The 2015 Spring Roadtrip: Gallup to Jackson

The first part of the trip, when you start out buried in Central Texas, is always the worst. In this case, headed for Gallup NM, it was 7 1/2 hours through west Texas just to get out of the state. I left Monday morning at six and the only incident of note was the anxiety I felt west of Albuquerque over gasoline. I departed Albuquerque headed west on I-40 with the Sierra telling me I still had over 100 miles range in which to find a gas station. No problema, right? Wrong. This is New Mexico: from here to there (choose any "here" and any "there") is a hell of a long way. Gas stations are few and far between. And it's windy! And for planning purposes, that's always a headwind. The Sierra gives me an estimated range for the gasoline onboard, but it doesn't tell me how it calculates anything, which would be interesting and perhaps even helpful for an engineer. But then, at some indeterminate point, it quits estimating the range and just tells me I have "low fuel". That "low fuel" means different things to different people. What it means to pilots is definitely different than what it means to your average driver simply because everything that happens when you're flying an airplane screams potential doom. But I found an off-brand gas station at a wide spot in the road and topped the 26 gallon tank up with 23.7 gallons. As it turned out, Grants NM was just a few miles up the road and I could have made that too; I just didn't know it at the time. The GPS took me directly to my motel and, aside from the 25 to 30 knot surface winds, things were looking good.

It's 135 miles from Gallup to Cortez in the southwestern corner of Colorado. I was on the road at six the morning of the second day. It was bright and clear that morning and the winds had faded in the night. The traffic headed north was light, but the weird driving regulations on the reservation (Navajo, I think) were more than annoying enough to make up for that. It seemed like it took forever to make Cortez. There were a few pleasant spots where the scenery gave me a shot in the arm. In the picture above, with the dearth of trees, I might have imagined myself in the Scottish Highlands if sage had been heather and had there been any thistles growing on the roadside. If your imagination is up to snuff you should be able to find three castles on that long blue mountain in the background.

From Cortez to Monticello, across the state line in Utah, is only 61 miles. In Cortez it was still bright with only a scattered layer of clouds. Soon after leaving town, however, the sky was much more interesting. To a landscape photographer, an interesting sky can really add drama to an image and I was getting excited about my prospects for the rest of the day. Five or 6 miles from the Utah state line and maybe 20 miles from Monticello I was presented with the "interesting sky" in the picture above. It was like staring into a black hole and it had me seriously reconsidering my plans for the day. Twenty miles from Monticello on a regular day the town would not be visible because of the intervening low hills and shallow vales. But it would be nearly impossible to miss the Abajo Mountains rising suddenly 4000 feet directly west of the city. I love this picture, but without knowledge of the geography it would be merely somewhat interesting.

By the time I'd driven to the outskirts of Monticello, I'd survived transiting the black hole and emerged on the other side where the skies were beautiful, if chaotic, and exciting rather than intimidating. The skies continued to moderate as I drove past Canyonlands NP, through Moab, by Arches NP, west to Green River, and north again to Wellington, UT. North of Green River was new territory for me and exceedingly interesting. The GPS presented me with a glitch in Wellington, telling me to turn into a (dead-end) street while, at the same time, showing my route joining my chosen highway a mile or two north. My familiarity with the GPS has been increasing and I was able to recover on the fly with nary a hiccup.

The picture above shows the skies north of Wellington continued to dominate the scenery. At one point, on a straight stretch of otherwise empty highway, I found myself flying down the road between sandstone cliffs on either side. The tops of the cliffs were connected by a heavy, dark span of cloud directly overhead that presented the feel of speeding through an underpass. The skies in the windshield and behind me in the rear-view mirror were bright blue with billowing white cumulus. I was marveling at the impressive visuals when the overpass suddenly started leaking. I let up on the gas a little and the leak quickly turned from drizzle to pea-sized, then dime-sized, then quarter-sized hail. In two minutes or so, the hail had scoured all former carbon lifeforms (bugs) from the windshield. I don't think my windshield has been that clean since I bought the truck.

These two pictures (above and below) were taken between Wellington and Vernal, UT. The countryside seemed to be changing around every curve. It's hard to imagine these landscapes without the dramatic skies, but I remember the very pleasant feeling of having found a new place to come back to on a future trip in a couple years. Maybe the skies next time will be clear; even so, I suspect this landscape will be worth the trip.

These final two pictures, of Steinaker Reservoir (above), just north of Vernal, and Flaming Gorge Reservoir (below), near the Wyoming state line are separated by about 37 mi. The weather seemed to be holding off at the same time the clouds became more chaotic. Nothing yet suggested, however, that there was anything ahead other than interesting terrain and even more interesting skies. The roads were somewhat steeper, turning and climbing, twisting, dropping out from under you and immediately climbing again. It was almost like being in the mountains. As we (i. e., the road and I) got higher, closer to the ridge lines and hopefully the summit, the wild curves seem to sort themselves out a bit and the drive on promised to be a little calmer.

That should've been a "heads-up". I was still thinking how nice it would be to come back and visit this area again with a less crowded agenda when the hail started again. Pea-sized, like earlier, but this time the hail accumulated quickly on the ground, covering the road. Then the hail was replaced by sleet, which effectively filled in any and every spot on the ground not already covered by ice pellets. Shortly the sleet turned to snow. Since leaving Vernal I had watched the outside air temperature drop from 51 to 41°, then further to 36°, 35°, 33°. . .  About this time I thought, "I'm glad I've got fuel injection or I'd have to be worrying about carburetor ice." When I first started sliding, I didn't think about carburetor ice any more. I'd been following a small SUV with Florida plates up the mountain and the thought occurred to me several times that I'd probably rather be following someone from anywhere else than Florida. It was bad enough that if he slowed down and I lost my momentum, I might very well slide backwards off the mountain. Oh shit! Think of something else.

My friend, who turned out to be from Houston, not Florida (he was driving a rental car), kept his speed up and we both managed to reach the road's summit (the intersection of US191 and Fire Road 018, if you're following on Google Maps). Amenities here at this very inviting overlook, (i.e., a generous, flat parking area) included restrooms, two highway patrol cars, and now us. That made the very real possibility of spending the night on the mountain somewhat less onerous. The cops were telling us the snowplow had been dispatched but there was no estimate of when he might reach us. They also told us, as part of their tourist PR function, "this very rarely happens at the end of May." They left then, one going north and one south, checking the extents of the icy road hazard I suspect. They both came back, the one who'd gone north convinced Houston that he shouldn't have any trouble going north with his four-wheel-drive vehicle. I wasn't quite ready yet but, by the time the second cop returned from the south, I'd watched a fair number of cars and trucks all headed south pass the overlook. He came back and said they were apparently not having any problem and reminded me that the ups and downs to the north were not nearly as steep as those to the south. That was enough for me and, sure enough, once I got out on the road where people had been driving, I had no further problems with sliding.

Headed north once more my confidence rose in proportion to the air temperature, which steadily climbed as I came down off the mountain. I took the picture of the flaming Gorge Reservoir and the outside air temperature was again hovering around 54°. I got through Rocky Springs where I listened to the weather report suggesting the precipitation in the area was ending but warning that as temperatures dropped after sundown any standing water on the roads would most likely freeze. Of course, that convinced me to hie myself north to Jackson with all due speed to avoid the Ice Monster. Everything was going along fine and I was making up some of the time I spent idle on the mountaintop. I was thinking about tomorrow in Grand Teton and all the reading I'd done in preparing for the trip. There were numerous warnings about wildlife, the most prominent of which was: Be Bear Aware. Irony is everywhere and doesn't take vacations. I burst out laughing when the bear I was trying to be aware of turned from a grizzly into Smokey the Bear, the county Mountie (this guy was actually WHP ) of song and legend. Apparently, people in Wyoming don't speed much but, on the other hand, they hate wearing their seatbelts. This follow was so surprised to see me wearing my seatbelt, that I got a discount on my speeding ticket. My meeting with the gendarme cost me all the time that I'd made up, but the discounted ticket convinced me to mind my p's and q's the rest of the way into Jackson. When I arrived, the precip had stopped and the air temperature had dropped to 33°. Made it!