Utah and New Mexico road trip, Part 2

**scroll down to read part 1 before reading this**

TUESDAY OCTOBER 8, 2013
St. George is a place I have heard my family speaking positively about for years, and now I see why.  I guess I could summarize it by saying it was a cute town surrounded by redrock bluffs.  Our goal for today was to visit Snow Canyon State Park just north of St. George, however the park was closed until 2:00 p.m. for the "World Senior Games." I had never heard of such of thing and the first thing that came to mind was a bunch of seniors playing boggle and bingo. At breakfast we overheard some of the seniors talking about their roles in the Senior Games and was surprised and impressed to learn they were cycling, running, playing basketball, soccer, etc. Truely incredible! We passed some time in the morning by looking at model homes, something we both enjoy doing when we have free time. These were some pretty incredible model homes though, nestled into the redrock mesas with really cool desert architecture. I fell in love with one of them, which had the indoor/outdoor living concept I like so much. It had a man-made waterfall in the backyard, a stream, beautiful landscaping and every wall that could be glass, was glass. On top of this, it had a separate casita for guests inside of the most interesting entryways I have ever seen.

Front yard and entryway

Love the floor to ceiling glass!

View from the kitchen and great room

Best entryway I have ever seen

Following lunch and a drive around St. George and the adjacent town of Ivins, we entered Snow Canyon State Park to hike. Snow Canyon is a park that is often overlooked due to the proximity of the popular national parks that are nearby, but this park is not to be missed.   I could say the same for Kodachrome State Park.

Kodachrome State Park from the Highway 18 overlook

Petrified Dunes at Snow Canyon State Park

 We hiked the Petrified Dunes and 3 Ponds trails.

After our hike we took Interstate 15 to Highway 9 and stayed in Hurricane, UT for the night, putting us closer to Zion National Park for our next day of activities. 

Utah and New Mexico road trip, Part 1

Hanna and I are taking some time off work this month to travel. We are starting with a road trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico to visit her brother Eric and his fiancee Serena, but we are taking time to stop and see some fun places along the way. Our original plan was to visit some of Utah's national parks including Zion and Bryce Canyon, however the government shutdown started a few days before we left. We weren't about to let some Republican games ruin our vacation, so we headed out despite the shutdown.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 6, 2013
We left home Sunday morning with the lawns mowed, cat fed and a full tank of fuel and headed up Interstate 80 past Truckee and Reno to the bustling town of Fernley, Nevada, then continued east out Highway 50. The quick route to New Mexico is Interstate 5 to Bakersfield then route 58/40 east, but I would rather poke myself in the eye with a stick than drive the I-5. Highway 50 is a little circuitous but offers great views along the way. We left Hwy 50 a few miles east of Ely, Nevada and turned south onto Highway 93, then east on Highways 319/56, crossed into Utah and continued on to Cedar City, Utah for the night. We covered a total of 638 miles today, most of which was very scenic and very enjoyable. 

Nothing but wide open highway out here!

Made it to Utah

Caught some good light in the 30 miles before reaching our hotel

MONDAY OCTOBER 7, 2013
After a night of good sleep, we left Cedar City heading east through a really beautiful canyon on Highway 14, north on 89, then east on Highway 12, stopping at Red Canyon for a hike.

Highway 14 east of Cedar City.  This is a must-do route, it is beautiful!

 

Highway 14

We were learning pretty quickly that the national park closure was not about to lock us out of seeing beautiful redrock country.  Red Canyon looks like a miniature Zion, with trails that follow the contour of the mesa, with hoodoos and rock spires similar to what you find at Bryce Canyon.  And yes, 'hoodoos' really is a word.

Hiking in Red Canyon, near intersection of Highway 89 and 12 in Utah

The parties involved

Continuing east on Highway 12 toward Escalante, we stopped at Kodachrome State Park for a 6 mile loop around the Panorama Trail. Along the way were offshoots to Panorama Point and back to Cool Cave, which, as the name suggests, was very cool. The last 50 feet of the trail was narrow and ended at a cave with a giant natural skylight in the ceiling.

Random photo taken off Highway 12

 

Hiking to Panorama Point

Mesas along the Panorama Trail

The name says it all

After using up the day, we turned around and backtracked west along Highway 12, turned north on 89, west on Highway 20 and down Interstate 15 past Cedar City. We had an open itinerary with no advanced reservations, so we continued on to St. George, Utah for the evening to get us closer to parks we wanted to see the next day.

Weekend at Pismo Beach

The past couple of weeks have been all about travel preparation for our upcoming trips.  Our Europe trip is mostly planned, however we are leaving soon for Utah and New Mexico and literally haven't had a chance to plan any part of it.  Needless to say, we still have much work to make the most of our trip.  As far as Europe-prep, we hit REI pretty hard and bought the clothes we needed along with good hiking and city walking shoes.  Thanks to Adam, the REI friends and family coupon saved us $165!  We have been busy every night between trip planning, exercise, bbqs at friend's places, mobile food truck nights, etc.

Hanna's family sold their place in Los Angeles and found a house they loved in the Auburn area.  Timing worked out perfect, selling one place and getting the keys to the new one within 4 days of the old house closing.  They were staying with us while shopping for a home and during their 4 day homeless period, and we are happy to have them much closer to us now.

 Last weekend I went with the 4Runner group down to Pismo Beach for three days of playing around on the dunes.  Mike, Stuart and I caravanned down from Sacramento and met approximately 75 other 4Runner owners at the beach.  Many of them are close personal friends, so it was fun to visit and spend time out on the dunes.  This is the first time I have had my truck on the dunes with the supercharger, and it added a whole new element of fun.  Here's a video on the "sand drags."  It's uphill with plenty of whooptie-doos. 

Here are a few photos from the trip.

Part of the group photo

Mike

Me

If you haven't been to Pismo Beach, it's a fun place to spend an extended weekend.

Fall countdown

With summer ending, we are trying to squeeze in as many camping trips as possible before the rainy season hits.  (We were only partially successful at meeting that goal; more on that in a minute.)  We did an annual trip to Sly Park (Jenkinson Lake) with Hanna's friends and colleagues.  The location is close enough to home to not require much planning, the campsites are nice and the lake is perfect for watersports and running/biking on the trail around the lake.  I had never tried a paddle board, so we rented a gamut of watersport equipment including paddle boats, kayaks and paddle boards.  Of course, I loved it and I'm hooked on yet another sport.  Most people can barely balance on one of these things, but Hanna was immediately showing us her best hand-stand.  Bravo.

We had a brief thunderstorm over night, which I rather enjoyed.  I woke up to the sound of thunder, listened to about five or six rumbles in the distance and wondered when it was finally going to wake Hanna up.  A giant one hit nearby and lit up the sky, Hanna immediately sits up and says "did you hear that, thunder!"  haha.  She can sleep through just about anything.  Clearly she wasn't the only one though, at the moment, echoing off the adjacent lake, you could hear the sound of about a dozen tent zippers opening up simultaneously as people crawled out of their tents to put on their rain fly.  The rain was a nice change of pace.  In fact, we went running near our house a few days ago in the middle of a huge downpour and had fun doing it.

On the not-so-good side of things, I had to drive to work one day for a meeting that was scheduled to run late.  On my way home I stopped in traffic and the person behind did not.   A 2009 Scion sedan died on Highway 160 that night.  The 4Runner not only lived, I had the pleasure of getting to drive off of the woman's front end, which she had carefully wedged under my rear bumper and trailer hitch.  As I slowly pulled forward all you could hear was tearing plastic and broken glass hitting the ground (from her car), so hopefully that gave her something to think about next time she wants to not pay attention driving.  But alas, my truck was injured too.  It drove fine (I drove it around all weekend, in fact), but it needed a new rear bumper and some denting repaired at the bottom of the rear liftgate.  There was no frame or hidden damage and no one was injured in the crash, at least to my knowledge.

 
Her insurance admitted liability (I am not at fault) and it is currently being repaired at a local bodyshop.  Life goes on.

In more exciting news, Hanna and I are doing pretty well at our "work less, enjoy more" goal.  We are taking a full month off work and have two trips planned.  One to Albuquerque, NM to visit her brother and fiancee as well as experience the Hot Air Balloon Festival from a great vantage point..in a hot air balloon.  We are driving the car out so we can stop a few days in Utah and check out Arches National Park, Zion, Canyonlands, etc., the full itinerary has not been determined yet.  We will come home for a couple of days and leave for Europe.  This year it's Austria and Slovenia.  More on that in future posts.  :)

Lost Coast

My vote for the most fun hole-in-the-wall outdoor bar in Sacramento?  Swabbie's Bar & Restaurant on the Sacramento River.  I've been a couple of times now, usually for something weird like the Journey cover band we saw that Saturday evening August 27th.  The venue is essentially a tree-covered lot with tables right on the Sacramento River, along with a real dive of a building serving up the best fish tacos in town.  We invited Matt and Renee, Christy, Angela, Nicole and Megan to join us.  The Journey cover band was actually really good, and following a couple of drinks, they may have been the real Journey. 

With one of Hanna's bridesmaid's, Alex, already on her way to med school in New Orleans, her other bridesmaid Danielle was shortly behind her for the big move to D.C.  We spent Sunday hanging out with Danielle with a few rounds of bowling at Strike's in Rocklin to finish off the night.  We will miss having Danielle and Alex in town.

I took the next day off work, Monday July 29, to hang out with my friend Bob from Oklahoma.  He
flew to California to visit with family and backpack the Lost Coast with his wife.  His request for the day was to go mountain biking on the Foresthill Divide Loop Trail, and to also squeeze in a paddle down the lower American River.  After his kayak arrangements fell through we focused on the biking and got in a good ride just as the heat was setting in.  We drove down to the inlet of Clementine Reservoir for a quick cooling off in the water and came back to the 4Runner to find that the park ranger's truck completely stuck next to mine.  He was attempting to check and see if I paid my entrance fees, but his heavy full sized truck sank to the axles before he could get out.  He was happy to see us, and even happier to see I carried a tow strap.  After yanking him out of the gravel we set on our way.  I was telling Bob about our previous evening of bowling and he had the sudden urge to go, so off we went for a second evening of bowling.  Those two nights of bowling practice didn't amount to much, I still barely broke a 100.  :)

Hanna and I took the day off on Friday August 2nd and headed up the coast for a weekend of camping.  I am pretty familiar with the section of coast north of San Francisco between the Marin headlands and Salt Point State park, but my travels north of that area past Gualala, Manchester Beach, Navarro Redwoods and MacKerricher are much more limited.  And actually, there's a good reason for it.  Ever since State Parks went to the Reserve America reservation system at about my mid-point in college, I've never been able to get a coastal campsite.  Most of the coastal campgrounds are reserved far in advance.  (Availability mid-week is pretty good, but weekends are not.)  I checked each of these campgrounds before we left just to see and sure enough, all full.  We decided to do some scoping of the campgrounds both on the way north as well as on our way home, to pick out the best campgrounds and campsites for future camping.  While doing-so we checked to see if there were any first-come, first-serve sights available and the rangers basically laughed at us.  I knew this would be the case, which is why I packed pretty much assuming we would be dry-camping at the Lost Coast in the Sinkyone Wilderness on the north coast. 

The Lost Coast is the only area of California where Highway 1 leaves the coast, it's simply too rugged to make for a reliable roadway.  We turned off of Highway 1 at Usal Road and hit the dirt, traveling 5.7 miles to Usal Beach where we spent the night.  The area is beautiful, black sand beaches, sea stacks, rugged mountains, usually early morning fog in the summer, and the meadow between the primitive campground and the beach has had elk every time I've visited.  We ate dinner, watched the sunset from the beach and spent the remainder of the evening enjoying the campfire.

The next morning we had breakfast and set out for a mountain bike trail that repeatedly graces the "Top 50 most epic rides in the U.S." list, the Paradise Royale Mountain Bike Trail.  We knew it was going to be a workout at 14 miles in length, 2800 ft of climbing, all singletrack.  As it turns out it was not a good choice for us.  The climbs were not horrible but more than half of the trail had a giant cliff on the side, one with absolutely no room for error.  I've had my cliff diving experiences, so the trail was a little unnerving for both of us.  We got through it though and got some great exercise.  We headed back down King's Peak Road, crossed the paved road to Shelter Cove, and continued another 20 miles down the dirt Usal Road back to our camp, a total of 50 miles on the dirt (plus the bike ride) for today.  Following another nice dinner and campfire, we went to bed.

Sunday morning we woke up, had coffee and a quick breakfast and broke down camp and were back at the pavement at Highway 1 by around 9:30.  We checked out Westport Union Landing campground (great for RVs but not so good for tent camping as it's right on the coastal cliff), MacKerricher (fairly good camping), and Russian Gulch, where we stopped for a two hour hike in the redwoods back to a 36' waterfall.  I remember camping here when I was a kid (we would come here at exactly this time of year for the opening of abalone season) and generally have great memories in this campground.  I had researched mountain bike trails in the area and the Manly Gulch and Caspar trails sound worthy of future exploration.  I want to do some future exploring at Gualala and also at Big River, both locations look like a great place to paddle.


We continued south on Highway 1 and turned inland at Jenner, following the Russian River and Highway 116 through Sebastopol and back to US 101.  We elected to jump back on Highway 116/12 (Carneros Highway) to I-80 rather than Highway 37, the route we used on Friday.  We had a great time and targeted some areas we would like to explore again in the near future.

Following an uneventful week at work we spent our next Saturday August 10th in the Tahoe-Donner area hiking with Rose and Stuart.  We had breakfast at a new restaurant (strangely enough called Peg's Glorified Eggs and Ham, which was delicious, btw), drove up to Donner Pass and dropped our car off at Rose and Stuart's cabin, then took one car to the top of Grouse Ridge where we began our hike.  We did the Glacier Lake Trail, 7 miles total, with some great views looking across multiple lake-dotted basins and meadows.  We headed home after stopping first at the Soda Springs Lodge for burgers and drinks.


Sunday was much less exciting.  Some overdue weed pulling and yard work, replaced a Moen cartridge shower valve that failed for the sole reason we never use that shower (common issue with unused cartridge style valves), followed by our typical Sunday night routine of yearning for another day off.

Rollercoasters, ball games and friends & family

The past couple of weekends have been productive and fun.  Two weekends ago myself, Bill, Rose and Stuart all passed our ham radio licensing exam administered by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) and licensed through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  We are using ham radio in the 4Runner when we travel with friends to make sure we all end up at the correct destination; plus, it's fun to be able to chat along the way.  The range on ham radios can be hundreds if not thousands of miles when connected to a repeater.  They use the VHF FM band, so clarity is amazingly good. 

A few other activities:

• We did a Thursday night River Cat's game sponsored by Hanna's company.

• Hanna did the Davis Moonlight run with her co-workers and did really well.

• Spent a day at Six Flag's Discovery Kingdom riding rollercoasters.

• Had my sister, Joe and Derek up for a weekend of visiting.  Hit the RV show at Arco Arena on their last day before they left town.

• Were invited to dinner at Mike and Marin's family's house for an excellent feast of salad, ribs, chicken, steak, pasta and quinoa.  

I also started a "new" job last week.  It is still with the same company (basically a new boss and new collegues) and the job is very closely related to what I was doing previously, but I am now assigned to work on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), which is a fancy name for the twin tunnels project that diverts water from the Sacramento River near Freeport for delivery to farms in the Central Valley and to thirsty citizens of Los Angeles.  The BDCP is no less than 23,000 pages long, so I have my work cut-out for me.

New and improved(?) blog

For four years now I have wondered why the options on blogspot.com were so limited.  I couldn't change formats, templates or even colors.  I finally looked into the issue and realized that because my Mom and sister Jen had originally started the blog for me, they had the administrator priviledges.  For a small fee my sister rolled the blog over to my control and wha-la, I now have new-found powers.  Note the new format; like it?

So what's new?  I did a rafting trip down the Stanislaus River for work.  We are looking at increasing flows on the tributaries to the San Joaquin River, the Stanislaus being one of them, and we wanted to see the effect of releasing high flows into the river.  Because there are a lot of restoration activities occurring like increased side channel and floodplain habitat for spawning salmon, we wanted to ensure that increased flows would not render these restoration activities useless.  We will go out again at low flows to determine what can be done to increase salmon survival at low flows.

Our friends Rose and Stuart joined us on a little backcountry adventure the other weekend.  They recently parked their Jeep CJ7 and bought a 4Runner, which Stuart has diligently been building up for trail-use, and we decided to explore a portion of country we had not seen.  We did the 74 mile dirt road called Henness Pass Road, which leaves from Camptonville (north of Nevada City) and ends in Verdi, Nevada. 

Views from Pliocene Ridge

We spent the night at Sagehen Creek campground near Truckee.  There are only about eight sites and each back up to a beautiful meadow.

Sagehen Creek Campground

The next day we pressed-on toward Nevada, passing through some beautiful meadows just north of Truckee.

We found some areas that we liked a lot and will explore further this summer.

I mentioned in my last post that I was working on refinishing some new wheels for the 4Runner.  I looked at aftermarket wheels and didn't see anything I had to have.  When I see other people's aftermarket wheel choices I usually think to myself "I wouldn't have picked those," and often factory wheels are better quality anyway.  I ended up buying some 17" Toyota Sequoia wheels, which should look very at-home on the 4Runner.  Of course I couldn't just leave them alone, I chose to repaint them a dark graphite gray like you see on some of the high-end new cars.  I also went up one tire size to a 275/70R17, here is the final product:

The dark wheels aren't for everyone, but I like it. 

And finally, last weekend we went to Spicer Meadows Reservoir to join my mom for a weekend of camping.  She and Eddie have had their trailer up there for two weeks now, escaping the heat.  We got to spend lots of quality time and were able to celebrate her birthday that Sunday.  Hanna and I snuck in a nice mountain bike ride around Lake Alpine as well.

I have a goal of updating my blog a little more frequently, but we will see how that goes.  Until then, is the new format an upgrade or downgrade?