Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘postaday2011’

Protecting Zion From Millions of Fans Not Easy

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , on May 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »

 “I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? — Robert Redford

Instead of removing a fallen tree trunk still spouting leaves, a path from the campground to the visitor center goes over the obstacle. -- Photo by Pat Bean.

*Travels With Maggie

I remembered a visit to Zion back in the 1980s when our group got highly chastised by a park ranger because we had put our tent in vegetation slightly behind our assigned site. At the time I wondered why he was being so picky.

Today I saw why.

As I looked around the carefully marked-out camping sites, I saw a return of healthy native vegetation that both accommodated the wild nature of the park and provided a bit of privacy from the neighbors in adjacent sites.

While Zion, with over 2 million visitors annually, will never be the wilderness this country needs to protect, its caretakers have done quite well in maintaining Mother Nature’s ambiance for the masses.

Run by propane, this shuttle bus takes visitors sight-seeing up Zion Canyon. -- Photo by Pat Bean

One of its biggest, and most successful efforts, was the creation of the shuttle bus system for the drive up Zion Canyon.

When I first visited the park in the late 1960s, parking in the canyon at trailheads was never a problem. By the 1980s, as interest in our national parks gained in popularity, it was in disaster mode.

The shuttle buses have not only solved the problem of too many vehicles polluting up the canyon and having nowhere to park, they have encouraged the return of wildlife and returned peace to the landscape. Simply from the window of a shuttle bus I’ve seen wild turkeys, deer, porcupines, squirrels and even once a coyote.

People grumbled about losing their freedom to explore the canyon at will when the bus system first began in 2000. But I’ve never heard a complaint from anyone since who availed themselves of the service.

One can get on and off the buses at all the major canyon attractions, and never during peak season daylight hours have to wait more than 10 minutes for another one to pick them up.

Here’s hoping we all find ways to be kinder to this planet we live on. It’s not just that we need something to defend, we need to take care of our home because it’s the only one we have. .

*Day 15 of my journey, May 3, 2011

Read Full Post »

Zion a Good Place to Dream of a World Without Hate

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , on May 16, 2011| 6 Comments »

 “Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” — Coretta Scott King.

Out my RV window -- Photo by Pat Bean

*Travels With Maggie

On this day two weeks ago, as I drank my morning cream-laced coffee while watching Zion National Park come to life outside my RV window, I read the New York Times headline announcing to the world that Osama bin Laden was dead.

It was news Americans had been waiting to hear for over 10 years. I rejoiced, as did most of my fellow countrymen and women. And then I was ashamed of myself. While I was still glad bin Laden was dead, I did not like the fact that I could celebrate his execution.

It just did not seem right, even though he and his followers celebrated the deaths of Americans on that tragic 9/11 day when al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for killing nearly 3,000 people.

Sadly the world has not been the same since

I have no heartache about the death of any murderer who hates and kills. My heartache is for the people on this planet who can not accept other people who are different from them.

Members of my own family call me idealistic because I dream of a world in which there are no borders and where everyone gets along regardless of their country of origin, color, beliefs or lifestyle.

The mixture of joy and sadness over bin Laden’s death colored my day here in Zion in a way that I find hard to explain. Everything seemed a bit shadowed, and at the same time brighter.

A sage lizzard showing off for the ladies. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I watched a sage lizard pump itself up and down on a rock in its attempt to attract a mate so together they could make babies.

Maggie and I walked beside the Virgin River on the Parus Trail, the one trail in the park where dogs are allowed. The river was flowing fast and muddy, continuing to etch its path upon the landscape as rivers have been doing for eons.

Delicate flowers pushed their way up through the earth as they do in Zion and elsewhere every spring.

Everything told me that life goes on renewing itself each day, each season, each year.

It’s sad that hate also seems to renew itself . How can we stop it? I ask this question a lot, but find no answers.

*Day 14 of my journey, May 2, 2011

Read Full Post »

Zion National Park: A Bad Time Creates Good Memories

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 15, 2011| 7 Comments »

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair… “ Charles Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cities”

The Virgin River was running fast and muddy during my visit this year to Zion. -- Photo by Pat Bean

*Journeys

Waking up nestled in the shadow of Zion National Park’s sandstone cliffs in the Watchman Campground this morning felt like being at home.

As I watched, through the window of my heated RV,  the rising sun coming up over one set of high cliffs to dance down the cliffs on the other side, I thought of the many other mornings here that hadn’t been quite so comfortable.

The first one that popped into my was the cold morning I melted a pair of tennis shoes — while wearing them – because of putting my feet too close to a blazing campfire while watching the rising sun in eager anticipation of it finally hitting out tent site.

Then there were other mornings when shorts were the order of the day before the sun had risen that high. Zion weather in April and early May is a crap shoot.

But of all my visits to Zion, the most memorable is the one my family refers to as the “Camping Trip from Hell.”

It was 1995, and family members were coming to Zion from Texas, Utah, Illinois and California to join me for my annual April birthday climb of Angel’s Landing. We were all on the road when a landscape up Zion Canyon blocked the Virgin River, which then backed up creating a lake before it finally broke through taking a section of the Zion Canyon road with it.

While Zion's awesome cliffs mesmerize me, I still remember to look down at my feet. -- Photo by Pat Bean

We put my mother up in the Thunderbird Motel east of the park, but the rest of us continued as planned with the camp out. Since we couldn’t access the Angel’s Landing Trail, we hiked The Overlook and Watchman trails instead.

Wind blew down our tents, snow froze us and rain made it almost impossible to keep a fire going. But everyone stuck it out, and while it might not have been the best of times, it made for the best of memories.

Today, whenever the topic of camping is brought up at a family gathering, you can count on someone immediately asking; “Remember our camping trip from hell?”

And then the tall tales begin in earnest – and suddenly everyone is smiling.

*Day 13 of the Journey, May 1, 2011

Read Full Post »

Weekly Photo Challenge: Red

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , on May 14, 2011| 2 Comments »

Canyonlands National Park, Islands in the Sky -- Photo by Pat Bean

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”
Marcus Aurelius

Read Full Post »

Even in Sadness, Zion’s Beauty Can’t Be Denied

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , on May 13, 2011| 6 Comments »

 

My friend, Kim, with her beautiful GG -- Photo by Pat Bean

“You can shed tears that she is gone, or you can smile because she has lived. You can close your eyes and pray that she’ll come back, or you open your eyes and see all she’s left.

Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her, or you can be full of the love you shared. You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday, or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday…

You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back. Or you can do what she’d want: Smile, open your eyes, love and go on.”

 — David Harkins.

 

*Travels With Maggie

My friend Kim, who was to meet me in Zion National Park yesterday, canceled because her 99-year-old grandmother, whom I also loved and called GG for Great-Grandmother, was on her death-bed. GG had adopted me into her family when I lived in Utah because my own family all lived elsewhere, mostly 1,500 miles or more away in Texas.

The pending death wasn’t an unexpected turn of events, but one that GG herself had been wishing for in recent months because her life had dwindled to helplessness. She had told me as much herself when I had hugged her frail tiny body for the final time last September.

I was saddened by GG’s pending death, but also relived that this day had finally arrived. And knowing that GG was surrounded by her own loving family, and that I was not needed, I didn’t change my plans to stay in Zion for the coming week.

But as if echoing the sadness in my heart, weather in Zion this day was a cold-hearted one. It was only 27 degrees when I awoke, and the cold penetrated a sprained shoulder I had been nursing now for two months.

Indian paintbrush doesn't let a rocky habitat hinder its opportunity at life. -- Photo by Pat Bean

My dog, Maggie, meanwhile, who normally sleeps in until almost 10 a.m. woke at 7:30 and demanded a walk. Of course I bundled up and she got it.

Back at the RV, Maggie immediately snuggled back in on our over-the-cab bed and soon was snoozing. I fixed myself my morning coffee and sat in front of the computer to read the news online.

It wasn’t good.

Tornadoes and twisters, including some striking very close to my youngest daughter in southern Arkansas, had left over 350 dead behind.

Life is so fragile. And we never know what curve ball it’s going to throw at us. All we can do is live each day to its fullest and be thankful we can.

After checking in with my youngest daughter and learning all was fine there, and although it was with a sad heart for GG , and for those who had lost their lives in the tornadoes, and my daily sadness for the loss of lives in the wars our country is fighting, I didn’t forget to appreciate and be awed by my colorful and amazing surroundings here in Zion National Park. .

Not doing so, with all the suffering going on in the world, would have been a sacrilege.

*Day 12 of the journey, April 30, 2011

Read Full Post »

Zion National Park: Journey’s End Just Another Beginning

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2011| 3 Comments »

“Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own; he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do they worst, for I have lived today.” John Dryden

My RV site in Watchman Campground offered views of canyon walls in all directions. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

While leaving what many consider America’s most beautiful road behind me, this didn’t mean an end to the scenic landscape.

Highway 89, from its junction with Highway 12 south to Highway 9 continued to be an awesome rural drive with views of mountains, cliffs and roadside streams that this day were full and broad. .

The highway briefly passed through another section of Dixie National Forest and through the small towns of Glendale, Orderville and Mount Carmel, all early Mormon settlements begun at the command of the religion’s prophet, Brigham Young, between 1862 and 1875. Historic rock structures from those early days can still be seen today.

Each morning and evening I watched as the sun lit up the cliffs like a neon sign. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Orderville was the Mormon church’s failed attempt at communal living and Glendale and Mount Carmel, the earlier settlements, were abandoned because of Indian attacks. Many of Orderville’s men, meanwhile, were arrested because of their continued polygamous way of life after it was banned in the United States.

I left 89 at Mount Carmel Junction, where sits the Thunderbird Motel and Golf Course, and headed west on Highway 9. Thirteen miles later I entered Zion National Park, and traveled its winding road lined with colorful sandstone formations that boggle the eyes another 13 miles to the Watchman Campground.

The drive included passing through a 1.1-mile long tunnel that cuts through a mountain. The tunnel, built in the late 1920s, is narrow and dark. My very first drive through it took place in the 1960s, when one could park in a pullout and get out and look out one of the tunnel’s vast windows to a view of the canyon below.

My dog, Maggie, tried to chase a lizard into this cactus. Fortunately she was on a leash and I pulled her back. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Those pullouts are now blocked, and traffic is often regulated to one-way because today’s larger vehicles, like my RV, Gypsy, Lee, need to keep to the center line to keep from scraping the lower sides of the tunnel roof. I paid $15 for this center-line driving privilege.

I have visited Zion National Park over 30 times. This Southern Utah landmark, where peregrine falcons nest, mountains glow at sunrise and sunset, and the Virgin River tumbles downward in gurgling splashes, is my special place in the universe.

Hooking up my RV to electricity in Loop B in of the Watchman Campground, with the guardian mountain looking down on me, filled my soul with peace and contentment.

I was thankful that the coming week’s journey in my life would all be spent right here.

Continuing day 11 of the journey, April 29, 2011

Read Full Post »

Highway 12’s Sights Overload My Little Gray Cells

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 10, 2011| 3 Comments »

 “I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, then it will go on overload and blow up.” — Erma Bombeck

Looking down from the Hogsback, the Escalante River snakes a path of greeness through the rocky landscape. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Heading southwest out of Boulder from Highway 12’s junction with the Burr Trail, you’ll pass the entrance to Utah’s Anasazi State Park and Museum.

It’s a protective home for an Indian village occupied between approximately AD 1050 and AD 1200. It’s a fascinating place to visit for archeological and history buffs and shouldn’t be passed by. While that’s exactly what I did this day, I had spent time in the museum and in the Coombs Site Indian ruins here on previous visits to the area. Check it out at: http://tinyurl.com/3wzmn6z

Just a little ways farther down the road and I was on the section of Highway 12 known as the Hogsback, although some people refer to it as Knife’s Edge, which seems quite appropriate.

Looking back as Highway 12 leads onto the Hogsback. -- Photo by Pat Bean

This section of Highway 12, which 70 years ago opened up Boulder to the more civilized world, travels along a high narrow ridge with steep cliffs on both sides. There is not a single spot along the highway that doesn’t offer magnificent views.

But since it’s narrow enough in some places to see down both sides of its 2,000-foot high cliffs at the same time while driving, for safety’s sake I did most of my gawking at pullouts.

The first time I crossed this amazing landscape was when I was visiting Escalante in the late 1970s and a local was showing me the sights. I was quite impressed – and the amazed emotions haven’t dimmed with the years.

Since leaving Boulder, I had been traveling through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which is spread across nearly 2 million acres of Southern Utah.

Its creation in 1996 by Democratic President Bill Clinton, who announced the gigantic news in Arizona with the widowed wife, Norma Mattheson, of Utah’s former Democratic governor, Scott Mattheson, did not sit well with the state’s then Republican administration, nor the state’s large anti-environmentalist segment.

The controversy was a boon, however, for this  environmental reporter who was thrown into the thick of the battles.

In the end, at least in my opinion, the protection of these awesome lands has benefited the state greatly with increased tourism in an area where jobs were scarce, and with transfer/trades of lands elsewhere to the state that have been more profitable in providing income for Utah’s school system.

Calf Creek Falls, worth the 6-mile round-trip hike. -- Photo by Scott Catron

 Escalante had certainly grown since my last visit about eight years ago, I noticed as I entered this town named after a Franciscan missionary who was the first to explore the area. And why not? It’s situated in some of the best scenery and hiking trails you’ll find anywhere in North America.

One of my favorites is the six-mile round-trip hike to Calf Falls,whose trailhead I had passed before entering Escalante. It has been a long time since I had seen the falls, but I could still recall the thrill at the end of three miles, mostly on a sandy path, of coming upon the 125-foot waterfall beneath which lay an inviting pool and shade trees.

Egads! Here I’ve covered only 27 miles of driving in today’s blog, and already I’m in past-and-present landscape brain overload.

Highway 12 will do that to you. And there’s more to come – tomorrow.

*Continuing Day 11 of the journey, April 29, 2011

Read Full Post »

Highway 12: Scenic Highway Gateway to a Scenic Backway

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 9, 2011| 2 Comments »

 “You cannot be wimpy out there on the dream-seeking trail. Dare to break through barriers, to find your own path.” Les Brown

The Henry Mountains as seen from Highway 12's beginning in Torrey, Utah -- photo by Pat Bean

*Travels With Maggie

Utah Highway 12, a 125-mile Scenic Byway that runs from Torrey just outside of Capitol Reef to Highway 89, has been called America’s most beautiful drive.

Yippee! Driving it was my agenda for the day.

The journey for my dog, Maggie, and I began in the Dixie National Forest. The narrow road through the woodlands, with rarely another vehicle in sight, climbed steeply upwards, offering spectacular views of snowy peaks in the Henry Mountains.

The nearer landscape was a mixture of red earth and rocks heavily dotted with cedar and sagebrush that gave away to tall pines and firs and still leafless aspen at higher altitudes.

I stopped at all the overlooks to gasp in wonder. I also gasped with delight when, just as I topped a 9,600-foot summit, a soaring red-tailed hawk glided past.

I didn’t mind at all that the winding and steepness of the road often meant traveling at speeds of 25 mph or even less at times.

The Burr Trail Grill and Trading Post, the civilized beginning of the Burr Trail Scenic Backroad. -- Photo by Pat Bean

It was just after 11 a.m. when I pulled into Boulder, a tiny town of less than 200 that was just 35 miles away from Torrey.

This scenic town was once so inaccessible that it was the last place in America to still get its mail delivered by mule power. That changed after a road was finally built to it from Escalante in 1939. It was 1947, however, before Boulder got electrical power.

My timing to hit the town, which sits at an elevation of 6,700 feet in the shadow of 11,700-foot Boulder Mountain, was perfect. I could have a leisurely lunch at the Burr Trail Grill, so named because of its access to the trail that’s been a hot land issue for Utahns for many years.

Pointing the way. -- Photo by Pat Bean

As I sat there, eating a spicy, guacamole hamburger made from 100 percent organic beef raised in Boulder, and my split pea, asparagus and shallot salad, memories of my last meal here and my drive on the four-wheel drive trail flooded my little gray cells.

I had been accompanied back then by a professional photographer. We were paired up together to do illustrated newspaper stories on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that had been newly created by President Bill Clinton, and on the controversy surrounding the proposed paving of the Burr Trail.

The wild and scenic backroad, which is now partially paved, begins in Boulder – right next to where I was having lunch — and runs through Capitol Reef National Park’s Waterpocket Fold and then on to Bullfrog in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

While the road is only about 70 miles long, it took the two of us from early morning to dusk to drive. Of course that included frequent stops and us getting lost a couple of times.

One special moment of the trip that I recalled this day was standing beside our turned-off vehicle, facing a landscape that appeared untouched by human hands, and being amazed at the quietness. It was as if all of a sudden I realized how amazing it was not to even hear the quiet hum of a refrigerator.

If ever I had a day I could repeat, this one would certainly be on the list.

But there was no time for regretting that this wasn’t that “Groundhog” day. There was still more of Highway 12 ahead. And next up was the mind-boggling Hogsback section of our drive.

I’ll tell you all about that tomorrow.

*Day 11 of the Journey, April 29, 2011

Read Full Post »

Weekly Photo Challenge: Wildlife

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , on May 8, 2011| 3 Comments »

A break from Travels with Maggie and our journey from Texas to Idaho to post a photo for the weekly photo challenge. 

The photo below was taken on Merritt Island in Florida. It was a spectacular place to watch birds. 

Northern Pintails: Heads or Tails — Photo by Pat Bean

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decided to do. You can act to change and control your life, and the procedure, the progress is its own reward.” — Amelia Earhart.

Read Full Post »

Capitol Reef: A Fold in the Earth’s Landscape

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” Wallace Stegner.

The domes of Capitol Reef. -- Photo courtesy Wikipedia

*Travels With Maggie

My soul-stirring day’s travel, full of colorful wonders of Mother Nature, didn’t end with the day’s driving. The magic continued at Capitol Reef National Park, a landscape created around 65 million years ago when forces deep in the earth created a wrinkle on the planet’s surface.

In earlier times, when I was driving a 4-wheel drive vehicle, I took the back, unpaved, steep, twisting road. which  went up and over the fold, into the park. Today, with my 24-foot Gypsy Lee, I more sedately drove into the park on Highway 24, which was still quite scenic.

Driving down into the park’s gorge, a steep narrow road, was one of Gypsy Lee’s first adventures, and I still have the picture my oldest son, D.C., took of her that day.

This photo of Gypsy Lee down in Capitol Reef's gorge was taken in May of 2004, when she was just two months old and Maggie and I were both seven years younger. -- Photo by D.C. Bean

Thankfully this was not my first or even second visit to the national treasure, becauseI didn’t have too much time to gawk at the park’s features. With what I did have, I decided to hike a ways on the Cohab Canyon trail, which after a short ascent is fairly level.

Its trailhead is right near the park’s campground.

I walked slowly, not as interested in distance, as I was in taking in the smaller miracles so often overlooked by younger hikers. I know, because I was once one of them.

Today, however, I got my thrills from examining the swirl of patterns on sandstone rocks that lay jumbled along the trail, from a yellow butterfly flitting over some tiny pink flowers growing next to a just-beginning-to-bud cactus, from a mule deer staring at me from up the trail before quietly disappearing, and from the sight of an ash-throated flycatcher sitting up straight on a pinyon tree branch.

These were the kinds of things that interested me for the hour or so before I got back on the road for an 8-mile drive to Torrey, a small town just outside the park where I had reservations at Wonderland RV Park.

My head was so over-filled with the day’s amazing sights that I lay sleepless in my over-the-cab for a long while, watching stars overhead through my roof vent and listening to Maggie snoring on the couch below. She had decided I was too restless and retreated there for a better night’s sleep.

Have I ever mentioned how loudly Maggie snores?

*Continuing Day 10 of the journey, April 28, 2011.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »