- Animal encounters
- Black tail jack rabbit and a brown desert rabbit (not sure of type)
- hundreds of lizards (blue belly, ??)
- Several Mule deer
- Wild burrows or donkeys
- Wild horses
- Wild cows j.k.
- Birds (road runner, say's phoebe, house finch, spotted towhee, black throated gray warbler, house sparrow, yellow warbler, western kingbird, blue gray gnatcatcher, black headed grosbeak, and yellow breasted chat. (thanks to theCornellLab Merlin Bird ID app). Also golden eagle, two osprey
Lake Mead NV and Virgin
River Campground, AZ
After exploring the beautiful desert at Hole in the Wall for four nights, we headed north past Las Vegas with the goal of eventually reaching Valley of Fire State Park. We have been there before and were hoping that wouldn’t be too busy. We headed towards Lake Mead just East of Las Vegas and landed at Stewarts Point on the North West side of the lake. Lake Mead was low (still) and the dispersed camping was OK for the night (sorry, no pics). We decided to stay there because we arrived later in the day on a Friday and we were concerned that there wouldn’t be any camp spots at Valley of Fire. In the morning we made the decision to ditch our plans to go to Valley of Fire and continue North (due to our burning urge to get away from the crowds)
Nevada > Arizona
After leaving Lake Mead area we ended up in a beautiful canyon at a rest stop/campground called Virgin River Canyon Campground in Arizona for the night. This campground is just in the town of Littlefield, AZ. The campground sits on a plateau just above the Virgin River. There are a few hikes there but it seemed that they had all been flooded out. We spent the afternoon walking around the area and exploring the river banks.
Beautiful view across from our campsite at
Virgin River Canyon Campground Arizona
Arizona > Red Canyon Utah (just outside Bryce Canyon
Our next stop was Red Canyon. This is a favorite stop just outside of the chaos of Bryce Canyon. The rock formations are a smaller version of what you see at Bryce Canyon, it's a mini Bryce. We stayed at Red Rock Canyon for two nights so that we could hike a bit and drive into Bryce for some sightseeing. This area is beautiful red rock surrounded by a contrast of green Forests that include rare Bristlecone pine trees. I took in a nice long hike while Craig hopped on his mountain bike at rode the mountain bike trail at Thunder Mountain.
We decided to stay put for a few days in Escalante. We've been there before and have found that there are more places to see than anyone can do in one trip (we've been there at least three times before).
The town of Escalante is pretty small with a population of just over 800 people. The draw to this area is that it sits right in the middle of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and has some pretty interesting canyons. The monument consists of 1.7 million acres of diverse and rugged terrain.
One trip Utah long ago we were heading up to Wyoming and had planned to go to Dinosaur National Monument. When we arrived it was so hot (90+) that we went to the visitor center and looked around a bit but didn't stay long. Since then I have always wanted to go back and spend a bit more time there. There is a "bone yard" there where Archeologists have uncovered a huge cache of large dinosaur bones. In addition there are quite a few places where you can see dino bones embedded into the rock formations on the side of trails.
In addition to the dinosaur inhabitance there is evidence of a large indigenous human population there. The large green river that runs through this area must have been an incredible resource for these people to fish and farm in this area.
The First People
"Dinosaur National Monument is home to a vast and rich cultural history. Since time immemorial, people have lived and migrated through here, drawn by the natural riches of the area. Proximity to the Green and Yampa rivers provided a reliable water source, while the natural alcoves and canyons offered cool shade and respite from the desert sun. An abundance of archeological evidence, including stone tools, granaries, and homes reveal that people have lived in the area for at least 10,000 years. The presence of petroglyphs (etchings) and pictographs (paintings) on the rockfaces throughout the monument show us that life was comfortable and allowed people to devote a substantial amount of time to the creation of these images. Many of the petroglyphs and pictographs found within Dinosaur National Monument are attributed to the Fremont peoples, whose descendants still reside in this area today."
A little side bar
Trouble with our RV refrigerator. At some point when we were in Los Padres NF, we realized that our very full refrigerator was not as cold as it should be; In fact it was about 50 degrees. The strange thing was that the freezer, also full, was working as expected. We had planned a few days to visit family before heading up to Tehachapi so we took the opportunity to troubleshoot the problem. At first we called a few repair shops to see if anyone could look at it but soon realized that a 3 week + wait time wasn’t going to work for us. Our second step was to starting checking out prices for a replacement fridge. These little RV 3 cubic feet 2-way fridges are expensive because they run on electricity or propane. A new Dometric brand runs between $800 and $1200 but they can get them to you in two days. This was an option but I figured that given enough time to think about it, Craig would hopefully be able to figure out how to fix it. After getting online and reading a few other RV fridge troubleshooting posts, I was able to find someone who had a problem with similar symptoms relating to the propane jet getting clogged (The jet heats a tank of ammonia to keep the fridge cool). Craig was able to remove and un-clog the propane jet and tada! 12 hours later is was back to 34-40 degrees.
