Crosscountry Adventures

I’m in Moab, Utah, the initial destination of my trip. I’ve been wanting to get here for years now - after seeing all the fun other bikers have had in this area. There’s great riding both on and off road and half a dozen national parks within a couple hours. This place is a motorcycle wonderland.

In the last couple days I’ve visited Mesa Verde, Monument Valley, Natural Bridges, Canyonlands, and Arches National Parks (and Monuments). I’ve never seen a place like this before, so dry, so tall, and so beautiful. There is so much variation in the scenery and geology, it’s fun just to figure out what made things the way they are.

Before the new stuff, I wanted to mention something from Mo’s. While we were sipping Tecate and Jack Daniels out on his property about half a dozen shooting stars came over head. I’m not sure if there was any special shower, but it was nice. One that streaked the entire sky was so bright it classified as a fireball. Both of our jaws dropped as we followed it across the sky. Later, Mo and I took a walk that would both stretch my legs from the long days of riding and inspire me to do more hiking that I’m used to doing on trips like this. That was a good walk.

I headed from Mo’s cabin north to Farmington, where lunch and a teleconference awaited me. The primary destination of this trip is Pasadena, CA, where I’m participating in a workshop designed to train young scientists how to plan a mission to another planet. The teleconferences are preludes and introduction - can’t miss those! Before long a dust storm threatened to trap me there, and it was time to hit the road again. The pictures don’t show it well, it just looks like rain, but this was a fierce dust storm that made it hard to breath.

Stopping along the way, I awoke to find rain approaching, so it was a hot ride into the park with raingear blocking the breeze. Finally I arrived at the park. I’d been at Mesa Verde before, but being young and dumb I missed the most important part, the cliff dwelling ruins. Turns out they are what makes the park special, not the view from above.

The first picture is the front point of the “Green Mesa.” The second shows what it looks like when you leave in the entire scene. This is a good trick to learn in photography, and I use it often.

My campsite was nice, and being so late I wasn’t able to do much sight seeing, so I did some required housekeeping and bought tickets for two tours the next day.

Here you can see a local, the view from above the campsite, and me. I hat met a woman named Pam who does photography out of Sedona, AZ, and we chatted quite a while. She gave me some pointers on where to visit in Utah, and I answered questions about physics and metaphysics. She also shared her blueberries and cantaloupe, which was great because my food preparation involves nothing fresh. In fact, perishable items are difficult to keep in a cramped, squished, 100 degree black plastic box. So it was a nice change.

Next came the reason for the park visit: the ruins tours. Boy was this an experience. Everyone should go there and see these fantastic structures. I won’t bore this already declining audience with facts or trivia I learned on the tours and just post a few pictures with links to the full album.

And the link to more.

So, something I’ve see a few times is this sign below. I think it’s a good thing, although it did make for long transits around the park, but at least people are working.

After leaving Mesa Verde things got dryer, hotter, and farther apart. This is good and something you should expect in the desert. The geology also got much more interesting. After some food shopping in Cortez, CO, it was west to Monument Valley (I’d already visited 4-corners and didn’t want to do that again, plus, as I understand, it is under construction, and you can’t stand at the point right now anyway.)

So that’s enough for now. The really pretty geology is coming up!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 11th, 2010 at 10:38 pm and is filed under Current. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.