Cyndy and I are now in our tenth week of travel.
We've done a lot of walking. In cities, deserts, and forests. On salt flats below sea level and in mountains. In chill temps and blazing heat. Our weight is less, our endurance is growing, and a 10-mile hike is now pretty easy.
Here are the highlights:
Montgomery, Alabama: While our GMC pickup truck, nicknamed Ruby Rambler, was getting an oil change, we walked six miles on city streets to visit five museums associated with the Civil Rights Movement.
Big Bend National Park, Texas: We camped near the Rio Grande at an elevation of 1,800 feet and temps over 100 degrees. So hiking above 7,000 feet in the Chisos Mountains, with temps in the 70s, was a treat.
Cloudcroft, New Mexico: In April, a tremendous windstorm hit the Lincoln National Forest and created what loggers call a "wind fall." There, we hiked through hundreds of uprooted pine trees, some of them several feet in diameter.
The White Sands National Monument in New Mexico features dunes that glisten in the sunlight and take on sense of serenity at nightfall. These great dunes, consisting of fine, fine particles, move -- maybe 30 feet in a month, maybe 30 feet overnight, depending on the wind. We walked five miles there one morning, enjoying every amazing step.
Sedona, Arizona, is a spiritual mecca where richly colored red rock formations serve as energy vortices. We climbed part way up Bell Rock, elevation 4,900 feet. I found a cairn within a Medicine Wheel where I meditated in the warm morning sun.
The Grand Canyon's North Rim in Arizona features precipitous ridge trails and majestic vistas, plus gusty winds that challenged our balance. We talked with hardy folks who were hiking "rim to rim" -- from the North Rim (elevation 5,800 feet) down to the Colorado River (2,460 feet) and back up to the South Rim (5,800 feet). Some would hike these 24 miles in a single day, and some would stay overnight on the canyon floor at Phantom Ranch. We didn't make this trek ... not yet.
Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada, is 40,000 acres of bright red Aztec sandstone where rock formations seem to have "popped up" out of the surrounding soil. Some are topped with gray and tan limestone called "white domes." Many vertical rock faces are the canvass for large, easily discernible petroglyphs that are more than 2,000 years old. Put this place on your "must see" list.
Death Valley National Park, California, is the hottest place on Earth. Our campground was named Furnace Creek.
We walked two miles across a salt flat -- elevation 282 feet
below sea level, the lowest point in North America -- where salt crystals crunched under our feet and, without sunglasses, whiteness would have been blinding. Yet, Telescope Peak, only 18.5 miles away, towers at an elevation of 11,049 feet. Dantes View, where we walked six miles on rolling mountain crests, is over a mile high.
We trudged on a rocky riverbed through Golden Canyon and hiked a crest trail to view the amazingly colorful Artists Palette, where nature has blended iron salts, mica, manganese, and chlorite into a beautiful array of red, brown, blue, green, and violet (find photos online).
We meandered through the remains of an outdoor "factory" where borax was processed in the 1880s.
In many parts of Death Valley, the surface is soft, hummocky soil or an endless plane of baseball- to softball-size rocks.
I felt empathy for "The Lost '49ers," a wagon train of families who, in the fall of 1849, taking a "short cut" to the gold fields of California, wandered into the valley and didn't find their way out for four months. Only one died, but all thought they would; thus this valley's morbid name.
Sequoia National Park in California is primarily a drive-through experience on Generals Highway, a very curvy mountain rode with steep precipices and few guardrails. But
Kings Canyon National Park, its neighbor to the north, has a plethora of trails.
Together, these parks are the home to the world's five biggest sequoia trees -- and some sequoia stumps, relics of a now-outlawed logging industry. At one place along Big Stump Trail, 13 of us stood atop a stump from a felled tree ... and there was room for dozens more. We also enjoyed walking around a meadow and on short trails to waterfalls.
Yosemite National Park, California, provided our greatest hiking challenge. There, we ascended Mist Trail to Vernal Falls, a 317-foot torrent along the course of the Merced River that also features the even-taller Nevada Falls within sight upstream.
Mist Trail starts out deceptively wide and comfortable, but the elevation gain over four miles is 1,400 feet. The last half mile is a steep granite stairway of 600 steps, many of them with a rise of more than a foot; often, we had to lift a foot above a knee to make the next step.
With recent heavy snowmelt, the Merced was raging and the mist on the steps was exceptionally heavy. My glasses covered with water and blurred my vision. A biting wind pushed moisture through my windbreaker and pants, chilling my skin. Water pooled on every concave surface, wetting my boots and feet. The sound of cascading water roared in my ears. The steps got steeper and slipperier (thank God for trek poles).
As the trail narrowed, the hundreds of people making this climb tapered to single-file. Stopping to rest would mean stopping the line. So we trod on.
Truthfully, it was not a pleasant hike ... until we reached the top of the falls. There, we, like everyone, shed our wet outer garments and basked like sunbathing turtles on large slabs of granite, watching the Merced flow over the precipice and disappear out of sight, crashing onto rocks somewhere below the rainbow that hovered above.
To descend, we followed the longer John Muir Trail, a "normal" trail with a gentler grade and switchbacks.
Next week: We will camp near and walk along Pacific Ocean beaches in northern California.
Take care and all the best!
