Back to the North West and family..

Hey, remember us?  It's only been a little less than two months but a lot has happened and we got to see a lot of family and friends during this time back home.  It was time to spend more time with family and friends and leave the computer at home.  Dick also left the camera at home most of the time.  He would rather take photos of landscape than people.

We left Arches National Park on June 27 and headed for Canyon View RV park in Spanish Fork Utah.  A paved parking lot with water and electric, but OK for one night.  Our motor home overheated on the mountain pass.  We then headed to our favorite camping place near Wells Nevada where we spent 3 nights; see the picture of our rig above.

On the way out of town we stopped at a truck wash and had them hydro blast the radiator and clean out all the red dust from Arches in hopes that it would solve the overheating problem.  As it turned out, it made things better but we found out later that it did not solve the problem.
Off we go again to Bully Creek Park on Bully Creek Reservoir in Vale Oregon for one night but ended up staying two.  Tried to go to the local United Methodist Church on Sunday morning but after checking the time for the service on the board in front of the Church on Saturday they changed the time later that evening so we missed service.

On the 4th of July we ended up at 1000 trails Sunriver Oregon and played tourist.  We visited the Lava Lands and drove up Lava Butte to view the huge lava flows.  And then it was off to "The Big Obsidian Flow" and what a pile of  glass.

This photo is not a black and white shot but sure looks like it.  Black obsidian and white snow.

Dick had to add these photos for our good friend Ray Howard and a very talented flint napper that we met in Delta Utah,  Danie Kersey, who makes the most beautiful knives, arrowheads and spear points from obsidian.  If you are interested in purchasing any of his work let me know and I will forward your address to him.

Another shot of the acres and this time with a little green in the background.  There is a trail that runs about 1/2 mile through the flow.  If you go there take it slow and easy, you sure don't want to trip and take a tumble on this path.

A close look at some of the obsidian.  Sure would like to load the motor home up with a pound or two of this stuff.

Really tough to get a picture with pure white and black but there is a little color in Jackie's shirt.

While in the area we fought off the mosquitoes and took another hike to view a very beautiful waterfall.

Another view from another direction.  Glad we took the time to spend some time in the woods after several months in the desert.  Wow, what a difference and we are glad to be back in the northwest where there are real trees.

7/6  Another day traveling but this time to get some big changes to our rig.  We spent two nights at AM Solar in Springfield Oregon where we had 3 solar panels put on the roof and the battery and solar controllers in the bedroom.  We are now totally self contained and don't need any stinking RV parks. (As long as the sun is shining, of course.)

After spending one night at 1000 trails in Chehalis Washington, we finally ended up at our destination in Poulsbo on July 9.  We spent lots of time with all three girls and all grand kids for a few weeks.

On one of our free days we took a drive to Sequim for their annual lavender festival and found a field or two of plants close to harvest time.

Another day we took a ferry to Seattle where we both were born.  What a beautiful day to stroll the waterfront with Deanna, Daisy and Dani.

After a few weeks with family and friends on the west side of the mountains we headed off to Ephrata where our trip started over three years ago.  After getting a new windshield in the motor home, we ended up at Dick's brother and S I L for a great week plus visiting with them and all our super
friends.  Thanks all for sharing your time with us, and thanks Guy and Joan for your wonderful hospitality.

We left Guy and Joan's to spend two nights with them camping on Lake Roosevelt where we had our first chance to use the new solar and it worked great.  While there we got the chance to take our boat out for couple of hours on the water.  Near our campsite was a large old dead tree with a very large Osprey nest with two little ones and Dick was able to get some good pictures but for some stupid reason they never downloaded.  If you really want to see them let us know and we will send copies to you.

We ended our trip to Washington by spending three great days with some very special people near Spokane Washington before starting our trip to the east coast, Dave and Kelly Anderson.  Thanks for a wonderful three days and fabulous food.  We also got to see Jim & Carolyn Retzer, MOC friends who Kelly invited for dinner.  Such fun catching up on what everyone's been up to.

While in Quartzsite

The light you see radiates through the rock in this 45 second exposure.

Thanks to all our friend and family for sharing yourselves with us during our trip back home.  Now it's time to head out on our next journey.  We departed the Anderson's for a trip to the east coast to see the fall colors.  We will try and update this blog a little more regularly as we travel across our great country.

To be continued...

A tour of special places at Arches Natinal Park in Utah

After two months it's time to hook up and move on.  We will depart Arches National Park early Monday morning and start heading back to Washington to visit family and friends.  Last week we had daughter Debbie here to visit us.  She came to relax, enjoy the heat and do nothing.  The day after she arrived we had a huge rainstorm; she must have brought it from Washington State.

We did get a nice ride in that day to see some of Moab and the mountains around here.  But after that is was hike, hike, hike (so much for relax, Deb!).  We had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Dell Keys who is a volunteer here at the park and knows her way around the Fiery Furnace like the back of her hand, so she took us on a evening 3- hour trip through areas not seen by another human, well maybe a few.

We snaked through several very tight spots...

found Surprise Arch with the evening light making it glow...

Jackie was showing off how she could walk on two fins at the same time.  We all had to do it to get here.

Another area we searched out was Skull Arch aka Underpants Arch (so named by Dr. Keys husband, who passed away a couple of years ago).

Debbie had to crawl through of all places Crawl Through Arch and

work her way under the rocks to come out in another area.

We did get a picture of the three of us after walking through Walk Through Bridge.

We exited the Fiery Furnace with a look back with no idea of where we went in or came out.  What a joy to go in there again with such a great tour director as Dr. Keys.

Up an hour before sunrise and headed to the windows section of the park so Dick could get this picture that he had wanted to take for the last 2 months.  Looking through North Window at Turret Arch about 5 seconds after the first rays of light hit it.

We made a deal with Dr. Keys that if she gave us a tour of the Fiery Furnace we would show her Magic Mystery Bridge (See a previous Blog).  To give you a better understanding of it's size look closely and see if you can find Debbie sitting on a ledge of the main wall.  Thanks to Brenda, our co-host, for this great picture.

Still another day and another hike into the Devils Garden, but just the three of us.  We wanted to try and show Debbie some of the areas that most people don't see.  We made it all the way to Double O Arch and found a way to get this shot from behind the arch.  It's hard to see but behind the little tree in the lower left is the smaller of the 2 arches.

And this shot we have only seen one other time and it is looking at the backside of Landscape Arch with Debbie sitting on the edge of a 200' drop off.

We got our picture taken in front of Navajo Arch sitting on an old Juniper tree.  The last time the two of us came here there was snow on the ground.

As a parting shot (pun intended) Debbie showing her excitement after walking through Broken Arch.

Thanks for the visit Debbie; we had a ball showing you a few special places at Arches.  Glad you got to "relax".

To be continued...

Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

Another 3 day trip to the town of Cortez Colorado with 3 nights in another hotel bed listening to people walking up and down the halls all night long.  We decided to leave our home in Arches National Park rather than take it with us but hope we don't do this again.

We did get another check off of Dick's bucket list and did 3 trips into Mesa Verde National Park for step back into history starting about the year 500 through about 1400 when the ancestors of today's Native Americans populated this portion of the country.

Jackie is getting a closer look at one of the many canyons below (way below) where these people lived for close to 1400 years before moving south due to unknown reasons.  Could have been that the food source dried up because of drought, over planting, lack of fire wood for cooking or that they finally depleted all the natural resources in the area.  An answer still to be found.

A look at one of the several long canyons where at one time there were over 600 separate archaeological sites in this area.  There were trails up and down all the canyons for movement between the homes or villages.  Not sure we would want to travel over this landscape in bare feet.

We drove out onto one of the many Mesa's and took a self guided tour of Step House.  This is one of the few dwellings that you can tour without a Ranger guide.  We pushed this tour as we needed to catch a bus for another tour.  Still very interesting and as usual Dick got a lot more pictures than we will show here. 

To really get the full effect of these sites you will need to click on the pictures to enlarge them.  The magnitude of these structures is unbelievable until you walk through them.  This is just one small section of Step House showing how they incorporated the large chunks of rock that had fallen from the top of the cave into their homes.

Moving on to another location is Kodak House, have no idea of where this name came from.  If they told us we forgot.  This is a two level series of homes; not sure I would want to live in the lower section but that's another story left untold.  They farmed on both the top and in the canyon.  It's a long and hard way to get up and down.

They could have used the upper area more for storage and the lower for living.

Still another location is now called Long House.  Don't know if we could climb up and down from this house very often or would want to.

Again this house had a storage area above the living area.  No sneaking to the storage shelves for a midnight snack here.

Another area called Square Tower House.  Some of the houses have deteriorated from time and weather and others vandalized through the years by pot hunters.

A little closer look at the square tower and other rooms around it.

 And finally for this Blog is Cliff House, quite an extensive series of rooms both living areas and ceremonial areas.

Dick's grandfather was a stone mason, he could have learned a lot from these folks with walls still standing over a 1000 years.

A final shot showing a closeup of the remains of some of the rooms at Cliff Palace some round and some square and some from floor to ceiling.

For our granddaughter Molly, here is a shot of some of the wild horses that populate this National Park.

Before heading back home to Arches we made a side trip to "4 corners" said to be the point where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico all meet.  This is on the Indian Reservation so they charge $3.00 each person to enter and give you the opportunity to purchase items from the 80 or so booths set up around the perimeter.

To be continued...

Magic Mystery Bridge found

As we posted in an earlier blog, our friends Robbie and Alice had searched for Magic Mystery Bridge here at Arches National Park with no luck.  On another day we searched with Alice and still came up empty handed.  Alice had got a GPS location from a website that was wrong.  Robbie searched on top of the slickrock and we searched in the washes, nothing.

With a little more research on Dick's part, he located other GPS coordinates and found it's location on Google Earth, so off we went today with our trusty GPS in hand.  I think we failed to mention that Dick forgot the extra batteries and by the time we needed it, all we had were dead batteries. 

Dick was able to take the batteries out of his camera and put them into the GPS until the Bridge was found and then switch back so we could post this blog with pictures.

We headed out of the campground with Jackie taking the lead down between the fins, knowing that it was our duty to find and share this soon-to-be great find.  Look closely as this is one of many pictures of Jackie in this posting.

We had to stop and enjoy the beautiful view looking out across the LaSal Mountains.

We got to Broken Arch going east, took a right down into the wash, being careful to stay off the cryptobiotic soil by staying on the slickrock and the washes.  With compass in hand we tried to head due east from Broken Arch.  This path took us downhill but brought us on top of the slickrock.  In just about 15 or 20 minutes we look to our right and see the large canyon that Magic Mystery Arch was at the head of. 

Then there it was, or at least we could see the top of it.  This shot is from the top of the Bridge looking north- east into the lower canyon.  The rock in the lower right hand corner is the top of the bridge.

Needing a way to show the scale of the top of the arch, Jackie offered to walk out for another shot of herself.  Probably hard to see but she is not smiling right here!  The longer you stand there the narrower the top gets; trust us it's true.

A little closer shot, but what's she saying?  "Take the damn picture so I can get off of here."

From the top of the bridge you can look back west and just see Broken Arch about in the center of this shot.  What was interesting that if approached from the northwest you can locate the arch, but if you come from the southwest or east you can's see it until you are on top of it.

We (Dick) decided that the best way to get to the bottom was to follow the fins to the northwest and then follow a wash down to the bottom.  So one last shot from this side and off we go again to get to the bottom of things, pun intended.

We had to travel a good quarter of a mile before finding an area where we could get into the wash.  Well we made it down but it took over an hour working our way over dead trees, huge rock falls, loose sand and rocks.  Several times we got to a point where we had to go back up the hill and find another path. 

The closer we got to the bottom the steeper it got.  We finally got to a point that we knew we could not get back up the wash so had to find a way down.

But we did take the time to stop and smell the roses, well at least one cacti growing out of the cryptobiotic soil.  So, does a flower grow in the desert even if no one sees it?  You bet!

As you can see by this picture we did finally make it to the bottom; not sure how, but in one piece.  Look closely as there is another picture of Jackie.

Dick was able to crawl up between the arch and the back wall, finding a shelf to very carefully walk out onto so he could have at least one picture of himself in this blog.



Facing the bridge from the bottom we found a steep but quick way up to the top for one final shot from the other side of the Bridge.  Sure wish we had tried to get down from this side as it would of saved an hour of hard hiking.  Oh well, now you know if ever trying to get to the bottom of Magic Mystery Bridge go down from the end to the southeast corner.

Thanks to the help of Google Earth we were able to locate the bridge and finally find it.  With the added detour it took us about 3 hours but should have been 2 including a lunch stop and lots of pictures.

Just to the left of the M in Magic you will see a black line, this is the space between the bridge and the wall.

A few details for all those arch hunters out there:
The Bridge was found in 1962 when a pipeline was run through the park.  Originally called Pipeline Arch but was changed and labeled in 1975
It's span is 95' long an the top is 11' wide.  (It really feels a lot narrower when you are standing there)
It has a 62' opening between the spans.
It is 12' away from the solid wall at the top.
It has a 48' opening below the span.
And it's location is:
38 46' 17" N
109 34' 23" W

If you should decide to view this normally unseen bridge, please take the extra time to stay off the cryptobiotic soil and stay to the washes and slickrock.  This soil has been growing for hundreds of years and one step will put and end to it's life.

Need more details on location or route, send us a message.  This is a very special Bridge as very few people get to see it because of it's location and difficulty in locating it.  We feel very blessed to have found it.  And now to walk some more to keep from getting stiff--

To be continued...