OnlyDirtRoads

Fall Utah Trip

This past Fall we took some time off to get back to the desert. We drove west, and spent the night in Western Colorado. This was when I realized the Cradlepoint didn't work. This was slightly problematic, as I had a conference call scheduled for Monday and now we need to be in cell range, instead of Skypeing in for the call.
We decided to head to Valley of the Gods where we knew there was cell service. We stayed in VOG for two days, got in some great long bike rides, some fun short hikes, and made my conference call.

We decided to visit Natural Bridges National Monument, as we'd not been there before. It was a short drive from VOG and we arrived mid morning.

We went into the visitor center and learned three things: 1.) the campground there is tiny, 2.) 30 minutes earlier they had a couple of open sites, and 3.) there were several people lined up listening to the ranger repeating the first two facts. So we quickly left and drove straight to the campground. There were maybe 12 sites, and all were taken. After our second trip around the loop, though, Nancy saw a guy carrying a bag of trash to the dumpster. She jumped out of the truck and asked if they were leaving. They were. So she walked back to the campsite and waited for them to drive off, and I drove back around the loop to position myself to fill their vacated space.
We quickly set up camp, which involves unfolding the camp chairs. The next hour we sat and watched the same people we saw at the visitor center forlornly drive repeated loops looking for an open campsite.

Normally, we try to avoid campgrounds. However, like a number of NPS campgrounds, this place was pretty nice. Each campsite on the outside of the loop was about an acre in size, and we had open desert on three sides of us. We had a view and no visible neighbors. Not a bad deal. We decided to walk the 8 mile loop and visit all of the natural bridges. It wound up being a great hike and we had the opportunity to see the bridges up close. One had petroglyphs at its base, something you couldn't see from the "view area".
The next day we took off and drove west. In retrospect, we should have boondocked some place between Natural Bridges and Hanksville, but instead we drive to Hanksville and got fuel and some groceries. While there, we met a couple in a Westphalia who told us one could get water at the BLM office in town. So we did.
We drive through Capitol Reef, which was super crowded and over Boulder Mountain to Boulder, UT. We asked if we could park the truck at Boulder Mtn Lodge and were denied. However, we did learn of a couple of new boondocking places nearby..so we went there.
We drove back into Boulder that evening to have dinner at HBG, which was, as always, spectacular.

The next morning, we went back to HBG for breakfast and drove west. We decided to see if we could stay at Calf Creek Falls and do that hike. Turns out THAT is also a tiny campground, and it features a road so narrow only one vehicle can cross the creek at a time. We stopped and waited for some guy towing a huge trailer, who told us there were no open spots.

We were bummed, but realized we had to do the loop anyway to leave as the ER was too large to turn around. At the very end of the loop was a huge drive-through site that was empty! WTF!
We parked there and couldn't believe our luck. Once again, we sat and watch sad people doing sad slow loops looking for non-existent campsites.
We hiked the trail to the falls and saw that Calf Creek is FULL of huge trout. We had our fishing stuff with us, but no UT license. Good to know for future reference.

That night, we were getting ready to eat and watching the sad would-be camper parade when a guy got out of his 4Runner and asked if he could park in front of us and sleep in his truck. My knee-jerk was "no", but the more we talked the more he seemed like a good guy and we finally said, "if you have firewood (we didn't) you are good". So..he brought a box of firewood over and had dinner with us. Turns out he was a super interesting guy who is reinventing himself as a photographer. We talked for some time. In the morning, he was gone by the time we woke up.
We took off later and headed back over Boulder Mountain, past Capitol Reef (again) and into the Swell.

The San Rafael Swell is considerably more popular than it once was, and it took a long time to find a place to camp. We finally did, and set up as far away from other people as we could. While there, we hiked a slot canyon, which was fun, and the following day did a long bike ride. The weather was starting to look sketchy and we could see rain off in the distance. Rather than take a chance of getting stuck in the mud, we took off and drove to Rabbit Valley. By the time we got there, it was late and most of the camping spots were full, so we wound up camping in one of the parking lots.
That kind of sucked, but it was just for the night.

Once again, we drove more than we wanted to..and if nothing else, the trip reinforced the need to be more aggressive about limiting drive time.

Overlanding, the "real world", and Dad

It's been many months since I've posted an entry here. A lot has happened since the last entry. We returned to OvEx(14), we took a couple of longish trips in the Big Truck, I've been on approximately 100 airplanes, a few camping trips got postponed and I lost a parent.

While the desire to explore is strong, the desire to avoid mortgage default is equally strong; so periodically we'd be forced to chose between keeping a client happy or taking a trip. Pretty much always, the client won.
This burden of responsibility ( some might refer to it as "the real world" ) can invade one's plans in other ways, sometimes even causing one to realize that our "adventures" have about the same import in the bigger scheme of things as "work".
This fall, we had a long trip planned around Thanksgiving. A trip that involved many of our favorite things: good friends, bike riding, the Utah desert, good food and good fun. I zealously guarded this time against encroaching client schedules and various other calendar-wreckers.
Our planning came to a screeching halt against something even bigger.

My Dad, nearing his 89th birthday and in pretty good health, went to his doc for a routine procedure and discovered, after three days of tests, that he had cancer. Bad. His doc told him "You have weeks".
So we dropped everything, flew to his home and spent a week laughing, crying, re-telling childhood stories and watching him approach this new "adventure" calmly and quietly. For a couple of hours each day he'd go into his office and catalog photos, receipts, collected coins, whatever he deemed necessary to leave things in order. A couple of times a day my brothers and I would leave the house and stand in the yard and cry. Afterwards, we'd wipe our faces dry, go back into the house...and pick up where we left off: "Remember the time Fred fell off the pier?"

We were there for a week. I'd like to say Dad was courageous, but that seems overly dramatic, he just took each day as it came.
The day we left was his birthday. Nancy had baked a cake the night before. He was a little dubious about having birthday cake for breakfast. "It's not that good for you, is it?"
A week after we went back home, he died in his sleep.

That trip was an adventure none of us had planned on, nor put on any list. It was perhaps the most valuable trip of the year. It was also a reminder that there is one last adventure we will all take. I hope I approach it as well as my father did.

Overlanding and work

One thing that's been challenging over the last year has been the frequency of business travel. I've been to the airport almost every week this year. By the time I get home, I wind up having to spend much of the weekend getting caught up on mail, bills, entering stuff in quick books and getting caught up on email.
So home and vehicle repairs get put off, and trips seem overwhelming because there is so much to do to plan, or prepare.
So it was great this fall when Pam and Dino stopped by with their ER. They had taken a long trip east, and stayed at our place for a few days. Naturally, I wasn't there. However, when Nancy picked me up at the airport, I learned they had planned a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park with us. Our truck was packed, and a camping location secured. All I had to do was get in and drive.
Perfect! So I got home, packed a few clothes and we took off for Estes Park. We'd only driven up the canyon a couple of times since the flood, so we were able to see the significant damage that is still evident a year later.
We arrived at the campground and found our sites and parked our trucks.

It was the perfect break from a long series of airplanes and hotel rooms.
It was cool and breezy (ok, windy) but nevertheless a welcome respite from business travel.
On Saturday we did a long hike up a drainage into the Park, which was a great workout. It was really fun hearing their stories about their trip, and sobering hearing about getting a flat with their ER and all they had to deal with to get it changed.
In case you didn't know, the Earthroamer uses a 42" Continental military tire, mounted on a split Hutchinson beadlock wheel. One wheel/tire weighs 250 pounds. The spare is mounted on the back of the truck, several feet in the air.
So, to change the tire, one must get the spare down, change tires and place the flat tire back in its place.
ER makes a crane that can be assembled to facilitate this, and one person can do it, solo. However it's not something that is easy. So hearing their story about getting this done was an eye opener.
The weekend passed all too quickly, and we drove back to our house on Sunday. By Monday, they'd left for home and I left for the airport, again.

I'm hopeful that 2015 will involve less business travel, but on 15 January, I type this on a Southwest jet, the third airplane I've been on this week.

A change in 2014

One big difference for me in 2014 was getting back into shape.
This came about through the intersection of two different paths.
After breaking my leg two winters ago, and subsequently sitting on my butt for months, my physical exam left me with the news that I'd gained more weight, and was up to 194. Considering that on my 50th birthday, I weighed 140, this news was disturbing.
My doc reminded me I'd been talking about losing weight every year, but had done nothing. "Shut up. Either get serious or stop talking to me".

So, I downloaded an app on my iPhone that let me track calories from eating and exercising and started paying attention to what I was eating. At the same time, Nancy was invited to do the Kokopelli Trail, a 150 mile mountain bike ride from Fruita, CO to Moab, UT. She was apprehensive about the three 50 mile days on a bike, so I agreed to help her train for it.

So, I ended my diet of peanut M&Ms , Coca Colas and French fries, and our weekends of increasingly long rides (culminating in one 9 hour weekend) started to make a difference. My waistline gradually started to shrink and by late fall I had to buy new pants.
30 pounds lighter, I feel great, and almost feel like a bike racer again.
I've stopped snoring (mostly), stopped having acid-reflux and pretty much don't even miss French fries.
Nancy wound up getting hurt and not doing Kokopelli, but we will tackle some equalivalent goal this year to keep us motivated and on our bikes.
Now that we have a bike carrier on the back of the Big Truck, it'll be easier to cart the bikes around with us and ride wherever we are.

Overland Expo 2014 (Finally!)

Overland Expo 2014 was almost a year ago.

Many have written about it, and even my favorite photos of cool rigs and trick gear seems very outdated. A few things still stick out, though.
We attended our first OvEx long ago, when we were trying to decide if we wanted a trailer or a camper or a van or....what? We drove to Arizona and visited the Fairgrounds in Prescott. It was windy as heck, a feature that seems constant for Arizona in the Spring.
We didn't know a soul, and felt a bit like outsiders. We timidly peered within big rigs and small tents. Paul May of Equipt 1 graciously spent a lot of time with us as we pondered roof top tents, and Martyn showed us the ins and outs of the various trailer models A/T was making. We left knowing the names of two or three people and the desire to buy a Horizon to pull behind the FJ.
By the next year, we were still searching for a used Horizon. At the OvEx, though, Martyn treated us like long-list friends and we avidly soaked up all we could in various classes.
We attended a couple of OvEx's with our Horizon, and felt a lot more at home there.

By 2014, we'd migrated to the Big Truck and had sold our Horizon (with some reluctance).
The highlight of OvEx14 had nothing to do with "stuff", and everything to do with relationships. We actually met people whose travels we'd followed for years, and found them to be even more awesome than we expected. 


We spent time with people who we largely only "see" on Twitter and Facebook, but who share so many of the same goals and outlook on life, we feel like we've known them forever.
We laughed, drank beer, told stories, and three days went by in a heartbeat.

We've determined that OvEx15 will be a bit different. We'll take no classes, bring more beer and more comfy chairs.
We'll try to spend as much time hanging out with these kindred spirits, with whom we share so much, and see so infrequently.
And hopefully convince a few to venture into the wilds afterwards.