Matt and I disagree about photos. For him, landscape photos are meaningless without a human, pet, or toy in the picture. He says, “If you want a picture of the landscape, buy a postcard. It will be a better picture.” The postcard, though, isn’t proof that I saw it, that I was there. Whereas when I take a picture with my phone, I am saying, “I was here!” And, in Bryce Canyon National Park, I said, “I was here!” at least a thousand times.
Every turn in the park becomes a vision of pink, yellow, white, green with a backdrop of deep blue skies. It’s unreal. I took a hike from Bryce Point down into the canyon along Peek-a-boo trail, Navajo Trail, Horse Trail, and then back up along Rim Trail. Couldn’t stop taking pictures. Each time I put my iPhone away, I would turn a corner and come face to face with another gorgeous view. I finally just kept my phone in hand and just snapped away at will. Here are just a smattering from that hike (and, yes, I did feature myself in one and my shadow in another).
After the hike, it was time to rest by the lake near my campsite (Pine Lake). I alternated between reading, reading with my eyes closed, and casting a lure in hopes of scoring dinner. Well, my casting talents failed, but my friendly, smilingly talents paid off when another fisherman offered me his catch (he didn’t want to clean it). In case you are interested, the trout was stuffed with a butter, garlic, random herbs and lemon slices. It was then sauteed the over onions, shallots, peppers and mustard greens with lemon juice, dijon mustard and a little beer (was already drinking the beer so, what the heck!). Delish!
Of course, one day of hiking wasn’t enough, so the next day I hiked Fairyland Loop. Did you think that was the end of pictures. Oh no… so many more to enjoy….
Well, tomorrow will be the last day of enjoying this incredible scenery. So, as I leave it behind, I also leave you with a parting shot of the campsite at sunset.
Aristotle and Plato head for storage in Las Vegas, and I head home. Happy to be going home, but also anticipating the next adventure…
Usually I wait until the end of a trip to talk about it. But today was just one of those experiences I need to share in greater detail than I would in a normal trip post. It was the day I almost became one of those headlines “woman gets lost and dies 4 miles from campsite”. I always wondered how someone can be a few miles from their car in the woods and get completely lost. Now I know how that happens.
So first, let’s just appreciate the beauty of Castle Rock Campsite in the middle of Utah. It’s lovely and nestled into a small canyon. Beyond the stunning backdrop of these unique rock formations, there is a quaint creek that runs through the campsite and each spot is private. The one drawback – none of my trail finding apps showed any meaningful hikes in the area. Then, on a whim, I found that someone had done a “mapmyrun” at the back of the campsite, going about 1.5 miles up the canyon and along the creek. I found a trail! Noticing that this trail was not marked on TrailForks or even AllTrails, I decided it was my duty to hike the entire trail and plot the hike on an app for other dedicated trail users.
Online sleuthing uncovered the fact that this trail is marked on a US Forest Service map, but not easy to find. It indicated that the trail from the campsite (Joe Lott Trail) extended about 3 miles from the campsite to an interpretive display at the other end. Right before the display, another trail loops back and then you intersect one more trail that finally brings you back to an early section of the Joe Lott Trail. Seemed really doable, estimated around 6 miles for the hike, not a huge hike. So I grabbed my usual gear: bear spray (also usable on mountain lions and aggressive men); GPS tracker (with an SOS function just in case the mountain lion got a swipe in before I hit it with the bear spray); 12 ounce water bottle (it’s only about 6 miles); and my phone to track the hike into the TrailForks app.
Let’s just say, things don’t always turn out the way you expect. The Joe Lott trail isn’t used much, likely because, after mile 3, much of the trail is unmarked. It’s also not 3 miles long, it’s more like 6. After trudging along about 4 miles, all uphill, I found a collection of bones. May have been the last hiker that tried this trail and failed. At mile 4.5 the trail runs into a large meadow and there is no way to tell where it continues. No cell signal meant no way to look at an online map. I assumed continuing to walk in the same direction might be the best solution, and it would be easier to backtrack if all else failed. At that point I was thinking that I should have left markers/bread crumbs along the way to be sure to find my way back. Then mile 5 reaches a summit, but still no easily traceable trail. I took various deer/bear/elk paths hoping one might be the trail. One side path stopped at a deserted campsite where a pair of hiking shoes were left in desperation (maybe connected to the collection of bones found earlier?). Finally a rock cairns indicating signs of hope – there was a direction to be had. Finally, just before mile 6, I got a weak signal and was able to ascertain where the trail was and soon connected not just to the trail, but to the junction of the next trail. I would live another day.
Relief was instant. An easy to follow trail and it looked like it would just be downhill. No more uphill! It would be smooth sailing, downhill, back to the campsite. While that trail was downhill, my next trail needed to cross back over a mountain to get back into the original canyon. This trail, like Joe Lott, was occasionally obscured by overgrowth and was hard to follow.
By mile 8, I ran out of water. Mile 10 brought a few tears as I stared straight up. Finally at mile 11 the current connector trail ran into the early portion of the Joe Lott Trail. After 3.75 hours of hiking (and occasionally running, I arrived back at the campsite. As a side note, mile 5 took me almost 30 minutes between the uphill and wandering off side paths. Mile 10 took me 25 minutes with a steepness that challenged gravity. Here’s a link to my route on TrailForks.
Pictures along the way… I did stop to blend into the landscape. Didn’t realize that pink is useful camouflage.
COVID and foot surgery messed up a few things, like our plan to wander up to Banff, Canada this summer. Instead, we were lucky to make it to southern Montana. So while the final northern destination wasn’t so north, the experience and friends we saw along the way made time during COVID not so bad.
Like the last trip, this one began slowly with Matt finishing various improvement projects. He is a wanna-be engineer, architect, mechanic, and inventor all-in-one when it comes his projects. There is nothing he cannot tweak, sometimes with less-thandesirable outcomes. But, hey, that’s the joy in inventing. When the first attempt doesn’t work, try, try again.
This time the project was installing a pre-designed (courtesy of his newly learned CAD programming skills) under-belly storage. Airstreams, and Aristotle in particular, are high on design, and sometimes low on function. The only outside storage, or even storage space that is accessible from outside, is what they call a “trunk”. Think fanny pack on the back of the trailer. It’s narrow and thin and fits almost nothing. So after much designing, even planning each items location, Matt had an aluminum (he has corrected me to be exact, 0.09” 5052 aluminum) “belly” box that would supposedly install across the belly of Aristotle and slide out from either side. I could go hours and hours on the installation process, as it took many, many hours, but instead I will just show you the result.
Exciting… right?? There’s actually a lot to be said for having outside storage of things that deal with the black/grey tank.
Matt’s installation held as we got to our first campsite in the Dinosaur National Monument. Lovely spot, by the way, but lacks any cell service and if you are going to work on the road, it’s just not the right spot. We did venture out for a short hike before packing up and heading onward.
I should mention that while the belly box held during our quick stay at Dinosaur, our electric hitch literally burned up. Say what? Well, that’s kinda of an inconvenience and a lot of workout when you have to hand crank 1,000 pounds of tongue weight on our 8000 lbs of a trailer up and down.
To make it even more interesting, Matt tried really hard at the second campsite to lose the belly box. I distinctly heard something like, “WATCH THIS!” while Matt proceeded to drive up a steep, gnarly, boulder strewn, pot-hole ridden forest service excuse for a road outside the Grand Tetons. It was definitely not meant for cars pulling 28’ trailers. After about an hour of inching up the road, being chastised by locals passing us by running over the bushes on the side, and a little bit of yelling at each other, we called uncle and u-turned at an already occupied site. The following video is part of our downhill crawl. Hey, at least the belly box stayed intact.
That video showed us coming back down the road with our tail between our legs. Why, you ask, did we think torturing Aristotle and Plato by traversing a steep, pot-hole, rock ridden road? Well, frankly we arrived late to this popular national forest area and all the flatland spots were taken. Unfortunately, all the spots up the crazy road, at least as far as we got, were also taken. Luckily, someone took pity on us after our descent and offered to share their rather nice, large spot on the flatland campsites. Our campsite was officially called, Antelope Springs Designated Dispersed Campsite. We ended up spending four nights there sharing food, beer, wine, and dog walking fun (that’s a shout-out to TJ and his four-legged kids, Achilles and Hades). All in all, it was a great stay, good biking from the site, good biking east of Jackson, and, of course, a great hike in the Grand Tetons to Delta Lake.
For those of you interested in staying at this area, know that it’s very popular and a vacant site is like gold. But, people, in general, are quite nice, and there are some that will offer to share their spots. Also you never know when someone is going to bug out and leave a vacant spot.
Alas, it was time to explore again, so we hit the road headed North. This time, I selected Red Cliff Campground in Gallatin National Forest just north of Yellowstone and south of Big Sky. Would I recommend it? Not really my style, but the hosts were nice and it was convenient. The silver lining was the crazy coincidence of meeting a couple that grew up in the same area of Austin that I did! We first connected as they also had an airstream. It’s a small, small world. However much I would have loved to swap stories, the smoke was rolling into the area and the campground was a bit too close to the road to really enjoy. We did find a good hike/bike near Big Sky, though. Notice the smoke… that’s from California and Oregon. It was suffocating. Can you imagine what it was like in Cali or Oregon?
Bozeman was our next target, not just because one of my college friends, Shawnee Spitler, lives there, and that was a strong attraction, but also because we could get an electric jack replacement. I love exercise, but cranking that jack is a bit more than I wanted.
Bozeman, what a great college town! We marveled at its thriving downtown with eclectic shops and a local flair. Too bad the smoke from western fires were a bit overwhelming. Otherwise we would have stayed much longer. Instead we had a nice dinner with friends, overnighted on a fellow Airstream owner’s yard, spent about four hours installing a new electric hitch, and hit the road to cleaner air. Bozeman, we will see you again – you can count on it.
Better air was found in Pocatello, ID, at the southeastern part of the state. We pulled into town a bit too late to ascertain campsites, so used our handy Harvest Hosts and camped out at the Museum of Clean. Yes siree, there is a Museum dedicated to a clean world – not just cleaning appliances, though they have corned the market in older vacuum models, but also a clean outdoors, clean energy, and clean people inside and out. As expected the parking lot was also very clean and suited us, along with three other RVers.
An early rise (think clean living), gave us a jump start on securing a perfect campsite outside of Pocatello on Scout’s Mountain. This was a great base for tons of hiking and mountain biking. If you love mountain biking, there are tons of trails to be had in Pocatello. If you like food, well, it’s not a foodie’s mecca. It’s definitely not in the Bozeman category, but does have one fabulous brewery, Jim Dandy Brewery. So, if you stop in Pocatello, learn from the cleaning masters at the Museum of Clean, do an epic bike/hike, and recovery while drinking beers at Jim Dandy Brewery.
This marked the end of Trip Twelve A…. I’m separating the trip into two parts, the first part with Matt (Trip Twelve A) and then the second part of the trip without Matt (Trip Twelve Solo). But before I go, here are a few shots of friends found on the road…
