Capitol Reef National Park Area
Friday, 16 September - Monday, 19 September, 2022
Looking down at Sipapu Bridge, Natural Bridges National Monument.
The pre-trip week was a massive struggle of preparation. Acquiring the new rooftop carrier and learning to pack it up added a whole new level of excitement. Eric picked the new carrier up from the Subaru dealership on Thursday, and Thursday night, we struggled to load the camping gear and, importantly, lock the lid shut. When I could not get the driver's side locked and remove my keys, Eric opened the passenger side of the double-hinged object, resulting in the lid twisting awkwardly out of alignment on a diagonal. Eric had read on the internet that, if this happened, you would need to remove the carrier from the roof in order to rectify the situation. I won't say that hilarity ensued, rather, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but we did succeed in getting the lid back into place without the necessity of removing the carrier from Mather's roof, if not before dark.
On Friday, the appointed day for departure, it was nearly 21:00 before we managed to load the rest of our gear into Mather and get on the road. I had made a reservation that night in Reno. As we headed up into the Sierra on I-80, we saw a red moon through layers of smoke. I hoped the smoke would be clear once we had summited the crest, but, alas, that was not to be. The east side was, if anything, even worse. The motel clerk told me sternly that we had a non-smoking room and, as I initialed the form, I remarked that I didn't think there was anything non-smoking within a radius of many miles. In a clear demonstration of how the US is really 50 little countries, the man also made me initial a promise that I would not use any marijuana products in the room.
The best thing I can say about the EconoLodge in Reno was that it had very good road trip art. (Stay tuned for our trip to the featured attraction on the Utah license plate.)
It was nearly midnight by the time we arrived, and 0:30 by the time we got to bed, after Eric did a brief ukulele practice. So, it was 10:30 on Saturday by the time we left this smoky, godforsaken place. We had nearly 1,000 km/600 mi to cover on Saturday, to reach the new territory we planned to explore. We had to cross most of the State of Nevada from west to east, retracing our passage out for our Colorado Plateau 2 trip last year, and also a substantial portion of the distance across Utah, ending in the City of Bicknell. We started out through the sometimes beautiful Truckee River Valley, now filled with a smoky haze. We crossed from I-80 to US-50, and bounded up and down over the Basin and Range, alternately climbing windy roads over mountains or driving straight across wide open basins. It took a surprising number of mountain ranges for us finally to escape the miserable smoke.
The hope for this part of the trip had been to visit Cathedral Valley in Capitol Reef National Park, because the road had been in a poor condition on our 2021 visit. This time, it was worse--the road was closed. So, we turned to alternative plans, which turned out to be surprisingly interesting.
Day 0 distance hiked: 0 km/0 mi
Day 1 distance hiked: 0 km/0 mi
Day 2 distance hiked: 2.8 km/1.7 mi
Day 3 distance hiked: 3.2 km/2.0 mi
Day 0 distance driven: 340 km/211 mi
Day 1 distance driven: 966 km/600 mi, cumulative 1,305 km/811 mi
Day 2 distance driven: 289 km/142 mi, cumulative 1,534 km/953 mi
Day 3 distance driven: 372 km/231 mi, cumulative 1,905 km/1,184 mi
Day 0 caches found: 0
Day 1 caches found: 0
Day 2 caches found: 2
Day 3 caches found: 1
On to Capitol Reef National Park area.