Category Archives: Travel

Hiking – to use the term loosely – out of Coyote Gulch

Camping, Travel, Utah

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We spent the second night on a sandy bench under a huge wall on the outside of a meander with the sky trying to clear. After our morning toilette,Escalante Trip-0110
and instant oatmeal with dry fruit for breakfast, we wandered around the area for a few minutes. Up until now, we have been walking through Navajo Sandstone, but, now, the creek – brook? stream? – has carved its way down into another layer or, more accurately, down into multi-layers; and the canyon starts to take on a different character.
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Today we walk under Coyote Bridge, following the stream, and nobody is around. Yesterday, we walked by Jacob Hamblin Arch, probably the most famous – using the term famous relatively – place in Coyote Gulch, but there were two large parties camped there, so we kept on walking. For the most part, we are hiking alone, although we do run into people going the other way or going faster (we don’t pass anybody who is walking slower than me). The first time I came here, we didn’t see anybody and now there are probably thirty people spread out along the thirteen mile canyon.

We are in an official park, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument but this is land that is administered by the Bureau of Land Management rather than The Park Service. It is the BLM, to anybody who lives in the Rural West. The BLM which administers over 245 million surface acres and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral rights. The BLM: giver of grazing and mining permits, regulator – over regulator or under regulator depending on you point of view – of fracking. Normally they do not administer parks and I really don’t remember the political reasons that brought this on except that the Monument was set-up under Clinton/Gore and Gingrich was running the House at the time.

What ever the reason, the BLM is much less formal than the Park service. In Zion National Park, many of the trails are paved, even in the Yosemite highcountry, some of the trails have wooden boardwalks and, in The Valley, some have guard rails. In Coyote, there  are no trails, there is only the way (as in this way may go through, or this way is better, or no way!). Sometimes the way is over a sandy bench covered in wild grasses, sometimes the way is in the river, sometimes it is through Gamble Oaks and Willows, but the way is always down into the canyon.
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Sometimes we take a break, just to bathe in the beauty, the wildness,
Escalante Trip-0168but the way always takes us deeper into the canyon.
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Escalante Trip-0155After a small waterfall, we ran into a slickrock section that required help from a stick that Courtney found. I kept thinking, I have been both down this section and back up, it is very doable. But I am older and stiffer and more brittle and, looking down at the landing zone, I realized that I would not make it without the stick. We slid halfway down on our butts, scooched to stage right, and then slid off the ledge to the solid sand landing zone. It was one of those places that is physically pretty easy, psychologically scary, and takes lots of time-consuming discussion.
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Escalante Trip-0175The last night in the canyon, we camp in a huge alcove. Alcoves are not my favorite place to camp because they seem so well used, maybe overused. I know that the Anasazi must have stopped here because they like alcoves, but they abandoned their major cities like Mesa Verde and Chaco near the end of the 13th century, and this is far from those cities. The magic, if it ever existed,  is gone, wiped clean by years of ranchers and cowboys using this place.
Escalante Trip-0188After our morning meditation, we hike the last couple of miles of Coyote Gulch, Escalante Trip-0191

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Coyote Gulch ends at the Escalante River at just about the place that the Escalante River, itself, ends at Lake Powell. It is as deep as we can go. But there is a way out – a long walk up a sand dune, just before the end – that leads to the Crack In The Wall. This sand dune has been a major worry for me, it is steep, sandy, and doesn’t have any shade, so Michele and I started while Gina and Courtney explored downstream. The hike up the sand dune is much worse – and much shorter – than I remembered it and my tactic becomes look up the trail, pick out a destination 15 to 20 feet ahead – like an Opuntia – then hike to that point to take a break and catch my breath. I repeat it about 50 times.Escalante Trip-0219
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Escalante Trip-0244Finally, we get to the Crack and it is much narrower than I remember – I am almost too fat – but I am able to squeeze through, only to be stopped by a block that has to be climbed.
Crack in the WallAt this point, the only way out is to go up, going back is a two-day slog, at best. With Courtney directing my feet and Gina pulling, I get above it and then scramble to the top of the plateau and, shazam!, we are out (with only a tiring, flat, walk back to the car). That night, we have a delicious dinner at the Hell’s Backbone Grill.
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The end of the Range Rover

Camping, Cars, Travel

Range Dog-3592I discovered the American Desert in the late spring of 1976 – my mom took me to Death Valley when I was about eight but I’m not counting that although it probably did plant the seed – it was a spiritual experience.

On the first trip, I drove a 1974 BMW Bavaria 4 door sedan. A friend had called and said that he had just been to Death Valley, it was fantastic, and he wanted to go back (in retrospect, he probably wanted somebody else to take their car). We drove across most of the Mojave Desert, in the dark, and camped in an empty Mahogany Flat Campground at 8,133 ft, on Telescope Peak. I slept on a cot so that I wouldn’t be attacked by snakes.

It did not take very long – but longer than it took to fall in love with the desert – to figure out that a Bavaria was not the ideal vehicle to get into the desert. The next vehicle was – and here I  am quoting from a list of my cars that I made in 2003 – A 1976 GMC 4 wheeldrive pickup: desert tan with whorehouse red vinyl interior and a GMC, OHV V8, big enough to pull a tree-stump out of the ground. It burned more gas than a 747 but was a very handy vehicle: four people could ride in the front (only) seat and drive to Death Valley. The truck really wasn’t mine, it was a company truck used by one of our superintendents, and I would use it the couple of times a year that I went to the desert.

Next was an almost new Jeep Cherokee that I bought from a friend. He sold it cheap because his parents had spilled milk and then let the milk dry under the seats and the Cherokee smelled. I don’t remember how we got rid of the smell, but it became Samantha’s car except when I wanted to go the desert. Finally, in 1988, I got a new Range Rover, described in my Car Log as A 1988 Range Rover: Olive Drab with grey interior and powered by a Rover V8 (really a modified mid-60s Buick V8 that Rover bought from GM). The perfect car for me at the time, it would go anywhere from the symphony to Coyote Gulch. And finally, A 1992 Range Rover: white. Same-o, same-o.

But it wasn’t the Same-o, same-o the 92 Rover took us all over the Western Outback – mostly the Eastern Mojave Area, the Escalante area in Utah, and Northwestern Nevada – for over ten years. It wasn’t particularly reliable, but it never left us stranded until March 29th, 2013 – about 4 o’clock in the afternoon when it gave up on 395, just north of Minden.

 Before that, we did have a couple of close calls. One memorable close call was when the alternator gave out in Soldier Meadow – probably 40 miles from the nearest pavement – but we were able to limp home.

As an aside, that problem taught me a great lesson on a difference between Rustic and City Dweller Morality – or, at least, Guiding Principles –  that I think is part of the Red/Blue conflict. When the Alt light came on in Soldier Meadows, we immediately decided to try to get as close to help as possible. We got all the way to Bruno’s Texaco Station in Gerlach where we consulted with Bruno’s son-in-law, Cecil. Of course they did not have the parts to fix it, but they suggested giving the battery a very slow charge over night. They thought that would get us to Reno. We spent the night and, the next day, drove to Reno.  The Guiding Principle in Gerlach is to help a stranger (and, I suspect even more so, a neighbor). Just outside of Reno, we stopped at a shop that specialized in foreign cars but they didn’t have the parts either (no surprise). When I asked them for suggestions, they said that they couldn’t give us any because they didn’t want to be responsible if anything went wrong. I suggested recharging the battery and they said they would do that if that was what I wanted, but it was my responsibility. We charged it over a very long lunch and departed for the Bay Area, with no real idea of what our range would be. To be safe, the next stop was an open Amoco shop near Vacaville, California. They couldn’t fix it and, when I asked about a charge, they said that they wouldn’t touch the vehicle because of the liability. We were back in the City where not getting sued was the Guiding Principle. We limped home. End aside.

A year and a half ago, when the 92 Ranger Rover gave out, it was the first time since 1976 that I haven’t had a vehicle to go to the desert. Anything reliable would be in the 20 to 25,000 range and I began to think that the money would be better spent in restoring the Rover. My complicated theory was as follows: old car prices – and I am using the term car, very loosely – start going up again  when men, and it is overwhelmingly men, get enough money to buy the cars they lusted after when they were twelve. That means that old Range Rovers should start increasing in price as people who were twelve , or so, in 1988, reach their 40s. And prices are going up, especially in England.

There are so many things to like about the Range Rover, it has a super cachet, is rugged and will go almost anywhere, has heavy-duty leather seats, a nice bin sunk into the dash for an altar, great visibility and…well, there must be other things, too, but there are also some real problems.

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The Range Rover was designed for Royals to drive in Scotland or, maybe, a lance corporal in Northern Europe when it was a military vehicle. It does not do dust very well – about 99.999% of the dirt and gravel roads in the west are dusty although we did cross a creek once in Soldier Meadows so maybe it doesn’t like water either – and, at almost any speed on a dusty road, the dust seeps in through the back window. Well before the Rover croaked, the electric doors and power seats no longer worked because the contacts were clogged with dust.

The Range Rover was noisy, not noisy in a good way like a Ferrari, noisy because it was shaped like a brick and had a rain gutter – an actual rain gutter – around the roof, noisy. Oh, and the radio didn’t work, grounding out with a 90 dB squeal at random times. The biggest downside to the Range Rover, however, was its miserable gas mileage, 15 miles to the gallon. The Rover’s V8 engine was originally designed by Buick in the late 50s/early 60s, in terms of engine design, the late 50s were the late Pleistocene and everything done to this engine since has been pretty much makeshift resulting in the lousy gas mileage.

None of the problems were deal breakers though, until we rented a cheap Chevy to go to Oregon.

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The Chevy was ugly as sin – indeed, if sin be ugly, as my mother used to say – quiet, comfortable and had a great radio. Its power seats and door locks actually worked, and the Chevy got spectacular, by our low standards, gas mileage. At 60, on a dirt road, no dust came in as we rode in air-conditioned comfort. Intellectually, I know that a cheap 2014 car is a better transportation appliance than an expensive 1992 car, but – driving around Oregon – we became believers.

Now the question becomes what next. The Range Rover is at a repair shop in San Francisco and that is part of the problem. I asked the shop what it would cost to get the Rover restored and, clipboard in hand, the owner said my timing was perfect because he was just getting into that business. He said he would work up some numbers and get back to me, that was in April and I still haven’t heard from him. I called Landrover Ranch in New Mexico and left a message asking about restoration, they never called back. Meanwhile, Michele is starting to read reviews of VW Tiguans and I am starting to wonder about all the restored and updated  Toyota Bj61s I keep seeing.

As for the Rover, it occurs to me that my first off-road car described, again in the Car Log, as A 1948 Pontiac 4 door sedan: faded blue with chrome stripes on the hood and an Indianhead hood ornament that lit up; powered by a OHV straight 8. My maternal grandparents’ car I was asked to buy (for $300) when they got too old to drive. They had covered the seats with thick plastic seat covers so, when I got the car, it was a 8-year-old beater with new gray wool – derogatorily called mouse fur – seats. About this time I started camping and this car did many uncomplaining miles on dirt roads. had a good life. That car eventually died on a dirt road near Longs Peak, Colorado while being driven by the second owner after me. He, fittingly in my opinion, left it by the side of the road to exfoliate back into the earth.

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Wall Spring oasis and the Fleming Collection

Americana, Art, Nevada, Travel

Wall Springs-1864In Northwestern Nevada is an oasis named Wall Spring (for a spring in the closest canyon, Wall Canyon, I think). The Wall Spring in the canyon is a result of geology, the namesake Wall Spring is a collaboration between geology and Mike Moore. Geology provided the aquifer and Moore tapped into that aquifer with two artesian wells, one around 100′ and the other 180′ deep;   provided judicious use of rented skiploaders – or backhoes, if you prefer – over several years to make ponds and waterways; and pole-planted trees (sourced locally, he tells me).

In the past, I have referred to it as Mike Moore’s place in the Smoke Creek Desert, but it is as much Linda Fleming’s – Mike’s wife’s – as his and it is now becoming a home to some major pieces of her art. Linda is an artist who creates, among other things, Wall Art and Sculptures. Her work hangs – stands? – in such diverse collections as the Stanford University Museum of Art, the Albuquerque Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Oakland Museum, the U. S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, and, I want to add, Michele’s and my home where we have two of her drawings. Now some of her major pieces are at, or are moving to, Wall Springs.

On our way to Portland, Oregon to go to nephew Jason’s wedding, we decided to go via Wall Spring, in Nevada, for dinner with Linda and Mike  (it makes more sense if you have the roadtrip gene). It turned out that Mike’s brother Kirk and his sister Kathy would also be there to make it a party. We were bringing much of the dinner because we had stopped at the San Mateo Farmer’s Market and we wanted to tout our fresh produce over what we assumed – wrongly, I think – to be their meager desert fare. We are also on a barbecued goat-leg jag and we brought one with us, it is perfect for a party of six.

We wanted to be there by four to get the goat on the barbie, and catch the 5 o’clock tour of Linda’s work – and we were running late, having diddled away an hour in Truckee – so the last hour and a half of our trip was at 60 miles per hour, or so, over gravel roads. Windows up, cool air blowing through the quiet car from the A/C, the desert, almost motionless in the windshield, with only time rushing by, was a new experience for us. We were in a rented Chevy Captiva, a compact SUV, that is just sold to Car Rental Companies. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the start of the end of our Range Rover adventures.

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We got to Wall Springs on time, and while Mike prepared the barbecue, Linda took us on a tour. The one time I had seen more than one piece of Linda’s – often – huge sculptures was at a show in the Esprit Sculpture Garden in about 1988, and I was thrilled to see some more ( it even included a nice wine, like any uptown opening).

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Michele, Kathy, and Linda
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Mike and myself with “Necklace” [steel; 2000] in the background


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As an aside, the lines on the Buffalo Hills are old beaches where the water level was during the last Ice Age. End aside.

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On her website, Linda says My works hint at the co-existence of the mundane and the cosmological where two realities simultaneously exist including the possibility that the past is also present.  The structures are diagrams of thought that provide a glimpse of the strangeness beyond the every day world; opening a place where thought becomes tangible, history leaves a trace, and information exhales form. My reaction, seeing the work here, is visceral; they just seem to fit, to be part of the geological province.

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“Insinuation” [steel; 1997]

As an aside, the dog is Lefty who is a rescue dog. Lots of people I know have rescue dogs – or cats – but they don’t know they are rescue animals, but Lefty does. Mike found him with his left foot caught in a coyote trap about 70 miles from the nearest paved road (for the longest time, I kept calling Lefty, Lucky, and still want to call him Lucky for what I think are obvious reasons). End aside.

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“Pink Glass” [cast glass/steel; 1988]
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“Grey Matter” [laser-cut powder coated steel; 2006]
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“Hercules” [wood and steel;1988] with the Granite Mountains in sunlight

The tour ended as the shadows stretched out along the Buffalo Hills, we retired to the back porch for drinks and appetizers. -Pink Glass- [cast glass-steel; 1988]-1855

Sitting on the back porch, drinking  my wine, eating Linda’s appetizer of heirloom tomatoes, and watching the alpenglow glow on the Fox Range , I am struck by two, almost diametrical, thoughts. Why does this austere, inhospitable,  landscape so pull me? How come it doesn’t pull everybody?

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We had roast goat leg, corn brought by Kathy and Kirk from Truckee, and salad for dinner as the Terminator – the line marking the earth’s shadow – under the pink Belt of Venus, ended the day.

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The air is soft in the Gloaming and the Silence flows in off of the desert floor. On the back porch, we soak up the moment, knowing it is valuable for being transitory. Tomorrow, the heat and the glare will return; the air so dry it buzzes, the light harsh, and the heat an overbearing physical presence.

The next morning is Monday and getting our usual late start, we turned off the gravel Smoke Creek Road onto an actual paved road at about 11:30. In this case, the paved road is Highway 447 which goes north into Cedarville and beyond.

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An old-timey museum in the Willamette Valley

Americana, Travel

Willamette Valley -2592Douglas A4-E Skyhawk and Consolidated PBY Catalina

As we left Portland  , I suggested we make a run for home. Michele suggested wine tasting in the Willamette Valley and then sweetened the deal by mentioning that the town of McMinnville was home to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum.  I had never heard of  the Evergreen Museum but I love airplanes and was immediately sold.

To back up a little, I went to Washington in 1976 to see the newly reopened Smithsonian. I had been there a couple of years earlier but most of the Smithsonian had been shut down for a major remodel to celebrate our 200 year anniversary. After my first visit, my two favorite museums were The National Portrait Gallery and the Corcoran Craft Museum and I assumed that, once they were opened, the bigger, more famous Smithsonian galleries would be much better. They weren’t and I was very disappointed. At the time, I didn’t know why.

Maybe three of four years later – maybe ten, but later – I read a column by Stephen J. Gould that explained everything. I don’t remember if I fell in love with Gould’s column, This View of Life and then subscribed to Natural History Magazine to get them or the other way around, but, either way, I subscribed to Natural History and anxiously awaited each month’s Stephen J. Gould column. Gould wrote about evolution and I was deeply involved in trying to understand it.

As an aside, I never did understand Darwinian evolution and still have grave doubts about it. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the fossil record, the facts of change, and the fact of change. I believe the earth is about 4.5 billion years old. What I don’t understand is the how of evolution and Darwinian Evolutionary Theory doesn’t satisfy me. Survival of the fittest seems to be a tautology explaining nothing; how do we know they were the fittest? because they survived! What is left unexplained is how everything, including Homo sapiens, evolves against the Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that everything moves towards equilibrium. The evolution of the universe is away from equilibrium. The Big Bang Theory – I think the Great Unfolding is a better name – says that the Universe went from nothing to a plasma of subatomic particles, to simple atoms, to molecules. Many of those molecules evolved into cells – life – and increasingly more complicated plants and animals. Eventually, those cells evolved into flatworms, and sharks, and frogs, and monkeys, and, eventually, us. That is a constant direction away from equilibrium. End aside.

Back at Gould’s column, he wrote about how museums have gone from being depositories of organized stuff, to teaching about the stuff. The example he gave was of a museum that had a display of beatles. They had several cases of hundreds of beetles carefully laid out and a sign that said something like A sampling of the many beetle species beetles found within fifty miles of this museum. The new display shows several beetles and a large plastic model showing the different parts of the beetle and how the beetles have hard wings that act as covers over their delicate flying wings. Gould liked the first display better and thought it gave more information especially showing the wild variation and number of different kinds of beetles (there are more different beetles than any other kind of insect and more different insects than all other animals, leading the British biologist J.B.S. Haldane to say to a group of theologians, when asked about God, He must have had an inordinate fondness for beetles).

I am with Gould on this one, I like the old museums, that featured collections of stuff, much better than the new museums and the remodeled Smithsonian is a new type of museum. One of the things I was especially interested in on my return visit to Washington was the Smithsonian Railroad Collection that I had heard about. But – when I was there, I hope it has changed – there were only two engines, beautifully restored but, come on, only two engines! The Evergreen Museum is old school with airplanes jammed everywhere.

Wall Springs-2545Michele in front of a French Blériot XI with a Curtiss Model D behind, on the right is a Quickie Q2 designed by the great Burt Rutan, all under the The Spruce Goose

 Great planes, famous planes, most of which I haven’t seen before. There are German and British planes of the kind that fought in the Battle of Britain, the Supermarine Spitfire and the Messerschmitt Bf 109,

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and there is the ultimate WWII fighter, the mighty Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe which was the world’s first operational jet with a top speed of 530 mph. I was surprised to read that the Germans actually built 1,430 of these planes but there are not many left and this is actually a recreation (accurate enough so that the factory gave it an authorized serial number).

Wall Springs-2548There is a real Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird that can fly at 2100 miles an hour at 85,000 feet and once flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in 64 minutes and 20 seconds.

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behind that is a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter in NASA livery.

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There are even drones, featuring a Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, unironically posed above us with a backdrop of an American flag.

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In short, this is the kind of old timey museum that the visitor can spend days wandering around. And when you get tired of airplanes, you can go wine tasting at one of the sixty – or so – nearby wineries.

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