Vagabond Tracks — by Paul & Amy

20 Oct:  Our final destination on the way home was in western Pennsylvania, to see the archaeological site of the oldest evidence of human presence in North America.  It was found in 1955 by a local man who kept his chance discovery of a few ancient artifacts secret until 1973, when the site could be carefully excavated and examined by archaeologists from the University of Pittsburgh.  This kept it undisturbed by looters and souvenir seekers.  The site was a natural rock overhang with layers of rocks, dirt, artifacts, and plant and animal remains that had accumulated to a depth of several feet over a period of about 16,000 years.  It is invaluable not only because of the age, but also because the entire uninterrupted sequence was preserved unharmed from erosion and vandalism.  The site appears to have been used frequently but temporarily throughout its long history, such as a camp for hunters or families moving through the area.

18-23 July: Except for two short trips to New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest, we haven’t camped in Vagabond since October 2019. Two long trips that we had planned for 2020 were cancelled due to Covid. Although we appreciate being able to video chat with our daughters and granddaughters in Colorado and California, we sorely missed being able to see them in person the whole time that we were isolating at home in N.H. for more than a year. The primary goal of this year’s trip across country and back is to spend a couple of weeks with each family, with only a modest amount of hiking, biking, visiting, and sightseeing as we travel from the Denver area to Monterey and then back home.

The one place we lingered on our way out to Colorado was Indiana Dunes National Park (formerly a National Lakeshore, elevated to NP status in 2019). While the scenery seemed at first to be less impressive than most national parks, the video at the visitor center gave us an appreciation for the significant diversity of wildlife the park holds. This is especially true for birds, due to the wide variety of shore, woodland, meadow, and wetland habitats, and also to the location along the migration routes of many species that key in on the southern tip of Lake Michigan on their long journeys. We had time for a short loop hike that climbed onto a forested dune ridge with nearby views of wetlands and Lake Michigan.

In mid-afternoon of our sixth day of driving, we finally arrived at the home of our Colorado daughter Lowry, son-in-law Kyle, and their two young daughters after not having visited with them since Christmas of 2019. Corwyn, our oldest granddaughter (nearly five), had eagerly anticipated our arrival by following our progress on a map of the states until we arrived. Her younger sister Oakley (20 months old) was reserved at first, but was soon at home playing in and out of our camper while we unloaded it after setting it up in their driveway.

25-28 July:  We went with Lowry, Kyle, and the girls for a four-day/three-night camping vacation.  Chatfield is only an hour’s drive from their home and has playgrounds, paved bike paths, and a swim beach.  Early on our first morning there we awoke to the sight of the park’s colorful hot air balloon drifting close over the campground.  Later that morning Amy’s brother Bill, his son Paul, and daughter Hannah with her two young daughters came up from Colorado Springs to visit with us for a couple of hours.

In the Afternoon, “Mimi” (Amy) and Lowry drove the girls to the beach, while “Beepee” (Paul) went for a run on the bike path to meet them there.  An interesting exhibit near the path was Slocum Cabin, built by an unknown trapper around 1850 and thought to be the oldest building in the Denver area or even in all of Colorado.  The Slocum family moved into it in 1859 and owned it for multiple generations.  This small cabin (10’ x 12’) of well-crafted logs, dovetail corner joints, and a stone chimney was moved recently to its present location in the park, needing only minor repairs and a new roof and door.

The next day we hiked in Mount Falcon State Park past the ruins of a mansion built starting in 1909 on top of a high ridge southwest of Denver by John Brisben Walker, a prominent businessman and entrepreneur.  (A short interesting summary of his diverse career is at https://morrisonhistory.org/people/john-brisben-walker/.)  His wife died in 1916, then in 1918 lightning struck the house and it burned to the ground, leaving only the stonework and foundation that remains today.

On the day we left the campground, we rode our bikes about 15 miles on the Mary Carter Greenway paved bike path along the South Platte River, stopping along the way for an elegant brunch at Lucile’s Creole Café.  Oakley and Corwyn enjoyed the ride from their Trail-a-Bike seats behind Kyle and Lowry.

29 July-8 August:  For most of this week and a half, we mainly stayed around Lowry and Kyle’s to visit and to spend time with Corwyn and Oakley.  We went outside with the girls when they played in their backyard (swings, slide, and sand box) or on their front lawn (pouring water in and out of buckets and bins).  We read stories and played with them indoors (hide and seek, trying on inherited Halloween costumes).  We went for walks and bike rides to neighborhood playgrounds with them.  One day all six of us went to the Denver zoo.  We visited with Kyle’s parents twice for dinner.  Of course a couple of weeks in the lives of a five-year-old and a 20-month-old doesn’t go by without occasional bouts of crying or yelling, but the fun times were the rule and it was a precious time for us to strengthen our bonds with these two granddaughters whom we get to visit with all too infrequently.

Corwyn is looking forward to kindergarten this year.  She is already reading pretty well and the prospect of making new friends excites her.  Although she is towed on a Trail-a-Bike for long rides, she has mastered peddling her own two-wheeler and will soon need a larger bike.  Beginning swim lessons this summer have made her much more confident and capable in pools and at beaches.

Oakley doesn’t yet speak many words, but she understands a lot, usually responding to questions by pointing or with yes or no.  She is cautious and methodical, spending a lot of time observing before trying a new skill or activity.  This was our first time to truly forge a bond with her, because we haven’t seen her in person since she was a newborn infant.  She had been rather impassive during our family video chats before this visit, but after interacting with her in person on this trip we feel we have grown to really know and love her.

 

8-10 August:  We had planned to travel in a single day to Green River, Utah, but a closure of a section of Interstate 70 near Glenwood Springs due to a mudslide resulted in limited and lengthy detour options for us that seemed too long for a comfortable day’s drive.  The happy solution was to leave Lowry’s a half day earlier and spend an evening and night with longtime friends Dick and Sonia in Granby, west of the Continental Divide.  They are often on the road this time of year with their camper, but they were at home for Sonia to recuperate from recent rotator cuff surgery.

Our next campsite was in Green River State Park, which provided a pleasant shady and grassy haven in a hot and otherwise barren part of eastern Utah.  This was our base from which to make a day trip to Goblin Valley, an hour’s drive away.  The signature feature of Goblin Valley is a concentration of hoodoos, sandstone formations created when vertical cracking and subsequent weathering form intricate rock pillars.  Most of the hoodoos in this park are concentrated in a flat valley surrounded by steeply eroded cliffs, giving the appearance of a community of gnome-like shapes towering over the visitors, who are encouraged to wander among the formations scattered across the valley floor.  The Carmel Canyon trail led us down to a dry stream bed at the lower end of the valley and then up past the iconic Three Sisters formation and up through a narrow slot canyon back to the observation deck and trailhead.  It was a very hot day, and the campground at Goblin Valley has no shade or greenery, so we were only too happy to spend a second night at Green River before continuing toward California the next day.

11-12 August:  Our next camping destination was Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah.  A while after leaving the bleak landscape between Green River and Goblin Valley behind us, the scenery began to get interesting.  We passed occasional rocky buttes first, then threaded our way between the colorful and tall sandstone cliffs of Capitol Reef National Park.

Next, we ascended onto a high pine-covered plateau before the highway emerged along the narrow crest of a high rocky ridge between two vast and deep valleys.  This was the justly famed “Hogback” stretch of Highway 12 along the “Devil’s Backbone,” a truly awesome vista said to be one of the most scenic drives in the country, between Boulder and Escalante, Utah.  About 40 miles of Hwy 12 follows the route taken by Maj. John Wesley Powell in 1872 during his mapping expedition to fill in the “last blank spot on the map” of the continental U.S.

It had been 37 years since we had first visited Bryce, and it was nice to get back.  The air seemed relatively cool and clear, due to the high elevation and the lack of thick haze from Pacific Northwest wildfires that had obscured the mountains from our view while in the Denver area.  We hiked down from the rim of the plateau into the Bryce Amphitheater section of the park where the ornately eroded hoodoos are impressively clustered together along the face of the pink cliff formation, and then we continued around a loop trail that ascended through a tall slot canyon back to the rim of the plateau.

13-14 August:  After Bryce, we spent a couple of days exploring some of the scenery that Dixie National Forest has to offer.  In Red Canyon, the NF visitor center is not only located in a very scenic spot, but the outdoor kiosks and indoor exhibits are first rate.  When we noticed that the bike trail through the canyon is paved, we decided on a shorter hike for the day, so we would have enough time also for a bike ride in this scenic canyon among red rock formations and ponderosa pine trees.  After biking, we hiked the Pink Ledges interpretive trail, which loops up past a pair of prominent hoodoos overlooking the visitor center.

We stayed that night in the Duck Creek NF campground, in a quiet setting of spruce trees, aspens, and grassy meadows.  Our drive the next morning climbed over a forested ridge, passing through an area of jagged black lava flows, then descended through a winding canyon to Cedar City.  It was a challenge finding the trail we had chosen for this day’s hike, the Noah’s Ark Trail, because of recent flash flood damage in the creek valley and ongoing reconstruction work behind a locked gate.  With another couple we met nearby, who joined us for the hike, we were able to bushwhack through the damaged area and find the trail.  It was worth the effort.  The trail climbed up the end of a ridge to a fine overlook toward Vermillion Castle, a rugged red sandstone mountain on the opposite side of the Bowery Creek valley.  Along the trail we noticed some bristlecone pine trees as well as a thick layer of conglomerate containing large rounded stones.  A gravestone near the trailhead informed us that Adalinda, who had settled there with her husband William Uriah Thornton in 1887 to build the first home and shingle mill on the creek, was the $5 winner of a contest when she named the area Vermillion Castle.

15-17 August:  On our way to the southern tip of Nevada from Utah, we drove across the northwestern corner of Arizona, where Virgin River Canyon offered great views along Interstate 15.  We were looking forward to seeing some of the colorful rock formations in Valley of Fire State Park, which first came to our notice when a view from it was featured on the postage stamp celebrating Nevada’s sesquicentennial in 2014.  Our hiking friend Judith had warned us that it would be hot there, and she certainly wasn’t exaggerating!  We camped there two nights and the temperature never seemed to drop into double digits, even at night.  We opted for short hikes, avoiding the peak midday heat.  A couple of short walks led to viewpoints of ancient petroglyphs, and a loop hike the next morning led us through an area formerly used as a movie set for westerns.

At sunset of our first evening in Valley of Fire, a bighorn ram provided some entertainment.  After running close by our campsite, he stopped three campsites down from ours.  There he occupied himself for several minutes getting a drink from the water faucet, by alternately butting the pipe to make water spurt downward and then lapping from the puddle below.

The day we left Valley of Fire, we stopped to see the Lake Mead National Recreation Area visitor center near Hoover Dam and take a walk on the Historic Railroad Hiking Trail.  The excellent visitor center displays included a large 3-D scale model of the lake and surrounding terrain, as well as descriptions of the dam construction.  The hiking trail is the former bed of the railroad that was built and used for bringing equipment and supplies to the construction site of what was then named Boulder Dam (renamed Hoover Dam in 1947).  Informational plaques along the trail gave us some historical perspective—as well as excuses for frequent stops for drinks of water.  Tunnels along the way provided some welcome shade.  It was sobering to see how low the water level in Lake Meade had become after recent years of drought in the region.

18 August-4 September:  After having just visited Lowry and family in Colorado, we now spent a couple of weeks with Abby and her family in Monterey.  These visits were the two cornerstones around which we planned this year’s 2.5-month trip with Vagabond.  We had not met our third granddaughter, Saia, in person until she was nearly a year old, because of Covid-19 travel restrictions.  With Abby and her husband, Payam, both working full time, we were only too happy to spend lots of time with Saia.  We had flown out for a visit in late April and early May after getting vaccinated, and now we could appreciate how much Saia had blossomed in just over three months since we had last seen her.  She was now walking confidently and even trying her first few words.  Generally cheerful and independent in her play, she had definite ideas of what she wanted and wasn’t bashful in trying to make her wants known.  We usually took her on walks with the stroller or back carrier at least once a day, often to the nearby San Carlos beach or the Coast Guard pier where the sea lions congregate noisily.  Twice we took her to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Some days when Saia was in day care, the two of us ventured out to explore various local attractions.  Our outings included a couple of art galleries, Pinnacles National Park, Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, the museum at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, and Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve.  One weekend the five of us visited Abby’s cousin Teresa and her family on their organic farm in Pescadero.  Teresa and Mike took us for walks around their farm and Saia had fun playing with her second cousins Charlie and Ellie.  On a beautiful sunny day on the following weekend, we went kayaking.  Payam and Paul paddled from San Carlos Beach to Lovers Point Beach and Abby and Amy paddled back, while the two not in the kayak stayed at the beach with Saia.

5-8 September:  When in southern California, we often try to get to Coronado to see Paul’s brother Bob (92) and sister-in-law Marilyn (turning 90 in October).  They live a day’s drive from Monterey, where Abby lives now.  It’s a long drive, though, especially on a holiday weekend, so we took an hour’s break for lunch at the grassy and shaded Los Angeles National Cemetery and visited with Amy’s niece Kathy and her husband Bahrad and son Arash (2).

Bob and Marilyn’s house is within short walking distance of both the beach (we dipped into the surf one hot afternoon) and a wide selection of shops and restaurants (we sampled a different one each night for dinner).  A bonus while visiting with them is that one night we got together for dinner with their son Robb and his wife Rosa, who also live in Coronado.  Bob and Paul enjoyed looking through a couple of old family photo albums with several pictures dating from the 1920s and 1930s, including Canadian relatives whom Paul never met.  Meanwhile, Marilyn and Amy easily found local shops to visit.  One day Bob led us on a bike tour of the historical district in and around Hotel Del Coronado and then south along the bike path on the Silver Strand.