Butch Cassidy Und Sigrid War Hier

Glen Canyon Recreation Area, Utah

Hite Campground

We pull into a completely empty camp ground surrounded by red Navajo sandstone buttes, with the north end of Lake Powell below us. It's 'dry-camping', with no water, electric, sewer, cable TV, laundry or Wi-Fi. The weather is moderate enough that we can open all the windows and let the cool breeze blow in while we sleep.

The morning started off well with two sets of tennis on the municipal courts in Blanding, Utah. However, when I tried to pull out the rear slide to get to my tennis shorts, I found that both the front and RV rear slide-outs were inoperative.

I checked the two 15 amp fuses in the fuse box, however unlikely it was that both of them would blow at once. That eliminated, I went into the house battery compartment in the 'basement' to examine the rat's nest of wiring down below. I found an unattached, large-gauge, purple wire. When I touched it to the hot side, a relay closed. At that point, the two relays for the slides began to work again and the slides were operational.

We finished our game and set out through 90 miles of wilderness to Hite. After 45 miles, one of the four rear tires had a catastrophic failure. There was no cell phone coverage, so I unhooked the Toyota and sent Mrs. Phred back to Blanding for help. Fortunately, she had insisted that I buy a spare a year ago, but it is not mounted on a rim. I had filled the tires to 80 PSI at sea level. Here, at 7,000 feet, they were up to 92 PSI. That might have been a contributing factor.

As I wait in my lawn chair in the desert, reading Elmore Leonard, a stream of Samaritans stops to offer assistance. After two hours, a taciturn tow-truck driver from 100 miles away showed up and spent an hour putting us back on the road.

At the camp ground, the slide-outs didn't work again until I touched the purple wire to the hot side and hear the relay close. I'm beginning to think about risking connecting the purple wire directly to a hot lead. Mrs. Phred is counselling the need to wait for civilization in case of an electrical fire or explosion, which she has known me to sometimes create in my wiring efforts. The year I spent in an Air Force electronics school might have done more long-term harm than good.

We got a great night's sleep in the cool breeze. I cooked sausage, eggs, bagels (with tofu cream cheese) and coffee for breakfast. There is no cell coverage or even FM radio here. This is where the Snake, Colorado, Green and Dirty Devil Rivers converge at the beginning of Lake Powell; I like it here. We have plenty of unread books. I see red coyote eyes in the starlight.

The lake here, at the upper end, is interesting. It has apparently dropped at least 100 feet, revealing a layer of sediment deposited as the result of creating the dam. Here the lake has become more of a river, cutting though a delta of its own sediment. It's at least 500 yards from the mouth of the boat launch to the water. 173
million tons of sediment, which used to go downstream, end up each year in the upper reaches of the lake.

As we stare at this environmental mess, Mrs. Phred wonders why they would build a dam in the first place. I give her a few reasons: electric power, recreation, flood control and water regulation.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid used to rustle cattle around here and swim them across the river. Butch was maybe the last great western outlaw. When things got too hot for him after the turn of the century, he and Sundance sought new opportunity in Bolivia.

We find new petroglyphs on the black millennia-old patina of a sandstone wall, 'Sigrid und Inga – 05/05/08'. I can't believe we just missed them.

The Floggings Will Continue

(until morale improves)

Goblin Valley State Park, Utah

After three days in the desert fun I was looking at a river bed

And the story it told of a river that flowed

Made me sad to think it was dead...

– America

My dear departed mother-in-law, Frieda, gave me an ashtray in 1970, I left it out on the RV's running board and now it's gone, after 37 years, on the roadside somewhere in the Utah desert. Frieda gave me the ashtray so that I would remember her each time I had a smoke. It was indestructible.

Yesterday we drove up into the Capitol Reef National park. After I took one picture, my camera batteries died. I'd forgotten to bring the spare batteries. We hike into the Grand Wash for two miles. It's a very narrow, two-mile long canyon that is subject to periodic 15-foot walls of flash flooding. The government has posted dire warnings about hiking here in the rain. The rock formations are interesting, with typical desert patinas and petrified sand dune striations. The sky turns black and it starts to rain. Thunder rumbles down the canyon.

We see lots of missed photo ops and have conversations with a French couple and some German hikers from Munich. We keep a wary eye on a potential place to climb above 15 feet, but the flash flood never materializes.

On the way back we stop at an organic vegetable farm in the desert. A boy sits picking a guitar on the front porch. I think of 'Deliverance'. The only thing in season now is greens so we buy 1/2 pound, which the farmer, dressed in a Lawrence of Arabia hat and overalls, picks for us in his greenhouse. We also get some home-made bread and cinnamon rolls.

When we return, we find that the storm has passed through and destroyed our RV awning. It's an $1,800 replacement item. Maybe we'll check out our insurance coverage back in Florida. Mrs. Phred makes us a big salad to go with a rib eye steak.

Today we also checked out Goblin Valley. The town of Green River, up the road, has internet coverage. After three nights without it, I've developed a bad internet jones.

I Have Seen The Future

Moab, Utah

This is one of my favorite places. We are in a lovely camp ground with green grass and shady elm trees on the banks of the Colorado river. It's a desert oasis.

Sandwiched in between two spectacular National Parks (Arches and Canyonlands) the town of Moab is Goldilocks size (not too big, not too small), with just the right amount of things: services, cell phone stores, tire dealers, people, traffic, libraries, book stores and tennis courts.

Yesterday was a resupply day; shopping for fish, a satellite tuner; haircut, new sewer hose, ashtray, tires and a new barbecue fork. We met James at the Verizon mobile phone store. He is a handsome and thoroughly pleasant young man, age 26, who lived in South Florida for four years. We gradually discover that he has only learned to drive last year. I ask about bicycles and he says yes. We don't press, but he fits the pattern of a young Mormon who has served on a mission. You see them a lot in groups. They wear white, short-sleeve shirts with neck ties and bicycle helmets. They travel in groups of three or four. Once they came to our house and gave me a special bible after I debated theology with them for an hour. It's in storage with the contents of the house we sold two years ago upon retirement.

We rented a Jeep for next Tuesday to get back into the back country of Canyonlands. We cooked some salmon from a farm in Chile last night. It was perfectly fresh. I sneaked a free real estate magazine off the rack, while Mrs. Phred shopped for fish.

We feel very safe out here in the wilderness. It's different from our usual 3am strolls though the inner city. I have learned that there are really only two things to worry about out here in the desert.

The first thing is human witches (also known as skinwalkers or shape-shifters). The Yeenaaldlooshii (it goes on all fours) shapeshifter has the power to assume the form of any animal they choose, depending on what kind of abilities they need. Most commonly they appear as coyotes or owls. You can tell a Yeenaaldlooshii in human form because its eyes glow in the dark. Never look a Yeenaaldlooshii directly in the eyes because that allows them to take over your body.

The other thing to fear here is chindi. These are spirits released from people at the moment of their death. The good parts of people end at death, but troubled parts continue to wander as chindi. Usually, these are malignant forces or entities that manifest themselves most frequently as whirlwinds. The clockwise whirlwinds are benign and the counter-clockwise ones are evil.

You can get Ghost Sickness from a chindi so never throw rocks at a whirlwind or call one by a name. Also, never enter a death hogan where someone has died. You can spot one of these abandoned hogans by the opening in the back that has been made to allow the chindi to escape.

The Right Book

Arches National Park, Utah

Sometimes the right book has special meaning in the right place. If you read Jack London short stories in Skagway or Dawson, The Journey in the high mountains of western Canada, Geronimo on the Mexican border or Desert Solitare while visiting Arches National Park, you will understand.

Desert Solitare was published in 1967 and based on two seasons in 1956 and 1957, when the author, Edward Abbey, served as a solitary park ranger in a place with no paved roads in what was then the Arches National Monument. At the time, Abbey was literally a 'lone ranger' in a place visited by 3,000 people each year. His book is beautifully written and alternates between poetic descriptions of rattlesnakes or juniper trees and bitter diatribes against 'Progress'. Thanks in part to Abbey's book, Arches, now a National Park, has 800,000 visitors a season.

The last time we came here it was late in the season, two weeks after the first expected snowfall. The park was uncrowded and most of the commercial campgrounds in nearby Moab had closed for the year. This time the campgrounds were full and the park was jammed with visitors. It was difficult to find a parking spot at any of the trailheads and the trails were bustling with tourists. As we drove in the park, there was usually an SUV or minivan trying to drive up my tailpipe and see everything in a hurry. People line up at the park entrance at 6:30am, hoping that a campsite in the park will come open.

Abbey rails against 'Industrial Tourism', the practice of building paved roads into the wild places, and the automobile. Cars, he says, should not be allowed into sacred places: cathedrals, museums, bedrooms or National Parks. If you visit a park he feels you should do it on foot, on a bicycle, on a horse or even on a wild pig. I was disappointed by the crowding and traffic, but we returned to the park just before sunset after the crowds and cars had dissipated. The photographic conditions were better and we spent an hour on a lonely turnout looking at the stars.

They had a discussion of Abbey's book last night in the Park amphitheatre at twilight. We arrived early and I ask the lady ranger, a former English professor, if Ed will be giving the talk. She says, 'I'll do my best to channel him'. I stare in blank confusion at Mrs. Phred, who told me that he would be there. She tells me that Abbey died in 1989, but she was afraid that I wouldn't have come if I knew.

Anyway, so far all our travels in the summer have been to uncrowded places like Alaska. Our visits to National Parks have been in late fall, winter and early spring. I'm definitely rethinking my plans to see the big California parks this summer.

Here is a slideshow of a few of the pictures I took at Arches National Park.

There are Two Paths We Can Go By

Moab, Utah

Moab had a brief boom in the early 1950s due to desert uranium mining and prospecting. It currently has been expanding rapidly because of the millions of tourists who come to enjoy the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.

The town has a lot of Jeep-, ATV and dirt bike rentals as well as raft trips, sky diving and bicycle tours. Mrs. Phred googled 14 beauty parlors, but the lone barber keeps leaving notes saying he's at a convention. There's a chairlift and a water park that seem to be out of business, as well as numerous restaurants, coffee shops, auto parts stores and book stores. Moab is still too small for a Wal-Mart. That might be one necessary criteria for our next home.

We took a ride yesterday along a road on the Colorado river and up to the snowline in the mountains and saw dozens of really nice camping/recreation areas built along the river by the US Forest Service.

This morning, after three sets of tennis in Moab, we had a panic situation. We had to change RV parks and the slide-outs stopped working again. The rear slide was stuck in the extended position which makes the RV undrivable. There is no one in this small town (other than Phred) capable of solving the problem.

Touching the loose purple wire to a hot lead had no effect this time. Finally, after all other hypotheses failed, I removed and reseated the four square relays in the basement battery compartment, after spaying them with a compound that promotes the flow of electricity on corroded contacts. That worked. Apparently, some of the relay contacts had built up a little corrosion.

We've picked up our Jeep for our excursion into the Canyonlands National Park tomorrow. The four-wheel trails lead up switchbacks to the rims of the canyon. The red Jeep has satellite radio, air-conditioning, power windows and a big V-8 engine. It feels a little tippy driving because of the extremely short turning radius and big tires.

On Wednesday, we have a ranger-guided hike scheduled into the 'fiery furnace' area of Arches National Park. It's a sandstone maze about eight square miles in area. People got lost and died in there all the time, so you have to go with a park ranger. The fact that I'm a trained navigator carried no weight with the Park Service.

We gave the Moab library three shopping bags full of books for their book sale section. Two of the books were new Tony Hillermans. Belatedly, we realized that our oldest grandson would have enjoyed them.

On Sunday, we'll be parking the RV here and heading over to the Wendover, Nevada casinos to visit my brother, 'Spike', who lives in the desert. Then we drive back across the Great Salt Lake to Salt Lake City for a flight back east to see the six grandchildren.

When we return, we need to decide a direction. I have two trip routes planned. One leads southwest to Death Valley, up the west coast and to New England. The other goes northeast to the Rockies, up to Canada and to New England. There is a 4,000 mile difference in the two plans.

...Yes, there are two paths you can go by,
but in the long run
there's still time to change the road you're on ...

I could have sworn, the song said, 'there's still time to change both yours'...

Canyonlands by Jeep

Canyonlands National Park, Utah

It was a bone-jarring ride over 50 miles of bedrock. It took eight hours to bump and grind over the four-wheel drive road.

We spent some time at 'Thelma and Louise Point'. That was the movie that ended when Thelma and Louise, persecuted for their armed robberies and for blowing up a gasoline tanker truck, drove off a spectacular cliff.

At first, because the scenery is so spectacular and varied, I was disappointed, even depressed, with my pictures.

When you blow up the pictures into the full 2 gigabyte format and look at them, they begin to hint at what your eye might have seen. However, when you try to shrink the whole thing down to a 2" x 3" picture, it doesn't translate...So it's not my fault.

Some of the unpaved roads are single lanes that run for several miles on the edge of a thousand foot drop with a rock wall on the other side. You get a major pucker factor when you meet a dirt bike coming at you. We were lucky not to meet any more imposing oncoming traffic.

There is a climb-out on a long series of switchbacks to the top of the mesa. Meeting traffic on the climb would require you to hang two wheels over the cliff. This time I screwed up my courage and did the whole drive myself instead of turning the wheel over to Mrs. Phred and closing my eyes.

Canyonlands has some great vistas that you can reach in the family station wagon. I love the back country. They have enough four-wheel drive trails that it takes four or five days to do a complete circuit of the park on the edge of the canyons.

Here are a few more pictures of Canyonlands National Park.

The Firecloud Report Archive

Phred Firecloud

19.02.09 Front Page

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