mk5 adventures

Dang, I was supposed to be camping there in two days! But here I am on TW when I should be getting more work done...

Fun fact: The bridge was used in a few movies over the years. It was once painted to look like a wooden bridge.

 

i didn’t understand that this was satire until I read half of your post

 

Upgrade: Finally, some SERIOUS recovery gear

Well folks, my truck is still taken apart, and I've got like a dozen unfinished projects underway. But one clearly takes top priority: After nearly four years of constant use, the winch in my front bumper just isn't cutting it any more. It's not worn out or broken, but sometimes you need more than a front-mounted winch to get the job done!

For example, say a stranded vehicle is located behind you. A front-mounted winch is useless in that situation, because none of the people in that vehicle can see your winch, so they'll have no idea that you're a winch-owning bad-ass who probably also works out. (Note: I don't actually work out.) Now, supposedly there are ways to use... like, a bunch of pulleys and some trees or whatever, to let you use your winch when the stranded vehicle is behind you, but none of that makes sense to me. Maybe you're supposed to throw the pulley at them to get their attention? Sounds risky... if you hit their car they might get angry and beat you up. Personally I think a big mirror would be better, so anyone could see your winch from any direction. But when I started unscrewing the huge mirror from our bedroom door, my wife got angry and threated to beat me up!

Well luckily, four years ago, some super-smart people announced an innovative new product that solves this problem completely. But here we are, four years later, and it STILL hasn't hit the market!

Well, the rest of you can keep calling them to ask when it will be released, but I'm done asking, because I finally made my own! (And also they blocked my number earlier this year.)

Introducing the MK5 Pronto-Tug:



It's the only one, and it's mine!



BOOM. Rear winching problem solved.



OK, now this one looks photoshopped. And it is, but only to obscure the license plate. The rest is a result of a poor choice of lighting. Don't believe me? Too bad, I just upgraded the rating to 20,000 pounds, and you don't have one.

Now there are some folks who might call this pointless, pathetically derivative, or a huge waste of time. One in particular might ask why the hell I finished this project instead of the dozen-or-so necessary repairs so we could go camping this weekend. Then with increasing irritation, ask me how much time I wasted designing and printing this totally fucking ingenious mounting and rope retention mechanism.... or how much money I wasted buying an actual fairlead, clevis, rope, etc...

Okay, well, that one person probably has a valid point. The rest of you, I say, are simply jealous!



Trust me, this thing is the horsepower-equivalent of at least 1,000 stickers.



I think this one is the best.


Happy Friday y'all!

-mk5

 

I just caught up with the last couple of pages. Great pics! Keep the bridges, tunnels, dams, mines and night shots coming. Can’t wait to see year 2 with the camera!

Any link to the colored LEDs you are using?

 

FYI, pretty sure this is a tiger trout, a brown/brook hybrid, that is fairly rare and (mostly) not naturally occurring (ie stocked). Nice work!

 

Thanks!!! I only post about 20% of what I'd like here--never enough time. Nice to know folks are enjoying it though!

Here's a batch I bought the other month:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08ZNB3W2Q

Dude that made my day, thank you! Can't wait to get back to those high-altitude lakes in UT and CO.




Well, I'm too busy to follow up on prior posts and projects, but here's a couple photos from our aborted camping trip turned roadtrip/airbnb adventure. No tacoma on this trip...











I just love Phoenix.



Who wore it better?



Sorry folks, I like these trucks, but I'm going to have to give this one to the Ford. Plus we saved around $200 on gas.

 

Hard to believe I didn't have a subscription to your thread. Well now I do. A lot of your photos/videos are missing unfortunately.
Sad to see Desert Center in such crappy shape. People suck. When I was first employed at Kaiser I also happened to come across Desert Center and found the history amazing especially since it is practically the birthplace for Kaiser Permanente.

 

Cheers man! I don't get a lot of time to finish posting pictures and stuff these days. Heck, my truck is still taken apart, since... February? Ugh.

Maybe I'll get back out there by June.

Anyone know of a mobile automotive A/C service shop in SoCal? I'm trying to get someone to evacuate the rest of my refrigerant. It would save me a few hours of work, vs. having to get it running to take to a shop, just to drive home and take it apart again.

HVAC shops say they won't touch automotive A/C, "call a mechanic!" Mechanics say they won't do mobile A/C work, "call an air conditioner guy!"

 

I’m sorry to hear your truck is still taken apart!

Just wanted to drop a line and say that I just found your build thread. Well, I found it like 2 days ago. I’ve kept it open in a separate tab on my browser so I didn’t lose my place while reading and I literally read every single post over the last few days lol

I usually just scroll through the pictures in threads and read a few paragraphs here and there but your writing is next-level.

Really awesome stuff man, I hope you get the truck back together soon!

 

Well guys I'm taking a sick day today. Figured I'd pass the time by posting some more photos. Let's resume that bridge tour from earlier this year...

Part 3: A bunch of cool bridges and tunnels and stuff!



So where were we again... oh yeah, we're in Portland OR, and we're checking out a particularly neat suspension bridge!



This one is the St John's Bridge. While it's not the biggest suspension span on the west coast today, it was when it was built, and either way it's easily one of the most beautiful.



Plus there's a nice park under one of the approaches, so it's fun to photograph too.



In fact apparently there was, until recently, an "illegal" skate park constructed under the approach. We missed it though, it was demolished in 2020. Plus I didn't bring my skate board.





Not far away is another bridge which is very different, but still pretty neat:






Maybe it doesn't look very big in these photos. Let's try a different angle... pickup truck for scale:



See, it's a pretty big wooden bridge. Couldn't drive over this one, but some other guys did, and one of them even waved at me! But I decided not to try climbing up there.



There's something really cool about gigantic wooden railroad bridges. They're kind of an endangered species though... My favorite specimen is a bit closer to home:



This one is the Goat Canyon Trestle, and while any large wooden trestle is worthy of a visit when you're in the area, this one is worthy as a sole destination for a trip. So I made it so, not long before the pandemic. Wish I had a dedicated camera back then... but I at least brought a really long selfie stick.



Definitely a cool hike, with plenty of tunnels and other other relics from the appropriately named "impossible railroad."



It is technically still an active right-of-way, and depending on which internet sources you trust, hiking it is illegal.



I for one would love to see trains return to this route someday. Although not at the above photographed moment.



I'll end this discussion with a video and its description from my visit there:

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, we were making our way to the Oregon coast! And oh boy are there some spectacular bridges there. Many were designed by famed architect Conde McCullough, and certainly epitomize a forgotten era of beauty in public construction. One of the most noteworthy is the Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport, OR, so we'll pick up our trip there:



Completed in 1936, this is one hell of an amazing bridge.



You'll note a lack of the long selfie stick shots on this bridge, and also on the other signature span of this route further to our south. Thus turned out to be the first time I've found myself unable to launch the flying camera. There's a towered airport not far from this bridge, putting the area firmly in class D airspace. No worries, I figured, I'd click buttons on my little phone until it said I could fly. There are ways to get permission for these things, or at least there were in other areas I've flown. No such luck this time -- they really don't want you flying here!

Being a stubborn bastard, I set up some radios to monitor the tower frequency, and an ADS-B scanner. There was absolutely no traffic, so I figured I'd give the tower a call and request permission the old-fashioned way. After all... I only wanted to fly around beneath the bridge itself, which seems like a pretty low hazard for the non-existent aircraft in the area. But even that plan was thwarted, because the stupid drone had a non-removable geofence set for this airspace. Those bastards. I packed it away and stumbled down the hill on foot. Got some ok photos in the end. I was more disappointed for what that meant for the other big bridge we'd encounter on this drive, which I knew was in a similar airspace restriction, and I now no longer had time to give it proper justice from the ground due to wasting so much time on this one.



They just don't make 'em like that these days.

Well there are a lot of smaller but noteworthy bridges as we continue driving to the south, few of which we had time to properly explore:


The Umpqua River Bridge (1936) comprises a swing span flanked by dual concrete arch spans on either side, rich with art-deco embellishments -- a common theme of many of McCollough's spans in this area.


The Suislaw River Bridge (1936) features a bascule draw span, with a concrete tied arch spans on either side. Check out the guard houses on the draw span -- beautiful!


The Isace Lee Patterson Bridge (1932) spans the Roge River, and although most of the interesting stuff is below deck level on this one, I couldn't help but admire the art deco influences exuding from the above-deck work...







The Bullard's Bridge is one of the few major ones on this route not designed by McCullough, and opened in 1954, clearly represents a different architectural era. It's a rarely-used vertical lift design flanked by camelback trusses, spanning the Coquille River.


The Cape Creek Bridge (1932) is a special one -- while not particularly huge, it's a quite unique in its Roman-aqueduct-inspired design.


It's also a bit tricky to photograph because it's really tucked away in a meandering gorge just giving way to the Pacific. But conveniently it's located at a popular beach area -- Haceta Head State Park.


That's a parabolic arch on the main span.



Another really neat part about this bridge is that it leads directly to a tunnel, which is like a 3x enhancement for cool points.



And wow, they even made the tunnel beautiful!



Well the post is getting long, but there's one more bridge that needs to be included here: the Conde B. McCullough Memorial Bridge (1936). It's by far the biggest and baddest-ass one on this drive, and I was really disappointed to reach it under shitty lighting and with no time to spare for proper photography. And the nearby airport and shitty FAA policies once again ruled out the flying camera.



It's a big one.


Hard to do it justice from the ground, and I didn't have time to find a good angle. Oh well, here are some pictures of its construction I stole from the internet:





The Oregon Coast sure makes for a great drive!

 

Part 4: Bridges and tunnels and stuff!

I'm on a roll here.

Having just cleared the final and most-majestic of the McCullough spans on the drive home, the Oregon Coast still had one more gem in store for us -- the Thomas Creek Bridge.



Opened in 1961, it's not the most interesting bridge on earth. But at 345', it's actually the highest in Oregon. (Note that the St Johns bridge from the above post is structurally taller at 408', but here we're talking about deck height, which is obviously the one true metric for bridge highness.)



It's hard to appreciate its height from the drive across. You need either a difficult hike, or a really long selfie stick, to get the right perspective.



It's so high up that the marine layer was intermittently blowing over the roadway. You'll notice a similarity to the Mill Creek Bridge that we featured in an earlier post, despite being built over a decade later, appears to be quite similar in design. I wonder what they did before this one was built... I'm guessing a huge chunk of today's 101 route didn't exist prior to this bridge being built.



One irritating thing I've found with my flying camera, it tends to delete green hues from dark areas of photos. Especially if I'm shooting through a polarizer, which is pretty much all the time except at night. I have to either recolor the photos by hand, or decide to live with the shitty coloring, as is the case above. Sigh.


Here's a fancy moving picture to cheer me up.

Speaking of high bridges, in the US, that title is still held by the Royal Gorge Bridge, which also managed to hold the world title from its construction in 1929 throughout the remainder of the 20th century:



Now I'll agree that's a terrible photo, but it's my terrible photo, so that's what you get here. This was nearly 10 years ago, right after the park had been closed by a fire, and long before I had anything better than a potato cellphone for photography. But damn, I loved visiting that place as a kid!

While it's a cool bridge for sure, it's not a particularly useful one, and it was built as a tourist attraction rather than as part of a highway route. The title of the highest highway bridge in the US goes to the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge bypassing the Hoover Dam. It wasn't quite built last time I rolled through, but here's a construction shot:



Gotta plan a trip to go see it someday. Although now that I think about it, I think I've seen and crossed every other bridge spanning the Colorado from this point north, all the way to Colorado... although they are definitely few and far-between! Here are the interesting ones:


Here's a pair of crossings at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Permits required to stay down here, but it's an epic hike if you ever have the time!


Navajo Bridge(s) at the mouth of Marble Canyon. That river was teaming with fish, but shucks, I didn't have a fishing pole back then...

Glen Canyon Dam Bridge, we'll start with this shot from 2008 so we can laugh and/or cry at how full the pool was back then...


Here's a more recent shot, and trust me folks, that lake is looking pretty empty these days!




The next bridge is Hite Crossing:




Once we get to Moab, the bridges become normal and boring, save for the ruins of the Dewy bridge:



Let's get back to our main storyline now, returning to the Pacific Coast. I enjoyed seeing this temporary Bailey Bridge (or whatever the modern equivalent is called) during our drive through Redwoods NP:


Driving south on 101 of course eventually leads us to the most famous bridge of them all, the Golden Gate:



That's right, we couldn't even see it! Fucking San Francisco...



Even with nothing to see, the whole NRA was a zoo. Driving through the tunnel was neat though.

Here's all we managed to see of the bridge:



I've hiked this bridge before, and let me tell you, the worst part of that hike was discovering there was absolutely no food at the far end! Note even a vending machine. Damn near starved hiking all the way back to the city to find something to eat...



Well that was kind of underwhelming, so here's another bridge which, according to Wikipedia, is painted the same color as the Golden Gate, and inspired by the design of the nearby Bay Bridge (note that it's also a double decker):



If you ever needed proof that better lighting makes for better photos, I went back later in the day for another shot... From the bar that is, but the bridge photography was nice too.



That's a Rio-de-Janeiro-style Jesus on the far shore too. Nice touch!



OK well let's round out our tour of random bridges of the pacific coast... here's a famous one along PCH in Big Sur:



And a neat railroad bridge near the corner of the state:



And another big one not far from Santa Barbara:



Wow, so big of bridge!



Well that's enough of bridge photos and cold medicine for me... I'll have to go take some more I guess. But let's end our tour back in Portugal with a few other random shots that seem worthy of sharing somewhere, so why not here?

A fortress:



Some nice civic architecture:



Oh and hey there's even another bridge...



This one looks cool and old, and very much unlike the kinds of bridges we find here on the west coast.



And looking back at these now several years after that trip... I discovered another hidden gem: I happened to catch a sunrise timelapse of, you guessed it, a distant bridge. I didn't realize it at the time but this is the Vasco da Gama Bridge, which was until recently Europe's longest bridge.



The crazy thing is that this bridge is poised to once again retake this title. It's odd to think that the free world might cherish the fall of a major bridge, but what can I say, we live in crazy times.

 

Retitling this from Part 2 to Part 3 is a tricky way of making us think you wrote more than you did.

I hearby request an additional part as compensation.

Seriously though, very cool. @mrs.turbodb is not happy that I now want to stop and look at all bridges and railways. She knows it is your fault.

 

Yeah the whole numbering scheme kind of fell apart, part 1 was "night photography", part 2 was "bridges and stuff," then I did nothing for 8 months, then I wrote two more posts about bridges. Whatever, glad to be posting things.

So to keep the momentum going, I present:

Trip report: Colorado 2022
(I'd call it "back for more" but someone already posted a report under that name. But to be clear I'm going back. For more.)

So… my dad came out to visit again. He probably wanted to see the vast metropolis where I begrudgingly reside… it’s famous cultural icons, world-class dining, sunny beaches, and all sorts of other expensive overhyped crowded bullshit that I don’t much care for. But I got to plan the visit, and I wanted to explore desolate places, rough roads, and maybe some abandoned mines… you know, the usual. The problem was, it was the middle of the summer, so it was far too hot to explore my beloved SoCal deserts, and I figured the Sierras would be on fire by then. Instead, I came up with a plan to road-trip back home with him. Not all the way, of course -- just as far as the interesting scenery would take us: to Colorado. Then I’d dump him at a train station and wish him luck traversing the endless monotony known as the Midwest.

Some might wonder why I’d want to drive him to a train station some 14 hours from home, when he already had a perfectly good ticket home booked from LA. And the reason is, this would be no 14-hour slog of freeways and fast food… it would be a week-long adventure across the American Southwest, a tour of the back country that would take me to some new places, and revisit many favorites from prior trips. Plus it would put me in Colorado at the perfect time of year to enjoy its high country, with several days before I had to be back at work, with a fishing pole in my hand. So… here we go!

Day 1

You guessed it, I blew it again! The truck was nowhere assembled by the time our 7AM planned departure arrived. And I hadn’t slept either. No major repairs this time, just a ton of minor ones that had been dragging on for months on end while I was busy at work. Perhaps the most time-consuming project was repairing the cracked bodywork around my air intake, where I learned definitively that I can’t tig weld very well:

Here was one of the original problems -- cracked bodywork everywhere!



And the eventual repair:



For whatever reason I decided to make this repair out of stainless steel and "learn" how to tig weld in the process. Oops.



Es no bueno...


Uhhh...


I also wound up swapping out a leaking steering line, fixing a broken skid mount, welding shut some cracks in the bodywork, re-plumbing my water system with a different type of hoses and fittings, rebuilding my air compressor regulator, accidentally breaking then replacing my steering reservoir, replacing all the air QD fittings, fixing a rainwater leak in the vent behind the rear seat, replacing and adding rock lights and cameras, and… oh yeah, the day before leaving I discovered one of my shocks had bled out on the driveway. Luckily DC Shocks was able to rebuild it for me while I waited that very day – thanks guys! With of these projects having been neglected for months on end, I’ve never had to scrounge around for so many lost screws! And unfortunately, the one project I hadn’t tackled yet was my air conditioning, which has been slowly leaking for some time. Hmm… I wonder if we’d need air conditioning while exploring the desert in the middle of summer?


New steering lines...


One of my skid mounting points broke loose, had to weld it back together...




Ta-da...

At one point things were looking so bad that even my garage lizard Juan Pablo came out to help:


I eventually got everything thrown together, but not until the sun had already set. The planned destination at the north rim of the Grand Canyon would have to wait for some other time. We hit the road around 10PM and made it as far as Cima before I had to call it a night. (A more accurate term would be “early morning,” but let’s not split hairs!) I would have rather stopped earlier, but there are few places in the Mojave where it’s bearable to camp in the summer – the thermometer had been reading in the high-90s in the valleys below, whereas they dipped to pleasant low-80s as we climbed in elevation to the foot of this ancient volcano (or whatever it is--I’m not a geologist) called Cima Dome. And alarmingly, the AC hadn’t been working at all. We found an old corral not far off the 15, arriving just in time to catch a spectacular view of the setting near-full moon, framed by desert-aged timbers of a long-disused cattle fence… but not in time for me to unpack the camera and properly photograph it.



Why don’t I ever have that stupid camera ready? Oh well, I wandered back to the gate after we set up the tent to at least get a shot of the heavens above…



and to try a few other angles as well, here’s the best shot:



I didn’t linger long, I was exhausted. But just before turning in, I decided to set up a timelapse to catch the rest of the night skies before dawn. But here’s the thing about those waxing gibbous moonsets… the sunrise is never far behind.



Looks like the skies began to lighten about 2 minutes after I went to bed! Oof.

 

2022 Trip: Day 2

Despite leaving essentially an entire day late, skipping the Grand Canyon let us more-or-less catch up to the originally planned itinerary. In fact it seemed we had an hour to spare, so I immediately set about squandering it to put us back on a more familiar chaotically rushed pace. To my delight, the AC sprang back into action that morning, not as cold as it once was, but enough to make the drive entirely more pleasant.




Hey I've camped up there before...


I love those Mojave cattle fences...



We meandered around for a bit in MNP, checking out the progression of the devastation from the Dome fire a few years prior.





Sadly this is now a 43 thousand acre graveyard for some 1.3 million Joshua trees. Their eerie skeletons are beginning to topple.

Then we continued racing up the 15 into Utah, finally turning off for two-lane highways at Hurricane. I pulled off briefly there, hoping to get a souvenir shirt for my wife at this place:


We like watching them on the you tubes.

No luck this time—they’re closed on Sundays. How Utahn of them! But at least they have a shop now--last time we rolled through they were just a tow yard with a YouTube channel. Now they’re a YouTube brand with a tow yard. Good way to get a dose of Utah scenery when we're stuck at home.



Our next photo stop was at the Glen Canyon dam. My dad had wanted to see the Hoover Dam, but I told him this one was just as good. (It’s not, but he pulled this kind of shit all the time when I was a kid, and karma’s a bitch!) We both strolled out onto the adjacent arch bridge to marvel at the concrete monstrosity beneath us, and while I fumbled around with the camera, the old man wandered into the visitor center.



I followed him several minutes later, but just as I reached for the handle of the dark-tinted glass door, a uniformed man with an automatic rifle strung over his chest pushed it open, and politely informed me that the visitor center was closing. A steady stream of tourists followed him, my dad among them. Wow, I bet bars would have an easier time clearing out the drunks at night if they hired that guy!


Yeah, twice on one page, I like the picture.

Next we cruised through Page, flanked by its bizarrely green golf courses in steadfast defiance of the surrounding desert and its relentless climate--a marvelous testament to now-waning triumphs of last century’s reclamation efforts. I had booked us late-afternoon tours of the nearby Lower Antelope, but with temperatures well above 100, I had decided to cancel them earlier that day. Actually I had cancelled it because I was confused about time zones and didn’t think we would have made it in time, and although we in fact could have, I still don’t think the old man would have done very well on the hike, especially its steep staircases. So instead, I headed over to revisit horseshoe bend:



Which turned out to nearly as long of a hike anyway – wish I had held out for the (new to me) Lower Antelope tour after all! Oh well, at least there were no stairs involved here. And damn, has this place changed! When I first visited here some two decades ago, it was an unpaved, unmarked pull off from US 89… and I had the whole place to myself. Today it’s a city park, with a sprawling parking lot behind a tollbooth now charging $10 for entry. And it was PACKED – by no exaggeration I’m guessing we shared the place with 200 other tourists despite the triple-digit heat, with at least 50 at the overlook at any time. A most cherished benefit of the recent park development are the sun shelters constructed along the trail – especially on this day.



The final stop in Page was at the car-parts zone. Drenched in sweat from this relatively short hike, I had now concluded that we wouldn’t survive the rest of the trip without properly function air conditioning. It was time for a recharge, even if that meant I’d later regret injecting leak-stop into the system. Dammit, why can’t they just sell pure refrigerant in a convenient-to-use can? Nobody will evacuate my system now... not sure how to go about changing out my compressor as originally planned. Looks like I'll have to vent it outdoors, which is terrible and infuriating.

[photo missing]
Um… what if it’s 106?

With the AC now blowing ice-cold, we charged onwards. Our destination was Monument Valley, where I had booked a hotel room. We had to make it by 8PM or else we’d miss the dining room and its Navajo tacos – if ever there was a good reason to speed, this was it!



For many years, the landscape east of Page was punctuated by the towering smokestacks of the nearby Navajo Generating Station.

I didn’t actually notice their absence this time, but was puzzled to see that the catenary had been removed from its coal-hauling railroad as we passed over it on the way out of town. This was certainly one of the most unique railroad operations in the US, owing to its reliance on electrification, and its isolation from other rail networks. I’ve enjoyed watching its electric locomotives hum along portions of its 73-mile long track several times in decades past. I wondered if they had switched to diesel traction?


(This photo is from Wikipedia, not from our present trip, not taken by me.)


As we charged eastward, generally following this railroad and enjoying the increasingly beautiful Utah (er… make that Arizona) landscapes, I eventually realized that the railroad in fact is no longer in service – the coal mine and the power station it served both closed in 2019, the latter was demolished in 2020:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5cZEdJmiWo

(not sure if this one will embed… and obviously, not my video!)



While the isolated rails of the coal-hauling operation remain today, the electrical system appears to be long gone. And although the massive silos at its western stand tall as ever, the gigantic conveyor that once delivered coal from the strip mine to the south is already being disassembled:


Not bad for shooting from a speeding car, eh?



I pulled off a few more salvageable shots along the way too…



And by salvageable, I mean the original exposure in fact looked like this:



Not too bad. Here are some more shots from Utah's golden hour:







We in fact arrived at Monument Valley with time enough to stroll into the dining room at a leisurely pace. Not bad. And those Navajo tacos were every bit worth the rush!




Yum!

 

2022 Utah Adventure: Day 3

I left the curtains of our east-facing hotel balcony open that night, and set a single alarm, unsure if the dawn skies would be inspiring enough to rouse me from the comfort of slumber so early following the prior day’s drive... but still wanting to give myself a chance. And along with the brutal effects of sleep deprivation, a theme for that prior day had been uncertainty regarding which time zone we were in, and for that matter, what time zone was being specified for anything else (tours, restaurants, etc.) We had awoken in CA, crisscrossed our way along the AZ/UT border all day, and were now at the edge of (but within) the Navajo Nation – three differing jurisdictions when it comes to time zones and daylight savings time. A situation so confusing there’s even a Wikipedia page about it. And who knows where the cell towers from which we intermittently pulled signals were located… our phones were usually in disagreement. In any case, my alarm wound up going off well into the sunrise, not pre-dawn as planned, so the spectacular scene unfolding through the window, already well-enveloped in golden light as I turned to face it, was more than enough to motivate me out of bed. I hopped in the truck and headed out to see if I could get a nice timelapse… but no sooner had I pulled out of the parking lot than I saw the first rays of sunlight peeking over the horizon. So I stopped at the first turnout, perhaps not even leaving hotel property, to catch what was left. A laughable distance to drive, but hey, this is America. And in America, no distance is too short to drive.


Lol what a trek!

Another thing about America, and I’m quoting straight fact here, is that it’s “the beautiful.” So despite having missed the best colors of dawn, there was no shortage of the beautiful left for me to enjoy. Unfortunately I did a terrible job picking where to point the camera, so you’ll just have to believe me on that one. But oh well, I was really enjoyed being outside, relaxing in a chair. I even hopped on TW to catch up on some leisure reading… probably the first time in months I’d been on here for any reason other than urgent truck repairs!



But shit, my timelapses sucked!


LAME!!!


ULTRA-LAME!!!


And then it was hot.

As the beautiful sunrise gave way to the relentless inferno of desert sunlight, I packed up, swung by the gas station, and returned to the room--where to my great relief, the old man was already up and moving. We enjoyed the dining room once more, swung by the front desk to print some permits, and hit the road.


It seemed expensive at the time :/

First up was Monument Valley, just across the highway.



This place is best toured in early-morning or evening sunlight, and having enjoyed the latter on my prior visit, I was every bit as awestruck now experiencing the former.


Holy range compression, batman!

I made sure to get my wife some souvenirs from the roadside stands this time too--last time through (with her in the passenger seat no less) they had already packed up for the night.


Oh boy, pony rides!



Next up was Mexican Hat--our last fuel stop for quite some time. And having arrived in daylight this time, I was finally able to see this town’s namesake!


You’ve heard of the dance, but here’s the rock!



A few moments further, we turned off the highway for our next destination…






Another fee paid, another spectacular view… and if you thought yesterday’s horseshoe bend was wacky, wait till you see this shit!


That’s, like, 4 horseshoe bends strung together! Whoever designed this river (I’m guessing this “San Juan” guy?) must have been super drunk.



The state park is obviously a no-drone zone, but it’s a postage-stamp parcel surrounded by infinite BLM lands, and beyond its boundaries I was able to get plenty far enough away from other humans to send the thing aloft in good conscience.

Here's a slightly more immersive version if you've got 20 seconds to play an embedded video:

https://youtu.be/yyGUI8xB-Nk

Pushing onwards, and sadly skipping Valley of the Gods, we arrived at the Moki Dugway, and again I was struck by the entirely new perspective afforded by revisiting a prior destination under different lighting conditions. Of course, last time I drove this road was in the darkness of night. And the votes are in--this place is even better in daylight!



Ok, you’re thinking, that’s already four super-cool places, just in one day--surely you must be getting to camp by now?

Hell no, this is UTAH!


Bears Ears in the distance...

So although our night’s destination soon came into view, we had another park to visit first.

Unlike the numerous towering sandstone arches that prominently dot the landscape of the so-named national park to our north, the three enormous natural bridges of this so-named national monument lie below the surrounding terrain, within a rather narrow canyon. (Perhaps not narrow by Utah standards, but generally not much wider than the bridges that span it.) So while they are easily viewed from overlooks along the park loop, you really have to hike down there to appreciate their grandeur.


See what I mean?

I only had the time and endurance to hike to one of them, so obviously, I chose the biggest: Sipapu. (Ok, well, maybe I didn’t know that at the time, and I just chose the first one we came across…) The hike is scarcely over half a mile each way, but don’t be deceived – it’s a steep one -- so I’m glad I doubled back to grab a water bottle as I left my dad in the air-conditioned car with his audio book, before exuberantly charging down the trail and its series of staircases and ladders. Smart thinking, me! I made great time speed-hiking the trail, knowing its short distance posed little risk of exhaustion even in sunny triple-digit heat. But by the time I had regained all 600 vertical feet of potential energy, that water bottle was empty, and I was thirsty for more!



Perhaps my favorite part about this hike is that, unlike the total zoo that is Arches, here I had the whole place to myself!


Some cool... [whatever this is?]... above a cliff dwelling en route...

Update: This is "tafoni" -- thanks @turbodb and @ETAV8R



Sipapu Bridge used to be the largest natural bridge in the US – in fact the largest of its type in the world (China hosts a handful of definitively larger bridges amidst its vast karst topographies, but this is not Karst--plus it's over here in the free world). But then in 2007 some clipboard-wielding geeks re-measured it with a laser beams and fuddy-duddy “scientific methods” and it got booted to 13th place worldwide, behind several others in Utah. Maybe it was the same buzzkills that demoted Pluto around the same time?


That’s okay, Sipapu Bridge, you’re still the biggest natural bridge in my heart!

And for what it’s worth, it is the largest natural bridge in the US where hiking beneath it is neither discouraged nor illegal. It’s also the largest bridge I was standing beneath at that very moment, and that had a certain appeal as well.




Up is the harder direction! All I could muster at this point was a mediocre cellphone shot.

Returning breathless to the parking lot, I chugged six gallons of water and turned the AC up to 11 to cool off while we cruised through the rest of the park. A few stops later we were facing our night’s destination once again: Bears Ears.



Not long into the graded-but-bumpy road taking us to higher elevation, I stopped to air down, glancing back towards the vast expanse of the lower San Juan watershed and the distant towering monoliths we had so enjoyed that morning.


One more glimpse back...

We still had many hours of daylight left, but I had made no effort to scout out potential camping spots up on Bears Ears. Last time through, my camp site sucked, so I was hoping to find somewhere with less cow shit, fewer yellowjackets, and maybe even a spectacular view. I succeeded on the first two fronts, but owing to the dense tree cover up there, and the fact that many of the roads suggested on my topo maps turned out not to exist, I decided after an hour or two of exploring random spurs to settle on an okay-but-not-great camp spot. We were at the edge of a plateau that would have offered a commanding view of a valley to our west, over which sun would later set, but we couldn’t see much of it through the trees. The flying camera revealed what we were missing, and was repeatedly set out to investigate the ever-changing sunlight gracing the terrain...



Arriving so early to camp led to the decision to just chill in our chairs, enjoying some snacks and drinks in the cool breeze. We had plenty of time after all, so why rush things?





Well predictably, the time flew by, and we soon found ourselves cooking dinner in the dark, then regretting we hadn’t set up the tent earlier! But the weather was splendid, and with a now-full moon overhead, the gentle swaying of the trees quickly lulled us to a most-restful night’s sleep.

 

Mojave National Preserve is having volunteer Joshua Tree seedling planting at Cima Dome next month. I did this for three days last March and it was fun. https://forms.office.com/pages/resp...ITwoaWh1UNzdBRzVaMjZEUldXNkJYVzFLVEMxMFRHSi4u

 

[whatever this is?] is "tafoni," which I only know because (I think, though I have a very poor memory) that Eric @ETAV8R mentioned it in one of his trip reports, at which point I went back and edited all of mine.

 

2022 Adventure Spectacular: Day 4 (GIF DAY!!!)

I got kinda bored, so I'm trying to see if I can tell this day's story using all gifs. Hope your browser is up for a challenge.

---

The shade of the trees let us sleep in, so sleep in we did. So much so, in fact, that we decided to skip breakfast and hit the road again. Or maybe it was the discovery that I had frozen the eggs rock-solid at the bottom of the fridge that led to this decision. I’m not totally sure, but either way, I need to get better at packing the fridge.



Can you eat eggs that have been frozen? Neither of us knew. And with no cell service, Siri couldn’t help either -- the old man tried. But it was a moot point, because through trial and error, we figured out that you definitely can’t eat eggs that are currently frozen, at least not using any of the utensils and cookware available in my camp kitchen set. We speculated that other tools from our camp gear might have enabled us to open the eggs: perhaps the hammer or the axe, or how about the handgun? But we weren’t hungry enough to try any of those terrible ideas



Unlike my first trip through Bears Ears, when I was hopelessly lost the entire time, this time I knew most of the turns by memory, plus I had all sorts of digital maps at the ready on my dashboard. Navigation would be a breeze! But not long after heralding this achievement to my passenger, the dot on the map marking our GPS location went gray. Then it disappeared entirely! My GPS receiver was on the fritz.



Not long afterwards, the electrical gremlins spread to my rear-view dashcam thing, which started flickering, then cut out entirely. Why do I keep buying cheap electronics? (Answer: because they’re so cheap!)



Neither of these problems were particularly terrible, but both would lead to making mistakes for the rest of the trip. I wish the electronics in my car were more reliable!





Sidenote: Upon returning home, I wound up replacing the battery in my dashcam in hopes of reviving it. This model is no longer available, and it would be a ton of work to tear out all its wiring (including its power supply buried in my dash, and its back-facing camera in the rear bumper), just to replace it with a newer model with the same features but different wires and connectors. After making the repair, I was delighted to see its display light up once again, and re-mounted it to the windshield. Of course it crapped out again after a few minutes of driving. I eventually discovered it was a worn-out USB power connection that had led to the loss of power – something I could have fixed on the road! Which is really too bad, because with it disabled for the rest of the trip, I lost out on dashcam footage that would have included an epic fighter-jet flyover, a rollover crash and several near-disasters on the highways, my sliding perilously off a shelf-road snowbank, and the bizarre behaviors of the countless idiots with whom I shared the road. Even worse, and speaking of idiots, I lost a brand-new fishing pole out of my bed when I moronically left the tailgate down and drove away after a fuel stop. No way I would have made that mistake if the always-on rear-view video feed was still working.





Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, by now we had worked our way down to Beef Basin. Today, we’re going to re-run my favorite back-country route of all time, heading into Canyonlands via Bobby’s Hole.



I hadn’t seen anyone else all day, save for the seemingly abandoned old pickups and rundown RV dotting the open range we had traversed above. It seemed as though we had the whole basin to ourselves. But curiously, I noted that I was following the fresh tire tracks of an extremely wide vehicle. I wondered if it was perhaps some sort of crazy dune buggy?

The answer later revealed itself: It was a road grader. About the last thing on earth I expected to meet on these rough and seemingly unmaintained roads!



But I'm getting ahead of myself. Long before we saw the grader, we actually encountered a surprising amount of road maintenance underway out there. In fact the only vehicles we encountered all day were associated with it.


Dude must've been on break...

Arriving at the Canyonlands turn-off with time to spare, I decided to explore other directions aimlessly for a while, knowing there were some ancient ruins to explore out there. But I hadn’t really researched them, and wasn’t too concerned with actually finding them. I did encounter a gigantic tumbleweed blocking the road, so large I had to get out the shovel to bat it off the road. And we were caught off guard by a minor flash flood – not in the bad way – but surprised nonetheless when we returned to a dry wash we had crossed some 30 minutes prior, finding that the countless tire tracks marking the trail (including ours) had been erased by foot-deep floodwaters that had disappeared as mysteriously as they had arrived. We had scarcely seen any rain in any direction up to that point!

That’s not to say the skies were clear; clouds had been building all day, and it had just started sprinkling on us. We would soon encounter the first of many occasional monsoonal showers, and would see countless more in the distance as the sun began to descend from its zenith.




Here's that tumbleweed I mentioned. Wish I had dashcam footage of my futile efforts to shoo it away. I mean, there's nothing to grab them by, and if you try to kick it, your foot just goes right in, then your leg is covered in stickers. Next time I'll know to just go for the shovel!

Another point of interest was a huge, mysterious, white square slab located just off the road to Canyonlands. I had noted it on satellite imagery when planning my first trip here, but then I forgot to check it out. My default guess as to its purpose might be “UFO landing pad,” but in the intervening years, I managed to solve the mystery from afar: It’s is a catchment system for a guzzler.

But I still swung by to check it out, if nothing else, it gave us an excuse for a lunch break.



The road-grader tracks stopped just before the first steep decent leading to Bobby’s Hole. Here we noted a work truck and trailer parked at the pulloff, from which originated a new set of tracks, now appearing to be those of a narrow tracked vehicle – I was curious if we’d encounter it below.



With that in mind, I sent out the flying camera from the top of Bobby’s Hole, knowing I might not be able to reverse my way up the steep loose terrain if the trail was blocked below. Of course I could have just walked too, but this was more fun.



Sure enough, squinting at my tiny cellphone screen, I saw a most peculiar dot moving about at the bottom of the route ahead. I decided the investigation warranted breaking my rule of “don’t operate this obnoxious flying camera within earshot of other people, or at least not without their permission.” Trust me, there was no chance of startling this guy -- he was making quick work of the loose boulders down there, in the cutest little bulldozer I’ve ever seen!



But speaking of being startled, the camera’s return trip revealed a human approaching our vehicle from behind. Out here in the middle of nowhere in 95-degree heat, just a guy in a t-shirt and jeans, no backpack, no water…



It turns out this was the grader operator, who had made his way back to the end of the graded section of the road behind us, then walked down to check on the dozer guy. Over the next hour or so, I enjoyed chatting with them, and watching this miniature bulldozer transform the trail as he worked his way up to the top, eventually clearing the way for me to descend the trail in relative ease. It was an impressive ordeal.




Gotta get material from somewhere...




Wasn't even fazed...




Practically an expressway now!

Soon we were at the gates of my most-favorite national park. Don't have a gif for that one, sorry.



The various delays had eaten up pretty much all our free time for the day, so we more-or-less just cruised through the park, enjoying every minute of it. Between the front locker, the multitude of spotter cams I’ve installed, and the knowledge gained by having driven this route a few years ago, I rarely had to get out to pick a line. It was a spectacular drive, made all the more blissful by air conditioning, and with dramatically less drama than last time.


The NEEDLES!!!


WEEE!!!!


Seriously. The fucking NEEDLES.



Nothing on earth is quite like that drive through the Needles District.





I would have liked to pick a different camp site for this year’s visit to Canyonlands, but it turned out that good ‘ol New Bates Wilson was the only one available when I hatched my last-minute plan. But what’s so amazing about Canyonlands is that even though the park was “booked full,” we didn’t see another soul the whole time.



Making better time to camp than expected, I went ahead and pushed onwards to the confluence overlook trailhead. Not with any intention of hiking it, but knowing that it offered certain facilities that would simplify things at camp. We reached camp with an hour of sunlight left. It had been an exhilarating day, and the views kept us enthralled as the skies ominously churned above, without ever really letting loose.



Dinner tonight was steak and vegetables, and we managed to cook them perfectly in the dutch oven, adding liberal quantities of red wine and seasonings to the mix. It was delicious!



But it turned out my dad wasn’t interested in sharing the now irreversibly uncorked, nearly-full bottle of red wine with me, so I had no choice but to drink it entirely on my own. I would regret that in the morning, of course, but it was great at the time.

[tl-gif]

Unlike my last trip, where Bears Ears was cold at buggy but Canyonlands was blissfully pleasant, this time around we enjoyed perfect bug-free weather at the higher elevation, whereas camp at Canyonlands was a bit stifling and overrun by mosquitos. No regrets though, I knew I’d be dealing with mosquitoes in even greater quantity as we headed to Colorado, and bugs or not, I can’t wait for our next trip to Canyonlands.



Okay well that was fun. But I got some old-fashioned stationary photos to fax in, too.


It’s what’s for dinner.











I’ll point out that I didn’t attach my light string to foliage or government property here, which I now know is verboten in the park. It’s just sitting loose on the rock.

 

I'm going to have to go back and read from the beginning. So far I've just skimmed through, but the commentary's gold and the photography is really incredible.

 

2022 Super Mega Awesome Trip: Day 5

I slept in again, long past when the sun should have woken me.



It was brutal. I was drenched in sweat. Flailing my arms in vain at the swarming insects, cursing each drop of sweat as it fell from my brow; with deafening pain echoing throughout my skull upon each heartbeat, I prayed that the sun would just explode, and that the next time I opened my eyes to squint in horror at the reality of my predicament might somehow be the last. Then I tried to move my neck, and things somehow got even worse.



I blinked a few more times... okay, maybe I wasn't dying after all. Maybe I just had some red wine, then slept on my neck wrong.

A quick stretch, a glass of water, and a short walk around camp had me willing to face existence again--quicker than the stupid sun's explosion could have reached earth anyway. Fucking ass-hole sun... I threw on a hat to thwart its relentless assault of skin cancer. Packing up was still on the slow and uncomfortable side, but what can one expect out in this middle-of-nowhere shadeless desert hellscape I cherish so much.


Here we see the native Toyota Tacoma, lurking in hunt of it's favorite prey: costly suspension components...

Today we are exiting the park via Elephant Hill. My dad has never been on a trail like this one, and he got a good kick out of the reversing switchback on the way up. But to his credit, he never felt the need to step out and walk. Although I'm not sure he could have, given the angles one encounters driving that trail. A true gem of the National Parks.



Taking my own advice from last time, I routed us through Monticello—the closest opportunity to refuel. Even then it seemed like we barely made it. The gas light had been on since confluence overlook the night before, and the needle had been on the peg since Elephant Hill. There was a lot of pavement to go.



I fully expected the engine to sputter out at any moment as we climbed over the ridgeline north of town.



But we made it without any problems, then fueled up and enjoyed some delicious burgers and shakes. As glad as I was to have filled up the gas tank, the shake shack was even better -- between the still rock-solid frozen eggs in the fridge, and the soul-crushing headache I had been nursing all morning… well, breakfast had once again been skipped.



I had been hoping to visit the hanging flume on the Dolores, but had misplaced its location in my memory, so I wound up just taking the “scenic route” to Telluride, with intermittent backtracking and cursing at my now nonfunctional GPS. I still had my phone, plus, like paper maps or whatever. But sometimes it's more fun to be stubborn.



Excitement grew as the San Juans appeared in the distance, becoming more majestic with each new glimpse. I passed an absolutely huge convoy of Tacomas on the way, and if my stupid dashcam was working, I'd post the footage here. Bet there were some TW members in there!

Unfortunately as we approached Telluride, the idiot traffic became pretty infuriating. There’s not a lot of opportunities to pass on these roads, and some people just want to drive 28 miles an hour on the highway no matter how many cars pile up behind them. These are the people going to Telluride. And not surprisingly, Telluride was jam-packed with cars blocking the traffic lanes, each idling in pace with a chosen pedestrian, wondering towards which luxury vehicle he might be lugging that framed print of the Maroon Bells protruding amidst the reusable bags of organic produce. Their blinkers flashing resolutely, indicating not a hope, but a fundamental belief, for a parking spot that will never materialize. It’s a delightful town, except during tourism seasons-- especially Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.



Tired of the brake lights, I weaved my way towards our escape route to the high country above: Imogene Pass.




Home sweet future home...

Imogene Pass had been closed to traffic up until just a few days prior to our visit, not due to snow, but for bridge repairs. I didn’t even remember there being bridges up there, but sure enough there were several. I’m glad they got them fixed in time for our visit.


One of several

There must have been some kind of classic Jeep jamboree going on at the time, because half the vehicles up there were older than I am. It was impressive to see so many carbureted engines still working in the 21st century… although several seemed to be struggling on the climb to 13k feet. I love older vehicles and enjoy seeing them out and about, but the overwhelming aroma of unburned hydrocarbons trailing them gave me newfound appreciation for my vehicle's (relatively) modern, computer-controlled engine and fully functional catalyst system. Sure, maybe it's not a Tesla, and maybe I don't have a vacation home in Telluride... but hey, I'm saving for my first Gulfstream.




Wonder what a lift ticket costs these days...




At the summit once again


Nice view from a side overlook towards Corkscrew, where we'll be tomorrow!

I met a new Bronco on the way down too, and chatted with its driver for a bit. He was having a great time, and without doubt, that Bronco looked right at home on the trail.



I actually ordered myself a Bronco, put down my $100 the first day they were offered. I was hoping for a first-edition, but the website kept crashing. Wound up building a tricked-out Sasquatch – truly a marvelous vehicle when I test drove it, and although I’ll say the Tacoma eats speedbumps better, that ecoboost hauled. But in the end I decided that $70k of hard-earned money should probably be saved for this “retirement” thing, especially since it doesn't look like I can count on the sun exploding whenever I want it to. Or maybe a Gulfstream...



Well the dealer was absolutely elated at my hesitation, and my custom Bronco was gone from his lot by the next morning. Bet he made at least ten grand. In any case, the new Broncos were starting to make quite the showing in the San Juans; I saw a bunch of them in Ouray. Definite "cool new kid" vibes there... and I still kinda want one.



Further down the hill I encountered these marmots--they were talking about the Tesla Cybertruck. The one on the right pre-ordered one. The other two are making fun of him for not ordering a Bronco or other reality-based vehicle. Poor little guy.



One of my concerns with this somewhat early-season visit was snow. Sure didn't see much on Imogene:


Hope my stupid luck holds...

My go-to motel in Ouray closed down the other year, so we wound up at a new-to-me B&B off the main drag. I’ll definitely be back next time I’m here with the wife.



I loved studying this map they had hanging in the back hallway:


Ouray was as fun as ever, with the exception that my usual brewery was closed that day:


Bro, I literally can't even

But hey, there’s no shortage of awesome places to eat and drink in Ouray.



Making my final trip to the truck for forgotten toiletries that night, I noticed a bright light high on the mountainside above. Was there a cabin or a camp up there? I have no idea, but it’s a crazy-steep slope, and I can’t find any trace of a trail anywhere near there on satellite maps. I wonder if it was rock climbers making camp up there?



Or maybe.... ALIENS?



The truth is out there, bro.


NOTE: This adventure resumes several pages later. Link to part 6 here.