Archive for September, 2008
September 5, 2008 at 5:01 pm · Filed under Places to go
It’s both a privilege and a challenge to be “professional campers.” We travel for fun, sure, but in this blog I have tried not to gloss over the many things that go wrong, and the difficulty of balancing the work and play. Today was a typical example of how we usually get a little bit of both.
We took a look forward in the calendar and decided that it was time to leave Hovenweep after only two nights. We’d seen 80% of the publicly-accessible ancient Puebloan ruins, hiked most of the trails, and Emma had completed her Junior Ranger program. But also we saw time beginning to run short on us. We’d like to complete our loop of Utah national parks before the end of the month.
One reason to wrap up this month is that we are considering going to the Albuquerque Balloon Festival, October 4-12. We had reservations for last year, but abandoned them when we decided to go to Banff and the Pacific Northwest instead. This may be our last chance to go, if we find ourselves bound by school schedules in the years to come.
Another reason is weather. Right now it is ideal weather at the upper elevations, but in October things will get distinctly fall-like. The mid-70 to mid-80 degree days we’ve been having are ideal, and the nights have been warm enough that we have only needed heat on a few occasions.
So we drove out of Hovenweep this morning, zig-zagging along county roads to eventually find ourselves at Natural Bridges National Monument about 75 miles drive to the northwest. The Hovenweep area is a bit of a Bermuda triangle for GPS units. Garminita very much wanted us to take some dirt trails across the desert, which would have been fun had we not been towing the trailer. We had to disregard the GPS for about fifteen miles and use the old reliable paper map instead.
Not long after we settled our differences with Garminita, the trailer brakes stopped working. It was the usual scenario, one I’ve started to become rather comfortable with since it has now happened three times. All was well, and then when coming to a T-intersection I noticed that I suddenly wasn’t getting the brake response I expected. I pulled the manual override on the Prodigy brake controller and sure enough, no trailer brakes.
Once again the problem was a dirty ground wire on the trailer. We had last cleaned the wire in May, in the Florida panhandle, but I suppose two weeks of salt air at the Outer Banks of North Carolina and two months of intense humidity in Vermont had their effect. This time we really scrubbed both the ground wire and all the points it contacts, first with a screwdriver tip to scrape off some accumulated varnish, then copper wool, then Emery cloth (fine sandpaper). Problem solved in about five minutes.
I can only plead distraction for the next mistake. Fuel is exceptionally rare out here, and literally our only shot at it was in the town of Blanding. I mistakenly listened to Garminita and took the turn onto Rt 95 toward Natural Bridges, forgetting that we needed to overshoot the turn and go into Blanding for fuel. By the time I remembered, we had passed through two canyons with 8% grades and were about seven miles away.
At that point we had a half tank, but that means nothing out here. I had a choice of working back to Blanding (easily a 20 minute drive each way, with those darned canyons), or proceeding north toward Natural Bridges and hoping for fuel in that direction. Garminita was no help: her database of fuel stations is woefully incomplete. She claimed there was no fuel for at least 90 miles going north.
I decided to proceed to Natural Bridges (25 miles further) and make inquiries there. If there really was no fuel heading north, I’d unhitch the trailer in the campground and return to Blanding alone for a refuel while E&E did something else. But fortunately the rangers reported an automated fuel station in the settlement of Hite, about 50 miles further up the road. We have plenty of fuel to get to Hite.
I have to remember the “Rule of Fuel” here: Always stop for a refill whenever you can, regardless of price. There are no major towns in this part of Utah. A 28-gallon tank such as the Armada has, is sufficient to tow through this area if it’s kept more than half full. Seventy miles between gas stations is not unusual. Years ago, when we towed our Caravel with a Honda Pilot, I quickly discovered that a 19 gallon fuel tank is a joke when towing, even in the east.
With the fuel worry lessened, we faced another challenge. The campground at Natural Bridges is only 13 sites and they are all quite small. It’s really best for tents and very short motorhomes. Signs say that maximum allowable length is 26 feet combined. When I told the rangers we were towing a 30 foot trailer, they kind of grimaced but didn’t say anything. I told them we were accustomed to squeezing into tight spots. (We are, after all, professionals.)
Well, we are, but I have to admit that this is one of the tightest campgrounds we’ve camped in. Our combined length is about 52 feet ““ double the suggested limit ““ and that meant careful navigation through the loops leading to site #9, where we backed in and then parked the Armada alongside. This is probably the hardest campground for us to fit into since Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in northern California.
I wouldn’t recommend trying this without a lot of prior experience. The alternative campground is seven miles away on a free BLM site, so if you come to Natural Bridges and are oversized, stay there instead. Also, the Natural Bridges campground does not take reservations and it is so small that it fills up quickly.
The big challenge of camping in this region is managing our resources. Other than in the town of Blanding, there are no campgrounds, no dump stations, and very little water. Hovenweep had sulphur-tasting water but nothing else. Natural Bridges’ campground doesn’t even have water (and again, no dump station). Water is obtainable at the Visitor Center, and a sign there says the limit is five gallons per day. We picked up three gallons today. Two and a half gallons went into the water tank and the rest was set aside for cooking.
So we have been watching our water consumption extremely carefully. We won’t get a chance to dump the tanks until we get to Capitol Reef (or the nearby town of Torrey). Hiking in the sun, with lots of sunscreen on, demands a shower at the end of the day, which makes the water-management job much harder.
The only resource which hasn’t been a challenge is electric power. In between hikes I’ve been writing up notes and editing articles for the Winter issue of the magazine on the laptop, and Eleanor has been using her laptop as well. Our solar panels have kept us well supplied. At this writing our batteries are 94% full, and our last plug-in was Tuesday morning. I love the desert sun.
In fact, the sun is so abundant here that Natural Bridges was chosen as a demonstration site for solar power. The Visitor Center is powered by the sun, using two arrays of panels across the street. A short trail leads down to the 50,000 watt solar arrays, encouraging visitors to see.
The big draw, of course, is the three natural bridges formed in the canyon below by water erosion. Each one has an overlook point from the 9-mile loop road, so you can see them all without hiking, and each has a hike down into the canyon to get a closer view.
We did two bridge hikes and one other hike to see another set of cliff dwellings, totaling only about 1.5 miles. Emma has a sore ankle from a minor twist a few days ago, and we’re trying to give her a break. We won’t do any hiking tomorrow unless she’s entirely recovered.
Tonight there is an evening program involving a telescope. This area has some of the darkest night skies to be found in the United States, and the skies have been crystal clear each night since we got to Hovenweep. There, we stood outside the trailer at night and looked up to the most brilliant display of stars I have ever seen. The Milky Way was a unbelievable flood of stars, and Jupiter was glowing like a streetlamp. So if we can manage to stay awake until 9 p.m. tonight, the evening program should be pretty good.
That pretty much covers what this little park has to offer, so tomorrow, after picking up Emma’s Junior Ranger badge, we’ll move on to Capitol Reef.
September 4, 2008 at 6:40 pm · Filed under FAQs, Places to go
I have to remind myself that not everyone knows the location of Hovenweep National Monument. It is one fairly small US National Park site of about 390 in the western hemisphere, and it’s hard to get to. You really have to want to come here, because it’s just not on the way to anything.
Hovenweep National Monument is actually a series of small parcels of land scattered across the southeast corner of Utah and the southwest corner of Colorado. It’s a bit confusing to people, I think, for several reasons. First off, a lot of people think that only places with “National Park” in their name are actually national parks. Actually, the National Park Service system includes National Monuments (NM), Nat’l Historic Sites (NHS), Nat’l Recreation Areas (NRA), Nat’l Memorials (N MEM), National Seashores (NS), Nat’l Historic Parks (NHP), Nat’l Battlefields (NB), Nat’l Scenic Trails (NST), and a few oddballs like the John D Rockefeller Jr Memorial Parkway (near Grand Tetons). All told, there are about 390 sites in the United States, plus a few in US protectorates like Guam, Samoa, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The number keeps rising as new parks are being authorized all the time.
To make things more confusing, this national monument is surrounded by another national monument: the recently-formed Canyon of The Ancients Nat’l Mon. So as you are driving from one “unit” of Hovenweep NM, you are also in and out of Canyon of the Ancients.
But wait, there’s more. Some national monuments are not in the Park Service system, but instead are administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Easterners are often not familiar with BLM, but out here in the west BLM owns vast tracts of land, which is often open to recreation, mining, and drilling. BLM Nat’l Monuments often are just open space with a few primitive 4WD roads and no developed facilities (such as a Visitor Center or campground). Sonoran Desert Nat’l Mon in Arizona is one example, and so is Canyon of the Ancients.
At Hovenweep, the Visitor Center and campground are in the “Square Tower Unit” of the park, located in Utah. Today we drove northeast to three other units where more ancient Puebloan ruins can be seen. The Horseshoe & Hackberry Unit, Holly Unit, and Cutthroat Castle Unit are all located just 4-9 miles away, but they are in Colorado, and they are within Canyon of the Ancients Nat’l Monument.
This results in an interesting study of how the two government agencies administer their land. The Hovenweep units are fenced, have better signage, pit toilets at every trail head, and are more closely monitored. Camping is prohibited except at the campground we’re in. There’s also a day-use fee to access any part of Hovenweep. The rest of the land is BLM, and the rules are less clear (and possibly less restrictive). There’s no fee or services in the BLM’s Canyon of Ancients Nat’l Monument.
Visiting all five units of Hovenweep will certainly be a very full day, or even two days. We have visited four so far, and hiked most of the trails. To visit the other ruin sites you need only a car (you can hike right from the campground but it adds 8 miles roundtrip to the day), assuming the roads are dry. If wet, the guides say they “may be impassable.”
The only site that can’t be reached by car is Cutthroat Castle. You can get most of the way in with a car and then hike down to the sites, or if you have a high-clearance 4WD vehicle like us, you can have an interesting drive down and hike just 0.1 miles to the site. After doing three other hikes, we chose the interesting drive. 4WD Low Range all the way and it was great fun.
Because of the BLM/NP borders, it happens that the exceptional “Painted Hand” pueblo ruin is also on the same access road as Cutthroat Castle. Because it is on BLM property (and thus part of Canyon of the Ancients NM), the brochure you get at the Hovenweep Visitor Center doesn’t even mention it, and it’s not depicted on any of their maps. But it’s right there, almost impossible to miss as you head to Cutthroat, and you must visit it. Painted Hand has towers, kiva depressions, pictographs, farming terraces, and great views. Best of all the round-trip hike is less than a mile. I’m glad we visited Mesa Verde first, so we knew what we were seeing.
We’re still alone here. We did see one other couple visiting some of the ruins today, but other than that it has seemed as though this is our own private national park. We could really stay another night, but we’re juggling our desire to visit Capitol Reef and other places as well. One limiting factor of this park is that it has no dump station, and because of the remote location they ask that we take all our trash with us as well. With careful conservation, those factors won’t force us out for a few days, so the choice is ours to make.
September 3, 2008 at 7:34 pm · Filed under Places to go
This is already an amazingly great National Park and we’ve only been here a few hours.
If you were looking for the middle of nowhere, Hovenweep is pretty close. The nearest town (fuel, services, food, etc) is Cortez, about 44 miles away via a bumpy County Road. The park is in the midst of vast tracts of open desert. Almost nobody lives in the area. There are few roads.
And yet, when we pulled in, we were blown away to find a completely modern, accessible, and handsome Visitor Center, and just beyond it, one of the most beautiful campgrounds we’ve ever seen. I mean, it’s the nicest place we’ve camped since Frisco campground in the Outer Banks. And best of all, there’s nobody here.
I mean nobody. In the 30 site campground, there is one camper: ours, shining brilliantly in the desert sun in space #4 with a gorgeous view in all direction. In the Visitor Center, there are two rangers and nobody else, so we got extremely personalized service at the desk. On the Ruins Trail that we hiked this afternoon (2.0 miles), we saw two people who quickly disappeared, and other than that we had the place to ourselves.
And the kicker is that for some strange reason, there’s a cellular signal here. There’s not supposed to be. I’m supposed to be offline, disconnected from the Internet. And yet, when the winds blows right and I hold my breath, I can get a cell phone signal.
This changes everything. We no longer have to rocket through this park and Natural Bridges (our next stop) because work is piling up. We can take our time, because every morning and evening I can get online and keep up with business.
When the stars are telling you something, you’ve got to listen. It’s $10 a night to stay here, the weather forecast is for sunny mid-80s all week, we have a gorgeous spot and our water tank is full. It all adds up to: “STAY”. So we’ll stay for at least two nights and then decide if we want to move on.
It seems almost unfair that we should have all this to ourselves, but I’m not complaining. The ancient ruins all around here are fascinating, Emma’s doing another Junior Ranger program, we’re luxuriating in the dry air, and there’s plenty to do in the area. This is the type of situation that we live for. It makes all those Wal-Mart nights and borderline campgrounds and high fuel prices worthwhile. May as well enjoy it.
September 2, 2008 at 4:57 pm · Filed under Places to go
Our plan for the day was to explore a representative sample of Mesa Verde, not everything. A park this size can’t be seen in one day, in fact it probably can’t all be seen in a week if you count in all the hiking trails. For our first visit to a big park we like to sample and browse, and in the process learn what we’ll want to come back to see next time.
I’m a big advocate of the idea of hiking a park as much as possible. I realize that’s not possible for everyone, but right now it works for us and so we always try to check out the lesser-known corners by making the effort to hike. Our first hike was an easy one, the Farming Terrace Trail near Cedar Tree Tower, about 0.5 miles. The Ancestral Puebloans who lived here during the time of cliff dwellings were farmers. They grew squash and other vegetables, including a very small variety of corn. Since rainwater runs off the mesas very quickly, they created small terraces to slow the water enough to irrigate their crops. This trail brings you right through a series of terraces.
Three of the most popular cliff dwellings are only accessible by guided tour ($3 per person). We’d seen Long House yesterday, so today we had tickets for Cliff Palace and Balcony House. As it turned out, this was a great order to see them in. Long House is a spectacular first dwelling to tour (150 rooms), and then Cliff Palace is even more elaborate (151 rooms), so you can easily see the difference.
Visiting these dwellings requires climbing ladders and going up and down irregular stairs. The Park Service warns people about the physical challenges of these places, and in the pre-tour briefing the rangers all mention that, should you have a medical emergency, help is three hours away. In reality they aren’t particularly strenuous to anyone in good health, but you can see why the rangers prefer to scare away anyone who might have a problem: They are the ones who will have to carry the stretcher up and out of the canyon.
Something special was happening at Cliff Palace when the Puebloans lived here. It has many more kivas (round ceremonial rooms built into the ground), plastered walls, excellent masonry work, and elaborate decorations. It’s anyone’s guess as to what made this particular so much more elaborate than all the others.
Balcony House made a fantastic final tour. Fair warning: this tour is not for anyone with a fear of heights or claustrophobia. It is considerably more psychologically challenging than the other two. The tour starts with a pair of 30-foot ladders mounted on the cliff above a very very long drop. “Don’t look down — don’t look up!” warns the ranger. “Just look straight ahead and keep three points of contact on the ladder at all times.” I didn’t look down, but I did look up and regretted it.
Climbing the ladder at Balcony House — click for larger
Once you’re inside the Balcony House, the view is stunning and you can see why it has that name. You also might wonder how the heck you’re going to get out of there. Back down that ladder? No, it’s even more interesting. You crawl through a tunnel that is 18″ high, and twelve feet long. (In the middle it opens up enough to crouch, but that’s all.) Emma made it look easy. The rest of us took off our packs and pushed them ahead of us.
Emma goes in the entrance; a tourist comes out the (larger) exit.
Then, you climb up a sheer rock face with chain-link handrails. Again, looking down is not recommended. It’s a looooong way to the bottom of the canyon.
Last challenge of Balcony House — click for larger view
If climbing ladders isn’t your thing, you can still see a lot of cliff dwelling sites from your car, or on a hike. Many are marked from overlooks, and a few others are just surprises. Just by keeping my eyes open during drives and hikes, I managed to spot and photograph more than a dozen cliff dwellings. The Spruce Tree House is probably the best self-guided tour, and it’s only a few hundred feet via paved walkway from the Chapin Mesa Museum parking lot.
At Spruce Tree House you can actually get in a restored kiva. Kivas had roofs made of wood, but the wood has long since rotted away, so during the guided tours you see right into the kiva, like looking at a foundation with no house on it. But getting into the kiva at Spruce Tree gives you a sense of the mysterious, and you can imagine the rituals going on inside while the ceremonial fire burned.
Kiva without roof; inside a kiva
From Spruce Tree house there is a very nice hike on the Petroglyph Point Trail. The signs claim that the total elevation gain is only 174 feet, but that doesn’t include the many ups and downs in the trail. In reality, I would estimate the total climb at several hundred feet — all at about 7500 feet elevation, in arid and often hot conditions. Bring a lot of water. The reward is not only some superb petroglyphs but an unnamed cliff dwelling along the trail. If you want to just see the petroglyphs with minimal effort, do the trail backwards (it’s a 2.8 mile loop), and turn around when you reach the petroglyphs. The second half of the trail is on flat mesa, very easy.
All this plus a short visit to the Chapin Museum accounted for a full day. Our last stop was for fuel, but as I expected the concessionaire-run gas station at Morefield Campground was outrageous. Unleaded: $4.71 per gallon. Seven miles away in Cortez, gas is $3.83. This is typical. When the concessionaires run things, there are more services in the parks but they always cost an arm and a leg. This also accounts for the campsites costing $24.05 instead of $14. I bought two gallons of gas just so we’d have a reserve to drive to Cortez for a proper refill.
Our stop today is Cortez, CO, to top off our reserves. We needed an oil change, a tank of propane, gas, groceries, a fridge defrost, and a chance to catch up on email & the blog before heading out again. The next four days of travel (at least) will involve places in Utah where the cell phone won’t work, Internet is just a concept, groceries are scarce, and prices for everything are likely to be high. I can’t say when I’ll get a chance to update the blog, but I will keep writing entries as we travel, and upload them as soon as possible.
September 1, 2008 at 1:13 pm · Filed under Roadtrips
Early Sunday morning the rain began in Silverton, a tap-tap of fat drops that steadied into a drizzle by the time we got out of bed. This rain had been forecast, but the Silverton forecasts are often wrong (I was told), so I had hoped it would not come.
Our task for the day was to drive back along the Million Dollar Highway to Durango and then to Mesa Verde National Park. This is the same highway we arrived by, which meant again we needed to cross two very high passes with steep ascents and descents: Molas and Coal Bank. Now the task was complicated by wet roads and occasionally dense fog.
So we prepped everything, donned our rain gear, and said goodbye to Mike and Tracy. We expect to see them again over the winter in Tucson and perhaps Quartzsite, and even Silverton next summer.
Like bats before flight, we first stopped at a nearby campground to offload about 200 pounds of black and gray water. (Campgrounds will usually allow you use of their dump stations even if you aren’t staying there, for a fee, in this case $5.) Two hundred pounds may not seem like much in the context of a combined rig that weighs closer to 14,000 pounds, but amazingly it does help a bit with the power when climbing 7-8% grades for many miles.
Since driving conditions had the potential to be nerve-wracking as we wound up and down the steep grades with few guardrails, everyone kept silent. This is a technique used by airline pilots (the “sterile cockpit” rule, which says that there can be no unnecessary chatter on the flight deck of an airliner below 10,000 feet), and it really helps. I got the rig into a nice steady groove in second gear as we climbed out of Silverton, and we rolled along steadily until the road finally straightened out 20 miles later.
Steady is the key. A road like this is constantly inciting you to speed up on descents and slow down on ascents & curves, and if you give in to it you will find yourself either standing on the accelerator or brake nearly all the time. This is hard on the rig and can easily lead to loss of control. Remember, you’ve got thousands of pounds of cargo behind you, just aching to push you sideways on a descending turn. On a climb the engine or transmission can easily be overheated. And brakes will fade to worthlessness once they get too hot.
So we used every advantage we had. The Hensley hitch kept the trailer straight, we stayed in second gear the entire time for engine braking, and I tapped the disc brakes lightly on the descents when engine braking wasn’t enough. I kept the speed within a band from 15 MPH (on the hairpins) to 35 MPH, and watched the RPM gauge to keep the transmission in its ideal range for cooling.
Cars and motorcycles stacked up behind us, and would occasionally pass in suicide maneuvers. The entire road is a no-passing zone, for good reason. The speed limit is generally 30-35 MPH and much slower in curves. There are few pull-outs, so most of the time there’s nothing you can do about impatient people who want to shave two minutes off their trip. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t let pressure from vehicles behind cause you to drive beyond your rig’s abilities. If you are wrecked on the side of the road after going too fast on a wet foggy mountain pass, will they stop and take responsibility for it? Will they go to the hospital on your behalf, or buy you a new truck? Unless you are sure the answer to all these questions is “Yes,” let “˜em wait, or use the next available pull-out.
The only really intimidating part of the ride was one point when we were descending to a steep hairpin turn in dense fog. I could not see the turn even two hundred feet from us, but fortunately the GPS map showed me it was coming, and being in fog I already had the Nissan and Airstream slowed down to 20 MPH. Steady as she goes.
I’ve mentioned before not to trust the GPS when going to state or national parks, but I’ll say it again. Coming to Mesa Verde from the east, Garminita wanted us to exit the highway onto a dirt road named “H-5.” Knowing that she tends to get excited when we approach a national park, I disregarded this and continued another mile down the road to the proper (and well-marked) exit. Good thing, since H.5 doesn’t go anywhere. I pity the RV’er who follows that direction from their GPS. Attempting a U-turn on a narrow dirt road (or worse, backing up a half-mile) is not fun.
Mesa Verde is a large park containing over 600 cliff dwellings, 4,200 other ancient dwelling sites, and many miles of twisting roads. Those roads connect to just a handful of sites that are open to the public, and trailers or motorhomes with vehicles in tow can’t traverse them. Motorhomes over 25 feet long or 8000# GVWR are prohibited entirely from the road to Wetherill Mesa.
Even after driving five miles into the park to set the trailer in Morefield campground, it was another 11 miles to the Visitor Center, and an additional 12 miles to Wetherill Mesa, where we took our first tour of a cliff dwelling.
I had chosen to stay in the park at Morefield because (1) we always like the national park campgrounds for their convenient access, low prices, and generally attractive settings; (2) the NPS website said, “It never fills,” so even on Labor Day weekend we didn’t need to worry about reservations. Alas, Morefield was a slight disappointment. Now I know why it never fills. The price when we arrived was not $14 as published on the website, but a startling $24.05 per night. That’s a lot for an unlevel, weedy, primitive site (meaning no hookups). Bathrooms are nearby, but showers are inconveniently located over a mile away. Still, the location is at least five miles closer than the nearest commercial campground.
Since we arrived in Mesa Verde in the early afternoon, there was time to explore one end of the park. At the Farpoint Visitor Center, the road forks into two. One road leads 12 miles to Wetherill Mesa, and the other road leads 5 miles to Chapin Mesa. Although the distances don’t seem long, the twistiness of the roads means that the 12 mile drive to Wetherill takes about 30 minutes. Since there are multiple sites to visit at both mesas, and the drive times are long, it’s impossible to see everything in one day.
We caught the last (4 pm) tour of the day at Long House, the second-largest cliff dwelling in the park. It’s also the longest tour, at 90 minutes. This visit made up for the tedious drives of the day, because Long House is just spectacular. With overcast skies in the afternoon, the light was perfect. Inside the dwelling I used bounce flash to fill in a few shots, but for the most part it was just natural light. I shot over a hundred images and wished I’d had time for many more. I’ll be setting up a new album on Flickr for some of my favorites.
Getting to Long House requires a tram ride, a steep set of stairs, and a hike of about half a mile. Exactly at the end of the tour, the skies opened up and a deluge started “¦ and of course, being optimistic, we left the rain jackets back in the car. We weren’t the only ones. Half a mile later, about a dozen of us arrived at the tram stop utterly drenched, and then sat down on the flooded plastic benches of the tram for a soggy open-sided ride back to the parking lot.
The rain meant there was no chance of us attending the Ranger talk in the amphitheater at Morefield campground, so we dragged our dripping selves back to the Airstream and fired up the catalytic heater to maximum. If there’s any fun in getting soaked in the rain, it’s the moment you take off all the wet clothes and put on dry ones, while standing in front of a toasty heater.
We hung our wet stuff in front of the heater, including our shoes and Emma’s stuffed cat Zoe (she goes along for every hike and really doesn’t like getting wet), and watched a movie while eating pecan-crusted boneless trout filets that we bought at the Great Machipongo Clam Shack in Virginia last May. That made a fine end to a long and wild day, and it felt well worth the trouble of towing the Airstream over the mountains to have it waiting for us with warmth and dinner and comfort.
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We took a look forward in the calendar and decided that it was time to leave Hovenweep after only two nights. We’d seen 80% of the publicly-accessible ancient Puebloan ruins, hiked most of the trails, and Emma had completed her Junior Ranger program. But also we saw time beginning to run short on us. We’d like to complete our loop of Utah national parks before the end of the month.
The big draw, of course, is the three natural bridges formed in the canyon below by water erosion. Each one has an overlook point from the 9-mile loop road, so you can see them all without hiking, and each has a hike down into the canyon to get a closer view.
