Adventures in the Great American Desert Part I

ADVENTURES IN THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT

Late last winter, we decided to spend a summer week at Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico, a retreat for people who wish to contemplate the spectacular scenery that inspired Georgia O’Keeffe, while participating in one of many week-long classes. On this long meandering trip, we rediscovered some routes traveled in times gone by and others never seen before. This 3-installment blog covers first,  the trip to Ghost Ranch, second, the stay at Ghost Ranch, and last, our return to Davis by way of Santa Fe and Albuquerque NM. Along the way we crossed deserts and a couple of national parks, and were treated to fantastic scenery of high sandstone buttes, deep ravines, at least one hair-raising hairpin highway, and several Indian reservations.  

The entire route starting and ending in Davis, CA; July 3-18,2013. Circled numbers indicate consecutive travel days, and vertical bars indicate places we stopped for the night. Ghost Ranch is at the far right, just northwest of Santa Fe, NM

Part I: Davis to Ghost Ranch, NM

JULY 3 (Wednesday): Our car, packed for any eventuality, included a 3-gallon water jug provided by our geologist friend Eldridge, who is an expert on travel in Western deserts. He told us we could easily be stranded with no cell phone access and only a couple of cars coming by per hour in boiling heat. At 3 pm, we backed out of our driveway in Davis, temp 101^oF, in our Honda CRV. Equipped with brand-new Hercules tires and just-inspected air conditioner, we traveled I-80 through rush-hour Sacramento up and over Donner Pass to the old Sierra city of Truckee, CA, elevation ~6,000 feet, temperature in the 80s where we stayed overnight in a Best Western at the eastern edge of town.

JULY 4 (Thursday): We left the 4-lane I-80 and picked up the 2- lane US-50 in Fallon,NV, about 40 miles east of Reno, and drove for the next 250 miles across the Great Basin in 95^o heat to Ely, NV. Coming down a long hill, we saw flatlands covered with sagebrush, salt fields, and then vast mountains rising straight up out of the desert.

Day 2: Truckee, CA to Ely, NV mostly on Highway 50

Entering Highway 50 near  Fallon NV

East of Fallon, the old Pony Express trail crosses US50 several times where in 1860-61, it delivered the US mail. Fearless young riders averaged 10-15 mph carrying saddlebags between relay stations on the 2,000-mile route between St. Joseph, MO, and Sacramento, CA. The journey took just 10 days.  

The route of the old Pony Express trail in Nevada as it crosses US 50

Pony Express Monument

We stopped at one rider switch-off site, a camp that had been invaded and destroyed in an Indian raid. (No one considered them the real Native Americans in those days.) The picture above memorializing their route, and below depicts what is left at high noon.

What you now see at the old Pony Express station where the route crosses US 50 on its way west to Sacramento

 After crossing the highest pass of the day (7,884 feet), we arrived in Austin, NV, where we found shade on a bench in front of the old courthouse (locked up tight on this holiday), enjoyed a leisurely lunch, and read posters on the courthouse door.

Ann lunching at noon at the Austin courthouse

Posted on the courthouse door, even though
    only halfway to our destination Ely, NV     

   

Romantic dinner after a hard day's drive

Then on over more passes to Ely, an old mining town founded as a stagecoach supply stop on the Pony Express route. Ely later became a copper mining center and is now replete the usual Nevada gambling casinos. Dining in our own private cell in the Jailhouse Restaurant, we enjoyed a romantic dinner of steaks, wine, and conversation (?!).   At 9 pm, we drove to the Ely golf course for the July 4 fireworks spectacle. And then to bed in the Bristlecone Motel, highly recommended for future travelers.

JULY 5 (Friday): After breakfast at a diner filled with cowboy-hatted men and their wives, we soon turned south from US-50 onto US-93. Much of the 2-lane road is “straight as a string” with a 70 mph speed limit, punctuated by low mountain passes and surrounded by craggy mountain peaks.We stopped briefly to focus on a wind farm nestled between highway and mountains.

Wind farm beneath a mountain range US93 near Ely, NV

Cathedral Gorge US 93 NV

   














Temperatures were already in the high 90s. We stopped for lunch at a picnic table overlooking Nevada’s own mini grand canyon, Cathedral Gorge, formed by evaporation of a Great Basin lake to a meandering river millions of years ago.

Irish step-dancing in Cedar City UT 

We turned east onto NV317, which became UT56 when we crossed into Utah. Thankfully, Ann’s evasive action prevented our being sideswiped by two huge speeding trucks, one heading toward us and one passing us on the narrow 2-lane highway. We finally arrived at Cedar City, UT, home of Southern Utah University and the Utah Shakespeare Festival. After the Irish step-dancers at the USF Green Show, we saw Twelve Angry Men, which featured an outstanding actor we’d seen years ago in the title role of Richard III at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This night, he played the wiseguy juror who just wanted to render a guilty verdict in time to go to a Yankees baseball game.

JULY 6 (Saturday): Heading south on I-15 (speed limit 75 mph), we came to Kolub Canyon, a less visited area at the north end of Zion National Park. (We eschewed the south end of Zion, now accessible only by bus in the summer, where we’d hiked on a previous visit.) Kolub Canyon revealed spectacular red-rock formations formed over 200 million years. Here we are at the top of the road, only 15 minutes from the main highway. The full view of this spectacular canyon is shown below. 

Kolub Canyon, Zion National Park

We then made our way through the southern end of Zion on UT-9, which featured scary switchbacks, sheer cliffs, and an amazing mile-long tunnel that featured regularly spaced viewing windows. After turning south onto US-89, we arrived in Kanab, UT, where we found a wonderful café with imaginative cuisine and an art gallery on the second floor.A late evening stroll down the main thoroughfare revealed that Kanab was a favorite for the filming of old Western movies. Each side of the main street was punctuated with plaques commemorating famous old actors who had worked in and near Kanab. 

On the sidewalk of Kanab where Greg shot a movie

The Rocking V Cafe, Kanab, art gallery upstarirs

Day 5 from Kanab UT to Kayenta AZ, passing north of Grand Canyon, then crossing the Colorado River, south to the Navajo Nation 

JULY 7 (Sunday):  En route to Kayenta, AZ, on US89A and US160, we drove through more of the great Colorado Plateau to Navajo Nation, the country’s largest Indian reservation, encompassing more than 25,000 square miles in parts of 4 states. The first stop was Tuba City, AZ, where we n visited the site of the Indian Health Service hospital where Chuck and former wife Crystie spent the summer of 1961 as medical students. The hospital has grown from the 1-story clinic with adjoining inpatient ward where Chuck and Crystie worked to become a large regional hospital serving Navajos in Northern Arizona.

In those days, the Navajo got around on horses, lived in hogans (traditional homes made of packed mud and wood), suffered from classical infectious diseases like tuberculosis and rheumatic fever, and, most commonly, from severe trauma in motor vehicle accidents involving alcohol intoxication. After nearly 50 years of high-calorie fast food and other social change, they now drive cars, live in houses, and suffer from major life-shortening diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes. Alcohol is banned from the reservation.

Interestingly, a recent New York Times piece by former North Dakota senator Byron Dorgan, a champion of Native American rights, decried the fact that our new US budget sequestration policy places severe limits on Native American education and even the Indian Health Service: www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/opinion/broken-promises.html

Kayenta entrance to Monument Valley

After our visit to the old Indian Health Hospital in Tuba City, we made our way to the northeast through the reservation, bypassing turnoffs to Keet Seel, an ancient original Anasazi village carved into a rock canyon that we had seen on a previous trip, and finally up to Kayenta. Before dinner, we took a 40-mile return visit to Monument Valley, whose spectacular rock formations seem to rise straight from of the desert floor, formed through millennia of wind and meandering former river streams.

Monument Valley, looking from Arizona into Utah at the Northeastern corner of the Navajo Nation

Day 6, from Kayenta AZ to Ghost Ranch NM, just north of Abiquiu

JULY 8 (Monday): Up early, we made our way through continuing desert and plateau near the Four Corners area and into New Mexico via US160 and US64, leaving the Navajo Nation and entering the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation where the landscape turned to forest, streams, hills, some canyons, and flatlands as we made our way across northern New Mexico and over the Continental Divide to the town of Chama, then southward via US84 to Ghost Ranch, which lies just north of the little town of Abiquiu. The highway between Chama and Abiquiu runs partly along the Chama River with high mountains and forests to the east. The Rio Grande is off the map to the left, and was the route for Spanish explorers in the 16th century. 

The entrance to Ghost Ranch

We finally entered Ghost Ranch in late afternoon on the 6th day of travel, now 1354 car- miles from home, where we encountered a mile-long dirt road leading up to high multicolored sandstone cliffs, and the room we would call our own for the next six days. --to be continued