Bryce Canyon National Park

 

National Park number 2 on our month long trip to see the 5 parks in Utah.  This is just amazing.  We both do not understand how we did not come here when we lived in California and had an RV.  We waited way too long!

So we left Zion and took the alternate route so as not to go through the tunnel and busy road through the park.  It added about 60 miles but it was a very scenic drive.  We left weather where it was in the 80’s during the day and 40’s at night to where it is in the low 50’s during the day and in the teens at nights.  So far the coldest night has been 16 degrees.  For those of you not into RV’s that means filling the onboard water tanks and disconnecting your water hose and sewer hose.  I forgot to disconnect the sewer hose the first night and had some issues the next day, but fortunately it warmed up enough to resolve the issues.

The big difference is instead of being at the bottom of the canyon, like we were in Zion, we are now at the top, at almost 8,000 feet.  So you see some snow still on the ground and when the wind blows it is really cold.  Not as busy here as it was in Zion but still a good crowd. Many foreign speaking tourists both at Zion and here.  From my great language skills I would say France, Germany and eastern Europe.

OK, back to the park.  This park features Hoodoos.  These are rock formations caused by erosion of the sandstone.  We first encountered these when we visited Banff in Alberta, Canada.  Here it is the whole canyon.  Words do not do it justice so I will just post some pictures.

     

Our first full day here we drove the entire park and stopped at each of the viewpoints.  We really could not do much else as the wind was blowing and made it feel like it was in the 20’s outside.  Reminded both of us of living in Chicago!!

On Friday we drove back on the road we came in to take some pictures of the tunnels they have made in the rock.

We then drove north on the highway 12 scenic byway, which we will be taking to our next stop.  We drove to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which is a huge park, but mainly is not accessible unless you have a good off road vehicle and want to hike.  We attempted to visit one landmark but they have not graded the roads since winter and I thought we would lose the shocks on the truck, so we turned around.

Today, Easter Sunday, we took a 2 1/2 hour hike down into the canyon at Bryce.  It is called “Walk amongst the Hoodoos”  Easy going down, hard coming up, but it was neat to see the Hoodoos up close and to be at the bottom of the canyon.

Tunnel carved into the rock on the trail

  You could probably kick these over, if you could get to them.

  This was our walk up.  I told Fran I had completed a heart stress test, and PASSED!!

We are here for another couple of days then we move to Torrey, Utah which is near Capitol Reef National Park.

Route:  From Zion we took Highway 9 west to Highway 59 and 389 east and north to Highway 89 north to Highway 12 into Bryce.

Zion National Park

 

We left Pahrump and drove to Zion National Park in Springdale, Utah.  This is our first stop in our month long trip to see all 5 of Utah’s National Parks.  We are staying at a private campground/hotel about a 1/2 mile from the park entrance.  It is very convenient as we could walk to the park pedestrian entrance and pick up the shuttle bus to go throughout the park.

Here is our view from our RV

The good part of this trip was the weather was fantastic.  It got up into the 80’s during the day and the high 40’s at night.  The bad part was spring break.  The whole area was very busy during our visit, especially on the weekend.

Besides the beauty of the park one of the main attractions is to “walk the narrows”.  This is a trail that begins on dirt for about a mile or so then ends at a stream where you then walk in the water for another few miles to view the narrows, where the canyon walls come close together.  To accomplish this you need to rent waders, waterproof shoes and a walking stick.  As we are not avid hikers and the water was 40 degrees we chose to stop at the waters edge and wish all the hikers well.

Here is the where the water trail starts

We did most of the easy and moderate hikes but passed on the strenuous ones.  Here are some pictures from our travels through the park.

       

 

 

This is the Zion Canyon Lodge with its massive tree and lawn

The park has a highway that goes through it to take you to the eastern side and onto Bryce Canyon.  This road is narrow, has many hairpin turns and includes a mile long tunnel.  They have height and width restrictions to go through the tunnel without an escort, otherwise you have to pay $15 for a round trip so you can drive down the center.  Our big red truck was too wide so we paid the fee and got to use both lanes.

 

As Bryce Canyon is our next stop this road would be the shortest route for us to take with our trailer to get there.  According to the park rules we should not be able to take our trailer but we saw many motorhomes, tour busses and trailers going through it.  However, after driving the road, we have decided it would be best to take the alternate route that adds about 60 miles to avoid this road and tunnel.

On the eastern side the landscape changes somewhat.  The rock formations are more layered and have a wind swept look to them.

This is called Checkerboard Mesa

We hiked the Canyon Overlook Trail which was well worth it.  It takes you to a view of the western side of the park.

 

Route: From Pahrump we took highway 160 to Las Vegas where we picked up Interstate 15 north highway 9 into Springdale.

Death Valley, California

 

We spent the last 3 days in Death Valley.  It was our first visit to this park, which seems strange as we both spent so many years in Southern California and never made the trip.  I guess we just saw it as a very hot place with nothing to see.  Since we began our travels I had put this on our list as a place to visit, but in the winter months.  This year it worked out for us for the route we are taking and I am glad it did.  It is a nice place to see for a couple of days, longer if you are an avid hiker.  The weather was great as it only got into the high 70’s during the day and around 40 at night.

Before I get into our activities in Death Valley, let me tell you about the drive to get there.  The route from Lone Pine to Death Valley is Highway 190 which crosses two mountain ranges, going as high as 5,000 feet, before arriving in the valley.  The road over the mountains is narrow and winding so it made for slow going pulling a 40 foot trailer.  Adding to that is the fairly steep inclines and descents.  Most of the time we were driving around 25 mph.  We stopped at one point, at a turnout, so we would use the trailer restroom.  When we got out of the truck we could smell burning brakes from the trailer.  We let the brakes cool down and I backed the trailer brake gain down so the truck would do most of the stopping and this helped.  It took us over 2 hours to cover the 100 miles and over half a tank of gas, which means we probably averaged 4 miles per gallon.  We made it with no problems but both of us commented how it reminded us of the mountain scene in the “Long, Long Trailer” starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

We tried to see all the major sites, but some require an off road type vehicle to get to and can take most of a day.  Others required some long moderate hikes.  The only full service RV park is in Furnace Creek and is run by the National Park Service.  Even in this park they only have about 20 or so full hook up sites, everything else is dry camping. 

Furnace Creek.  In the summer it can be reach 120 degrees here.  I believe this is where the highest recorded temperature on earth was recorded at over 130 degrees.

The lowest point in North America.

Very near our RV park was the Furnace Creek Resort.  This is a very nice hotel built back in the 1920’s.

They call this area the Devil’s Golf Course.  It is very rough land that has some interesting patterns in the soil.

Volcanic crater.

We took a drive to a peak that overlooks the valley.  It is called Dante’s Peak.

The highlight of the visit was a tour of Scotty’s Castle.  There is a whole story behind this house that I will not get into now, but short story is that it was the summer home of a wealthy couple.  It was built back in the 1920’s and 30’s.  What is so neat about it is that the owner donated the house and furnishings to a charitable foundation he set up in the 40’s so they could conduct torus.  Later the foundation sold the house and furnishings to the National Park Service.  So everything in the house is as it was back in the 30’s.

The house

Our tour guide, who is a NPS Park Ranger.  They dress from the 1930’s to conduct the tour.

The music room

One of the living rooms from the upper floor.

Another stop was the large sand dunes in Stovepipe Wells.  The blowing sand gets trapped here due to the mountains. 

Dunes

Fran’s shadow in the sand.

Great time in Death Valley.  We have now moved on to Pahrump, Nevada where we will spend 3 weeks before moving into Utah.

Route:  From Lone Pine we took Highway 136 to Highway 190 to Furnace Creek.  From Furnace creek we took Highway 190 to Highway 127 to Highway 160 into Pahrump.

Lone Pine, California

 

We left the Bakersfield area and moved to Lone Pine, California.  As our next stop is Death Valley this stop made sense to break up the trip.  We have never stopped here before but had driven the highway, US 395, a few times when we lived in Southern California years ago.  We found a gem, especially this time of year.  The weather was just great.  It would get up into the 60’s during the day and high 30’s at night with the skies as clear as anything.  It made for star gazing at night and great views of the mountains on both sides of town.  Lone Pine is the gateway to Mt. Whitney, highest point in the lower 48 states.

First, here are the views we had from our RV park.

We took a drive on the road to Mt. Whitney but decided to turn around before we started to get far up the mountain.  The road becomes very narrow as it climbs the mountain plus there was snow a few miles up.  I was concerned that we would not have a place to turn the big red truck around.

We stopped because the road looked like it may be a problem for the truck.  You can see the road as the two lines on the mountain.

Mt. Whitney is the rock towards the middle of the picture.

This area was used for filming of many movies and TV shows over the years. Mainly westerns were filmed here, the last one being Django Unchained.  With this film history the town has created a little film museum that is a must see.  It has to have one of the largest movie poster collections I have ever seen.  It has great merchandising items from the Hop-a-long Cassidy movies and the Lone Ranger.

Some of the movie posters

Lone Ranger exhibit

Wagon from Django Unchained

Our next stop was the Manzanar War Relocation Center.  This is one of the camps set up to house Japanese Americans on the west coast that were relocated after Pearl Harbor.  Only the auditorium building and a watch tower remain, but they do have a great museum in the auditorium and have created a driving route showing you the layout of the entire camp.

Original watch tower for the camp

Auditorium building that houses the museum

Entrance to the original camp

Recreation of a barrack from the camp

Memorial at the camp cemetery

Next up, Death Valley.

 

Route:  From Bakersfield we took Highway 58 east to Highway 14 north  to US 395 north to Lone Pine.

Bakersfield, California

 

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post, a good time to catch up.

Last we were in the San Diego area.  From there we drove north to Lake Cachuma, California.  This is a county recreation area near Santa Barbara and Solvang.  We had last been there around 35 years ago to do some tent camping.  It was sad to see how the drought has impacted this lake.  The water level is way down.  The water used to be very close to the campsites but now you have to go a substantial distance to get to the shore.  We took a drive into the Solvang/Buellton area to have lunch at Anderson’s Pea Soup, walk around Solvang and, of course, do some wine tasting. 

On a recommendation from one of our wine group friends we stopped at Lincourt Winery and were very impressed with their wines.  We joined their club as they are part of a larger wine company that will give us some good benefits when we visit the Napa area later this year. 

Lake Cachuma

From Lake Cachuma we drove towards the coast for a stop in Morro Bay, California.  We have never stopped here before but visited the area many times over the years.  We stayed at a very nice RV park near the ocean with the famous Morro Rock in our view.  The RV park was a little tight as they use every available part of land for an RV space.  Fortunately we had requested a nice pull through site so it was easy to get into.  I would not want to have tried backing into the other spaces.  We had nice time walking on the ocean and walking the waterfront with its many shops and restaurants.

View from our RV park

From Morro Bay we drove a short 30 miles to Lake Lopez which is a county recreation area near the town of Arroyo Grande, California.  Here we met up with Fran’s aunt and uncle and their family.  They all have RV’s and a couple of boats.  All together we took up 5 spaces in row.  We had a great weekend catching up with them and going out on the lake in their boats.  However, we did encounter some stressful moments trying to get into our space.  We arrived a day early, Thursday.  We had selected the largest of the sites in the loop we were staying in as a group.  The problem is the site was on a curve and the road in front of it was very narrow.  It was a back in spot and there was dip at the front of the site and a big tree on one side.  I kept trying to back our rig in but the dip was causing the bike rack on the back to hit the ground and I was just not getting the right angle to get the trailer into the spot.  After discussion and analyzing the situation we decided to take the bikes and bike rack off the trailer and to try backing from a closer angle.  This worked but it was close as the back of the trailer came very close to hitting the roadway.  It took about 30 minutes and is probably the hardest backing job I have done.

Deer roaming the park

Each day a couple of times a group of wild turkeys would walk through the RV sites.  They obviously have been fed by campers as they come right up to you expecting to be fed.  They are fairly big and very noisy, especially early in the morning.  It is really cool when they fluff their feathers.

After spending the holiday weekend at Lake Lopez we left Tuesday for Bakersfield, California to spend a week. 

Route: From Santee, California we took Highway 52 west to Interstate 805 north to Interstate 5 north to Interstate 405 north to US 101 north Highway 154 to Lake Cachuma.  From Lake Cachuma we took Highway 154 to US 101 north to Morro Bay, California.  From Morro Bay we took US 101 south to Grand Ave and followed that to Lake Lopez.  From Lake Lopez we got back on US 101 south to Highway 166 east to Highway 99 north to Highway 58 east to Fairfax Road in Bakersfield.

San Diego California

 

We are finishing up our two week stay here in the San Diego area.  We are staying just outside the city in a town called Santee.  It is a very nice RV park that is part of a large regional park.  We stayed here a couple of years ago and really enjoyed our stay.  The park is great for walking and biking and is close to all the San Diego things to see and do.  The weather, during this stay, was typical Southern California, 70’s during the day and 40’s at night.

We did take some excursions while here.  First was a drive into the mountains to see the towns of Alpine (nothing to really see) and Julian (great little town for a stop).  The weather that day was a little cold with some rain so our stay in Julian was short.  We did have a great lunch at an old café and took a couple of slices of famous Julian pie home (apple/blueberry and apple crunch). 

We met up with some friends who are fellow full timers who we follow on Facebook.  We met them a couple or years ago while in Lake of the Ozarks and have followed each others travels since.  They are staying up the Interstate in Menifee so they came down to catch up and have lunch.

We took a drive out to Point Loma and Cabrillo National Monument as we had never stopped to see this area before.  It was a gorgeous day so it made for great viewing from the point.  From here you can see all the naval operations on North Island, downtown San Diego and Coronado. 

The lighthouse on the point

View of North Island (Naval base)

From there we drove over to Shelter Island and had a nice lunch at the Blue Wave grill.

Our next excursion was to see the Mission Basilica of San Diego.  This was the first mission founded by Father Junipero Serra in California.  Most of the mission had been destroyed over the years but they were able to use part of the original façade, some of the bells, the tile for the mission floor and some wood beams.

Inside the mission

The façade and bells

Statue of Father Serra.  He was only 5 foot 2 inches tall

From there we drove into San Diego and walked around the downtown area.  We visited the Gaslamp District which is a 16 block area that has numerous bars and restaurants.  We had lunch, outdoors, at Café 21.  Very nice lunch.

One of the neat old buildings in the Gaslamp Quarter

We leave on Thursday for the Santa Barbara area to spend the weekend then Morro Bay, Lake Lopez (meet up with Fran’s cousins) and then Bakersfield.

We are coming up our four year anniversary of “Life on the Road”.  Look for my next post regarding this milestone.

Time to get caught up

 

I see that my last post was just before Christmas so two months has passed and we are on the move.  Time to get caught up.

We had a nice Christmas with my parents.  For New Years, Fran’s brother had just moved back to Southern California for his job so he spent some time with us while waiting for his apartment to be ready and then we helped him move in and set up his apartment.

We took a couple of day trips into Los Angeles.  The first trip was to stop at Olvera Street, see the Disney Concert Hall and the Catholic Cathedral.  It was a beautiful day and we had a nice time walking around the city.  The second trip was to see the Watts Towers and then into Los Angeles to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art.  Again, it was a great day and we had a nice time.

Next up was to get all the repairs completed on the trailer.  The parts finally came in so the repairs started.  It ended up taking 3 days as they did not have all the parts and the repair of the heater was a little more involved.  It all turned out good and everything is working fine, so far….

We had nice get together for the football playoffs with Fran’s brother’s family.  His two daughters and their significant others came for a BBQ at our trailer.  It was a fun day.

Another excursion, while the trailer was in the shop, was to go (wait for it)…………………………. WINE TASTING!  Imagine us, going wine tasting.  We went to Temecula, an area we have not been to before.  They are a little pricey on their tastings and do not not waive the fee if you buy a bottle of wine.  I hate that!  I had picked out 5 wineries to stop at but we only made it to 2 as the second one, Leoness, was so good and fun that we stopped there, bought a bunch of wine and joined their club.  We were at that winery for about 2 hours so that pretty much finished off the day after tasting so many of their wines and then having a glass while we ate lunch on their patio.  We plan on making another stop at Leoness while we are here in Santee.  We have one more club coupon to use, plus we get 8 free glasses of wine per month when we visit.  We have to take them up on that!

On the 22nd of January we left Anaheim and drove about 100 miles south to Santee, California.  This is where we are at now.  We have been at this park before and really liked it as it is fairly close to San Diego and the park is very nice with lakes and walking trails.

We did have a meet up with another full time RV family that we have been with friends with for a couple of years through Facebook.  They were up the interstate about 70 miles so they came to our place for a visit.  We had a great time comparing our stories of living on the road.

That gets you caught up for now.  Hopefully I will get back into my regular schedule of making blog posts.