Postcard from the Swell

Greetings!

Mary and I are just back from a 12-day trip to the San Rafael Swell. "Where is that?" you might ask. If you've ever driven I-70 between Green River and Richfield, Utah, you'll remember multiple signs warning you it's 110 miles to the next gas station. As you traverse that service-free are, you are crossing the San Rafael Swell, a giant dome-shaped anticline from the time of the Laramide Orogeny, 40-60 million years ago.

Buckhorn Draw panel detail

Our route brought us up the Moki Dugway, across Cedar Mesa (part of the new Bears Ears National Monument), then north on spectacular Utah Hwy 95 to Goblin Valley. When we left the Swell, we headed south via Fish Lake and the Burr Trail to the south flank of the Henry Mountains. After crossing Lake Powell on the Bullfrog-Halls Crossing ferry ($25/vehicle for the 20-minute ride), we were back in Bears Ears country, long one of our favorite parts of the southwest.

Lake Powell near Hite

We had a "swell" time, and came away with some tips for would-be explorers.

(1) We camped, and left home with pretty much everything we needed for the next two weeks. Every time we had an opportunity to buy gas or refill water bottles, we took it.

If you're not planning to camp, the nearest towns are Green River (off I-70) and Castle Dale (on Utah Hwy 10). These are also good places to restock ice and groceries.

Goblin Valley, looking south to the Henry Mountains

If you want a campground, there are only two- Goblin Valley State Park (on the southern end of the Swell, between Hanksville and Green River) and San Rafael Bridge Campground (no drinking water, but in the heart of the Swell, off Buckhorn Draw Road). If you're a boondocker, the Swell is wide open.

Bring everything you need. There really are no services.

(2) Other than Utah Hwy 10 and I-70, there aren't a lot of paved roads. High clearance is nice. 4WD is better. When wet, even graded gravel roads were a challenge for the Eurovan. The Chinle Formation was not just a driving challenge. A surprise thunderstorm made the last few miles of our San Rafael River hike a Slip 'N Slide.  Rocks, sand and mud are the major road hazards, and we found ourselves approaching many stretches as if scouting a river rapid.

If highway driving is more your speed, or if the weather doesn't encourage off-pavement exploration, take the time to stop at every east- and west-bound rest area.  Between the views and the interpretive signs, you won't regret. it.  A Guide to I-70 Through Southeastern Utah

Toby and the Reef (eastern slope of the San Rafael Swell). Our
campsite was less than a mile from an "informal" I-70 exit.

(3)  Don't rely on web-based resources, unless you have a reliable way to keep them available offline. Get the most up-to-date maps and guidebooks you can find. National Geographic Trails Illustrated maps cover most, though not all, of the areas we visited. Beware of what one guidebook calls "the great UDOT milepost migration." In the first decade of the 21st century, the Utah Department of Transportation replaced freeway milepost markers, making them more accurate. A worthy goal, although it means guidebooks published before 2010 are likely to contain erroneous milepost information. If your old guidebook tells you to exit I-70 .3 miles after MP 145, the actual "informal exit" might be immediately after MP 147. And yes, there really are "informal exits" leading to wire gates and dirt roads that take you to roads through under-interstate culverts, pictograph panels and backcountry camping and hiking.

Temple Mountain Wash Pictograph Panel detail

(4) Verizon signal (phone or data) was generally nonexistent.  What signal there was, was spotty and weak. I posted to Facebook offline, and photos eventually made their way to "the cloud."

Head of Sinbad Panel detail

Why go? The Swell is gorgeous, rugged and remote, and loaded with fascinating Barrier Canyon Culture pictographs more than 2,000 years old. Maybe it's just their emotional impact, and Mary and I believe these figures are mostly larger than life, i.e. meant to be seen from afar. Even though some of the panels are fairly easy to reach, we had them all to ourselves.  Iffy weekday weather may have helped. We got the feeling the area is a weekend playground for ATVs and dirt bikes.  We saw the most people in the Goblin Valley area and at the Wedge Overlook.

Rochester Panel detail

It wasn't all pictographs and scenery. We saw astounding petroglyphs too, both in the Swell (Rochester Panel) and on Comb Ridge (Procession Panel). We  even stumbled on an Ancestral Puebloan village, complete with penthouse apartments and kiva.

Head of Sinbad Panel detail

The night sky was a surprise bonus on this trip. Between mostly moon-free nights and remote locations, we had dark skies every night, from our first camp at Natural Bridges National Monument to our last at Navajo National Monument. More stars than I've seen in decades.

Black Dragon Panel detail. Several of the pictographs in this
panel have been outlined in chalk, in this case erroneously.
This 2015 Science magazine post is a very interesting read.
'Winged monster' on ancient rock debunked by scientists  

All the panels in these photos can be found in guidebooks and on the web.

Top of the Burr Trail switchbacks

House on Fire (Mule Canyon)

Mary in "Hidden Village"

Little Grand Canyon from the Wedge Overlook

There's so much to see and do up there. We only sampled the low-lying fruit.

Until life's next adventure!

Toni

Postcard from Tanzania

Hello from Ngrongoro Farm House!

It's Saturday in Tanzania, and our two weeks here are coming to an end.  We’ve been mostly in the national parks and conservation areas of  northwest Tanzania- Arusha, Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro and the Serengeti.

Yesterday we visited  Oldupai Gorge, site of Mary Leakey's discovery of the Zinjanthropus skull. Today we drive to Lake Eyasi, south of Ngorongoro, and home to the Hadza people, who have have lived in this area for thousands of years. Tomorrow we hope to visit the Hadza, and perhaps join them on a hunt.  Monday night we begin the long flights home.

Tanzania is the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. Within its borders are well over one hundred tribes, each with its own language. Everyone speaks Swahili, a language in which every word ends with a vowel.. This is one positive legacy of the twenty-five-year socialist presidency of Julius Nyerere. As we understand it, albeit with some serious missteps, Nyerere succeeded in forging a Tanzanian national identity by emphasizing education and a common language.

We have loved being in Tanzania, more specifically, loved being on this particular trip, travelling with Prescott College professor and naturalist Walt Anderson, driver guides Augustine and David, and six others, three of them students.  The days have been long, generally twelve hours in the field, and that's what it takes if you really want to locate and observe wildlife.

The part of Tanzania we have seen is simply beautiful, offering gorgeous scenery in addition to stunning and plentiful wildlife. We are on the cusp of the rainy season, so wildlife is concentrated around water, whether a river or a puddle in the road. We saw more birds, mammals and reptiles than you can imagine, all unfettered by fences.

Observing wildlife behavior was such a treat. Whether the subject was lions squabbling and mating, a pack of African wild dogs sleeping, or serval cats disappearing in the grass, nature did not disappoint.


Although all our accommodations have been unique, welcoming and clean, the temporary Katikati camp in the Serengeti stands out. We spent four nights at Katikati, dining in the open air, and sleeping in canvas tents in total darkness. A generator ran a few hours each evening to recharge phones and camera batteries.  If you wanted a shower, a bucket of hot water was hoisted above your tent. What a treat after a long dusty day. 

Time is running out, so I'll end here.  If you want more photos, you’ll find them on Facebook. For me, posting there is easier, and more immediate.


Love, Toni

P.S. We did meet up with a group of Hadza.

Camping in Texas

If you've been following my Texas posts, and considering a trip to the Lone Star State,  here's one on the ins and outs of Texas camping, specifically camping in the Big Bend, Hill Country and Panhandle.

Unlike Arizona and most of the Rocky Mountain West, Texas is short on public lands.  Although there is plenty of wide open space, it's not "this land is your land, this land is my land"space, space you can use for hiking and camping.  On the Federal front, in the western half of the state, the half we visited, there's Big Bend National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and the Amistad National Recreation Area.  No National Forests. No BLM land.  The AAA map tells me there's also the Rita Blanca National Grassland in the northwest corner of the Panhandle and Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge, just west of our present location in Palo Duro Canyon State Park.

In the last 3+ years with the van, our default style of camping has been National Forest, National Park and BLM campgrounds. These are reasonably priced, and practically free with the America the Beautiful Senior Pass (if you're 62 or older, $10 gets you free admission/parking and half price camping for life).  In west Texas, with one big exception, our pass didn't do much for us.

The exception is Big Bend National Park.  Three great campgrounds, each $7/night with the pass, plus a great backcountry option we'll use next time we're here.  For one $10 fee ($5 with the geezer pass) you can spend up to 14 nights in designated primitive sites, many of them on decent dirt roads.

So what's a camper to do?  Two options, one free, one a little more costly than we're used to.  As a side note, when we visited cities like San Antonio and Austin, we stayed in hotels and motels, and used the van to get around.

In Texas, you can stay overnight for free at picnic areas. Since Texas highways are lousy with picnic areas, this is a good option for folks on a tight budget.  Although we made a lot of lunch time stops at picnic areas, we never used them for camping. Texas picnic areas consist of several picnic tables and trash cans, generally in a grassy area, and right by the highway.  When we camp, we're generally looking for distance from road noise, places to walk with Toby, water, and a toilet.  If we find a nice spots for boondocking (dry camping, remote camping, primitive camping, dispersed camping), we're happy to forgo the water and toilet.  Picnic areas didn't do it for us.

We quickly realized Texas State Parks were the way to go.  These parks were mostly constructed by the CCC, and are all over the state, generally in scenic areas.  State parks offer water, restrooms, hot showers, and hiking, and with the exception of Big Bend Ranch State Park, dogs are welcome on the trails. The only drawback is cost. Overnight camping fees vary from park to park, and range from $8/night for primitive sites to $24/night for sites with full hookups.  It's been a mostly cold trip, with many nights in the teens and low twenties, so we've mostly opted for water and electric sites, at an average cost of $15/night.  In an electric site, we can plug in our extension cord, then run the refrigerator and furnace, and recharge stuff, all without draining the "house" battery.   Many state parks also offer decent WiFi in the water/electric camping areas.

Although not as big or remote as what we're used to, the Texas State Parks have all been good places to spend the night, well-maintained, and generally staffed with welcoming and helpful volunteers and rangers.  The one exception is Palo Duro Canyon, easily the most spectacular of the parks, and also the least welcoming and most poorly maintained. Perhaps it's the proximity to a city, in this case, Amarillo.

If you visit Texas and think you'll visit more than half a dozen state parks, natural areas and historic sites, consider a Texas State Parks pass. It's $70 for a year, and gets everyone in your vehicle into these parks for "free." Since admission to Texas Parks and Wildlife sites ranges from $2-6 per person per day, this in addition to any camping fees, it's a better deal than you might think.  The pass also includes four half price nights when you're in the same site for two nights. The pass expires at the end of the month in which it was purchased, so ours is good through February 2017.

Of the parks we stayed in, we particularly liked Copper Breaks, Caprock Canyons, Seminole Canyon and Davis Mountains.  We also visited and loved Pedernales Falls, Enchanted Rock (this park has all walk-in sites) and Colorado Bend State Parks.

Another side note- more of west Texas than we expected has no Verizon signal.  Not a problem, and it's good to be prepared with paper maps, books, magazines, etc.  We're also doing a three-month $0.99/month trial of Spotify, and enjoyed listening to albums we had downloaded and saved offline.

We found the state parks pretty empty, and hear that changes dramatically with Spring Break in March. Even in winter, Friday and Saturday nights within a couple of hours of cities like San Antonio and Austin may be booked way in advance at more popular parks. 

The good news is Texas has a good park reservation site, and unlike Recreation.gov and the Arizona State Parks site, no additional reservation fee.
http://texas.reserveworld.com/Home.aspx

If you camp Texas and find more options, let me know!

Toni

The photos are of our camps in Chisos Basin (Big Bend National Park) and Comanche Loop (Copper Breaks State Park).

Postcard from Nova Scotia

Friday, September 25

This comes to you from Lincolnshire (Chicago area), home of Mary's brother Dick, where we are enjoying a brief layover on our flight home from Nova Scotia.  Although those of you on Facebook will already have seen the photos from White Head Island, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, for us, this trip was not about dramatic coastlines and picturesque fishing villages.

Our trips often develop in unanticipated theme.  Largely because we were listening to Mary Doria Russell's books "Doc" and "Epitaph," our spring van ramble through Oregon and northern California acquired an 1870's focus.

This trip turned out to be about migration, and its corollaries immigration and deportation.  We absorbed the 1755 deportation of the Acadians (many migrated to Louisiana where they developed what we know as Cajun culture), the immigration of the New England Planters who replaced them, the immigration of the Scottish highlanders, the British Loyalists (including Black Loyalists), and finally, the millions of soon-to-be Canadians who flowed through Halifax's Pier 21 during the 20th century. Our understanding was informed by this trip's audiobook, Isabel Wilkerson's "The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration."  

We don't learn much about Canada in U.S. schools, and historic sites don't always give the big picture. Until we visited the Fortress of Louisbourg, it was a blur of French in charge, then British, then French, then British. At Louisbourg, in the course of a one-hour walking tour of the 1740's fortress (at that time, the largest fortification in North America, defending the third busiest port on the Atlantic coast), we were finally able to put it all in the context of vaguely familiar European century of imperialist conflict between England, France and Spain, that included the French and Indian Wars, the War of Spanish Succession, the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812.  Not unlike today's Syrians, the peoples living in Nova Scotia and on Cape Breton, from the Mi'kmaq on, were displaced by these wars, with often disastrous results.

It wasn't all history.  We had two wonderful visits with friends- John & Brenda Blom on White Head Island (New Brunswick) and Bob & Janice Girard at Lake Annis (near Yarmouth, Nova Scotia).  There's something particularly invigorating about days of intense hanging-out with folks who like good conversation, food and drink.

Speaking of food, we ate amazing amounts of very fresh seafood, particularly haddock and scallops, but also mussels, cod, tuna, halibut, and bits of lobster and crab served in endlessly appetizing ways.  Most unusual were the lobster pirogues served as part of our five-course tasting menu at the The Bite House, just outside Baddeck. 

In addition to food, we sampled local wines, beers, and single malt whiskey, enjoyed Cape Breton music from ceilidhs (a "kay lee" is a sort of Scottish music jam) to Men of the Deeps, North America's only coal miners chorus.  Although Mary did see a few new-to-her birds, we were too late for fall migration (and too early for fall colors). Oh yeah, we rode on a LOT of ferries, on rides varying in length from five minutes to 2 1/2 hours.  We were, after all, in the Maritime Provinces.

On our last full day in Nova Scotia, at Pier 21 (Canada's Immigration Museum), the Family History Center provided printouts of my parents' immigration records from 1939 (Papa) and January 1940 (Mama), as well as information about the ships they came in on- the Georgic (Mama) and the Ils de France (Papa).  For me, a moving conclusion to a visit during which we talked so much about the migration of people from one place to another.

Home tomorrow. Still lots to ponder.

Toni

Pictures- (1) Getting ready for lobster season on White Head Island, (2) John and Mary at Southwest Head, Grand Manan, (3) the beach at Kejimkujik Seaside, (4) Bob & Mary, followed by Janice and Bob's sister Phyllis on Mavillette Beach (French Shore near Yarmouth), (5) the Lunenburg Academy, (6) little toad at Uisge Bahn Falls near Baddeck, (7) view south towards Cheticamp, (8) another coastal shot, this time along the Lighthouse Trail outside Louisbourg, (9) the Skyline Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, (10) sunset from our B&B in Cheticamp, (11) the beach at Inverness, (12) the White Head Ferry from John & Brenda's deck, (13) a carnivorous pitcher plant at Keji Seaside, (14) harbor seals at Keji

The limitations of posting to Blogger from a mobile phone mean the photos are low resolution and the layout nonexistent.