Texas

The Texas panhandle gives very little to write home about. I am driven crazy by the flat flat flat land here. Its so flat you can see a farmhouse miles away and an hour later its still miles away. Okay, so this is a little bit of an exaggeration but that's the way it feels to me. It is still grey green prairie though sections of it have lots of that nice gold prairie grass. Same old stuff I've been looking at for days.


Antelope grazing on the perpetual grey-green prairie

Then there's the Cadillac Ranch. Talk about graffitti heaven! These caddies are nose deep in mud and the whole area around it is littered with spray paint cans and multi-colored can tops. I've heard a few stories about how they got there and none are the same so I won't relate any of them. All I know is that the caddies change constantly. The last time I saw them they had all been painted black in honor of somebody or other. As far as I'm concerned, it wasn't much of an honor since black is so dull. Color is so much more exciting.

Everyone is making such a big deal about Highway 66 these days. It was once the main route from Chicago to where (?), maybe Los Angeles (I should really pay more attention) before there were interstate highways. There is much art deco influenced architecture left over from those days. My favorite building is in Shamrock but it was too dark for photos. I did run across this amazing rest area along I 40. It was huge, brand new, but filled with old ad signs from the heyday era. In the women's restroom there was a big mosaic tile wall mural. I was tempted to slip into the men's room to see if they got a different one but I didn't dare.

Petrified Forest and Around

I find that all these mesas, canyons and rock formations are starting to look the same. Therefore, petrified logs are a pleasant and exciting change, especially to a chronic rock hound like myself. At the gate I had to show them all the rocks in my van and mark them because this park is very strict about collecting. The fines are very high so I didn't even try it.

There are many trails and overlooks in the park. One had signs identifying the native plants and telling about the usage of them by the natives and early settlers to the region. Absolutely ingenious, I say. Also very interesting. As for the vistas, they are looking down at what they call petrified dunes, pink-orange in the late afternoon sun. The next day I was in the south end of the park where the formations were above ground and more white with a purplish tinge.

Petrified logs are everywhere! Some were long sections of trees, broken up as evenly as though they'd been cut with a saw. There are so many stumps and chips everywhere. The fact that they are so colorful is what impressed me. They have the usual orange, brown and black but whites, ochers, even purples were also represented. Wow.

 

 

Outside the park and in the countryside close by. People decorate their yards with large stumps of petrified wood. In Holbrook, AZ, I found a building, now abandoned that was faced with copper ore and petrified wood. Some of the wood was in log crosscuts and polished. I though it was beautiful, even with boarded up windows. At one end of town, an entry, I suppose, I found a statue of a cowboy riding a huge petrified tree like a bronc. You would think they'd use real petrified wood but they didn't. I checked. As one woman told me: "Its everywhere but if you look for it, you won't find it."

Driving the Dry Country

Between Moab, Utah and Four Corners the land goes through many subtle changes. It dips and curves around red bluffs, then straightens out, flattens out and goes from red to orange to sandy-light formations, mostly mesas. You look up at them for a while till the road climbs to a long plateau and the formations are down below...over and over. The land itself can be dry desert grass, rabbit brush, sage and pinon or juniper trees; then there are no trees at all, even no grass and the red soil is lit bright orange by the sun. Along the often dry riverbeds, there are cottonwood trees for a refreshing touch of green. Sometimes the sky is black but one butte, formation or rocky mesa is brilliantly lit. Formations go from sheer red bluffs to hard crusted sand hills to cow-flop-plop looking piles of rock. It can be striking if one pays attention. In the distance is the blue shape of Sleeping Ute Mountain. It  is said that the sleeping Ute will one day wake up and drive the white man from this land.

There are diversions, of course. Newspaper Rock is one of them, some of the best petroglyphs I've seen. They are supposed to depict about 2000 years of Native American life though I don't know how they determine the age. There are a couple dated entries, 1906 and 1943, scratched on by more recent people who also wanted to record their existence.

The Res

I spent my last night in Utah in a town named Bluff, population 300. There I met a  79 year old woman named Faye Belle with a weather worn face and crusty attitude. She ran a cafe, RV park and rented room; did it all alone and with only one hand. She proudly proclaimed her spartan lifestyle, showing off her faded, threadbare jeans. She drives 70 miles for groceries and parts for her business, putting it all on her skymiles card. She breaks away by scouting out deals on cruises and says she's been all over the world. I forgot to ask if she wore those jeans on her vacations. I want to grow up to be just like her.

Bluff, Utah

Northwest Arizona is Navajo reservation land. The gov sure did know what they were doing when they gave the tribes this land. It doesn't look like it supports much of anything being drier and dustier that what I drove through all the day before. Dirty trick, I say.

The first town of size I drove into was Chinle. When I stopped for gas I was accosted immediately by one begging Navajo woman and five begging dogs, ribs in plain view. I bought the dogs kippered beef, even gave the woman some but did not give her money. Chinle is sort of like this. Sure, it has Burger King, malls,a brand new sports complex and new government buildings, but it also has an alarming number of beaten mobile homes. The land is hardly more that bare dirt except along the roads where horses graze untethered and nobody seems to think that's odd. Stray dogs, stray horses...hmm. What really strikes me is the litter. Fortunately, all the towns on the Res don't look so bleak.

Chinle is the town where the road turns off to Canon de Chelly, a gem that the gov evidently didn't think had value when they signed this land over. Otherwise, surely they wouldn't have. The roads lead to overlooks where one can see canyon walls, formations and a green valley floor. There are some Anasazi ruins but it just isn't as much fun at a distance as it was back when one could still wander in and among the ruins in places like Mesa Verde. Modern day Native Americans sell their art, pottery, paintings and jewelry spread out on blankets at the overlook areas.

I asked a young native man about the hogans and if there was a significance in their being round. He said its easier to stack the logs in rounds. It makes sense to me when I look around and notice a dire shortage of trees in the area, especially tall ones. But there is something about the universe being in circles and the dirt floors bringing them closer to mother earth that is part of the tradition. Maybe the young aren't so much into the old tradition. There are lots of these around, though.

Dead Horse Point and Canyonlands

No water, no gas, no food. Its short sweet and simple. If you don't bring your own to Canyonlands, you do without. I don't care for MREs and hope I don't need to eat another any time soon. And right now, I would kill for a shower. Redemption is in the scenery. The views and trails make it all worthwhile. I must confess that I was not one of the hardy souls that hiked down in.

Dead Horse Point

Brave fellows at Dead Horse

This photo and those that follow are all from Canyonlands.

Almost too much of a good thing, don't ya think?

Utah!

Many years ago, when I lived in the Colorado mountains, I had a t-shirt that read: Eat Drink and Be Merry For Tomorrow You May Be In Utah. Little did I know. Many years later I drove to San Francisco avoiding the interstate as much as possible and I accidentally discovered the paradise that is Utah.

This trip, I was headed for Arches National Park and took a small road intended to connect me with one of Utah's scenic highways. This road was beaten and desolate with more dips than a Frito party. A town called Cisco showed on my map but when I passed the sign for 'Cisco Landing', the arrow pointed to a small, totally abandoned collection of houses and stores that 'in need of repair' doesn't begin to describe. There was no other settlement in sight. I slept that night beside the Colorado River with deep red cliffs all around.

Arches...the name tells all. Once again, there are formations of reds and white-ish and every shade in between dressed up with a little copper green here and there, shaped by wind and rain since the beginning of time. There I met a couple from Seattle. Merry had white hair with a bright red swatch at her right temple. She told me all about the Juniper trees that can put a root out 100' looking for one drop of this area's 8-9" of annual rainfall. When it gets really, really dry, this tree has the ability to kill a portion of itself off and rejeuvinate when the weather is friendlier...and live on, up to 600+ years. Merry showed me her pocket of rocks and we laughed over my collecting tendencies while her partner, known to me as her "first and only husband" stood tolerantly by. Merry is character #1 and I got to be #2 by taking my shoes off and hiking those red sandy trails barefoot. Boy, did that attract attention!

Along Scenic highway 128

Coming into Arches in the morning

The ranger called it Utah Juniper

A fun stop in Moab

Leaving Colorado

I came out west looking forward to seeing those deep blue Colorado skies. I have to admit that I've been disappointed this trip. It is as hazy here as the east coast. Everywhere I go people blame it on the fires. They were national news on the front range this year and have also been raging in Eastern Washington and Idaho. The smoke is the haze.

I will end this post by offering up a handful of Colorado mountain photos.



In the San Luis Valley



Tennessee Pass



Looking over Gilman



Tennessee Pass



I wish this really showed the rust and gold colors the eye sees.



Glenwood Canyon. THey took the magic out of the canyon when they built the new highway.



Coming into Grand Junction

Leadville

I arrived in Leadville as it was getting dark. I lived there for many years and have been gone for several more. I left Leadville a town of ashes, destroyed by Reaganomics in the 1980s. The main mine, Climax, was shut down, the EPA seemed determined to make an example of one of the few operating mines left, Black Cloud, where I once worked.

Boom Days drilling contest rocks

This time around, a billboard greeted me announcing that Climax is open and hiring. Town is booming with new businesses and people are out for the evening. I stopped at the laundromat for a shower and wi-fi where I talked to a young man who works above ground at Climax. I resisted the temptation to lecture him about respirators. He also shoes horses in exchange for living in a little camper. He allowed me to park my van in his yard that night, all the time worrying about the street light outside my window, the neighbors barking dog and would I have enough blankets. I have a good sleeping bag but I forgot how cold nights get in the high country. That's reported to be about 10,000 altitude, by the way.

In the morning I stopped at a bakery where the owner who came from Detroit told me she'd never felt like she belonged before she came to Leadville. My sentiments exactly. Another woman came in with a very familiar face but her name didn't ring a bell. She new all the people I ran around with back when I lived there over 20 years ago, even my ex husband. She told me a lot about the happenings in the now grown up Leadville. There are still have mines, bars and churches, as always, but now there are organic gardeners, meditation groups, massage therapists and even a writing group. When I lived there in the late 1970s, none of this seemed possible. Now I think about moving back there.

 Check out Leadville Deb's website for a look at Rocky Mountain issues: www.rockymountaingreenguide.com

Harrison Ave., Leadville

My old Cabin in Stringtown...first real estate venture