Tag: rv family
Ancient Dwellings

Ancient Dwellings

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Hey Guys!! We’re in Arizona!! Utah was so much better than I thought it would be. I mean, I knew it was going to be amazing…I’d seen all of the pictures of the various National Park Units throughout the state, but Guys, the whole two months we spent exploring Utah were way better than we’d expected.

Utah was harder than we expected too. The remoteness of it…the lack of good groceries stores…not even a Walmart in most areas that we stayed. It was really great to pull into Page and see some major chain stores! Ha!! It’s all about the little things…like being able to find the right brand of cat litter or the right dish soap.

The RV park we stayed at had these really cool covered wagons that you can book and stay in! So neat! I kept seeing people walk up to the wagons and try to get into them. I guess out of curiosity, but sheesh…can you imagine staying in one and having a constant stream of people trying your door handle? We’ll actually be back in this park on our way North after the winter passes and I think I’m going to ask someone in the office if I can see the inside of one! I’m super curious.

We stayed in the Page area so we could explore a few different National Park Units. Canyon de Chelly National Monument was quite the drive from Page, but we were the closest we would be and we all really wanted to see this park. We found out about this park back in 2015 while we were exploring Wupatki National Monument. The Ranger there told us about Canyon de Chelly and we immediately stuck it on our need-to-see list.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument is actually still home to several Navajo families. They live down in the canyon during the summer months then move up to the rim community during the winter months. I worried it would be super awkward driving around their community to the various viewpoints, but it wasn’t. Not really. Everyone we met was welcoming and had stories of their life in the canyon to tell along with some beautiful handmade jewelry or pottery to sell. If you make it to Canyon de Chelly…and I highly recommend it…make sure to take cash because you’ll want to take home some of their wonderful wares. We ended up with several things. We bought some jewelry as well as the items pictured. Everything was fairly priced. Everything was expertly made. And everything came with the opportunity to get to know one of the residents.

One thing I didn’t know before we visited Canyon de Chelly is that the National Monument is actually split up into two different canyons. Canyon del Muerto (North Rim) and Canyon de Chelly (South Rim). You drive down one then turn around and drive the other. I honestly didn’t think this park would take long. We had no plans of taking a tour down in the canyon…so I figured a couple of hours and that would be it. I didn’t plan on two different canyons with a very low speed limit! But, its all a residential area, so the speed limit makes total sense.

North Rim Drive is 34 miles round trip and has several stops along Canyon del Muerto. The maze of canyons known as Canyon de Chelly has been occupied for close to 5,000 years and has encompassed many different cultures. The current residents, the Navajos, have made this canyon their home since the 1700s.

The canyon walls go from around thirty feet at the canyon entrance to a soaring 1,000 feet in some places. At each viewpoint along the rim drive you can see evidence of both past and present residents. Right by the ancient dwelling (the Navajo don’t like to call them ruins because they don’t see them as ruins), you’ll find a freshly plowed field waiting for the seasonal planting.

When you visit Canyon de Chelly National Monument, make sure you bring some binoculars…you’ll need them. We appreciated these view finders we found at almost every spot. When you’re trying to find something all the way across the canyon…it can be hard to pinpoint exactly where you’re supposed to be looking. The view finders they have up are super helpful. We would locate the ancient dwelling with the view finder then use our binoculars to get a better look at it.

Established in 1931, Canyon de Chelly National Monument preserves and protects nearly 5,000 years of human history within the 84,000 acres that make up the park. When you visit any National Park you should be respectful of what the park is trying to preserve, but I feel like at parks like Canyon de Chelly, you should be extra careful…extra respectful. You’re essentially visiting someone’s home and when you’re a guest in someone’s home you try to learn, respect and observe their customs and beliefs.

We also made a trip to Navajo National Monument. This NPS unit protects three ancient Ancestral Puebloan dwellings built into the cliff walls of the Tsegi Canyon System. Tsegi is pronounced SAY-ih and means a spiritual and physical home.

Navajo National Monument is a smaller park with only around 360 acres. There’s a great little museum and gift shop at the visitor center. We learned so much about the Navajo culture from this park and Canyon de Chelly. The structure in the picture above is an old style hogan. A hogan is the traditional home of the Navajo people. The word hogan comes from the Navajo word hooghan (ho-won). Everything about the construction and the elements of the hogan have meaning and purpose. Everything. Even the direction you walk when you enter a hogan. The hogan is round because the Navajo (they call themselves Diné) have always believed that the world is round and that everything in our world is connected within a circle.

Navajo National Monument protects three puebloan dwellings. You can only see one of them from the trails. The Sandal Trail is only about a mile long (round trip) and it takes you down to an overlook for the Betatakin dwelling. You can also take a guided tour to see this dwelling. We would have loved to do that, but we were there in the wrong season. The Betatakin dwelling was used for about fifty years before it was abandoned. They think there were close to 100 people living here while it was occupied. The cliff dwellings are so often built in an alcove because that is a source of water. The alcoves are made from water seeping through the sandstone and they would collect the water to use while they lived there.

The Keet Seel dwelling can be seen through a guided 17 mile round-trip tour. That’s a long hike, but it’s to see one of the best preserved dwellings in the Southwest. Keet Seel is the biggest of the three dwellings protected in Navajo National Monument and was occupied much longer than Betatakin. The Inscription House is currently closed to the public because it’s unstable and not safe for people to explore.

The boys got some pretty cool swag at Navajo National Monument for completing the Junior Ranger program! We really enjoyed chatting with the Rangers there! The Ranger in the photo wanted to get her picture taken with the boys because she hadn’t seen that many Junior Ranger Badges before. It’s always fun to watch the Rangers check out all the different badges Alex and Nicholas have earned.

Let’s talk foodies! We were pleasantly surprised with the foodies in Page! Not only did we find some really good Texas BBQ…I found my absolute favorite chili rellenos! We also found prickly pear tea. We’re huge fans of anything prickly pear so we were pretty stoked to find a tea made of it!

We had a busy two weeks in the Page area. I’m going to pause here on our Page area adventures. I’ve got more adventures, more National Park Units, and more foodies to tell you about next time!

See y’all down the road!

#NationalParkTour
Longhorns in Utah?

Longhorns in Utah?

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Hey Guys!! We’ve made it to the last stop on our Utah Big Five section of our National Park Tour. We stayed in a city called Hurricane for two weeks and after four weeks of tiny towns with tiny grocery stores and very few foodie options…we were loving this area of Utah!

The main reason we were in Hurricane was to explore Zion National Park. I’ll tell you all about our Zion shenanigans in the next post. Zion is getting a post all to itself. Yup, it was that epic.

So, what else did we do while in the area? Honestly…not a whole lot. We’d pretty much been going non-stop for three months straight and we were so worn out. We’d had plans to explore Zion, Pipe Spring, and then a few state parks in the area, but that didn’t happen. We needed some down time. Living in a small space does have its good points…we’re a close family…but it also has its drawbacks. We’re always within a few feet of one another. Personal space isn’t really a thing when you live in an RV and usually, that’s cool. Like I said, we’re a close family, but when you have five people who have zero personal space and they’re all tired and worn out…our home-on-wheels can feel a little more cramped than usual. We decided to, of course, explore Zion and Pipe Spring National Monument (since we are on a National Park Tour), but we skipped everything else…this time. We spent a lot of time just hanging out…trying the foodie spots…and resting.

Sometime in the early 1920s, Steven Mather (the first director of the National Park Service) was on his way from Zion National Park to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon when he stopped at Pipe Spring to rest. He became fascinated with the place and saw an opportunity to make a little money by having a place to stop on the way from one big National Park(Zion) to the other (Grand Canyon). So, he bought it with his own money and by 1923, Pipe Spring National Monument was born.

Back before it was known as Pipe Spring, this land was home to the Paiutes. They lived off of and cared for the land in and around the spring. In the mid 1800s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claimed 160 acres of the land to use as a ranch for cattle. The first thing they did was build a fort over a small section of the spring so they would always have access to fresh water. Relations between the Paiutes and the LDS members escalated horribly when the Paiutes started hunting the cattle since the LDS members were hunting the deer in the area. The Paiutes weren’t being malicious…they didn’t see a difference in hunting one thing over another. The cattle, after all, were on the land they’d called home for 1000s of years. One thing led to another, and the ranch was abandoned for a time.

Not wanting to give up the land and all of the profit it was bringing in for the church, the LDS members went back to Pipe Spring and built a stronghold. This strong hold became known as Winsor Castle. Winsor Castle and the ranch was out in the middle of nowhere and needed a fast way to communicate with people. By 1871, 995 miles of telegraph wire had been installed and Pipe Springs was connected to the Deseret Telegraph system. Eliza Stewart was the first telegraph operator at Pipe Spring.

The ranch prospered from 1871 to 1879 making bimonthly delivers of butter, cheese, and cattle to St. George, Utah while the LDS Temple was being built. When the Temple was built, the Church no longer needed the ranch and in 1895 the ranch was sold to Maggie Heaton. Maggie welcomed any and all to her home. She’d have fresh water, pies, cakes, and fresh bread. And the rest…is history.

I’ll be honest here…this is the first National Park Unit that I’m not really sure why it’s a National Park Unit. Every National Park Unit tells a story…it preserves an important building/town/canyon/section of our Country that needs protecting or needs to be remembered. The story we were told at Pipe Spring National Monument, while interesting…wasn’t really any different than 1000s of other stories/places of that time. In fact, the story told at Pipe Spring National Monument was mainly about LDS Members and early days of their church and if I’m being completely honest with y’all…it wasn’t a kind story about them or their early life practices. Perhaps this was a learning story…if we forget our country’s history/mistakes, then we’re more likely to repeat them. I’ve watered down the history of Pipe Spring National Monument here…my intention is to keep it real, but not offend anyone. I feel like this park would be better suited as perhaps a State Park or a privately owned museum.

Oh, and one more thing…Pipe Spring National Monument is actually in Arizona…not Utah…so the Texas Longhorn in the photo was in Arizona. 😉 We did see some in Utah on the way into Zion though. A whole herd of them! They were very cool!

Let’s talk foodies! Now, keep in mind…we’d been out in the middle of little towns that didn’t have many options for foodies…and keep in mind we were recuperating. Yeah, recuperating… we’ll go with that. **wink, wink**

We kind of went crazy with the options for foodies. And, Guys…we’re not even sorry about it. Not. Even. A little bit.

One of my all time favorite things to do is peruse the ice cream sections in the different areas/regions. I’m always on the look out for a different brand or flavor. We started seeing the Red Button Brand as soon as we crossed into Utah and well…we had to try a few flavors. Our favorite (and one that’s not pictured) was the Root Beer Float flavor. It was really good!

Every time we’d head into Zion, we would pass this place called Fort Zion. This place was a souvenir store/restaurant/petting zoo. It was a really neat place and the petting zoo price was super reasonable. My favorite thing here was the cute little old western town they’d made!

I didn’t get any pictures of pretty flowers so I’ll leave you with this sunset picture. In the next post I’ll tell y’all all about our Zion explorations…so stay tuned!

See y’all down the road!

#NationalParkTour

The All-American Scenic Byway

The All-American Scenic Byway

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Hey Guys!! While we were staying in the Torrey, UT area we stayed right at the beginning of Highway 12…also known as The All-American Road Scenic Byway. With a name like that, we couldn’t help but explore at least some of it! The entire scenic byway is 124 miles with sooo many stops, hikes, and scenic backway roads that lead off to even more adventures.

All along highway 12 are scenic pulloffs to some absolutely stunning panoramic vistas.

You’ll also find three State Parks spaced out along highway 12. We stopped at one of them during our day of exploring. Anasazi State Park Museum sits at the site of an Ancestral Puebloan community that was used between 1050 to 1200 AD. Most of the site has been left unexcavated, but they have uncovered ninety-seven rooms along with several pit structures. There is a small replica (that you can explore) of what some of the structures would have looked like when the Ancestral Puebloan people were there. We spent a couple of hours checking this small State Park out.

One of the best…maybe the best… section of The All-American Road Scenic Byway is what they refer to as The Hogsback. This is the part of the highway that follows the thin razorback ridge of a mesa with steep drop offs on each side of the highway. Luckily, they put in a nice wide pulloff right at the top where you can get out of your vehicle and ogle the breathtaking views. I think I must have taken twenty pictures of just this pulloff alone.

When I did my research on places to stop and things to see on highway 12, one place kept coming up. Kiva Koffeehouse. Everyone said to stop for a snack and soak in the view…Guys, they weren’t lying. The view here was spectacular and the food was super fresh and tasty! We sat outside while we ate and the picture on the left was our lunch view. Then we drove around the corner and ran into the view in the right picture. And for probably the 100th time that day we all stood there saying wow!

Ancestral Puebloans used this area long before highway 12 was built. If you look closely, you can see the upper valley granaries still stored. A granary is where food was stored to keep it safe. They would wall up the area to keep animals and other people from getting to their storage. If you don’t know where to look, I’ve zoomed in and put an arrow pointing to the granary. It really blends in with the cliff side.

We made it all the way to Powell Point before we turned around. At Powell Point you can see the very topmost layer of the Colorado Plateau’s Grand Staircase. You can also see this same layer at Bryce Canyon NP.

On a different day we went back to highway 12 to tackle the scenic backway known as Hells Backbone. This is a thirty-eight mile dirt road built by the CCC to connect two mountain towns. So many of the reviews I read about this road kept saying how dangerous it is and under the wrong circumstances, I can see how it would be dangerous. You’d definitely want dry weather and no snow or ice on the road, but Hells Backbone is a great short scenic drive. Just watch out for the cows along the road (upper right picture).

We still had some light left, so we headed over to the Burr Trail Scenic Backway. Yup…another scenic trail! Ha! Burr Trail started out as a cattle trail to get cattle from their summer grazing pastures to their winter ones. We drove to the end of the paved part and found the view above. Not a bad view of the Circle Cliffs with the Henry Mountains in the background.

On the way back out of the Burr Trail, we stopped at a pulloff that led to a deep cleft in the side of the canyon wall. When we walked up to the cleft, there was a family there with two girls who were singing songs from The Sound of Music and Guys…the acoustics in this cleft were amazing! The girls sounded wonderful. While we were chatting with the family, a small owl flew out of a nearby tree, floated right over our heads, and landed in a little alcove in the canyon wall. It took us all by surprise! It was a really cool experience.

Hells Backbone Road and Anasazi State Park Museum are actually part of a bigger National Monument. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is divided into three different units and spans across close to one million acres. Besides the fact that this is one huge National Monument, the area within it is the last place in the US to have been mapped. We explored some of this park from Torrey and some from our next stop, Panguitch…so stay tuned for more on this amazing National Monument!

I have one more post for our time in Torrey! We’re going to need a vacation once we finish with Utah so we can get some rest… There’s so much to see and do here.

See y’all down the road!

#NationalParkTour

Dirt Roads and Hiking

Dirt Roads and Hiking

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Hey Guys! This is the last of three posts about our two weeks in the Moab, UT area. We really did cram quite a lot into those two weeks!! I feel like we went non-stop and we still didn’t even scratch the surface of what’s in the Moab area. I think it’s safe to say that we will definitely be revisiting Moab in the future.

One of our favorite things about this Nomad life of ours is the people we get to meet. Our neighbors in Moab were super nice! They were in the middle of an epic road trip from Massachusetts all the way to Arizona and back. When they left, they gave us a few guide books for the Moab area and they left notes as to what they did! Like I said..super nice! We ended up doing the Gemini Bridges trail/hike because they’d recommended it and Guys, it was awesome! To get to the Gemini Bridges we drove up a dirt 4×4 road. Yup, we found another dirt road to drive on. The road up to the plateau that the bridges are found on was steep and narrow with a pretty big drop on one side, but once we got up onto the plateau, the road was better. There are a few places to park and a marked trail out to the bridges. Gemini Bridges are two natural bridges that lay side by side. There’s about a six foot gap between them and apparently some people try to jump the gap…and a few have missed. The sheer height of the cliffs near the bridges could set someone’s vertigo off. It was so steep! When we got there a group was leaving. We had the place to ourselves for about ten minutes.

When we left Gemini Bridges we went a different way and ended up on a paved highway just outside of Canyonlands National Park. On the way home we found a scenic pull off with a short hike. Not a bad view. We were amazed at how far we could see. The day we went was crazy windy! We were very careful not to get too close to any of the edges because we were concerned we’d get blown off by a gust of wind. It was that windy.

A couple of years ago, I found a picture of Fisher Towers somewhere on social media and I immediately wanted to go see them in person. I tagged them on my Google Map and waited patiently for the time we would be in the Moab area.

I loved this hike! It was just the right combination of effort and views to make it interesting and enjoyable. I can’t really imagine doing this hike in the summer though. There wasn’t much shade to be found on the trail and there was a fair amount of effort in going up and down to navigate this trail. The whole area is made of pinnacles, spires, and fins that you wind your way around.

After we finished playing over at the Fisher Towers, we headed down the road to Onion Creek for a dirt road adventure. Onion Creek got it’s name from the slightly stinky smell of the creek. You splash through this creek several times as you make your way through some really cool rock formations. We were surprised by all the different rock colors! The top right picture in the above gallery reminded us so much of Artist Pallet in Death Valley. We didn’t drive the entire road, but what we saw was really cool!

Corona Arch trail is one of our favorites in the Moab area! This trail is only three miles long , but it leads to one of the biggest arches in the Moab area. We went on a late afternoon, mid-week and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We passed a few people on the trail and there was one other person at the arch with us, but there wasn’t a crowd of people like you’ll find over in Arches National Park.

The trail to Corona Arch has you climbing up a ladder and using some steps that have been cut into the side of the rock (called Moki steps) along with some cables. It wasn’t too technical, but just hard enough to be fun. It’s a great hike for someone who’s trying to get outside of their comfort zone just a little and get off the flat path.

Your effort is rewarded with not one but two arches. Bowtie Arch is…I think…a pothole arch and it’s smaller, but still very cool. The star of the hike is Corona Arch. We actually all voted Corona Arch our favorite arch in the area. And yes, that’s including all of the arches we saw at Arches National Park! Corona Arch has an opening of 140 feet across by 105 feet tall and is made of Navajo sandstone like most of the arches in the area. Rumor has it…that airplanes used to fly through the opening of Corona Arch. Since it’s not in a National Park…it’s not quite as protected. I think it’s now a BLM NP Unite and protected land though so hopefully, it’ll receive some more protection.

That’s it, Guys! That is pretty much everything we did in the Moab area. We checked off everything we had on our list, but ended up adding several new things to see next time!

See y’all down the road!

#NationalParkTour
A Day of Monuments

A Day of Monuments

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Hey Guys! Since we’re on a National Park Tour we decided to cram three National Monuments into one very long day. Three. I’m not sure that was one of our better ideas…but we did it and we all survived…barely. Ha!

Our first stop was in the Shash Jaa Unit of Bears Ears National Monument. Bears Ears is made up of two different units and is bursting with ancestral dwellings, rock art, and amazing rock formations. The whole National Monument is contained within about 228,000 acres. The Shash Jaa Unit has some incredible cliff dwellings tucked into the sides of cliffs and in caves.

Bears Ears NM is so big…and we were trying to squish three different National Monuments into one day…so we had to pick and choose what we made time for during this visit. My main interest was a place I’d found out about several years ago…House on Fire. The trick is to get there during the right time of day so that the sun bounces off the canyon floor and hits the cliff dwelling giving it a fiery glow. We got there too early and joined the small group who were also there to see the phenomenon of House on Fire. While we waited I took pictures from several angles at several different times. I took some with my good camera…I took some with my phone camera…I took some up-close…far away… You get the point. I was covering all of my bases trying to capture the amazing effect I’d seen on the interwebs. I got it! I had several different pictures that I deemed worthy. And, honestly, my phone camera picked up the effect just as good as my expensive camera.

Bears Ears National Monument is a newer National Park. There’s not an official visitor center yet. It seemed to us that the area BLM Rangers and National Park Service Rangers were all kind of sharing the stewardship of this particular park. We hope to one day go back and explore more of this amazing park. BTW…Bears Ears NM is named for the two towering buttes that stand out against the surrounding landscape. You can see them in the picture on the right.

Natural Bridges National Monument was our second stop of the day. This might be a good time to tell you the difference between an arch and a natural bridge. An arch has to have an opening of three feet and is the remnants of geological stone formations such as fins, ridges, or rock cliffs. A natural bridge is formed when running water cuts through a canyon wall. Natural bridges are actually more rare than arches. Another noteworthy difference is that bridges tend to be lower in canyons while arches are usually higher up and easier to spot. Both are formed from different types of erosional forces.

Natural Bridges National Monument is the home to three of the world’s largest natural bridges and all of them are within the same canyon. Sipapu Bridge is actually taller than the National Capitol Building. There are short but steep hikes down to each of the three bridges. You can see them from some well placed viewpoints as well. We’d already done some hiking this day and the boys were starting to make noise about lunch, so we opted to gaze at the natural bridges from afar instead of hiking down to each of them.

Our last stop of the day was Hovenweep National Monument. This National Monument tells the story (or at least what we know of the story) of a group now known as the Ancestral Puebloan people. There have been people living in and around Little Ruin Canyon for thousands of years. They started out as hunter/gatherers and somewhere around AD 900, settlements began appearing along the cliff walls and around the top of the canyon. In the 1200s, the Ancestral Puebloans started adding pit houses, kivas, and pueblos to the community that was now around 2,500 members strong.

Most of the ruins you can see standing today were built in the mid to late 1200s. This little community was just one in a whole system of settlements. Each community was a days walk to the next community. There’s a bit of a puzzle as to why so many stone towers were built in this particular location and why they were placed in sometimes precarious positions along the canyon rim or within the canyon. No one knows why the Ancestral Puebloan people seemed to suddenly disappear or why they left or even where they went.

We’ve always enjoyed learning about our country’s history. Some of our favorite National Park Units tell the story of the first people to call our country home. We had several great conversations as we walked through these ancient dwellings. Where did they go…why did they leave…why did they build the towers? Sometimes we leave a National Park with more questions than when we got there and that’s ok. One of the reasons we go to National Parks is to learn and sometimes you have to learn what questions to ask before you can find the answer.

Well, Guys…I think I’m going to hit the pause button again on the Moab area adventures. I’ve got more to share with you so stay tuned!

See y’all down the road!

#NationalParkTour