Now nearly a month delayed, here is my second to last post from my road trip.
After Mesa Verde I arrived back in New Mexico, the state that first brought my guard down and lured me into adventures. I was in the far northwestern corner and, desperate for a shower and some internet, drove until dark searching for a state park that would provide. I was disappointed. I ended up at El Vado Lake State Park and picked a campsite just as a storm started to blow in. I set up my camp stove with a …
[Almost three weeks after the fact now… Happy Easter everyone!]
I managed to tear myself away from the splendor of Monument Valley to get to what would be one of my other favorite places before sundown: Hovenweep National Monument. It is another ancestral Pueblo site but I didn’t realize what was so special about it until I got there. These aren’t cliff dwellings but actual towers built up out of nowhere. On top of boulders, on the rim of a canyon, these towers are completely mysterious and powerful.
Scientists can only guess what they were built …
Dear readers, I am now posting about 2 weeks after the fact. My apologies! In addition to my delays from lack of internet on most of this trip, the last week has been a flurry of interviewing for work (I got a good seasonal engineering job here in Ithaca), running to Vermont to retrieve necessary work gear, visiting friends and most importantly attending James Hart’s Memorial outside of Philadelphia. I am now back in Ithaca NY hoping the dust will settle and starting work here tomorrow. But without further ado, my long delayed chapter:
Leaving Bryce …
The night I left Zion I opted to spend the night at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, just a short detour away. I was driving down the dirt road to the park when I saw a big open parking area just off the road with two campers set up. Lucky day-there was a sign up asking overnight campers not to bury their trash so I knew I could set up there and get a free night’s stay. As I was pulling in, 9 dune buggies come flying off of the dunes behind the …
First, thank you all for your condolences regarding the loss of my friend James. Mourning is a process and for parts of the day I feel happy remembering him, and at other times I just feel awful. The remembering will be on-going.
For right now, as he would want, I will continue adventuring.
I left Horseshoe Bend in late afternoon, maybe 4:30 pm. At that point I was still trying to figure out how to make a loop down to Mojave or Death Valley to meet up with my friend Chris; I knew I would pass north …