Sweatin’ It in Arches

After two nights in Bryce, we drove to Arches National Park, which basically took all day. We went through a bunch of wild landscape, up over a snowy pass…

We were on this scenic highway 12, which was really beautiful, but long. Totally worth it. At some point, we came to Capitol Reef National Park, or maybe Escalante/Grand Staircase was first…I don’t remember.

That looks like Capitol Reef. We ate lunch in a shady spot and then it rained.

Not bad…just enough…

I basically spent the whole day staring out the window at all the weird rocks…especially those green ones.

We didn’t hike…there wasn’t time.

We did get out and look at stuff though…like petroglyphs…

Cool stuff. By the time we made it to Arches, it was after 5 PM, there was no one on staff anywhere, and we had to try to get a tent to stay in rocky ground. That’s our tent in front of their camper (it was the only place the stakes would go in).

And here’s what happened to the mallet.

Oh well. The stakes went in well enough to survive the wind and rain storm the next night.

We got up relatively early the next morning and walked out to the Devil’s Garden area near our campground…this time, we actually camped in the park. With no showers. I remembered that later.

The thing about Arches is that there are arches everywhere…the one below lost a major piece back in the 70s, so you can’t go up to it anymore. I’m OK with that.

It’s pretty huge though.

This is what stopped us going to one of the arches…climbing up this rock fin. Too slippery.

We got about halfway up and stopped. Other people kept going. I’m OK with that too.

Flowers and plants everywhere…a bonus of a rainy spring.

I think you totally miss that in summer. This is Delicate Arch. We did the in-between hike, not the rock-scrambling hike. There are people up there. Not us.

It was also pretty warm in Arches. I don’t do well with warm.

The flowers do though. This is Pothole Arch…fascinating thinking about the science behind all these.

We did all the short hikes during the day…

There were lots of people on these. Pulling a dance move? Nah. Pointing at an arch.

There were lots of them.

So a weird selfie, but mostly was trying to get my feminist shirt, which I hiked in, and a bunch of women told me they liked my shirt. That was cool.

Nevertheless She Persisted applies to many things. Turret Arch…

So I have all these appliqued quilt blocks from 2005-2007 that I did (a friend made the patterns), and some of the places we went are in those blocks…like this one.

This is one of the Windows, North or South…

I think it’s South.

Then we went into town for alcohol, wood, and gas. All important. We came back and tried to hike Park Avenue in the middle of the day heat. Ugh. No. We got about halfway…but I really feel like these rocks should just fall over.

They are illogical. The valley was very warm.

I can’t imagine it in July. Interesting rocks above and below though.

Petrified stream beds. Balanced Rock!

We did over 11 miles of hikes that I counted on this day, but this was like 300 yards off the road…so we walked much farther than 11 miles…just in little bits.

This is Skyline Arch…we hiked out to it.

Because we wanted to see the rock fall…some huge piece fell out back in the 1940s and is lying in the path. Not as exciting as the view up.

Then we headed back to camp…had a snack, refueled packs, and did a longer hike to see Tapestry Arch…

And then Broken Arch…well, flowers first…

And trying to find the path with stone cairns…some big, some tiny…

And wandering around the sandy landscape…until we found Broken Arch…

And a view of where we were hiking next, to Sand Dune Arch…this is the back view of Broken Arch…

At Sand Dune Arch, stupid tourist photos got in the way…this lovely Asian woman is in all my photos because her husband kept saying, “put your arms up.” “Now move forward three feet.” And my patience was wearing thin. His as well…

Although he smiled for me. Heading back toward camp…it was further than we thought…

But there were very few people out there. This funky flower…only the top one can be purple! All the rest are yellow!

Weird. We had a long discussion about open carry in a National Park, because of the guy who was hiking in front of us at Sand Dune Arch, with his gun. To protect himself from??? I just don’t know. Scared old man.

Back to the campsite, where we attempted to clean up enough to go out into public for dinner. Yes! Food cooked by other people in a restaurant! What a concept. We earned it.

Still no shower.

On the way back, we rode through a storm that then chased us into our tent for the night, tensely listening for thunder, planning to run to the car, finally collapsing exhausted by probably 9:30 PM.

The next morning dawned perfectly clear and beautiful…

So we packed up and got ready to leave. We originally had no plan for after this…we’d thrown around ideas, but knew we needed to start heading back home. So in the restaurant in Moab, we made a plan (because we had no cell service in the campsite)…and made a reservation for Tuba City, near the Grand Canyon. A quick day trip through there, then heading home. More on that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I survived my first day back at school yesterday. I’m exhausted. No shock there. This is puppy love while I’m grading assignments on the stationary bike.

I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I packed up one quilt, six to go. I traced this piece, ready to embroider…

I’m a little short on two of the colors, so they hopefully will show up in the next week or so. I’ll go as far as I can. I started some of the embroidery on it…just because I need to get them done.

She’s pink and purple for now. And then I cut stuff out for a while.

I went to bed early again…

It’s going to be a rough week. But I’ll get stuff done. I have to.

Art on Vacation…

I’m totally off schedule now on blogging. I downloaded about a million pictures this morning, but can’t get my head around most of them yet, so let’s keep it simple. I did artsy stuff while traveling. I drew all but two nights, mostly in campgrounds. Which is a cold and dark thing to do, let me tell you. But easier to see than trying to embroider in the dark on black fabric.

So the drawings…the first night, we drove from San Diego all the way to Zion National Park. We stayed about 25 minutes outside the park, but my first night was obviously influenced by driving in and seeing the rocks…brought tears to my eyes when we drove into Zion. The skirts that the rocks make, the sedimentary lines…I’d been seeing them all day. The moon was almost full.

And we saw our first of many deer that evening.

The second drawing was after a full day of approximately 14 miles of hiking in Zion. I don’t fall asleep easily, but the man does. So I sat and embroidered in the semi-dark (and then drew myself embroidering, which is just weird) while he slept…hands over head because the neighbors had their TV on too loud.

That was pretty realistic…except the room had no rugs…just cold concrete floors. Rugs, people!

Then the next night, we were freezing our asses off in a campground near Bryce National Park…there were lows in the mid-30s. The man made a fire behind me, and I drew the hoodoos I’d seen while we went to all the overlooks.

The next night was still cold, although it didn’t seem AS cold, probably because we were smart and put on three layers of all the warm things before we even started dinner. I had a glove on the non-drawing hand. I apparently can’t draw with a glove on. We’d spent the day hiking down into the canyon (which is an amphitheater, not a canyon at all)…and then around the rim, for a total of 9 1/2 miles or so…this time, the hoodoos were above me and there were twisty trees everywhere.

One of the weirder ones. The next day, we drove to Arches National Park, to a slightly warmer, but much rockier campground inside the park, and no wood or alcohol (should plan ahead in Utah, people, or drink beer and burn your clothes…whichever works for you). How beer and Mikes Hard Lemonade are acceptable drinks to the lord, and wine is not, I will never understand. Don’t even argue alcohol percentages with me.

Anyway, that night, sans fire, I drew this, a conglomerate of everything we saw that day, driving through Capitol Reef National Park and Escalante/Grand Staircase National Monument, plus over some pass with aspens and snow.

The last night in Arches we went from dinner straight into the tent, completely exhausted after over 11 miles of hiking in the heat, plus a rainstorm that had wind and lightning, but held that far enough away that we didn’t have to sleep in the car. So I didn’t draw.

The next night was after the most glorious shower ever (after two days of hiking hot and no shower facilities)…and after that, I drew this…

The whole trip on my mind…trees, rain, water, deer, rocks, tent, hoodoos, lightning, Balanced Rock from Arches. Plus an idiotic president and political party that don’t see the importance of our park system. Fuck them. The park staff are doing their best, but they are understaffed and underfunded, and it’s obvious. If I win the lottery, I’m giving a big chunk to the National Park system. You should too.

I didn’t draw the last night we were out. Too tired.

OK, then the embroidery. My patterns are being sold on the Global Artisans page, and soon there will be kits as well. As part of that, I need to stitch all of them. So that was one thing I did in the car…not while driving…

I had already started the Space Mother at home, but continued in the car on the first day…

I thought I might run out of the gray, so I did all of it first…then I went on to the blue…

Mostly I’m using backstitch, but I like the additional thickness of chain stitch and an occasional pile of French knots. This is the 2nd night in the bunkhouse near Zion…

She’s getting closer to done. This was right before I drew the picture of this exact scene. And this is how far I got before we left Zion.

Almost done…on the way to Bryce, I finished her…

All the fussy little bits…although I thought she was done here and then…

I decided to fill in Earth…

And her eyes. There she is sitting in the campsite while I wait to set up the tent…

She still needs to be rinsed out and ironed…then she can go on the pattern cover. So that was the first night in Bryce. She took about 10 1/2 hours to embroider.

While dinner was cooking, I traced the next one, Earth Mother with Wavy Hair, using Saral transfer paper.

With her, I was worried about running out of the flesh color. In the kits, you only get one bobbin of each color, so I have to be sure what I’m doing will allow for enough thread. Honestly, I’d probably use 20 different colors if I weren’t limited to 5.

Transferred before dinner boiled over…

This transfer paper is not the most ideal stuff. Still looking for a better option on these. I started trying to stitch that night, but black fabric made it almost impossible to do at night in camp light. So the next evening, while the man was cooking, I did some stitching.

All the flesh first…then when we left Bryce, there was so much too look at that I don’t think I stitched at all. Although there’s rainclouds…so maybe this is on the way out of Capitol Reef? Not sure.

I know I stitched in Arches though…

Yup. Eating, because blood sugar had crashed. This might have been in the morning actually…yes. Waiting for tea water to boil. Always waiting for that. Goldfish are a perfectly reasonable breakfast food. Shut up.

I didn’t get much done in Arches. Rain and all. But here’s on the drive out of Arches toward Tuba City, Arizona…

I got a lot done that day…and then retraced the lines, because they were fading, in the hotel…

Before…and after…

Still looking for a better option…

I didn’t stitch going into the Grand Canyon…I was too damn tired. And then in the canyon, didn’t stitch. This is on the way out, toward Phoenix.

I got a lot done on that afternoon. And then nothing done that night.

Driving back home, I drove the first three hours or so, but eventually traded the steering wheel for stitching. This is the hill up toward my house. Home!

Damn stuff is already starting to fade. I have the flowers on her arm to do, the bronchial tubes in the lungs, her eyes, the things on her face, half her hair, the jellyfish and other fish, her fingernails, her watch, and the trees on her head. That sounds like a lot. I guess it’s a lot.

I did a little last night too…trying to do a little bit at a time. So hopefully she’ll be done in the next week. I have some transfer pens coming that might help, and an idea for a better transfer paper. We’ll see.

The only other art-related thing that happened is that we stopped to see the exhibit I’m in, Things That Matter, in St. George, UT, through July. There’s a catalog available of all the pieces…

It’s a really nice space…my face is so happy to be out of the car and walking around…

That’s a big quilt y’all.

OK, and I’m currently working on a new piece that I can’t show yet…but I did get it fully drawn and numbered the night before we left…it’s only 924 pieces…

There’s part of piece 133.

And when we got home yesterday, I spent about 3 1/2 hours last night tracing the first 300 pieces…

I’m hoping to do the same tonight. I guess all you will see are extreme closeups of things that make no sense. I’m OK with that.

Anyway, tomorrow, I’ll try to work on some posts of the other cool stuff we saw…because we did go to see mostly rocks and what rocks do. Which is also cool. Plus we hiked a lot. Also cool.

All About the Rocks

Wow. I think this is the longest I’ve gone without posting in years. In my defense, my cellular connectivity has been iffy as hell, if not nonexistent, for much of this trip, and when I did have it, I was busy doing something else or totally exhausted after hiking over 11+ miles a day. I realize that’s not much to some, but this old body has been running on little sleep, weird food options, and lots of climbing around for days now.

That said, it’s been freakin’ awesome…a mind-blowing trip of all the different geologic formations you can get in two states (Arizona a little, but mostly Utah). I think we both decided while huddled in the tent last night during a rainstorm that we were done with camping on this trip, though, as we pinky-swore to wake the other one up if we heard thunder, so we could race to the car before lightning hit the aluminum connectors of the tent. Or the ground.

So this is the short version. We left last Wednesday on a long drive to Zion National Park. We originally had a reservation for the east side of the park, but they closed the road going through on April 9 to fix storm damage this winter, so I found a weird but functional place on the west side in La Verkin about a week before we left. It had a kitchenette and shared barbecues, so we used those (yes, even for pre-hike breakfasts of sausage and eggs). It’s Spring Break for about a million people, quite a few of them from other countries, and they all had the same plan for visiting Zion. We went in to the park that night to plan the hikes for the next day. We also did the Archeology Trail as a warm up for the next day…and saw our first wildlife.

We got our butts up early and headed out to garner a spot in the coveted Visitor Center parking lot (you don’t wanna know how early), and then caught a shuttle to a hike I said I’d never do: Angel’s Landing. It was still morning cool, which is a good thing, because that climb and the Walter’s Wiggles with 21 switchbacks (it didn’t seem like that many) is not something I would’ve wanted to do in hot sunlight. We didn’t do the last stretch that’s single file and a chain attached to a rock wall, but we did go all the way to Scout Lookout. Some might call that chickening out…I don’t care…we did awesome.

From there, we caught the shuttle and did all the things we wanted to do…part of the Pa’rus Trail, the Lower Emerald Pool Trail (Upper and Kayenta were closed due to storm damage), Weeping Rock, and the Riverside Walk out to where The Narrows starts (also closed, because the water flow was high from Spring melt and rains). At that point, we’d had it with crowds of people and their bad tourist behavior. The Angel’s Landing crowd understood trail etiquette and were amazing…the shorter hikes? OMG. People. Really. So we headed back to our domicile and another barbecued dinner. We did a lot of miles that day…my app says over 14 miles that day total.

Friday found us driving to Bryce Canyon National Park, where we camped outside the park, because everything else was first come, first served, and we didn’t want to risk having nowhere to stay. The campground at Ruby’s Inn was quiet and the showers were free and hot, and it wasn’t as cold at night as it was originally supposed to be, but it was still pretty damn cold. We got there pretty early on Friday and set up camp, and then headed off to Bryce to check it out. I’m glad we did, because we saw a bunch of the easy stuff on Friday, thus allowing us to do a really long hike on Saturday without feeling like we had to then go look at everything else. There was snow at Bryce, most recently from like 3 days ago.

Sleep was not our friend Friday night; it was just too cold. Nevertheless, we got up early again and headed out for the Fairyland loop, which goes down into Bryce and wanders around, then climbs back out (oh yes, at elevation No Oxygen for You), and then traverses the Rim Trail back to the Fairyland parking area. Wow. Great hike, but we did way more than the 8 miles it claimed.

We figured a better sleeping plan on Saturday night (towels on top of the air mattress to stop the cold seeping up from the ground, even though we had a tarp that was supposed to help with that, plus three layers of clothing, and wool socks, dammit, because cold feet were an issue the night before), and got out of bed early again, expecting (rightly so) a long driving day.

I have absolutely no idea what this is a picture of, but it was on Sunday.

We made it through parts of Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument and then Capitol Reef National Park, and finally headed into Arches National Park in the late afternoon, where we actually had a reserved site. At this point, it was Easter night, and there was no firewood or alcohol to be had (both useful for keeping moods light after a long hard day of driving, plus trying to pound tent stakes into hard rock), so it was not the best night, but the morning dawned ready for a day of hikes. And hike we did.

We were camping in Devil’s Garden, so we started on that hike, although we turned around at the rock scramble where I was like um no way, can’t do that. So we then drove through the park, stopping at just about every possible sight, attempting one longer hike at Park Avenue (way too hot in between the rocks). We made a quick trip into Moab for alcohol, ice, gas, and firewood (the necessities), but then continued on to see the rest of the arches and other bits. We made it back to the campsite, and set out on a trail marked by rock cairns to see three different arches. I think that was what put us over 11 miles that day. Awesome views though and mostly avoided stupid people.

We had decided to treat ourselves with dinner out (there’s only so many camp meals we know how to make before wanting to drown ourselves) , so we headed into Moab for burgers and beer (or wine, as you prefer). On the way back, in the pitch black, a rainstorm wandered in and we white-knuckled the drive all the way through the park to the campground, watching lightning strikes out there in the clouds. The campground was dry as a bone, until about 5 minutes after we arrived, when the raindrops started…and then the wind. Holy crap, everything in the car or the tent, no fire tonight! In the end, we were so tired from the day of hiking that we went to bed, no thunder ever sounded, and we slept really well. Not too cold, just right, so tired we didn’t mind any of it.

There was no cell service in our campsite (further up the hill had it, but they also probably had a rougher night with the wind and the rain), so we had mapped some ideas out at dinner in Moab. Canyonlands was a possibility, but in the end, we decided to brave the crowds at the Grand Canyon. We left Arches this morning and drove through Monument Valley (we didn’t go through the actual park…that’s for another trip) on our way to Tuba City, where we actually booked a hotel room. With a shower. Because there weren’t any in Arches and I think we really needed that. So we’re clean now and have a crazy plan for tomorrow, I had my Indian Fry Bread and retraced the most recent embroidery…more about those and the daily (almost) drawings in another post. Grand Canyon tomorrow and then heading back home. It’s been a whole lot of wow and hiking our old asses off, but I think it’s been an amazing trip so far. We have a pact for tomorrow to leave the park when one of us feels like pushing someone over the rim. We know this will be just a quick view of the park, and we’ll plan another trip later.

I have graded nothing. I have dealt with very little email, due to lack of access. The world is still rotating, though, and that’s a good thing.