Water, Wind and Time
Five gallons of water per day. That is what we have been living on for the last month. Why you ask? The simple answer is that in southeast Utah water is scarce and in every park we’ve visited, water is trucked in from the closest town, sometimes fifty miles away. What this has meant for us is that in the last month we have had two showers and one bucket bath. We definitely smell, but we’ve been having a grand time!
Funnily enough, it’s actually water and lots of it that has created this incredible landscapes we’ve been visiting. The soil here is mostly sand and rock so when it rains, especially in the summer monsoons, the water isn’t absorbed, it races off causing flash floods that scour and polish the rocks into crazy forms. Freeze thaw cycles and the ever present wind do the rest, creating arches, cliffs and deep canyons.
The Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands National Park is set on a mesa and has dizzying vistas into the cliffs and canyons carved by the Green and Colorado rivers. We were lucky enough to snag a campsite in the park—there are only thirteen. On one of our short hikes we overheard a guy say, “I keep hoping there will be an escalator.” The next day, as we descended 1400 feet down a sheer cliff face, I kept laughing at his words. There are definitely no escalators in canyon country!
Despite the unreal views and epic sunsets, it was freezing and we had snow flurries every day, so after three days it was time to descend to a more reasonable altitude. Moab is not our favorite town. It’s busy and noisy, filled with adrenaline seekers of all kinds, and more revving engines than we’ve heard all year. It is, however, a necessary stop as it is pretty much the only place to restock for hundreds of miles.
We each bought our fourth pairs of hiking boots, then loaded up our bookshelves and pantry before heading out to the unknown. That night we ended up in Sego Canyon, a BLM site on the National Register of Historic Places. The site contains pictographs and petroglyphs spanning thousands of years. Our favorite were the Barrier Canyon group, which are life-size red figures with horns and headdresses and bug-eyes. We met a BLM archeologist at the site who was out with a group of volunteers assessing graffiti damage. He gave us loads of information on the Native American inhabitants of the region. And we met some folks from the Utah Rock Art Research Association, a rather cool organization that runs regular field trips to rock art sites throughout the west.
After a brief drive along Interstate 70, we turned south again towards the San Rafael Swell, which is one of Utah’s three massive anticlines. The swell was basically an eighty mile long, thirty mile wide bubble in the earth’s crust, and over time it has been deeply etched with slot canyons. It is not a park or a monument, though it does contain six massive wilderness study areas, that have been languishing for decades, waiting for Congress to “promote” them. It is rugged country with only a couple paved roads. We knew that there was loads of dispersed camping out there, and that was pretty much all we knew. Imagine our surprise when we pulled into a camp spot at the base of Temple Mountain, a purple, green and burgundy cliff crowned with gleaming white rock (think massive Mormon temple). We stayed three nights exploring several slot canyons and hiking 4x4 roads past the remnants of the uranium boom of the 1950’s. It was a stunning and deeply peaceful place.
We write this post from the lap of luxury in Capitol Reef National Park. For the first time since we left Santa Fe, we have access to water, a dump station AND a trash bin, all within 200 yards of our campsite! All kidding aside, we love this park and plan to spend significant time exploring here.
