At the end of my last entry, I had returned to Denver from Moab so I could make it to a doctor's appointment. I was getting a couple laser treatments a week on my feet, which might have even been helping. When I attended the appointment I'd come home for, they told me, "We weren't able to fit you in next thurs, so we won't see you till tues."
I boggled. I actually had another weeklong stretch of time ahead of me, long enough to make a proper trip out of. So what did I do? I went back to Utah.
But first, I had to go grocery shopping and then pack everything back into the car. All of this camping had me noticing ways to optimize my setup. Bananas, for instance. My poor bananas, left in the food bag with all the other food, were always getting bruised. They needed a safe location. The center console has now become the banana box.
More changes were on the way. In the past, I've always stopped at the free campsite at Rabbit Valley on the way out to Utah. On my last trip, however, I found the Bureau of Land Management has turned it into a pay campground: $20 a night, plus a whopping $8 reservation fee. (They have not, however, installed any amenities like water, or even toilet paper in the vault toilet.) $28 is a bit much, especially considering I typically roll in around 10pm and leave at 7 in the morning. I literally only need a legal place to park the car for 9 hours.
So I decided I'd try dispersed camping the first night. I crossed the border into Utah after dark and turned toward Moab, then pulled onto a dirt road, found a sandy pulloff and hopped into the back of the car. My map that shows dispersed camping in the area is rather low-resolution, and it wasn't 100% clear whether I was in the dispersed-camping-allowed area or not, but the road was too rough for the Prius to continue any farther.
So. I was a little tense at first, worrying about The Knock. The Knock is when a police officer (or security guard, or ranger) wakes you up to say you can't sleep there and must move along. They aren't necessarily rude about it. However, knowing that it could happen isn't conducive to a good night's sleep. I have either gotten The Knock once, or zero times; if it happened, it was 26 years ago, and my memory of the incident is so hazy I wonder if I dreamed it.
All this is to say that it took me a couple hours to fall asleep. The stars were gorgeous, though, and sleeping in a car allows a clear view of them as you drift off. Once I fell asleep, I slept very soundly till morning, then used the bathroom at the next campground down the road.
I was headed for Needles. This is one of the four districts of Canyonlands National Park. I'd meant to make a day to visit it on my last trip, but in the end, I (and my aching back) balked at yet more driving. Now, I would be able to devote nearly a week to it and the surrounding area.
North and South Sixshooter Peaks
The sky was doing crazy things as I approached the park. It looked like dozens of jellyfish were on migration. In fact, throughout the week, the sky would cbe one of the main attractions: I saw so many strange clouds, drifting virga showers, foreboding thunderheads and etherial waves that watching the sky was one of my favorite activities.
My original plan had been to go straight to the Needles campground, half of which is first-come, first-served, and try to grab a campsite. But on the way there, I passed the Creek Pasture campground and decided to check it out.
It turned out to be very pretty, with lots of yellow flowers everywhere, and it was $5 less per night than the national park campground. The trees were a little scraggly, but who's judging? Of the thirty-two sites, only four or five were occupied. It was nearly silent. Since I was beginning to have grave doubts about my plan to grab a national park campsite at the beginning of a holiday weekend, and since quiet is one of my top priorities when camping, I thought maybe I should just grab a site at Creek Pasture.
I did.
I immediately set up the hammock and began to read, enjoying my nice view of the outhouse (and one of the Sixshooter peaks). The temperature crept higher.
Unfortunately, because I'm old now, the valves in my leg veins no longer do their job and I have to wear compression sleeves, even in the 90 degree heat. Also I hate sunscreen so I had full-length clothing on. The scraggly trees, it turned out, did not give very good shade. Basically, I was hot. I sagged in the hammock and watched a whiptail lizard dig in the dirt.
By late afternoon I'd had enough, and went for an air-conditioned drive. I stopped at the Needles visitor center to use the bathroom, and eavesdropped on a ranger talking with a couple of French tourists. They'd asked advice on where to go, and the ranger rattled off a hundred-mile-per-hour spiel that included the words "lush" and "planty."
So, this is where I complain about a pet peeve of mine: folks who work in the tourism industry, who have presumably received training in such, and yet who don't seem to understand that foreign tourists probably can't decipher their superfast, slang- and vocab-word-laden English. This bothers me so much in part because I used to work in tourism myself, and have high standards. Also because I've studied five foreign languages, and it's hard! Slow down and use common words.
Anyway. Beauty needs no translation, and yet I was still speechless once I got a little further into the park.
The orange flowers I had been astounded to see on my last trip, blanketing the usually sere, wasteland-esque desert north of Moab, had also spread themselves across the flats at Needles—but even thicker. It was so visually arresting I parked right on the shoulderless road and walked back and forth taking photos in the sunset like a tourist.
Back at my campground later, the evening light was soft on the sandstone cliffs, and at nightfall, surprisingly cold air descended and bright stars winked between the scraggly trees overhead.
The next day, I enjoyed a mix of writing and exploring the area. Since the trees weren't cooperating, I ate my dinner in the shade provided by the car's hatch.
I was finding that after spending all day in near-90 temps, I didn't feel much like hot food for dinner. Unfortunately, food that needed to be cooked was what I'd brought with me.
This is a good time to talk about my ambition: to find a job that will let me work remotely not just from home, but from the field. To this end, I've been acquiring the gear that will let me perform a proof-of-concept on the whole idea. I want to know if I can live in a healthy way, and one that's comfortable enough that I'm not distracted from my work by heat, cold, wind, etc.
So. Below is my new 12-volt fridge, which keeps my food and drinks very cold (see frost on walls) and was also surprisingly cheap.
It fits nicely behind the passenger seat, and the Prius powers it with no trouble. Keeping all my electronics and the fridge going, the car still only has to run the gas engine about two minutes per hour. The fridge holds about 30 liters, which could be 1 or 2 weeks of refrigerables for one person, depending on what percentage of the food that person eats is refrigerables.
It's well-insulated. I can turn it off when I go to bed, and it will still be at a reasonable temperature in the morning. However, as this trip continued, I found I was able to go for longer walks. I left the fridge unpowered for up to an hour while I did this, and it didn't get too warm, but I wouldn't want to leave it much longer than that in 94-degree heat. Which means that if my feet keep healing, I'll need to get a battery to power the fridge while I hike.
After my unpleasantly hot dinner, it was time for more photography in the park:
Well. I had decided I was tired of the lack of proper midday shade at Creek Pasture, and that I would try for the Needles campground after all. So, the next morning I got up early to drive into the park.
I was able to snag a site with good shade, and I left some gear there to leave no doubts that the site was occupied. I drove the ten minutes back to Creek Pasture and packed up the tent, then decided I needed to take advantage of the actual creek, and went and splashed the sweat off me in water that resembled chocolate milk and was absurdly cold. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at the temperature. From any high point in the area I could see that the surrounding peaks were still flush with snow.
When I returned to my new Needles site, someone had been into the gear I'd left behind, scattering it all over the table and dirt. And I knew who.
In the past, I've seen signs at Needles warning people not to leave any food out, since the ravens here were very clever. They have even figured out how to get into coolers. I hadn't left any food behind, so I never would have thought I'd be a victim too. I guess no one is safe.
Enjoy these photos, which were a pleasure to take in such a beautiful place:
Over the course of the weekend I managed to make more new friends: a couple, each of whom worked as consultants and traveled between taking jobs. They were into backpacking too, and I enjoyed discussing trips and gear with them. They also plied me with food and were very enjoyable company.
Solo travel isn't so lonesome. I actually end up talking more with people when I'm on the road than I do at home. For one thing, folks on vacation—including myself—tend to be more open, more relaxed, less rushed. I'm also in contact with folks like rangers and welcome center employees whose job it is to talk to me. We all have something to talk about besides the regular old grind. Wildlife sightings, for instance.
Or amazing sunsets.
And, finally, the needles themselves, which I did not get to see up close on this trip.
It was the previous fall, hiking through those needles, that I first got plantar fasciitis. I can look at the photo above and feel a lot of things: regret, embarrassment, a touch of bitterness. Maybe I should have known better; maybe I shouldn't have tried such a long hike when my foot and calf muscles were still atrophied from my post-surgery rest period. Maybe if I'd been less ambitious I never would have been injured, spending the last six months with limited mobility, missing out on so many things.
The funny thing is, having reached that low, I'm now ridiculously appreciative of just being able to walk the half-hour at a time that I can manage now.
My stay at Needles was truly lovely, quiet and beautiful (if very hot). I was quite busy, between hiking and photography and writing and the job search. But I felt a lack of purpose. I do have a purpose, ostensibly: to take advantage of my unemployed time by seeing more of the country, while simultaneously moving toward a future in which I can support myself from the field. I am applying for jobs, I am testing gear, I am testing how it feels to work eight hours a day from a campsite in all temperatures and weather conditions. And I am writing, the thing that always gave me a sense of purpose in the past. And yet, now, I feel oddly aimless, adrift.
I have a few theories why, and here is one: these past couple Utah trips, I haven't felt like I was on vacation, because I was working so much at the computer. But I also haven't felt like I was "at work." I have been in a halfway zone in which I struggle to focus on my computer tasks—being surrounded by the hallmarks of vacation, which constantly trigger the desire to hike and/or go find some ice cream—and also can't fully relax, knowing how much I want and need to accomplish with my time. My internal compass hovers between north and south, unable to settle.
I don't know if this will change if I ever do find a job that lets me work from the field, and a routine of morning or evening hikes bookending eight hours work becomes truly routine. I hope I'll be lucky enough to see.
It occurs to me now that some folks must be wondering, why not a van? Well, it might come to that. But I tend not to buy things unless I truly believe I'll both need and use them, and right now I'm still testing this out. Besides, I like being outdoors.
On my drive home I explored some of the near-empty land south and west of Moab:
I stumbled on a housing development in the middle of nowhere, where great holes were carved into the cliffs, and house facades were being built over the openings:
This was simultaneously cool and also distressing. I am a wilderness lover, and it's always a bit sad to see what had been pure nature (and beautiful, in this case) taken over by a housing development. And the houses seemed pretty clearly priced for rich people. On the other hand, it looked like it would be a sustainable development, and a cool place to live, both literally and figuratively.
I was hoping there'd be lots of dispersed campsites out here in the middle of nowhere, but I didn't find many. Just dirt roads stretching to a colorful horizon.
I ended up at Looking Glass Arch, which was once a landmark for travelers on the Spanish Trail. It would be a long ride from here back to Denver, so I took the opportunity to stretch my legs and climb around a bit.
I was sad to be leaving Utah once again. The fact that it was nearly June, and getting oppressively hot and buggy, did help a bit. I knew I probably wouldn't be back till the fall, but my methodical procurement of gear has helped cement the idea that some day I might be able to see a lot more of this area, and get paid for it.
But there were a few more practicalities to work out, and I hoped to handle a few of them on my next trip, this time to a special location in Colorado. Stay tuned!
