The Great 2008 Southwestern Road Trip - II

By the next morning I could see alright and my hearing had returned to normal. I left Cortez in the morning fog, but there were definite signs that it would be a beautiful day when the fog burned off.

 

I took US160 and headed for the Four Corners to see if the local scenery could sustain it as a tourist attraction or whether the fact that four state boundaries merged on the spot was the sole draw. It turned out that the latter was the case, though there is a US Geological Survey marker on the spot if you need a photograph to remind you that you were there. Thirty-some miles west of there I turned north again on US191 and reentered Utah from the south. The picture above was taken in that borderland area and shows that the day made good on its promise of beautiful weather.

 

This picture was taken approaching Natural Bridges National Monument in southwestern Utah. Driving out here is a pleasure, if for no other reason than you have the roads virtually to yourself. Free to enjoy the scenery, different vistas still seem to sneak up on you, keeping you in a constant state of surprise.

 

This one, looking southeast from the highway near Mexican Hat, shows the caprock south of Mokee Dugway. Utah 261 heads south from Natural Bridges like any other two-lane highway in the area then, in the space of a mile or so, turns into a gravel road and comes to the edge of the caprock. The elevation is 6425' and, if you choose to continue, you soon find yourself at the bottom of a series of switchbacks 1100' lower and on flat ground again.

 

This is the northern approach to Monument Valley on the Utah/Arizona border - you know, John Ford, the Duke, "Rio Grande", "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" - that Monument Valley. US163 is pretty, but to get the full effect of the Valley you need to get off on some of the tracks and search for "that perfect view".

 

This is a view looking west across part of the Wahweap Marina on Lake Powell, above the Glen Canyon dam and Page, Arizona. That's Castle Rock across the water. My November 19, 2009 post shows the Marina and Castle Rock from a higher elevation late in the day and it describes the cut across the peninsula to the right of Castle Rock. My post on the 20th shows a panorama view from that same overlook.

 

This is a section of the sandstone basin containing Lake Powell taken from a cruise boat one beautiful afternoon. The lake, which extends 185 miles up the Colorado River, has a longer coastline than California. Every time you turn a corner you're rewarded with a surprise and, at the end of the day, you're thinking it really would have been nice to have a geologist with you to explain how all this came about.

The Great 2008 Southwestern Road Trip - I

I've kind of been slacking off with my posts recently. I don't really have an excuse, but I do have an explanation. A couple weeks ago I read on an art blog about "virtual"  plein air paintouts. As I understand it, a normal plein air paintout would have a group of artists, each with his own easel and other paraphernalia, meet somewhere in the area and spend a morning or afternoon painting all the best parts of the given locale. Clearly good fun, a chance to visit with other artists, share tips. . . whatever. Now by contrast, these "virtual" paintouts might take place anywhere in the world and the artists "meet" at the agreed-upon location via

Google Earth. Of course, you forgo the visits with the other artists and you don't get to share tips, but you can do it all in your bathrobe - how cool is that?

But I digress. The point of this is that I finally discovered and installed Google Earth and have been having a great time since then planning and re-planning my May road trip. I think I've got a workable itinerary now and still have about two months to tweak it. Ain't technology wonderful.

Meanwhile, over the next couple of days, I thought I'd post some of the photographs from my 2008 trip. I know some of you have already seen these particular shots, an overview of the trip, but I showed them off before I started this blog, so most of you have not.

 

In 2008, I was living in Fort Worth so my route took me up through Amarillo, Santa Fe, over the Rio Grande (see the previous post) and up into Colorado. The picture above, of aspens and spruce in the snow, was taken in south-central Colorado between Pagosa Springs and Durango. I hadn't seen much snow for a while, so I thought it was pretty neat.

 

I spent the night in Durango and left at dawn for Silverton on the "Million Dollar Highway". As soon as it was light enough to see, it was light enough to see that it was snowing - big time. In no time I found myself in the middle of a full-blown blizzard on a wonderful mountain road I'd never before traveled - with nary a guard rail in sight and the river 'way down there over the side.

This picture, taken in the northern outskirts of Durango, show how much snow built up since I'd left town. You see, I eventually got Silverton where I had breakfast and talked to one of the locals about whether or not I should continue on my planned route around the mountain past Telluride and down to Dolores and Cortez. I found his answer rather equivocal and opted to return the way I had come back to Durango. Yeah, I know -- Chicken. . . !

Taking the highway west from Durango to Cortez, I passed the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park in a cold, soaking rain and decided to bypass that side trip and look for something else. I found a motel for the night in Cortez and headed west where the brighter sky showed some promise of something other than rain. Just wandering around near the Colorado/Utah border I stumbled upon a small section of Canyonlands National Park. I don't think I had even heard of Canyonlands before, and here it turned out to be one of the highlights of my whole trip.

The previous picture and these next two were all taken at the Needles Overlook. When I arrived, the weather was as good as I was to see that day. The river in the middle distance is the Colorado. The weather, of course, was moving in from the west and I was fairly sure that by the end of the day it would be very wet again. One of my favorite shots from the trip is this one of the storm passing the peak known as the northern six shooter. There's another just out of the frame to the left, which is the southern six shooter.

I remember hoping that as the storms approached, one after another, I'd have an opportunity to get some lightning shots. But, it was not to be. When the storms started closing on the Overlook, I started moving in the direction of the truck. By the time I got there I was in the middle of a sleet storm, soaking wet and cold as hell. Then, headed back east towards Colorado and my motel, the storm closed in close around me and I finally got to see the lightning - from inside the cloud. The lightning just blinded me for a moment - it was the thunder that was truly impressive.

*****

Now, if I can keep on task for the next few days, I should post several more pictures from this trip. But, as I said, finding Canyonlands was fortuitous and this was just one overlook. After studying the area in Google Earth I decided that my May road trip will include the drive up the San Juan Valley past Telluride, up to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison near Montrose, and west to Moab - where I've scouted out much of the rest of Canyonlands. It's gonna be great !!!

New Mexico - 2008

These pictures were taken in the spring of 2008 on my road tour of the Southwest. I was in a bit of a hurry to get to the mountains and snow in Colorado, so I'm afraid I gave New Mexico short shrift. Then, of course, I found myself on the Million Dollar Highway between Durango and Silverton in the middle of a blizzard. I need to study both states a little more so I'm planning another road trip. I'm going to delay starting until May this time and, hopefully, I'll see more of the countryside and a bit less snow. Meanwhile, I'll post a few more pictures from the 2008 trip.

This first picture is a view looking north towards Santa Fe with the Sangre de Christo mountains in the background - and the first of a lot of snow I saw in the next few days.

 

These two pictures are of the Rio Grande Gorge, northwest of Taos. Both of them were taken from the bridge, the one above looking north and the one below looking south. I found the area rather desolate but, with the Rio Grande's significance to Texas, I couldn't very well ignore it.

 

This last one is a Google Map showing the location of the bridge over the Gorge in relation to Taos. I knowingly crossed the Rio Grande in two other places (not shown): (1) in 1968 or '69 I was lured to Nuevo Laredo by some of the sailors I worked with in Kingsville, and (2) in 1978, when I was briefly with the FAA in Brownsville I wandered across the international bridge one afternoon just to get an idea of what the town was all about. Oblivious, I crossed it in the summer of 1974 and numerous times since on I-40 heading to or from California. And in January of 1975 Sally and I crossed it on I-10 near El Paso, enroute back to Lemoore.

 

When you look at a map of New Mexico and Texas, you get a surprising idea of just how long the Rio Grande is. But you'd have to include part of Colorado to capture its entire length. It's the fourth longest river in the United States. I couldn't bend Google Maps to my will, so there's no annotated map to include showing its 1885 mile course.