The westward course of bathtub rings (Potash, Utah)

Where does salt come from? And how can I never have wondered that before? The bathtub ring of Lake Mead and the westward course of empire should have got me thinking about this sooner.

Canyonlands National Park

Canyonlands National Park - Island in the Sky - 3 July

On the beginning of the White Rim road

Capitol Reef National Park

Capitol Reef National Park - Cass Mulford apricot orchard, Fruita - 2 July

After picking apricots

Kolob Canyons

Zion National Park Kolob Canyons 29 January

(Oh dear that was quite some time ago. Must try harder.)

There is a part of Zion that you can almost have to yourself. 

Zion National Park

Zion National Park 15 January

Bighorn sheep. The beautiful patina of wet sandstone.

All that wide blue sky (Kanab and Paria)

"But for me, oh it was the acting" (31s)
Only not in this case.

We saw the new Magnificent Seven a few weeks ago. (That was my allowance of murders for the month, can't watch any more for a while.) The story was interesting enough - it's a remake, and one of the classic plots, so no real surprises. The film likewise, especially in its context as one of a series (Seven Samurai, the original Magnificent Seven, and even The Avengers is not stretching the point too far.) The costuming was not bad, though the female pseudo-protagonist showed way too much bosom for a respectable woman of the period who wasn't at an evening party. (And not enough actual, y'know, character development. Ugh! Say it with me, boobs are not characters ... unless you're a comic strip.) Several of the characters were very striking - such a villain! - but for me, oh it was the scenery.

Image by Geraint Smith via jerrygarrett.wordpress.com

'Bonanza' set near Kanab, UT
On private property and unmaintained,
it is slowly succumbing to weather

I am enchanted with the cliffs and mesas of the region they call 'Indian Country' (which is gah, idk, hopeless understatement, much of the continent was Indian Country. However.) The ground in such shades of orange and brown among the green, it is no wonder the sky looks so blue. M7 was shot in New Mexico (and Louisiana, but that can't possibly be the landscape shots) but it could just as well take its place with dozens of earlier westerns filmed at Paria, Utah, or other locations not far from Kanab.

It is hard to convey in words how satisfying to the eye is the sweep of a long sagebrush flat, or a mesa rippling with golden-headed grasses, with the unpredictable shapes of the hills rising beside - the weird angles where different layers have been pushed, pulled, folded, or have eroded at different rates, the effect of patient wind and furious water, or long-dead volcanic eruption. In this case, too rivers and streams - though in our further west country, it is much drier.

from a prominence above old Paria town, GSENM, UT

Abruptly I want to learn how to ride a horse. (Up til now been afraid of horses for decades.) And oh, so looking forward to our trip to New Mexico later in the year.

Goldengrove unleaving (Autumn aspens on 143)

We took a drive from Panguitch up the hill. The road climbs through farmland and forest, past a lake and alongside creeks, from about 6500 feet to nearly 10,000.


The autumn foliage was at its fleeting loveliest, the sky flawlessly blue ...

So here's some melancholic autumn poetry for you.

(It isn't magic all the time
It's only magic when I rhyme.
- Johnny Fartpants (attr.*))

"That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."
 - Shakespeare


“At no other time does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost."
- Rilke

"Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing"
 - Rilke again


("Margaret, are you grieving
over goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?"
- Hopkins

How things from high school stick with you! Shout out to the girls of De Valon House, Miss McLafferty, pre-photocopier duplicating machines of all kinds - can you smell the spirit? - and autumn nostalgia.)

Itinerary

Highway 143 Panguitch - Brian Head - Parowan

---

*So Simon claims. Weirdly, this Viz character was written by Simon Donald. Coincidence? I Don't Think So. I'm onto you, SDM. 

Hidden treasure (Casto Canyon)

Early Autumn foliage at Casto Canyon

It's kind of off the beaten track though really not far off it: less than 3 miles north of the Bryce Canyon turnoff, and then about 3 1/2 miles in on an unpaved but well-graded road. To - just a canyon, in about the middle of nowhere.

A wide stony wash, still wet in places from recent rains. Red-orange sandstone walls, lucent against the sky, subtly echoed in the autumn foliage. The rain has washed off and settled the dust, leaving all the rock richer in colour and the sky a crazy clear deep blue, near-cloudless.

Still plenty of heat in the sun, but a cool breeze.

Hound them rocks (garnets and agates just as they growed)

I've been fascinated by rocks and minerals for a long time. I think it started when I first was given a couple of tumbled stones - agates, memory's eye says - by Amanda Brown in about Standard 1 (that's Year 3 in new money.) I also remember buying tumbled gems for maybe 10¢ apiece at a shop on Waiheke Island in a summer holiday there. Then, of course, I was 'into crystals' as a teenager and even worked for a gem merchant later in my teens. About 25 years ago I acquired an auction lot of unlabelled mineral specimens. I have always enjoyed having them around, the vari-coloured odd rough shapes, weights, textures of them. Now I think they came from the southwest, because I keep seeing familiar colours and shapes in collections hereabouts: petrified wood, fluorite, gypsum. On two recent trips, I've gone a little out of my way to reach rockhounding sites to bring home more piles of rocks: Garnet Hill, near Ely, NV, and a spot on the road between Cedar Breaks and Brian Head. 

Leave no trace except a pit

Garnet Hill is a BLM site where you can - with luck and a hammer - find small dark garnets
embedded in their native cream-coloured rhyolite. It's a well established site, and not everyone follows the 'leave no trace' approach.

Hammering away

Worth a visit, though, even if you don't want to look for gemstones, as the road up from Ely is both short and beautiful, and the hill affords a view over the huge Ruth copper mine, an open pit that stretches around a third of the horizon. We wanted to do both big and small, so when we got to the carpark, we headed uphill rather than down, and enjoyed the views from the top as well as the rockhounding. 

Panorama from Garnet Hill with the logical opposite of leave no trace - Ruth open pit copper mine

That speck is actually a garnet

The garnets themselves are not gem quality, being too dark to see through. They come as big as walnuts - or so it's said. We didn't spend the many hours that might have netted such large specimens, but in the hour or so we were there, we got the technique of breaking the rhyolite open with hammer and chisel, and found a few to bring home ... all big enough to see with the naked eye, and that's about as much as you can say for them (the biggest is maybe 5 mm across). 

A hill made of agate - view towards Cedar Breaks

Cedar Breaks agate is easier to see from a distance. The pale lumps on the hill are the bones of it showing through, and it is made of agate. The range of colour and pattern is amazing. Luckily, the site is well above 10 000 feet, so I couldn't carry away armloads of it (also there's a 25 lb per day limit.)

I had taken a rock hammer, but really I didn't need it, as there were so many beautiful pieces just lying on the ground, from small flakes and shards to chunks as big as your head. I kept mine, but brought away several lovely pieces ... and already can't wait to go back for more.

Springs and the Calligraphy Highway pt 4 (Really? 4?): Calculating Pie

Okay it's officially the Weekend that Would Not End. Did we really do all this stuff in two days? Brain hurts just thinking about it and carpal tunnel syndrome on the horizon.

After our sobering visit to the Meadow Mountains site, we continued south down the valley. We were on the way home, but by no means finished yet. I'd seen Gunlock Reservoir and State Park on the map, it was over 110 degrees and we thought a swim would be all right. So, turning off at Veyo, down the 3184 - ooh, 4 digit road - we were bound.

But we got a bit side tracked by a sign about pies (that this can happen explains a lot about us.)

And not just a sign, but an actual pie bakery. It was too much to hope that there might be proper meat pies like at home, but the coincidence was too much to ignore. With a nod to the great Viands bakery in Kihikihi, we felt we really should stop at Veyo Pies. (Check their website. Many gifs.)

Pros:

• Pies, obviously
• Both start with V
• Both at the turnoff to expected awesomeness with swimming above a dam
• Hungry
• Is that guy on the bench there actually real or one of those very lifelike porch dummies? (He smiled back at me, so I'm going with 'real'.)

Cons:

• Yeah, hurry up so I can lock the car. It's hot out here.

Result:

• They have a volcano pie.
• Yes, a volcano pie. It is chocolate pudding and caramel and cream. Though I think I preferred the sour cream and lemon pie.

At Gunlock we picnicked in questionable shade and made coffee in the crazy heat - I'll post more some time about my wonderful stove - gotta have coffee with your pie. Then walked across the dam to an orange sand beach and oh yes that water was not boiling, not even once you were in.

But the pleasures of more eroded sandstone were still in wait. We continued down the gorge of the Santa Clara, through the extremely lovely Shivwits Paiute land, and around east towards St George, to find further wonders:

How had I never heard about this?

These sandstone cliffs are stunning. I have never heard anyone mention them, never really seen them in guidebooks. It's amazing to live in a region where something this exquisite is no special cause for comment. 

If this weren't enough for a sense of perspective ... we proceeded through charming, historical, Santa Clara town (once a separate place, now part of the ever-spreading urbanosis that is St George) to this stop that Simon wanted to make and I happily seconded: Tuacahn Performing Arts High School and its astounding amphitheatre. You have to ask yourself, how confident would a performer need to be to have this as a backdrop?

And finally, a run down through the wild and scenic Beaver Dam Wash, a brief stop at quirky Beaver Dam AZ for iceblocks and cold drinks ... and on down the I15.

Coming down the interstate, you crest a gentle rise of land and Las Vegas is suddenly revealed, wrapped in the milky, fine, and alkaline dust of a million years of erosion, evaporation, wind blowing over desert. The towers and strange shapes in that soft light are like a dream half remembered, or a memory half dreamed. 

Yeah, we're nearly home.    

Itinerary

Sunday: Meadow Mountains Historical Site Overlook, Turn right onto 3184 at Veyo, Gunlock State Park, Kayenta, Tuacahn, Beaver Dam, Las Vegas.

Springs and the Calligraphy Highway pt 3: Meadow Mountains

This post might have triggering content

After a gentle walk along the river an reservoir at Pine Valley, we packed up. We were invited to stay another night, but Monday will come, alas, and with it bring work.

We drove back out and turned north. A few miles from Central is the site of a notorious, inexplicable mass murder: the Mountain Meadows massacre. There are four separate sites; a men's memorial and a women's memorial, a gravesite with cairn, and an overlook of the cairn and the valley where the tragedy took place in autumn 1857.

No one really knows why the massacre happened. The Fancher pioneer party, who had camped near a spring to let their beasts forage, were besieged, during which several men died. Then, under a white flag, over a hundred men, women and children were murdered. Only the toddlers were spared - those thought too young to talk. Apparently at least one baby died from the same bullet that killed its father. There is a report that some of the girls were raped before they were murdered.

There's no doubt that the mass murder was carried out by local Mormons and Indians working in concert. One local Mormon leader ended up taking the fall for it. John D. Lee went on the run (back when that was totally a thing in the wild west) and operated Lee's Ferry above the north-eastern end of the Grand Canyon for several years before he was indicted and executed. (Before there was a bridge at Navajo Crossing, the ferry service a few miles upstream was the last even remotely predictable crossing of the Colorado for a few hundred miles. The area was extremely remote - it's still fairly remote! - and they didn't arrest him until 1874.)

But really, John Lee can't actually have been the only one who was responsible - why was he made the scapegoat? Why was this thing done in the first place? How can it ever have seemed like a good idea to anyone? There were plenty of inflammatory factors, but how the transition was made from outrage over trespassing, even allegations of well-poisoning, etc to planned mass murder including children, is beyond me - maybe always will be beyond me. There are some failures of imagination that I can't feel are failures of character.

The overlook is peaceful enough, and so is the valley's gently rolling, tree-dotted, fenced pastureland. The landmark site is well cared for and has been brought into being by the descendants of the murderers and the victims. It is a good place for quiet reflection. As we read the names of the dead, my sight blurred. Sometimes, we humans are a strange and terrible species, and sometimes it is a strange and terrible world we make.

Springs and the Calligraphy Highway interlude: the Taj Mahal

Our tent is the Taj Mahal. (We probably look more like vintage comedy than these guys do, while putting it up. The cats stayed home.) I can stand upright in it, and we can fit a queen size air bed. The thing has a garage (not shown in the video). Next time, I'm planning to take along the gorgeous flag bunting our oldest girl made for our wedding and drape it festively about for a proper castle effect. I'm sure the hipsters in their roof-boxed Civic hatchbacks laugh in scorn ... frankly I'm too old and chronically sleep deprived to care. Give me the comfy, thank you very much.

We divided and conquered, with Simon putting up the tent and getting it ready to sleep in, while I tended the fire, grilled the steak, baked spuds in the ashes, and set the table (and, mind you I'm not confirming this, possibly sampled the beer). Also smoked my clothes and hair, as you do.

I've tried quite a few kinds of cooking, but this is actually the first time I've cooked steak on an open fire. It was terrific, I have to say. Steak's pretty hard to mess up. And yes, we did have veges as well.

We enjoyed the sunset as we ate. Then, tidied up, sat round in our comfy camp chairs, getting up to put more wood on the fire and more layers of clothes and blankets on ourselves as it got darker and colder. It was a toss-up whether we could stay awake for the sky to get all the way dark - this doesn't happen until nearly 10 at this time of year, and it had been a two-blog-posts-worth day. We managed it though, just barely. Long enough to admire Jupiter, Mars and Saturn delineating the ecliptic, and such a lavish plenty of stars (it was clear.)

I decided to make up my own constellations, but now I am decidedly disappointed to discover that my favourite one already exists. I was starting to think of constellations as making approximately as much sense as sun signs, but now I see I was wrong. It's a tiara, though, not a crown, clearly.

From http://www.topastronomer.com/StarCharts/Constellations/Corona-Borealis.php

Who doesn't love a tiara, right?

Right.

Itinerary

Well, not really, because it was all in the same place. Here

Springs and the Calligraphy Highway pt 2

Last time, on Desert Sage Adventure, we had caught our breath after taking Harry on a whirlwind rough road adventure ...

Highway 93 is also called the Great Basin Highway, and one of these days we will take it all the way up to Great Basin National Park. But that day was not today. We would turn further east at Panaca, cross into Utah and head down 18 to turn off at Central.

Before that, coffee. The Koolatron fits a lot of stuff, but I just didn't have room for iced coffee. And yet paradoxically, we ourselves had all kinds of room for iced coffee. Caliente seemed like a bigger dot on the map than any of the others. We drove up over the mountains - passing by Oak Springs Summit Trilobite Area, of which you, dear readers, will likely hear more in the future. The road dips down into yet another gorgeous little valley. Houses dot the landscape and we tell each other this would be a great place to live, and the sandstone cliffs over you would teach you a sense of perspective and also be just the loveliest distraction, and we stupidly look out for 'for sale' signs.

Then around another bend, and we are in Caliente, quaint wooden buildings everywhere and a grand mission style railway station. On the far side of the tracks, a couple of blocks of shops ... aha! The Brandin Iron. Reckon they'll sell us a cup of coffee or a root beer float.

Best wait staff service we've had for ages, she knew when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em. I don't think we waited more than a second or two for anything at any point, and yet she never seemed pushy or in our faces. Her suggestion of onion rings was a good one (well, they tasted great. Nutritionally, hmm ... they had veges in them?) A good stop.

But still miles to go. Coming down into Panaca is an exciting experience; there's a stopping place / pullout  half way down the hill, without any barrier, that has a hundred foot drop to cattle pastures. This, too, was my first conscious drive-through of desert crop circles. They are just as green in person, but somehow less improbable in appearance than from the air:

We turned east onto 319 at Panaca - there are hot springs there that are still on the to-do list, but otherwise it aspires only to the style of census-designated place with one or two notable old buildings. We continued into another lovely basin-and-range valley, and crossed into Utah.

A calligraphy road, UT 319

Where the road maintenance schedule is out of sync with Nevada's.
And they've a full and frank understanding of this desert crop circle thing:

No, it's not a video game. I'm not sure you could make this stuff up - no one would believe. As always in the south-west - see green, and wonder where the water comes from. Here, a close inspection of the map (click the image above to see it) shows more than one canal and a creek that hardly looks up to the job. Since I read Cadillac Desert I'm even more aware of looking for where the water comes from, who controls it, and what they do with it

Anyway, from the ground it all looks pretty normal - if we weren't in a desert - maybe barring the irrigation machinery, but nothing surprised me enough to stop and photograph it. We turned south at Beryl Junction through more improbable greenliness (it;s my new word, do you like it?). The day was getting on, so we did not stop at Mountain Meadows, but drove through more hills (it's not called basin and range for nothing), turned east again at Central and slowly (so as not to disturb the cattle) up the small road to Pine Valley. (They might understand crop circles but they have something to learn about grazing the long acre.)

Pine Valley is full of, well, pines. Principally Ponderosa, or Yellow pines. Also oak trees. It's cool and high and tucked into a semicircle of mostly wooded mountains that feed the beginning of the Santa Clara River. It is every bit as charming as it sounds! And yes, we stayed there, camping ... Simon managed to get the last available Saturday night site until August ... and yes I will tell you the story ... next time.

Itinerary

Saturday: ... Caliente NV, Pine Valley UT.