plants. Sagebrush, cactus, lichen, wind-twisted junipers and the occasional hardy wildflower. It’s all very neat and tidy, very different from the riotous weedy undergrowth we see blanketing Oregon. I think this trip was my first time seeing cactus in the wild!

We saw Partition Arch from across a ravine, and when we reached it we stopped for a snack. Good views from both directions…

We saw Indian Arch, which was like a cave and you could just imagine a small tribe camping in there. There was an amazing wall of intricately sculpted pale-pink rock, and I could see where people who design hand- and foot-holds for climbing gyms must get some of their ideas.

We visited Double-O Arch and hiked through a really neat area with huge “fin” formations that we thought looked like cruise ships.

Just before driving back to our camp site, tired but happy, we stopped at Park Avenue which I think should have been called the Nile Valley because it had a very Ancient Egyptian look. There were obelisks and perfectly flat vertical walls, with almost mural-like gouges and cracks. Almost doesn’t look real, does it?

Wow, Arches is awesome! I highly recommend it and I’d say 3 days is an absolute minimum to try to see the bulk of it. It’s nice that it’s so close to Moab, with good restaurants and tons of lodging, and also camping options inside and outside the park.

This year we had some extra margins on our Spring Break, and we were able to travel farther – we went to 3 national parks in Utah. We were armed with a new camera – the Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS “Digital Elph.” A long name for such a little camera!

The plan was for BN to give the final exam for the calculus class he was teaching, get it graded, and depart for our trip on the evening of Thursday, March 19th. On Tuesday, I came down with a pretty bad cold/fever – that made it difficult for me to pack and get ready – but we did get out of town before dark on Thursday. BN drove all through the night, and I tried to sleep but didn’t have much success. We did stop at a rest area and tried to sleep in our car seats for a couple of hours… With my lingering cold I was feeling pretty bad. I drove a tiny bit to give BN a break, and we made it to Salt Lake City for lunch. It was sunny, cold, and I was amazed by the huge snow-capped peaks looming over the town, and by the excessive number of colorful, tacky billboard ads lining the freeway.

Our first phase of camping was at Capitol Reef national park. The campground was next to an orchard, and there were various historic structures sprinkled around, as this used to be the site of a pioneer settlement.

Deer grazed under the trees in the orchard, and I saw two cats playing nearby. Not sure if the kitties belonged to the park or if some camper had brought their pets. It felt really good to get into our sleeping bags that night, after 24 hours of being “on the road.”

For our day in Capitol reef, we took a hike in this gully:

It was full of amazing rock formations, on a grand scale and in miniature.

After our hike we took the scenic drive back to the campground. I was most impressed with these layered rock formations, with their intricate striped patterns:

Also beautiful were the blue-green flows of sand at the base of the cliffs:

If I just had a few sentences to summarize Utah (rather than a series of blog posts – stay tuned!) I would say that the mineral features are just amazing. (Not to mention the plants!) When you think you’ve seen all the types of rocks and colors of sand, you drive around another corner and discover something new.

On Monday, the land of Eugene was sparkling under a spectacular layer of frost. Ooo, it was beautiful but COLD. It’s always that way – the clear, sunny winter days are coldest, at least in that sharp, intense way. When it’s overcast, it’s less cold, meaning nothing is actually frozen. (But, it still feels cold in a damp, penetrating way…)

Midway through the morning, BN realized that the UO had no classes due to Martin Luther King Jr day. I realized my work load was light. We decided to try our luck at the coast, since the day was clear.

We drove to a beach-access trail a bit south of Florence. We put on our jackets and grabbed our lunch bag and picnic blanket. A couple miles of walking later, we were uncomfortably warm in our coats and still hadn’t arrived at the beach. Whew! It felt like we’d traveled to a different state, in a different season.

When we finally arrived at the shoreline, we stripped off the jackets, hats, and sweatshirts and devoured our PBJ’s. It was 20 degrees warmer than in Eugene, with hardly any wind. It was the clearest day at the coast I’d had in awhile, and absolutely gorgeous!

BN got busy planting driftwood logs upright in the sand. I looked around at the natural works of art – this mixed-media piece was created by the wind. (Click the images to see bigger.)

After awhile we moved on to find a bigger branch. BN utilized all the nearby driftwood, levering and propping the “tree” further and further towards vertical. I mostly just watched, though I helped a bit at the end. I couldn’t help thinking how much it reminded me of The Sea Wolf by Jack London, which I read earlier this month… Humphrey, the ex-landlubber, working with the help of his sweetheart Maud to re-erect the mast of the marooned ship.

Success!

Just in time for the sunset.

The ladies at church went on a retreat to Florence, on the Coast. I have been on most of the retreats since I came to Eugene and this was the first one that had truly nice weather, the whole weekend. On Saturday morning the sunrise was reflecting off the white caps of the waves:

On Saturday afternoon, MT and I took a walk on the beach. It was quite windy, but absolutely gorgeous:

From the upper story of beach house, we could see the sunset over the ocean:

It was so nice to hang out with the girls.

Not everyone was able to stay over Saturday night, but those of us who did went shopping and out to lunch in Florence before heading home.

Our camping trip at Lassen with my family was really fun. It was nice to just relax with my Dad, Mom, and the 4 youngest of my siblings. I’d forgotten how beautiful Lassen Volcanic National Park is, and the weather cooperated very nicely. The evenings and mornings were cold, but the days were mostly sunny and we even got to swim a bit in the early part of the week. Some momentary sprinkles of rain on several occasions, but nothing to speak of.

We camped at Manzanita Lake, which was the only campground that stayed open all through the week we were there. We caught the very tail end of the season!

On Monday, we drove to Summit Lake where my family has camped most of the other times they’ve been there. It’s a good swimming lake so we did that and took a stroll all the way around, remembering past trips. Here’s my Mom with MA and HN. Aren’t they cute?

On Tuesday we visited Bumpass Hell, which is a wonderful place with a not very attractive name. When I was very young and we visited Lassen for the first time, I did think it was hellish because of the sulphur-smell and it was a very hot, glaring day. But now I love it. The smell is actually enjoyable because it comes with such wonderful visuals – intense shades of turquoise and green, enigmatic gray mudpots and streams… It feels a little like a visit to another planet.

On Wednesday we went rock-climbing near Terrace Lake. It’s almost as if no family camping trip would be complete without a bit of rock-climbing because my Dad used to take us older kids in Yosemite every summer growing up. Now the babies are all grown up and climbing strong. GC, age 16, made it to the very top (more than I was able to do!)

BN had been entertaining the idea, inspired by our various lake visits and star-gazing sessions in the past year, to take a boat out to the middle of a lake at night. Kinda crazy, but it just might work! So BN, GC, HN and I bundled up in our puffy jackets and wore our sandals down to the shore about 9:30. Very carefully we stepped into the inflated raft and pushed off from shore.

The moon had just risen, very close to full, so we didn’t see very many stars. But it was a totally clear night and the moon was so bright that we could see each other clearly.

Manzanita lake was formed recently, only about 350 years ago, and during our daytime rafting we had noticed the “kelp forest” type of plants growing a yard or two down from the surface. There were even a few tree trunks growing up from the murky depths. In the daylight it was pretty creepy, at night even more so!

On Thursday was our biggest excursion – out to Cinder Cone. We had to drive outside the park boundaries and then back in again, over a dirt road. We hiked through a stately forest of similarly-sized trees, with a thick blanket of pine needles and cones. The path was black sand.

Cinder Cone is this amazing huge pile of gravel! It’s quite intimidating, actually, and the climb up the path that spirals around it is quite steep and the gravel is constantly shifting. I was unpleasantly reminded of the South Sister, except black gravel instead of red. I hadn’t been to Cinder Cone before, (though my family had been a few years before) and I was starting to wonder about the hike. Was I almost to the top or only halfway up? It was like a gravel treadmill… two steps forward, one step back. Then I realized I WAS at the top, and wow, it was so worth it!!!

There’s the huge crater at the top, and an amazing view all the way around. The wind was so strong up there that we had to stow our hats and squat down to hold cameras steady. Cinder Cone was the highlight of the trip for me, scenery-wise. Here’s BN and Dad with the kids:

They are standing in front of the Painted Dunes, which you can get a great view of from the top of Cinder Cone. I thought they looked totally surreal, with swirly dots of gray, beige and pink, and the sparse green trees with mid-afternoon shadows… looks like a computer-generated landscape (or, another planet! Lassen is like its own galaxy…) Behind the dunes is the lava field.

On Friday, we took a hike through a lichen-laden forest to the Chaos Crags. Just to look at them, we weren’t up for another day of climbing…

On the hike we discovered a fairly sizable log that was covered in drips of transparent yellow sap.

BN was inspired, once we were back at camp, to collect a bunch more sap (or resin, as we later discovered is the proper term) from around the campground and RC helped him melt it down and embed a yellowjacket. Cruel, you say? Well, the pesky buggers had been our constant mealtime companions all week and we were sick of them.

On Saturday we took it easy and strolled around Manzanita lake in the early afternoon. The sky was full of pillowy clouds but the sun was out and those of us with cameras – 5 out of 8 – couldn’t stop snapping shots of Lassen reflected in the lake. Wow!

All in all it was a wonderful week. Thanks, family, and let’s do it again soon!

Well, we had a nice long vacation – on the tail end of summer. We were planning to meet up with my parents and younger siblings in Lassen, but before that we wanted to visit the California Redwoods. On our way there we stopped at Oregon Caves and took the guided tour. It was a weekday afternoon so there were only 7 of us including the guide which was a good thing because most of the cave rooms and passages were quite small. It was really neat to see the various cave formations and hear the stories about the cave’s discovery and history and the theories about how it was formed. I was snapping a lot of photos, both with flash and without, but when I got them home I realized they almost all came out looking super scary (and/or blurry.) Oh, well.

The first night we camped at Jedediah Smith Redwoods. The campground was packed, and the only sites available said “one night only.” So we went on our way the next day. BN took an exploratory mission to see if he could discover any of the record-breaking trees that are in an undisclosed location in the nearby forests. Here’s one that’s pretty impressive:

Next stop was the coastal redwoods. We camped at Gold Bluffs Beach. It was very foggy the whole 2 days that we were there, and pretty cold.

We set up our campsite and went down to walk on the beach.

There were so many beautiful rocks on the beach that BN was inspired to make a mosaic.

On our second day we took a hike in the redwoods.

The weather was nice for this, cloudy but dry. The forest was very dense with weathered-gray redwoods, and of course the coordinating ferns and clovers. Lovely!

Then it was off to Redding, to visit my uncle, aunt, and cousins who recently built their new home there. As we drove inland it started to get very hot and we were able to find a really neat swimming hole accessible by a short hike from the road. BN found these very flat, very round, very discus-like rocks. Skip that!!

My uncle’s house is on a bit of property (at least from my city-girl perspective) with beautiful oak trees and views of wide-open space with distant mountains. They have a wide porch running almost all the way around the house and we sat out there in the balmy evening under the nearly-full moon. They are so hospitable and open, we really enjoyed spending the evening with them and were so amused to watch the dog (a little Westie) and cat play-fight and chase each other around. The fact that it was so warm was very pleasant, coming from the cold foggy coast and heading to the high-altitude chill of Lassen…