The rest of the trip

So after all the fun exploration, we headed to CA for the main driving factors for this particular trip: seeing Kean in Downieville, and an early music workshop in San Francisco that I was signed up for.

Heading across Nevada, we admired the snow-covered peaks, and happened upon a small steam train, which naturally we needed to stop to admire as it came out of the tunnel.

In Downieville, we had a good visit with Kean.  One major task was helping him buy a used RAV4 which is a much better vehicle in the snow than the very aged Camry.  It's also easier to load stuff in for art fairs, camping trips, moving, etc...  Chad deserves all the credit for the great deal of research that went into finding the right used car, and now we know that Carmax is easy to work with.

After Downieville, we headed to the Bay Area for the music workshop in SF.  We actually stayed across the bridge in Sausalito, as one of Chad's friends has a boat there and generously let us stay there.  The marina in Sausalito is quite scenic and the plethora of good restaurants was a delightful bonus.

I quite enjoyed my workshop (who doesn't like spending all weekend sight-reading Josquin??); Chad brought his folding bike and got some good rides in.  At night we were rocked to sleep on the boat.

We took the most expedient route home, which meant partaking the usual roadside kitsch along old Route 66.  No matter how many times we do this route, we always find more Wild West UFO stuff.

Zion

The next day, it was time to head into Zion, where I had booked us a room in the lodge.  The snow was really starting to fall at this point, and we got *almost* all the way to the park on the approach from the east when we hit a road closure, necessitating an hours-long detour to enter from the other side (darn that coffee stop in Kanab?).  

Still, it was sort of magical to enter the usually-crowded national park as the snow fell, with almost no one else there.

I love finding micro-snowmen that people make.

We enjoyed the misty atmospheric light.

Chad's extra-pink Valentine's Day breakfast.

By this point, the snow had turned to rain and things were starting to melt out quickly.  We took a very wet hike to see waterfalls.

The path wasn't even that treacherous, and we got an early start, so avoided the crowds that picked up later in the day.

By the time we left the park, the weather had cleared up almost entirely.

Toadstools

As the weather started to change on our roadtrip, we opted to skip a planned bushwhack off a dirt road that is impassible if it gets wet and took a mellow walk up a small wash from highway 89 to investigate the Toadstools instead.  They are Very Good Rocks.

On our way out, the first snowflakes started to fall.

Moon House

At the start of our long road trip out to CA, the weather was auspicious, so we headed through Bears Ears National Monument to find the thousand-year-old Moon House cliff dwelling ruins.  I had called the ranger ahead of time to get the permit (not in high demand in Feb!), and knew the roads would be in good condition if we got there before the incoming storm did.  We lucked into a gorgeous day and the scenery on the way in from the east was specacular.

Trader Joe's cold toaster pastries and coffee make a good breakfast in the great outdoors.

Snow Flat Road follows the old Mormon Hole-in-the-rock emigrant trail, which we keep running into as we explore Utah.  We have the advantage of roads and signs and maps, but this would have been pretty tortured country to navigate back in the day.

Nice cryptobiotic soil.  We took care not to walk on it on our way to the canyon's edge.

The ruins require you to navigate across a steep little canyon on a goat track of a kind-of-sort-of trail. 

After navigating a couple of dead ends, we made it to the canyon bottom and admired the rocks.  

Then it was time to scale the other side of the canyon to get up to explore the ancient structures we had been getting glimpses of on the way down.

 

One of the neat things about this set of structures is that many of the rooms are sheltered by a big hallway, which one is actually allowed to carefully go into.  The hallway is painted with stripes and many small white circles, thus the modern name "Moon House". 

I am always amazed at how long the timbers stay intact in this dry climate.

 

There were neat views out to the canyon from the hallway.  Note the visible hand marks in the mud on the little pillar.  Thousand-year-old handprints, those are.

This site was a good day's exploring and we are glad to have finally made it out there.

 

 

Spot the Still-Feral Child

Kean and I had a good hike up a canyon at Ghost Ranch.  A party who shall remain unnamed didn't even lose a phone in the boulder field thanks to a helpful hiker.