Tag Archives: camping

Camping, Road Trip 2016

Bear Necessities

August 22, 2016 hannahviolin

You know how when you’re out in the woods you hear weird noises? We were camping on our second night in Aspen, and I woke up in the middle of the night, or early in the morning, to hearing somebody throwing a bag of ice around. I couldn’t tell if it was in our campsite or not! I lay there quietly, assuming it wasn’t, because that would be super weird. There was a lot of footsteps, but no noises, no talking, and I decided not to wake Louie up because I didn’t want him making noise. I was pretty sure there wasn’t anybody in our site, who would do that? Or we were getting robbed and I didn’t want the person to notice our tent, as there were no footsteps coming near. I heard somebody rattle what sounded like our bear box (that’s a box where you are supposed to keep your food) and then all was quiet, so I went back to sleep. I had a variety of dreams of waking up and finding that somebody had set their tent up next to ours!

We were in bear country. If you camp a lot, you know exactly what I mean. It seems that every campground has different rules. In Yellowstone they made you sign something agreeing—all your food must be kept in your trunk, all your toiletries that were scented also. No food, water, or scented toiletries (i.e. toothpaste, lotion, etc) in the tent with you. You had to wash your dishes in a certain sink, and make sure that all your trash was in special bear proof trashcans.

At the Difficult campground, they gave us our own bear box. And we usually kept a clean camp, put everything away. But there were a few things: one was that there wasn’t anywhere to wash dishes—they just told us to throw our water in the woods. And that the picnic table had a sign saying to put your things in your car.

Not only the bear box, but the car. The camp host had told us to use the box though…and laughed. But we had gotten “home” late and forgot to cover or move the cooler.

I woke up early, and got out of the tent to go to the toilet. I figured I’d see that everything was fine. But it wasn’t. The first thing I saw was shattered glass, and thought, OH MY GOD we’ve been robbed. And then I realized our car had been attacked by a bear.

The bear pulled the top of the car door down and removed the lid of the cooler and threw it on the ground. I started freaking out and yelled for Louie to get out of the tent and come see. We were both in total shock for a bit!

After awhile we started cleaning up. I was worried about the glass at first, but it was safety glass which mean it wasn’t as sharp as window glass would be. There was ice and melted water all over the backseat and the clothes. Most of the damage was on the window though, and nothing on the upholstery, thank goodness!

If you look you can see the dirty pawprint from the bear shaking this box. This is a bear box. If we had put our cooler in it we might not have had the bear attack. I do take the blame for it, but I’ll say this: I had never heard of this sort of thing happening before—I’d heard that bears would rip into soft top cars and tents, but not metal! I’d also add that the sign on the picnic table at the site says put food in the bear box or a locked car, which we did. And I’d also think that putting dishwater wherever you wanted would attract bears! So we were to blame, but there were other factors. And honestly, I think maybe people in tents shouldn’t camp at the Difficult Campground at all, and they should just say that. We found out later that another car was broken into and a “bear proof” cooler was broken into by the bear that night, and a few campers SAW the bear trying to break into their bear box.

(A google search found that a few years ago the problem at the campground was bad and they banned tents, but lifted the ban. I wonder if they told anyone after our attack?)

So here we were, at the beginning of a 3 week road trip, with a messed up car! We panicked for a few minutes, but then decided to try to do something. We had to drive into Aspen to make phone calls (nothing at the campsite available, no phone other than one for local calls which didn’t include 800 calls, and no pay phone) so we did that, carefully, and after checking with the insurance that it was allowed, Louie and I headed to a hardware store to try to fix up the window.

It ended up working really well. Louie managed to bend the metal back up, added plexiglass, and taped the whole thing with a combination of duct tape and gorilla tape. We realized pretty early that the entire door would need to be replaced, so putting tape on it wasn’t a concern.

We spent a few hours at the True Value in downtown Aspen working on it. The employees there were both really helpful and incredibly nosy too Smile Everybody kept coming out to see the car. People said that this kind of thing happened a lot (news to us, and I’ll bet to most of you) and that bears break glass doors, eat out of the trash, break into cars, etc. I ask, what is Aspen doing to help (the answer seems, very little) and I also ask, why don’t more people know about this? Honestly, we didn’t realize how bad the problem was, and we likely wouldn’t have camped. Maybe that’s why they don’t tell people? Or do they just think all towns have major bear problems? I don’t know!

I do know a few things; I won’t be camping there again, and we won’t be underestimating bears again.

We got the window fixed up though, by lunchtime (a waste of a morning, but it could have been worse!) and thankfully I’m dating an engineer who worked in remodeling and construction and knows how to make stuff work really well! And even though we wouldn’t be able to open that door for the rest of the trip, at least we didn’t have to cancel our trip.

So, that’s our “best” story from the trip. Our car got attacked by a bear. Oh, and he ate the rest of a bag of Trader Joe’s peanut butter pretzels, 2 apples, half a tub of hummus (left the rest), and even a beer. There was a can of beer that had a claw mark and had been drained. (Louie has a picture I know, but I don’t have it right now. I’ll share it later if I can find it from him!).

Sigh. What a day. But we weren’t hurt, and the upholstery wasn’t hurt, the insurance would cover it (minus the deductible) and the trip would continue!

Days camping: 2 night

Official hiking miles: 13.5

Road Trip 2016

And so it begins…to Aspen

August 18, 2016 hannahviolin 2 Comments

I love traveling. I love planning travel. AND I love writing about travel after the fact, but I’ll admit it’s the most daunting and perhaps the least fun part of it. This past trip was a doozy! How do I write about it? The best way, I suppose, is simply to put my fingers on the keyboard, have my photos at the ready, and GO!

So. We set out on a lovely Wednesday morning towards the end of July. My sister Carrie had been staying with me for a few days (we’d even gone on a float trip with her-it was a raincheck from Memorial Day that needed to be used) and she was staying behind for another day. Timing…but she was able to dog sit for a bit and then my friend April would be doing so afterwards (until she moved to DC, so sad!)

Louie and I planned to drive to Denver in one day. It’s a long drive, but possible. The following day we had reservations at the Difficult Campground in Aspen, so we wanted to get a good chunk of the drive behind us.

I’d been a little stressed out about my trip planning. I’d made a few rash decisions on camping reservations (based on availability and panic) and we were moving around nearly every night! I’d also really wanted to go back to Rocky Mountain NP for a few days, but then it ended up we wanted to be in Aspen for a few days to visit Louie’s dad, and then the timing got mixed up and our itinerary had us backtracking several hours. I have some regrets…but I’ll consider them things to learn from, and honestly, most of it worked out pretty well and we got to see more than we might have otherwise. But there were stressors, and things I was worried about, more so than in previous trips.

We’d tried to organize the trunk in a certain way, in order to facilitate staying organized. Over the next week or so things would solidify into a true plan, but there were some bumps. Here’s the trunk starting out!

Note: car camping for three weeks out of a Toyota Corolla is a challenge. Plus I’d purchased some of my favorites from Trader Joe’s, since I didn’t think we’d encounter any of those along the way, and it took up a fair amount of room. The backseat had the cooler, various shoes, all the clothes, backpacks, and camp chairs. Here you see the food, dishes, stove, sleeping bags, and the tent and sleeping pads (thermarests) are in there too. There are three bins with different categories: food, food prep, and non food prep.

Anyway! A tradition of driving to Colorado is stopping in Kansas City at Arthur Bryant’s for barbecue. On the one hand, I’ve become mostly a pescatarian. On the other hand, I said mostly.

I had the burnt end sandwich with beans and it didn’t disappoint. And the pickles! I am such a pickle lover. Why, yes, I’m waxing poetic over the pickles on a barbecue platter.

Anyway, the day went by uneventfully. Missouri goes by quickly, Kansas takes longer. And then there’s that part of Colorado that really just seems like it should be Kansas.

The wind farms are always fun to drive by, and we were just pumped up to finally be on vacation and hitting the road. It’s been a hard year, a stressful year, and we keep trying to get away and relax. Spoiler: we didn’t relax on this trip, but we did get away.

We’d hoped to find a cheap hotel in the Denver area but failed. I wanted to have a chill night of oh, let’s just walk into a place that looks good, as one would have on a road trip 30 years ago. But I instead started to panic and ended up spending way too much on a terrible Motel 6 near the airport. Oh, and we had dinner at McDonald’s along the way and got to watch part of the DNC…doesn’t that seem so long ago? McDonald’s has “fish” sandwiches, which are actually pretty terrible, but not too bad for food on the road I guess.

The morning came and with it, a nearby Denny’s. When the calorie counts are listed on the menu you find yourself ordering things like fruit and whole wheat pancakes.

This guy was both creepy and a little adorable. 60/40? 30/70? Anyway, then we hit the road. Into the mountains of Colorado we went!

On the way to Aspen Louie’s dad recommended we try a hike called the Shrine Pass hike, which is just on this side of Vail. He described it as “easy” so we forgot that 8000-10000 feet of altitude requires some adjustment. I was getting visually a bit blurry after we went through the Eisenhower Tunnel, and was super thirsty and a bit headachy…this should have told me something. In a nutshell, the hike was extremely challenging. I was short of breath and felt terrible! I should tell readers that I spent two summers in Breckenridge at a music festival, and firstly, I love the area: Breckenridge is like heaven, and secondly, altitude is no joke. It can take a few days to adjust, and one at mile high wasn’t enough.

The hike was probably really beautiful (it was, really) but I was feeling pretty awful and it was too hard. 4.2 miles round trip.

After the hike we hit the road again towards Aspen. We had a reservation for 3 nights at the Difficult Campground, a few miles from the town of Aspen. Louie’s dad was working there for a bit and he wasn’t sure if he would have room for us to stay with him.

This raccoon was posing and begging for us, but we know better than to feed wild animals. Well…mostly.

We got to the campsite and had to set up the tent and everything, and then he came to pick us up for dinner.

We set up the tent towards the back of the site.

It’s hard doing things normally while camping. For instance: our campsite didn’t have flush toilets, only vault toilets and water out of a spigot. So we couldn’t shower or freshen up for a dinner out very well. When you are camping and hiking and only around other people doing the same things, this isn’t a big deal, but when you are hanging out with people who are staying in a real house with running sinks and showers and wearing regular clothes, it’s odd. I had to reconcile myself to the fact that I wasn’t as put together as I would have liked to be, but the dinner sure was delicious.

The next morning we took a hike that left right near the campsite, called the Difficult Trail.

The description of it, in an old book, said that it was 3 miles one way and that there was a point where the trail wasn’t maintained anyway, but you could pick your way through for awhile. The trail was quite steep at first, but it was really nice, shady and in the woods.

Lots of boulders and trees and cool stuff to look at. We had a few times where we had to climb over some logs and follow cairns but didn’t think too much of it until the trail ran out entirely, and we realized it seemed we’d gone about 4.5 miles!

So I think we actually hiked all the way to the end of the UNmaintained part before heading back: I’ll say 9 miles RT. It was nice though, and then we met up with Louie’s dad and wife, and walked around Aspen for a bit. We’d thought about having dinner at the campground due to their work schedule, but ended up having a later dinner at their condo. We didn’t get “home” until nearly 11 pm and were exhausted: that’s very late for camping since the sun tends to wake you up early!

So that’s enough of the first post here. Our plan for the next day was to wake up early and do another hike. I want to keep track of our hiking mileage too.

Hiking so far: 13.5 miles

Days camping: 2 nights

Grand Canyon, Travel

It doesn’t look any bigger than the Mauritania

June 2, 2016 hannahviolin 1 Comment

When I left our adventure last, Louie and I were driving a borrowed Honda Civic (with stick shift) towards the Grand Canyon.

We took a slightly scenic route from Flagstaff to Williams and enjoyed seeing the forests and the various bushes and whatnot in the landscape. I don’t know everything, I’m sorry.

Anyway, we got to the Grand Canyon and entered the park for FREE using our National Parks Pass from the previous summer. We paid $80 for a year long pass, and we have more than covered that amount of park fees. It’s wonderful.

We decided to hit up our campground first, Mather Campground. I remember staying there one night as a young child, and the name stuck out at me. I think I’d seen the word Mather on some notes my dad had made and I thought it was a weird spelling of mother or something. I also remember they had pay showers and you had to put quarters in for the water which absolutely blew my mind.

The ranger at check-in told us that we didn’t need to worry about bears but that the ravens were the real problem. She used a funny word for them but I’ve lost it. Louie?

Our campsite looked pretty nice. (Site 293, in case you are interested). We quickly set up the tent and did a few other things then headed to the Grand Canyon itself!

Like I’d said before, Louie had never been, but I had. I remember thinking it was different than I’d thought it would be. I pictured a canyon as a deep, deep hole, and instead it was more spread out with various juts and crevices and rocks and all different colors.

Almost like a mountain range, except we are on top of it.

We walked along the rim trail from the visitor’s center and Mather Point, probably a mile each way. Then we remembered we had a big hike planned for the next day and probably ought to get some rest!

Dinner was beans and tuna and couscous, one of our favorites for some reason. You mix white kidney beans with tuna (at home I’d add salt and pepper and maybe lemon) and then our favorite camping trick is to put that on top of a serving of those flavored couscous you can buy in a box. Sounds odd, but it was delicious.

One of the odd things about being out in the wilderness is the lack of cell phone and internet service. I’m used to (as we probably all are) just looking up odd facts on my phone and never having to worry about things too much in advance, like weather forecasts, or sunrise times. It’s nice being disconnected, for sure, though sometimes it means you get things wrong.

We planned to wake up at 5 am with the hopes of being on the trail right around sunrise. Except we didn’t actually know when sunrise was, we just assumed it was around 5:45 because that seemed like a normal sunrise time.

Oh, I should digress. In the middle of the night (well, around 11 pm, which is the middle of the night in a National Park Campground) I had to use the bathroom. I managed to get out of the tent, I had my headlamp on, and I headed for the facilities. (Flush toilets, cold water, hand dryers.) As I got closer, I saw a group of about 4 deer in the bushes right in front of the bathroom. I assumed my approach would scare them off, but they showed no real fear or surprise. I wasn’t sure what to do—I tried shining my light at them but they made no move. I heard what I thought was another person approaching and was about to whisper to them about the deer, when I realized it wasn’t another person. It was a giant, huge, deer, and it was very aware of me and was in the middle of the road. I was a little scared, but just then the other deer moved so I went into the bathroom.

However, when I came back out the giant monster deer was still there, blocking my path back to the tent! I tried to approach it, hoping to scare it off, but it took a few steps towards me instead, with an ominous clomping sound. I pictured getting attacked by a deer, and wondered if this was something that happened to people? I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I was scared. I knew our camp area was a loop of sorts, so I decided to be safer and walk back the long way, along the loop.

After what seemed like forever but was probably 2-3 minutes, I realized it was a REALLY big loop, especially at night, so I turned back around. By then the giant monstrous beast had moved off the roadway—I could see the deer off to the side but I moved quietly and firmly ahead and did make it back safely to the tent. (edit to add: I realized later these were elk, not deer!)

I kept hearing noises all night and figured it was the deer, looking for me and planning to attack if I left the tent.

In any case, by around 4:30 am our neighbors made a bit of noise packing up their tent. Oh, and it was completely bright outside. By the time Louie and I got up at 5 am most people around us were awake, making breakfast, or had already left. People get up early there, evidently, and the sun rises MUCH earlier than it should. In other words, the Grand Canyon is in the wrong time zone.

Our hike plan: to hike down the Bright Angel Trail to the Colorado River and back. Warning: all the rangers and signs warn you not to do this, that it is too far for one day. Our friends all told us we could and should do it, that it is awesome and we will be fine. We packed food and water, and knew there were multiple places along the trail where we could fill up our water as well.

The Bright Angel Trail is the one that heads down, FYI.

The way down was easy. The trail is wide and well graded, and mostly just sandy. There were resthouses with water and vault toilets at 1 1/2 miles and 3 miles down, which seemed like a lot to us. (We learned why later, spoiler alert).

We’d started down the trail right around 6 am, and by 8:30 am we were resting on a bench at Indian Gardens, eating trail mix. Indian Gardens is about 4.5 miles down, and generally where rangers tell you to turn around for a day hike. We said, that’s for amateurs, not us, and continued down to the path to the Colorado River, 3 more miles.

I didn’t take as many pictures from that point on. First because I thought, well, let’s hurry and then on the way back we’ll be slower and take more pictures. But then my toes started hurting, and I was tired, and it was hard to hike. There was a part where you go around a corner and then you just see the trail, going down and around, deeper and deeper into the canyon, and I wish I had taken a picture. I remember though, I was both terrified and awed. Truly awesome, I guess.

But we made it to the river! The Colorado River, which was the whole reason the Grand Canyon exists. It was windy down by the river, and there were several rafts, one of which blew over and practically knocked Louie over. (he was trying to dip his feet into the river.)

I started getting really worried about getting back. I do this on hikes, I worry about finishing. I shouldn’t, I get into my head too much, and I don’t enjoy the moment. But in this case, I started really worrying. And I didn’t feel like eating, but I was hungry. We started walking back, and I realized I was nauseous and hungry, and we might have 8 hours ahead of us, and I just sat down and started crying and panicking. I worried I’d have to be picked up by mule or helicopter, and it would be awful and embarrassing, and that we made a huge mistake and that I am NOT like other people, hiking is hard, and I should have turned around at Indian Gardens.

Then we got passed by a group of men, going really slowly. Slower than we had been going. And I thought, okay, I can do that. I can go that slowly.

So we did. Bit by bit. We took a lot of breaks. The sun was hot, and high in the sky, and I’m sure Louie didn’t want to go so slow or stop so often, but he did, because he was with me. And we made sure to drink more water than we had been. And we made it back to Indian Gardens.

At Indian Gardens (10.5 miles so far) we ate a bunch of peanut butter pretzels from Trader Joe’s, made a Hammer Fizz drink with tablets in the water, and I really started feeling better. Only 4. 5 miles left.

After Indian Gardens, the path is really just up. Before that it mostly was up, but now there was no flat parts. We continued taking lots of breaks, and it was still hot, but we started to notice that everybody around us was also suffering, which made us feel better. Ha! Funny how that works, right? We finally made it to 3 mile hours, and enjoyed more Hammer Fizz, more snacks, and another long rest (15-20 minutes?). Then we set off again. Relentless forward progress. One foot in front of the other.

The last 3 miles were the hardest. 1 1/2 mile house seemed so far away…vault toilets were never such a wonderful beacon in the distance. This rest house smelled like urine so we didn’t stay long. And then the final ascent. As we got closer we’d run into folks just wandering down a bit from the rim, which was annoying in a way. Here we are, exhausted, sunburned, smelly, having been to hell and back, or that is, the River and back…and these folks are just out for a little stroll. And then closer yet, wearing sandals and drinking wine, or taking up the trail posing for pictures. Closer still. The rim was in sight, but still so far. More breaks, more catching of my breath (hard to do, but not as hard as earlier in the day when I was perhaps dangerously close to heat stroke). And then. We cleared the top!

You’d expect bells and whistles, or a brass band, but instead there were just tourists everywhere. Nobody we knew, nobody to celebrate our victory.

For some reason I’d carried a selfie stick this whole way. We set up for a picture with the Trailhead dedication rock. Some guy was trying to take a picture while we were setting up our picture and he seemed annoyed we were in the way—I think we deserved a minute with the rock after our day!

I’d told Louie during the hike that I would never do it again. And that’s a good idea, but of course as time goes by you start to forget how hard things are and you only remember the fun and the beauty and the feeling of accomplishment.

After the hike we went to take showers. Glorious! Even though honestly, the showers were pretty gross. Still, we were covered in so much red dust that it was wonderful. And then we bought a few things at the grocery store and then we ate and drank and rested and it was a wonderful night.

We had new neighbors for the second night and it looked like quite a few people were staying longer. Unfortunately we had to leave the next day.

We woke up a bit later, closer to 7 am (decadent sleeping in!). We packed up camp and went to check out more of the canyon rim views. Basically there are two ways you can go, west or east, and we decided to check out east side viewpoints and then leave the park that way and head back to Phoenix. The west side would have awesome too but we had to make a choice.

We stopped at almost all the stops along the way, including the Tusayan Ruins and the Desert View Watchtower. Louie even hiked down the Grandview Trail a bit (there are actually many trails into the Grand Canyon, and I guess another day, another year, we’ll have to do something again.) Oh, and Moran Point, which was absolutely gorgeous but also fun to say…well, fun to mispronounce.

We were sad to leave, and my legs were sore, sore, sore. But we were expected back in Phoenix for a concert that night and needed to get back to clean up. We left and drove through Cameron to Flagstaff to Phoenix. It was a wonderful trip, and hopefully we’ll get to do it again!

We are planning a bit road trip for later in the summer. Colorado, Utah, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It doesn’t cost that much to camp and cook our own food, gas is on the cheap, and so the only real cost is taking the time off. Since Louie is on an academic calendar he doesn’t work during that time, and I’m self-employed and summer is definitely a lighter time. Some people wondered last summer how we could afford it, and that’s the answer: if you drive, and mostly cook your own meals, and camp, it’s really pretty affordable to travel. This trip was more expensive since we flew to Phoenix, but it didn’t cost much more to see Sedona and the Grand Canyon!

If you have questions, let me know—I’d be happy to help.

Camping, Hiking, Phoenix, Sedona

A Few days in Phoenix, Less than 24 hours in Sedona

May 30, 2016 hannahviolin

After last summer’s big road trip, I mentioned to my sister Leslie that the annual NPS Louie and I had purchased didn’t expire until the end of this summer. She suggested we come out to Phoenix to visit, and take a few days to see the Grand Canyon. She was very generous to offer us their older car to borrow and a bunch of camping gear.

Louie had never been to the Grand Canyon. I had been but not since I was a small child (11 or so). The Grand Canyon is about 3 1/2 hours from Phoenix, which makes for a short drive though not really a day trip. Leslie, who is evidently a wonderful travel agent/itinerary builder, suggested we spend some time in Sedona on our way north, so ultimately I planned our time to have 1 night in Sedona, 2 nights at the Grand Canyon, and then home.

I like to look at the Trip Advisor Forums for advice on traveling, though Louie and I like to hike more than most members of the forums there. I’d found much of their advice last year to be excellent, with the exception of their great love of the Black Hills (it was fine, but we could have spent one night there and been happy rather than two). However, in the Sedona forums, there is at least one member who insists that you must spend 4-5 nights in Sedona in order to make it worth visiting. To me this is ridiculous. Sure, a week in Paris beats a day in Paris, but both are worth it. Maybe not the day if you fly in and out from the US for one day, but it’s a trip from another fairly nearby location, a little time is better than no time!

(I’m overwhelmed by my good fortune in being able to travel sometime, and right now I’m overwhelmed by all the beauty we saw and want to convey it to you.)

Okay, so…first we spent a few days in Phoenix hanging with my little niece Athena, and my sister and brother-in-law.

We rode the carousel and the train at McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale.

There was a lovely shaded playground.

We took selfies.

And we went to the zoo.

And then on Wednesday of the week, it was time for Louie and I to load up their Honda Civic (with stick shift) and head for Sedona. We piled in our clothes, cooler with food and drinks, tent, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, camp chairs, hiking boots and poles, stove, and more (maybe) and headed to Sedona. The drive was around 2 hours.

One big potential issue for our night in Sedona. The forecast was for rain and storms!

Sedona is known as Red Rocks Country. Once we made the turn off the interstate we started seeing evidence of this. It was so much unlike Missouri!

Our first stop was at the Sedona Visitors Center. We needed the restrooms, water, and lunch. I talked to a really helpful ranger at the desk as well. I hadn’t planned too many particular hikes for Sedona. For whatever reason, I’d found it difficult to get maps or find exact things to do so I’d figured we’d wing it…I love planning things, but as I’ve told you before, Louie enjoys winging them and being more in the moment, so I figured he’d help out with this part Winking smile The ranger asked how long we were there and when we told him, well, this afternoon and tomorrow morning, he didn’t yell at us that we hadn’t allocated enough time (we wanted to be in the Grand Canyon by mid-afternoon the next day) but instead made a few really helpful suggestions.

We first visited the Bell Rock area, which was just north of the visitor’s center. The sky didn’t look too menacing yet so we took a short hike up and around.

My mom is probably worried about all the red dirt. Back in South Carolina where I grew up she hates the red dirt that we would track into the house. It stains, and she would shout “Red Dirt Alert!” to make us stop in our tracks and remove our shoes.

Hiking: fashion? Those wire trash cans filled with rocks were to mark the trail. There were lots of signs warning us to stay on the trail, which was great until we’d get to a place that was only rock and didn’t seem to have any trail markers at all. It was fun to explore though!

Louie was smart and wore an orange shirt in order to blend in.

Here you can see the bad weather is starting to move in. We knew we weren’t terribly far from shelter though.

I took this of Louie when he went up a big higher than I felt comfortable doing so. Some of the rock climbing made me fear of heights kick in. Or perhaps my fear of rock climbing.

When we got back to the car, it started raining, and storming, and kept up for a bit. We decided to go to the store to pick up a few things we’d remembered that we’d forgotten (ha, good writing there!). The storms had blown threw by the time we were done (Sedona is full of shops and restaurants and places to stay, not remote at all) and we went to drive around something called Red Rocks Loop, that the ranger had recommended. It was definitely still a little rainy but not bad. We didn’t really feel like hiking though…we are tough, sure Winking smile but rain hiking is more work. The loop wasn’t that exciting, so we finished and then went to our campground.

I’d booked a night in a campground north of town called Manzanita Campground, run by the Forest Service.

Our first time by the campground we missed the turn entirely, but found it the second time. There’s a steep one lane driveway down to the campground and the sites are along Oak Creek. Other than the rain and the fact that the only facilities are vault toilets, I loved it.

We set out for a short hike before dinner-I’d seen there was a trailhead right across from the campground and we though we’d check it out, just for a few minutes. The rain had stopped, but it was still really wet.

The hike went through an area that had had a fire recently. Later Peter was telling us about it, but now I can’t remember. It was recent, and it luckily didn’t spread too much further than the small area.

(This article I found seems to be about it. We were camping in the Oak Creek Canyon area.)

I wanted to get back to camp before it was too dark, so we only hiked for about 45 minutes. It was neat and we were sorry we couldn’t go further.

It was a cold night. I believe it ended up being close to 40 degrees overnight, hard to believe it was May and Arizona! (Not everywhere in Arizona is hot like Phoenix, but that’s easy to forget). In any case, we made Trader Joe’s Vegetarian Chili with some sides and enjoyed a beer by the campfire. Sort of. The fire was hard to start due to the dampness (we managed, we are used to rain here in Missouri, despite the camp host almost refusing to sell us wood) but the real problem was that the firepits were about 3 feet tall and blocked all the heat. Oh well.

I didn’t sleep that well-first night camping, cold…it was a bad combination. We got up and loaded up the car and headed further north. We decided to hike the West Fork of Oak Creek Canyon.

The ranger had recommended this hike, yes, that’s how we roll (also Leslie and Peter did, but they recommended several hikes that we didn’t get to do either). He’d said he loved it because it was unlike anything else in Sedona. At first that sounded appealing, but then we started to worry, what if it was like Missouri instead? It was lush and green, but luckily it wasn’t really like Missouri.

The trail goes along the Oak Creek the whole way. It crosses the creek 13 times along the way (and then again on the way back). The creek crossings were quite a lot of fun!

It seemed they meant you’d have to walk down the creek for 2 3/4 miles! Maybe in some seasons it would be lower, but that just didn’t sound terribly fun to me.

After finishing the hike we had a quick picnic lunch before heading north (again) towards the Grand Canyon National Park. And that’s where I’ll end today’s blog post, with the two of us in a car, drinking sparkling water, and driving north, looking forward to the next portion of our adventure.

Road Trip 2015, Travel

The end of the Road (Road Trip Part 7)

September 27, 2015 hannahviolin

If you haven’t been keeping up, here are parts 1-6. Excessive? Not for a 19 day trip…

Part 1: There and Back Again

Part 2: Bouldering in Boulder

Part 3: Camping isn’t so bad

Part 4: There really is no place like Wyoming

Part 5: Yellowstone…everything here is more amazing than anywhere else

Part 6: Yellowstone again because one post was taking me entirely too long to write

And here we are at Part 7 of the Road Trip Summer 2015 Trip Recaps. Did I say trip too many times? I’ve been procrastinating this post, and I’ll be honest: I haven’t finished writing about it by hand either (I kept a notebook journal on the trip) so I have pictures, short notes for each day, and my memories to rely on here. I’d better get something written, haven’t I? Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable!

Why am I procrastinating so much? Well, other than the fact that life and work are happening here…it’s because after Yellowstone the trip was a letdown. It had to happen. Everything we were doing was just so awesome, and then we left Yellowstone and headed east, and mentally we knew we were heading home, and honestly, no offense to the entire TripAdvisor South Dakota Forums, but Custer State Park and everything around Mount Rushmore is just not as awesome. Sorry!

But I am procrastinating EVEN MORE.

We left off with leaving Yellowstone. Louie and I decided to drive the Beartooth Highway after leaving Yellowstone. Charles Kuralt called it “the most beautiful drive in America.” It took us WAY up high, and there were tons of switchbacks, and I was mostly terrified and Louie had a great time driving it.

Some gorgeous views along the way!

It was cold and windy at the top, and it was a neat drive. I’m glad we did it. After that, we ended in the town of Red Lodge, Montana, which looked cute, but the first few hotels we looked at were full, so we made an online reservation at the “Western Inn” in Lowell, WY, and off we went. We’d decided tonight was a hotel night, and couldn’t wait. We also wanted to eat dinner at a restaurant.

We made it to the Western Inn. Lowell was a very small town, and the Western Inn was a little…well, there were bikers out and it looked like a pretty run-down, rent by the week type of place, and for approximately $45, we kind of expected it. The room was clean enough looking, though very out of date, and the owner also seemed to run a diner out of the lobby called the “Cauc-Asian” diner (she was of Asian descent) though, we couldn’t figure out how the diner worked. We ended up eating dinner at a restaurant called the Brandin’ Iron, and I had fried shrimp with fries, and we split apple cobbler for dessert. That and a few cold beers had never tasted better. And the Brandin’ Iron was amazing in so many ways, especially if you are looking at it from the point of city slicker snobs like Louie and I are 😉

Now, the other thing to know is that we hadn’t managed to get a shower in since our first night in the Tetons. We must have smelled amazing, and looked good too. After dinner I was able to enjoy the most desperately needed shower of my entire life. Seriously, it was amazing. And I slept really well in the bed.

Day 15: We woke up and considered trying to eat at the Cauc-Asian diner but I freaked out because it smelled odd and I just didn’t really understand how it worked. We also desperately needed to do laundry, and then get to the Devil’s Tower and then to Custer State Park in South Dakota, so I was having a stressed out day and was having a hard time with it. We got muffins at a gas station for breakfast and then headed east. On the way east we drove through the Bighorn Mountains which were really nice, though we were getting sad that we were nearing the end of our mountains. The whole time we’d had a Garmin hooked up for navigation and it kept track of our elevation. For days and days we’d been at over 8000 feet, and then up to nearly 11,000 feet, and suddenly we were getting lower and lower.

We found a laundromat around lunchtime and managed to do laundry while getting tex-mex and also grocery shopping in Buffalo, WY. The cashier at the grocery store was quite interested in our sparkling water, and she couldn’t believe it didn’t have high-fructose corn syrup.

Then it was time for the Devil’s Tower. We’d had started listening to the podcast “Serial” but once we got to the middle of nowhere, truly, that’s where the Devil’s Tower is!

We enjoyed walking around it and not being in the car for a little while, but we still had nearly 2 more hours to go until we got to our campground reservation at Custer State Park so we didn’t spend too much time there.

We did spent some time photographing prairie dogs.

The best part of the National Parks, with the possible exception of the amazing scenery, is all the wildlife.

It was dark by the time we got to Custer State Park. I’d made a reservation for two nights at Grace Coolidge Campground, and there wasn’t a place to check in—it was just “show up at your campsite”… and somebody was in ours. It took awhile to find it in the dark, and there was a truck parked in it and people had a fire. We verified with another camper that we were looking at the right site (she had come out to see what all the lights were about) and I guess I’d said, darkly, “so those are the people who are in our site!” The man came over and apologized and said he thought it was first-come, first-served…we’d made our reservations over a month prior! And the signage was clear. He said they would clear out as quickly as they could, so we drove around for a bit to give them space, but it was raining off and on and we were getting nervous, so we headed back. Both of us felt bad kicking this man and his wife out of their site—they were in the middle of cooking dinner too—but the fact was, the signs were clear that if you didn’t have a reservation you needed to call, and it was only about 9:30 pm, not midnight, and we did have the reservation. Sigh. It was hard to feel quite as nice about our campsite knowing we’d had to kick somebody out for it. We made a quick dinner ourselves and a little fire and then enjoyed the nearby creek sounds as we fell asleep.

Day 16: Today we wanted to hike up to the tallest point in South Dakota, Harney Peak. I’d read it was a difficult hike and might take us 5-6 hours. We got a slightly later start than usual, by about 3 hours and decided that was okay, and we were just worn out and tired from our vacation. (Life. Hard.)

We drove on the “Needles Highway” to get to the trailhead. It was a crazy drive, with all these rock formations and some one-lane tunnels through rocks.

The hike was nice. It ended up being only about 3-4 hours, and wasn’t nearly as strenuous as we’d thought. Granted, we still got passed by the young and the elderly as I’m a slow hiker, but we felt in pretty darned good shape!

Louie did a bit more exploring at the time while I rested on my laurels.

After finishing our hike, the other thing I really wanted to do was drive the Wildlife Loop in the park. Since we were done with our hike early we decided to go see the town of Custer (we’d both been to the area in the past, Louie more recently, and we just decided against Mount Rushmore and some other things in order to do different things than he remembered). Well, overall Custer was an awful town, but we stopped at Ester’s Sausage House, at first for coffee, and maybe dessert, and then decided to have beer and sausage instead (obviously more logically) and also bread pudding.

Towards sunset is the best time to see wildlife, so that’s when we hit the Wildlife Loop. One thing that is crazy is that there are these wild burros roaming around, but they are actually tame (they are descended from burros that used to carry people up to Harney Peak in the past but were set free at some point) and go up to the cars! People feed them (this is a case of where feeding animals is okay) and they are pretty pushy, actually. But cute.

We didn’t see too much other wildlife other that the burros and more prairie dogs and were getting disappointed…we did see where a young burro had gotten stuck in a horse pen, away from its mother and were a little upset, so we stopped at the next ranger station to tell them (so they could let the baby burro out), and then the next thing we found were…

Bison!!! And a good old-fashioned bison jam (also sounds like a delicious product to spread on toast, no?). Smaller in scale than at Yellowstone but no less delightful. It was our last bison jam and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Interesting fact from my diaries of the trip in 1991 with my family: we saw bison at the exact same point then.

After that we returned to our campsite for more dinner and relaxing. Overnight it started to rain…

Day 17:

We awoke to pouring rain. We both stayed in the tent as long as possible, but realized that yes, we did need to leave by noon, and at some point had to pack up. Originally we’d thought maybe we would do another hike in Custer, or something else, but we checked the forecast, and the Badlands were supposed to get a lot of rain the following day, so we decided to leave and try to see them before the rain ruined everything there. It was not fun packing up in the rain!

On our way to the Badlands (about a 2 hour drive) we saw a bunch of pronghorns! They are kind of like antelope, and we were excited to see them.

I’d made a reservation at the KOA White River. As a child, the KOA campgrounds were my favorite so I thought it would be fun to stay in one for old-time’s sake. I was also worried (originally) that it was going to be too hot and sunny in the Badlands National Park campground, and having a place with shade would be nicer. It turned out I shouldn’t have worried about that, but having showers and nice bathroom facilities was nice! We set up our tent, had lunch, and then headed to the Badlands, about 10 minutes away. This was definitely a “free”visit on our America the Beautiful pass (Devil’s Tower was another one that was covered). The clouds threatened, but we managed to see a lot of things.

We started with the Notch Trail. As a kid I had been too scared to go up this ladder on the trail, and as an adult I was pretty scared, but I figured if I could climb the stairs on Uncle Tom’s Trail at Yellowstone this was no big deal. On our way BACK to the car a pair of pronghorns ran by us, over the formations and around the corner. It was so neat to see how fast they moved.

We drove around the Badlands Loop next, and stopped at a variety of overlooks. It was cold and windy, which was definitely a surprise, but the views were still really beautiful.

We saw a bunch more prairie dogs, and a small pack of goats (that blocked the road) and a lone bighorn sheep, though we didn’t even realize it at the time and thought it was a male goat—it was neat to realize it was a bighorn sheep since that was one we hadn’t “checked off” yet!

I wanted to drive on the Sage Rim Road, which is a gravel road where the bison and other wildlife/views are, but it was sadly, closed due to too much rain. According to the ranger too many cars had gotten stuck so they closed the rain. Disappointed, we headed back to our campsite.

Our little tent on the last night of camping. Notice how Louie likes to put the hatchet into a stump. We made a lovely fire and had a typical meal and just enjoyed being outside for the last night.

Day 18:

We had awoken several times during the night to some terrifying storms. Lightning and thunder and wind like you wouldn’t believe, and I was relieved that the tent survived and that we didn’t have to evacuate or something! I didn’t know if there was a tornado warning system, or something like that. I was glad we’d gotten to enjoy every night with dinner and a fire outside, but man, packing up all of our wet tent parts for the second day in a row wasn’t that fun. We got the car loaded up—the rain had mostly let up, and we drove through the Badlands on our way to highway 90.

The rest of the trip that day was uneventful. We finished the Serial podcast, and decided to try to get to Kansas City. We’d originally planned to eat at a restaurant Louie recalled, La Bodega, but their hours online weren’t correct and they were closing as we arrived. We ate at a nearby Mexican restaurant called El Pueblito and had wonderful margaritas and shrimp tacos, before checking into a suite at a 4 star hotel, the Crown Plaza, that we found on Priceline for around $75. It was…a bit nicer than our previous hotel. We walked to The Yardhouse, a nearby pub, for a nightcap before turning in.

Day 19:

One of the reasons we got our room for so cheap was the fact that the hotel was under construction. Around 9 am we awoke to loud construction noises…but we decided to relax, order room service, and enjoy the amenities (including a wonderful shower..) until nearly noon when we had to check out. From Kansas City to St Louis is about a 4 hour drive…and then we were home. Safe and sound.

The end! I’m so proud to finally have finished my trip recaps, even though I feel like I rushed this one—sometimes you just have to sit down and WRITE. Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions or comments let me know.

Camping, Hiking, Missouri

Taum Sauk State Park

September 27, 2015 hannahviolin 5 Comments

I’m exhausted right now but so happy!

I never would have thought I’d say that after a weekend of backpacking. In fact, I never thought I’d go backpacking (where you hike with all your camping gear, and then camp in the middle of nowhere) but part of being in a “new” relationship means you try new things. Louie got a bit jealous of all the people that were backpacking in the National Parks, so we decided to plan a little backpacking trip here. Nothing too fancy, and just one night. We invited a bunch of friends, and finally managed to convince two other people to go… a bunch of stressors here and there almost made us cancel on more than one occasion, but we decided to forge ahead and I’m glad we did.

We decided to hike an out-and-back from Taum Sauk State Park to Mina Sauk Falls and then a little ways along the Ozark Trail, find a nice place to camp, and then head back the next day. I had a backpack with a sleeping bag, sleeping pad, change of clothes, extra layers and rain jacket, food (lots of pbj, trail mix, and bars), 3 liters of water, various first aid stuff, water treatment, headlight, and a few other things. Louie had our stove and tent, and his own clothes, sleeping gear, and a few other things. We were with his brother Julian and our friend Jim, neither of whom had been backpacking before either. (Louie had gone once before, and a very similar trip to this one—in fact, he realized as we went along it was basically the same trip, except we camped further along). We also brought the dog, Mackenzie.

Mackenzie didn’t seem to realize she was being photographed. She also didn’t bring a tent, backpack, water, or ANY of those things! Silly dog made us carry her food for her too…but we figured it was worth it for the intrude warnings AND seeing her have a wonderful time in the outdoors.

The park was about 2 hours drive from St Louis, and the day ended up being cooler and a little more overcast than we thought. We started hiking around 1 pm, and took the right fork to get to Mina Sauk Falls. The “Falls” were basically non-existent, and all of the views were foggy though…but we enjoyed the scenery anyway, especially as it seemed finally autumn was here and the leaves were turning. (I would have said fall was here but with “the falls” that seemed confusing. And here I am saying fall and falls anyway…sigh…)

Trying to perfect our explorer poses. (Side note, I think my waist band is too high, anybody know? Maybe that’s why my shoulders hurt so much?)

I didn’t take too many pictures, because I was mostly focused on my footing! The hike was QUITE rocky and steep, especially once we continued from Mina Sauk Falls down towards the Devil’s Tollgate (which I definitely referred to as the Devil’s Tailgate by accident on at least one occasion.) When we climbed down to the bottom of the falls area (the most difficult part of the hike) we saw a little campsite on the left. We didn’t realize there would be a variety of makeshift campsites along the route, complete with fire rings—even though it seemed that making fires wasn’t allowed, there were fire rings. We didn’t want to camp yet, so we kept going, and passed another campsite right before the Devil’s Tailgate (note: I actually typed that by accident…) which Louie suddenly remembered he had stayed at before. We were tempted, but it was really close to the trail, and we thought maybe we’d find more if we continued along.

That’s the Devil’s Tollgate. Not THAT frightening, really…but really cool. This was definitely the coolest hike we’ve done in Missouri!

Finally we were getting a little impatient to stop. Our packs felt heavy (how do people do this? I suppose we overpacked/didn’t have them adjusted well? My shoulders ended up really being sore, but they do from my regular backpack too…?) and we were ready to relax and enjoy the woods. Just before we were tempted to turn back to the campsite we’d passed, we found another, even better one, with a large flat area for a few tents and a big log to sit on near a fire ring made with rocks. It was perfect! The only downside was that the creek was totally dry, but we had plenty of water with us (it wouldn’t have been so much, actually, but it wasn’t too hot so we didn’t need as much.)

By this point Mackenzie was exhausted. I think we’d been hiking between 2 1/2 and 3 hours (the same for miles, oddly)—not much in the greater scheme of things—but a long way for us backpacking newbies!

We set up our tents and then looked for firewood (we were tempted by the fire ring, even though we weren’t sure it was legal, why have a fairly used ring, plus it was pretty damp all around so we felt good about a fire.)

Louie and I returned to the tiny orange tent for this trip since it was much lighter than the larger one we’d camped in in August.

We made boxed red beans and rice for dinner and added “textured vegetable protein” to it for extra protein/calories. We’d decided that everybody was in charge of their own snacks/lunch/breakfast and such but dinner could be one thing. After dinner we just sat around chatting and discussing gender equality and various other important manners!

Oh, and we hung up a backpack with all the leftover food. It probably wasn’t bear safe, but we figured it would keep smaller critters (and large black dogs) away from it while we slept. Louie figured out how to manage this.

Notes: 1) We had definitely passed some hikers earlier in the trip, but once we set up camp we didn’t see another person until the next morning. 2) As it got dark, it got pretty scary on occasion, trying to figure out what various strange noises were! Mackenzie wasn’t sure what to think of all of this and the rest of us weren’t either 😉 but we never got too freaked out. The moon was HUGE and basically full, and kept it from being too dark. 3) We’d passed a couple that said they saw some wild boar/feral pigs (?) earlier in their hike so we were a little worried about those and, for some reason, coyotes.

We all awoke several times during the night. It rained lightly and between that and all the weird noises (mostly insects, but probably birds and snakes and raccoons too) and rustling from everybody tossing and turning, I didn’t sleep terribly well. Also not having a pillow didn’t help…but it was still fun to be outside, and we’d had a great evening hanging out and a lovely hike! So morning broke, and we got up, made coffee (instant!) and packed up, and off we went, back towards the car. The rain made everything a bit wetter, and some of the rocks we had to climb over were a bit scary, but my pack was lighter (I actually ran out of water—I’d shared a bit, and one thing we did learn was to make sure to tell any future hiking companions how MUCH water to bring—Louie and I each had 3 liters, more than anyone else) so that helped. I had a wooden walking stick for awhile too, that Jim had been using but he gave to me when I was struggling too much…next time, I am bringing my walking sticks, no matter.

We finally made it back up the top, and made a slight detour to the highest point in Missouri (we’d missed this on the day before while going down the trail.)

Being very weird and pointing at the sign…

Looking a little more normal, albeit tired!

So there you have it. Approximately 5-6 miles round trip hike, quite short by my usual standards (ha!) and some parts were really technically difficult, especially for a Missouri hike. Overall I had a wonderful time and learned a lot about how to prepare for any future backpacking, though I am (unlike most people on the internet)far from an expert. I will go backpacking again, though now Louie is talking about taking an overnight bike trip somewhere…the thing is, we have a lot of good gear for hiking/backpacking already, and not great biking gear (I really need a better bike, first off, that fits me better, and we don’t have any panniers!), but that’s a worry for another day. We do plan to try to backpack another part of the Ozark Trail the next time we can both get away for an overnight and wrangle some friends with us for entertainment and company, so I’d say the trip was a success.

Saw this guy when I came home, and now I’m gearing up for the workweek (Bach at the Sem!) and looking forward to October.

HANNAHVIOLIN

Tag Archives: camping

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The end of the Road (Road Trip Part 7)

Taum Sauk State Park

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.

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thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.