45.) View Spoiled....Vast Upheaval....Whale Rock....

     I land in Canyonlands National Park the next morning, my first stop is the section of the park known as The Island in the Sky. The wide open view, hundreds of miles of undeveloped land is reassuring to me; in that we, as people, haven't had a chance to ruin everything….yet. But I think I’m becoming a bit spoiled when it comes to viewpoints and overlooks.  The view over the canyon lands is gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, it’s the establishing shot in a old western flick, and when the heavy mist settles into the canyons obscuring everything except the flat toped bluffs, its easy to see where the name Island in the Sky came from; but after spending so much time at the Grand Canyon so recently, it’s less emotionally jarring than it would have been had I come here first. I still find it somehow soothing though.

It’s nearly a 2 mile round trip on the White Rim Overlook Trail through the familiar desert scrub brush. It leads me to a cliff’s edge at very tip of a peninsula that juts out over the desert floor hundreds of feet below. I look out and realize that I’m now standing on part of the island in the sky. The rock formations are different than the ones I saw in the Grand Canyon. Towers, spires, pinnacles, whatever you want to call them look small from here, but the tallest actually tops out at 305 feet.

From where I stand I can picture a downpour of rain and the runoff it creates flowing down the hillsides and how all that water, over billions of years, would result in the landscape I’m looking at now, and once again think about the time it takes to create something as magnificent as this.  The vastness of the place, in terms of physical size of course, I can see for hundreds of miles, but also the vastness of the timeline you need to grasp when considering the creation of a place like this. That’s why the desert makes us feel small and insignificant….maybe. That feeling can be soul crushing, paralysis inducing, nothing I do matters so why bother doing anything at all.  That’s the thought most people, myself included come to, but upon further inspection I think it can be sort of liberating.  There are forces in the world that are bigger than you, stronger than any of us. They are going to continue regardless of your, or my, level of involvement. There is literally nothing we can do about it so why burden yourself with the negative thoughts and just do what you please. 

     I was listening to an old George Carlin stand up routine recently where he says that people are arrogant when they talk about how we have to save the planet and I think he makes a valid point. The planet has been here for billions of years, it’s going to be fine. We’ll be gone, no doubt, but the planet will live on. It will take its time and slowly heal from all the terrible things people have done to it and it may no longer be habitable by humankind, but the planet will be fine. No one really cares about the planet, it’s themselves their trying to save. Sometime, when destruction of environment reaches a critical mass, and it become too ruthless to sustain human life, we will slowly die off. The human race will probably be able to survive , limping along on life support for hundreds of years, but eventually we’ll all be gone, and THAT is what will ultimately Save The Planet.  

Holy shit, I got a little existential on ya there for a second. Weeks alone in the desert will do that to a man's brain. I think I’ve mentioned that before, but weeks alone in the desert also takes a toll on a man’s memory. I apologize for the digression. 

     Lets get back to two and a quarter miles on the Upheaval Dome Overlook Trail. The sign at the trailhead says “Dome” but it’s actually a crater, and science isn’t quite sure how it was formed. Could it have been a meteor? A prehistoric sea? A collapsed salt dome?  These are the best guesses science has offered up so far, but still no proof to its formation. I manage to pull myself up the trail to the crater's rim where I plop down to admire another view and munch on a Cliff Bar.

    It’s a short 1 mile round trip to the crest of Whale Rock.  I don’t even bring my gps or water on such a short hike and almost immediately, I regret it. This one is another trail that mostly transverses the huge red boulders that are so abundant in this part of the country. Maybe a scraggily little bush here or there, clinging to life from a small crack. Windblown sand finds refuge in shallow depressions, but the rest is just bare rock. So with no worn path to follow I’m once again using those rock cairns for navigation. My lack of water provides an extra anxiety when I can’t seem to find them anymore. I stand in one spot and turn, 360 degrees, eyes locked onto the rough stone surface and see nothing. Uh oh……I take a few cautious steps in the direction I believe the trail was headed before I lost sight of it. Over a crest in the rock I finally set eyes on the next cairn and the crisis is quickly averted.

 

     It’s unsettling how quickly you can find yourself in a dire situation like that in the desert, especially if you're alone, and in this case without water. It could be something as simple as a twisted ankle or a skinned knee getting infected. Stuck out in the desert alone, you got a real problem on your hands. As of this particular moment however, I’ve got no problems other than a greying sky that’s threatening to storm by turning up the wind.

     Rain holds off long enough for me to do the half mile loop passed Mesa Arch. The name is apt seeing as its nothing but flat desert as far a I can see, in all directions. Eventually I can see where the desert just drops away and from there the arch peaks just up over the edge of the mesa. As I get closer I’m able to look through it to canyon floor hundreds of feet below. It’s a different orientation than the other arches I’ve seen so far and makes for a decent photo op. With the storm nearly upon me now I retreat to a nearby highway rest stop to crash for the night in the Jeep. Along the way I keep stealing glances in my rearview to see the sunset. The clouds mesh with the skyline of cliffs on the horizon and I can't differentiate between the earth and the sky, they have become one.

44.) Pricy Conditions......Free Box......and Investigative Journalism...

      

     The yellow, diamond shaped street sign I pass while heading into Telluride warns of Icy Conditions. A local prankster type has stuck the letters PR in front of the word Icy so the sign reads “Pricy Conditions”. It’s a good joke and when I pull into downtown I'm given reason to believe it’s accurate.The little mountain town is stupidly beautiful. Like something out of a Swiss tourism brochure. Cute little shops and brick store fronts line the main drag.  It's the middle the off season so a lot of the places are closed, have shortened hours, or are remolding; and nearly everyone I pass has a K-9 sidekick. It’s heavenly and throughout the day I have a reoccurring thought, “I think I could live here.”

     

     While the town itself is esthetically pleasing it’s not why I’ve come to Telluride. I could try and convince you that I’ve come here for the change of scenery. And to be fair, that is partly true, I suppose. The desert gets lonely. It takes its toll when you spend an extended amount of time in it….especially when the majority of that time is spent alone, and after only 2 and a half hours of driving I am definitely not in the desert anymore.      The town sits in the the crook of a horseshoe bend in the mountains.  Three sides flanked by the jagged snowcapped walls.  The highway just sort of ends in Telluride, it has no place to go once it reaches the mountains

     So don’t get me wrong, there’s no doubt that this place is beautiful, but again, it’s not what made me come here. Truthfully, I’ve never even heard of Telluride, but it’s 2014 and I HAVE heard about Colorado’s legal marijuana laws and I mean to check it out.  It’s a strictly journalistic pursuit, I assure you….Mom.   

The medicinal stuff has been legal for awhile in these parts, but recently Colorado was the first state to legalize recreational sales as well and it seems the locals are as excited as I am.  I can walk from one end of town and back in less than an hour, so it’s not a big place but the have 4 marijuana dispensaries….FOUR. One of them was strictly for medicinal purposes so I’m not allowed in since I don’t have a prescription card from a doctor.  The others have a special room for the medical stuff which I'm also denied entry to without my “green” card, but where I’m standing now has no shortage of inventory.  

Edibles, smokeable  hash, wax…everything one could want is on display inside the glass  counter or on shelves on the back wall. It’s just like the wall behind any bar in America.  Top shelf is the fancy, most expensive product.  It’s your smokable Royal Crown and Patron. Prices and quality diminished as you move down the shelves.  

I talk shop with the guy behind the counter, ask about the different products, what’s his favorite, what isn't worth my time that sort of thing.  He’s wearing a Minnesota Wild jersey, I let him know I’m a Blackhawks fan so I have to take anything he says with an appropriate level of mistrust, but he smiles affably and points me towards some chocolates .  Edibles have never really done anything for me so I have my doubts, but after I think about it every time in the past have eaten brownies, they were made by one of my stoner friends who, it’s very possible, had no idea what they were doing. These are professionally made so I trust his judgement and buy a package along with a few grams of the smokeable that I’m more familiar with. These they call “flowers”. It’s weed dude, just give it to me.  The “flowers” come in plastic cylindrical containers that resemble prescription bottles without the child proof top.  The chocolates come in a similar, larger bottle. It reminds of the container I used to keep my pogs in as a kid…Oh man, remember pogs!?  Anyway, 4 chocolates come in the tube, each slightly larger than a rectangle broken off a hershey bar.  I choose the mint chocolate chip flavor and am told that each piece contains 25 milligrams of THC.  The recommended dosage is 10 milligrams so the guy tells me to eat half of one to see how it goes, you can always eat more but you can’t eat less, so be careful, once it’s ingested you’re along for the ride.  

I thank everyone inside, shout "Go Hawks!" at the kid in the hockey jersey, and head back to the Jeep with my new found, totally legal, bounty.  I hide they flowers in the car since the new laws say I can buy and posses it, but I’m still not allowed to smoke it in public. Not on the streets, or in a pub, I’ve got to be in a private residence if I want to be 100% legal, but theres no law that says I can’t eat chocolate anywhere I want, so I remove 1 piece from it’s packaging. 

25 milligrams of THC per piece, I don’t really know how much that is. Recommended dosage 10 miligrams; that doesn’t sound like that much. I bite off half the piece and it tastes pretty good. I eye the other half and contemplate saving it for later but, it doesn't take me long to say fuck it, with a shrug and pop the other half into my mouth. I spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around the small town and reaffirming my earlier thought that I could live here.

Plenty of bars to choose from, a skate park down one of the out of the way back roads, a park with a large grassy area bisected by a shallow mountain stream.  It’s obviously ski/snowboard town, I can see the runs coming down the mountains covered in grass instead of snow this time of year, and pass by the deserted ski lifts. Evidently you can take the lift up the mountain and ski down the other side to a different resort in a different mountain town. That’s beyond my experience considering the ski hill I grew up with in the Midwest was just an old landfill long ago covered with dirt to make a hill.  This is another animal entirely. I’d like to try it out for myself one day.  

I’m still not feeling the effects from my chocolate and I curse myself for wasting my money.  I shoulda got all flowers, I know those work. Oh well, I chalk it up to a new experience and continue my wandering. That’s when I make an mind melting discovery in the middle of town…..The Free Box.

    

     

     It’s a series of cubby holes, like a bookshelf but with more space, and it’s full of all sorts of useful items. Old books, shoes and clothes that people have grown out of. House wares like plates and placemats. Blankets, pillows, anything that someone no longer needs or uses can be placed here, as long as its still useful. People can drop stuff off, or pick something they could use themselves.  It’s an incredible idea and I'm whole heartedly in love with it. This sort of thing should be in every town! Why don’t more places do this!?  But I quickly realize that all you need is one party pooper to ruin the whole thing for everyone.  Someone who cleans out the entire box, regardless of if they need the stuff or not, or someone using the box as a receptacle and filling it with trash or as a bathroom, filling it with……yuck. “This is why we can’t have nice things,” I think to myself.  But the nearby sign with the Free Box rules on it also has the heading “A Telluride Tradition” which makes it sound like its been around for a while.  I really wanted to partake in the Free Box but the books that were there I’d either already read or didn’t interest me, so I abide by the rules and take nothing I can’t use.  This is such a great idea, I’m elated, lifted up by the concept, and excited that apparently this town has found a way to make it work.  I have a little bit more faith in humanity after this display and when I finally turn away to check out the rest of the town, that's the moment I realize that I’m fucking flying.  Blazed outta my gourd.  The chocolates take a little patience, but eventually, they get the job done; and it’s less of a stuck on the couch and can’t move kinda high. While not energized exactly, I’ve still got the motivation to wander around Telluride for a bit longer soaking in the sights and snapping a few pictures in the process.  It turns out to be a wonderful day, and a relaxing respite from desert hiking.  So with my investigative journalism complete, and still too high to make the trip all the way back to Utah, I find a truck stop on the outskirts of town and crash in the Jeep for then night.

43.) Inquiring Strangers....the Last of the Arches....Thai Strippers...

     The next day is cold and grey with no signs of clearing up in the afternoon like usual so no hiking today. Instead I spend it in town refilling prescriptions, investigating the library, and making cheesy chicken camp stove tacos at a picnic table I find outside a Wendy’s. While I’m cooking I meet Mike, who inquires as to what I’m up to. I give him the quick rundown of this trip I’m on and he seems impressed. So much so that he gives me his email and tells me to look him up if I ever make it to Salt Lake City, he’ll hook me up with a place to stay.

     I’m always a little nervous when someone asked about what I’m doing. Afraid that they're just looking for a reason to kick me out of wherever I happened to be at the time, or that they just won't get it at all and figure I’m just some hobo loser. But it never happens that way, no one is ever critical of my decisions that have led me to this particular spot at this particular time. In fact, it’s usually jealousy and well wishes I’m met with, and sometimes, even sandwiches. The most critical comment I’ve gotten up to this point, outside of those border patrol agents down in Texas, is  “Seems like it could get tough at times, huh?” and without really thinking about it, my naturally occurring response comes out, “Yeah, but so can everything else.” I nod in agreement with myself, it’s a good point and people seem to take it as such.  

After I eat, I have a few beers and Woody's Tavern in Moab, and watch the Blackhawks lose. It’s still raining when I emerge so I retreat to the laundromat to enjoy my buzz while I wash some clothes and then crash out in the Jeep behind the tavern. The next day the rain continues so I’m still hikeless, but it’s Mothers Day so I call my Mom to wish her well and fill her in on the current what, when, and where of my trip.  Blue law says no booze on Sundays (bummer, especially on a rainy Sunday) so I spend most of the day reading ‘Just Kids’ in the back of the Jeep. 

The storm is still overhead the following day, but I can finally see the edge of it, it’s not raining but it’s still cold and overcast. Whenever I reach a new place it seems like summer has finally arrived but then a front comes through and it gets cold again. Earlier in the week I was sweating in the sunshine, but this morning at 11:30 it's only 55 degrees. I slog through another hikeless day, looking forward to warmer weather, but I’m sure once it gets hot I’ll bitch about that too, so ya know….The grass is always greener and <insert platitude>. 

Sweet, pure rejuvenating sunshine finally coats my skin after 3 days of grey, wet, boring everyday chores. Stop at the pharmacy, wash your clothes, make yourself dinner. These were the kind of things I was worried about, being on the road like this, always moving around, not really having an address. But it's all been relatively straightforward.  Give my current bottle of meds to the pharmacist, he makes some calls and I get new jar of meds. Find a laundromat, they're everywhere, to wash my clothes once in a while. I'm not attending any high faulting' get togethers or anything so I don't have to be spotless, or even, all that clean really, so this is almost a treat. Plus it's a constructive way to spend a rainy day. But I'm more than stoked to finally feel some sunshine again. 

   

     I should be able to finish up the rest of the trails in Arches today. The trail system that surrounds and leads to Landscape Arch is the only section of the park I have yet to visit. This section has a bunch of small trails branching off of each other. Some of them run right along the tops of the huge boulders so I play a lot of find-the-rock-carin to remain headed in the right direction.  It wouldn't be terribly difficult to just get caught up in the beautiful scenery and end up wandering off into the desert, but this side of the park is easier to access and therefore more popular.  There's not a ton of people around but it's enough to make you feel less exposed.

     All the arches are worth a gander though, and they're all different. Double O Arch is the most impressive for my taste.  Two window like arches on right on top of each other.  Theres others that lead through through thick rock fins, and one that looks to be on the verge of collapse.  This this ribbon of rock i believe to be Landscape Arch, and there are boulders underneath it that look like they'd fit like puzzle pieces into the underside of whats left of the arch above. Dangerous Territory. 

     

     The sun continues to shine but it’s still sweater weather with long pants and I’m loving it. With the La Sal Mountains the constant backdrop, ice cream sundae mountains with a healthy squirt of chocolate syrup snow to top it off.   I spend most of the day here wandering taking it all in. I’ve hiked nearly 8 miles by the time i’ve covered every trail in this section.  On my way back to the jeep it starts to catch up with me. Three hike less days of rain, and then 8 miles is taking its toll. I kick off my hiking boots and head back in to Moab where i find, McStiffs, another small town dive bar to watch tonights hockey game.

      Enter Byron, an affable Canadian man who ends up being generous with the drinks and the stories. We bullshit about the hockey game, the trip I’m on, and the like. The usual pleasantries that occur with strangers at a bar sorta stuff, until Byron tells me he’s recently returned from Thailand. Where here spent a lot of his time in Tai strip clubs.  one of said clubs one lovely lady asked him his name when he walked in the door. She the proceeds to slide a marker into her most intimate of areas and manipulated across a white board. The result, while not obvious, was still clean enough…she had written ‘Byron” with her hooha….Another act consisted of a different girl placing a ballon between his knees while a third lady of the night shot darts outta her baby maker until she popped the balloon. Needless to say, the experience left him disappointed when he visited American strip clubs for the first time.

    It’s understandable since when he left the club in Thailand one of the girls left with him, and ended up staying with him for the whole weekend.  “I never paid here or anything, I think she just wanted a boyfriend,” he says. 

“Well, so what did you do?” I chuckle in response.

“Oh, I was scheduled to fly out on Monday…..so I did. She was still in the room when I left. Hell, she might still be there.”  Byron might be bordering on scumbaggery here, but I love a good story and thats a damn good one.  I thank him for his chatter and the drinks and I retreat back to the jeep and crash out behind the building.  

I’m slow moving the next morning having had a few more drinks than anticipated the previous night so the morning is spent in the library where I know it will be both air conditioned and quiet.  Once the mist clears from my brain and I'm function more effectively I steer the Jeep towards Telluride, Colorado and state 5 of this trip.

42.) Cairn Hunting......View Viewing......and Dark Double Arches...

 

     I awake from my daydream and continue on, down the Broken Arch trail which leads right through the arch itself and into the campground. It’s a gorgeous place, surrounded with more rock fins, some 2 and 3 stories tall. Spires of the same red rock reach even higher in some places. The trail goes up, over, and sometimes right along these formations. When you hike on solid rock, a well worn trail is not possible the way it is through the woods or even on the desert floor. So I have to be on the lookout for rock cairns, manmade stacks of 3 or 4 small rocks that mark the trail. It makes hiking here into a game of sorts. I see a cairn, I hike to it, and from there I spin around until I locate the next one and off I go. It’s fairly obvious, not at all difficult to follow, but it’s different than just trudging down a well defined path.  

     I spend the rest of the day bouncing around on these rock trails, seeking out cairns and taking in all the views the desert has to offer. I consider the campground, it’d be quite an experience to stay out here after dark, but it’s 20 bucks a night to camp and I’m on the tightest of budgets. Food, gas, the occasional libation. My money is holding out better than I thought it would, but I have no idea when or how I’ll have the chance to make more, plus further investigation reveals that the entire campground is booked solid for the next few weeks so I stick to my free car camping in town.

     Before I exit the park for the night I watch the sun set on the Park Avenue Trail from the back of the jeep. The night before, my hiking boots had made sleeping in the jeep rather ripe, if you know what I mean, so before I set out this morning I powdered them liberally with odor eaters. I remove my boots as the sun continues it’s slow decent to the horizon and discover that I may have been a bit too caviler with the powder. Inside my sweaty boots all day it’s turned into a kind of paste between my toes. A rather unpleasant feeling but the silver lining is the gross feeling paste smells great! Let’s hear it for the smallest of victories! Park Avenue fades along with the sun, from red, to deep purple, to pure black. The same thing its done every single night for billions of years, nothing more than just ‘IS’.

 

 

     Moab mornings have been consistently overcast and rainy during my stay here, but by lunchtime blue skies usually make an appearance complete with cotton candy clouds. Today is no exception and I take advantage by heading to a new section of the park. Trails to The Windows and Double Arch take me on a 3 mile jaunt that is anything but disappointing. It’s still too crowed in my opinion, but the Double Arch might be the most impressive formation yet. And with the La Sal Mountains as a constant back drop it’s difficult to get too worked up about all the tourists. 

It’s hard to believe but my guidebook says Double Arch started as a small depression in the top of this huge boulder.  The depression would fill with water, and that water would work it’s way into small crack, and slowly make the bigger. Fast forward a few million years and you get Double Arch, two mammoth archways separated by a kind of skylight.  The water started where the ‘skylight’ is now, worked its way down and flowed either out the frontside of the formation or the backside, forming both arches that I’m able to climb up into. The floor below them is littered with huge boulder that obviously fell from above in times past, and we’re all having a jolly good time playing underneath.  Someday, someone, maybe several someones, in possession of the worlds worst timing will be hurt or killed here. Crushed by a hunk of boulder that hasn't moved in ages. It’s the truth, but…Why so dark Skala?

41.) Seeking Solitude....Regret of the Oreos....I Was Here...

    The next morning I find a picnic table to make camp stove coffee, make my way to the local post office to mail a Mother’s day gift, and then I'm right back into the park.  This time I’m headed to Tower Arch, nearly 2 miles round trip, a sandy hill makes the end of this trail particularly strenuous, then I round a boulder and again the arch is almost right on top of me.

It’s more of a window than Delicate Arch was. Standing alone like that, and the fact that I saw it first makes Delicate Arch the standard against which all other arches will be measured.  An Arch Barometer if you will… While it’s different, Towner Arch is still another impressive sight to take in.  

     Rainwater trickled down a cack in the top of this massive boulder, after billions of years the water ate all the way through the face of this rock to create the archway.  That’s a better way to describe it, and ‘Archway’. The red rock pinnacles on either side contrast nicely with the cartoon perfect blue sky/puffy white cloud combo.

     I came out here with the notion of it being less crowed.  Just to get to the trailhead I had to drive 8 miles down a dirt path through the martian landscape. Most people won’t bother, I figured, and I’m right. I see maybe 2 or 3 people but I'm still not all alone to be completely immersed in my surroundings. 

“I’ll takes what I can gets” I think and head up into the arch. I climb all the way up and thru and take in the panorama.  Breath deep in the desert air.  The openness of this place, the freedom of my life right now.  Like a deep breath in cold weather, I can feel it disperse through my chest and contemplate for a moment….

     ”What is it I really wanna do?” and the answer that comes back is “More things like this”. Keep putting checkmarks on the ole bucket list. It feels good…..It’s a thing thats fun to do, AND you feel pretty good after it’s done. You know what I mean? You’ll prolly feel pretty good after a nice run, but while you're doing it, it fuckin sucks.  Just the opposite goes for eating an entire bag of Oreos….feels great while you're doing it.  These Oreos are my one and only *chomp*, they’re the only thing that really understands me *chomp*, they’ll never betray me *chomp* and I’ll love them for always *chomp*. But before you know it, the bag is mostly empty and regret begins it worm it’s way into your little daydream, and not long afterwards you kinda feel like you wanna die.  

Hiking while emerged in beautiful surroundings is an enjoyable experience in and of itself in my opinion. Yeah, your legs might get sore, you may be dripping sweat but those things sort of fall away when I’m immersed in such an awe inspiring landscape. Plus you get the added feeling of really living when you make it to the end of that hike and are rewarded with a unreal view, not to mention the endorphins released from the effort you’ve gotta put in getting there.  I’m really enjoying myself.

Later on I do nearly 3 miles investigating Sand Dune Arch, hiking through Broken Arch, and into the park’s campground.  

Sand Dune Arch is hidden inside a rock formation. I have to squeeze between two of the massive fins to get to it. It’s cave like inside, the fins are close enough together that fat people wouldn’t fit. It’s tough going, hiking through this sand, so fine its nearly a powder. My boots and shins are caked with the stuff dyeing me a dark burnt orange. 

     The trail to Broken Arch is a mile or so through flat open grassland with a hardpan base of the now familiar red rock dust.  It’s the first arch I can see from a distance as I approach. The name is slightly misleading, since the arch isn’t actually broken, but there are seams through the rock at its apex. So it’s not broken now, but someday it will be, and I’m glad I got to see it before it collapses.

 

It sparks a thought, all this is temporary, on a long enough timeline EVERYTHING is temporary.  All these rock formations probably spent millions of years buried deep under the earths surface until the laws of nature worked their magic long enough to erode the softer soil that surrounds them, and eventually pushed their way skyward, birthed from the depths. And those same forces are still working today. Right this second, as I sit here watching, they are meticulously eating away at every crack a fissure. And millions of years from now these formations will be ground back down to nothing, returned to the earth from which they came.  

Delicate Arch especially. It seems the most fragile, which in turn makes it that much more impressive. As I said, it’s the one you see in all the brochures and websites.  It’s what brought me here, and I can’t help but assume it’s had a similar effect on a lot of other people visiting the park. I'm sure there will be “Breaking News!” one day, out of the blue, that a storm rolled through with such ferocity that Delicate Arch will be destroyed, never to be seen again, and I’ll be able to tell future generations that I was there, I saw it with my own eyes, felt its surface with my own fingertips, and on a postcard perfect day in early May, 2014 all seemed right in the world.