Escalante 2006 - A Dream and the Realities - Part Ten

Day 6
Thursday July 27 8:00am

Morning came. A reasonable night sleep had been had by most, Dan and TClog snug in their beds, visions of sugarplums danced in their heads, and I without kerchief asleep on the thermarests. Whatever. I was up first and showered, followed by Dan and then finally by TClog. We spent an hour or so getting our shit together for the extended trip home. The power was still off and so we were operating with the blinds open and the morning sun beaming in. I think we ate some of our trail food for breakfast, at least I did. I don't recall eating breakfast that morning anywhere, so I can only assume bagels were consumed.

Eventually we had everything in the car, and pulled up to the office to drop our key off. Dan went in to deal with that and I got a couple of pictures of TClog on an old tractor in the front of the motel. Dan came out, sat in the car and with a slight whir the power returned to Escalante, like spring after an abbreviated but bitter winter. The irony practically fell from the sky, like painful but delicious acid rain. You couldn't imagine a scenario as hilarious as the one we'd just been part of. Let me recap.

Sunday: AC breaks in the middle of NE with 18 hours of driving to go.

Monday: hike beings in 100 degree heat. Night spent with all of us in freakishly hot tent due to fear of snakes and scorpions, after a day filled with unmet expectations.

Tuesday: another hot day spent hiking followed by partial night in hot tent followed by caution throwing night outside the tent for Dan and I.

Wednesday: resolved to hike out, with minimal water due to cloudy creek, and get an air-conditioned motel room (and subsequently a good night's sleep) before the long ride home. Check in with the ac working, return from hike to find ac out (as part of total power loss) and all opportunities for a good dinner and that good night's sleep significantly curtailed.

Thursday: following a better night's sleep than would have been had in a tent (except for perhaps in the cool elevations of Dixie National Forest) but still far short of expectations, we check out almost simultaneous with the return of power, leaving us in the faithful Sombrero but once again without ac and with only a partial hope of getting it fixed before the real drive begins.

So, except for a few brief periods, we'd been hot almost continuously for 4 days. The few reprieves we had were glorious but shortlived. And here we were facing perhaps two more days of hot in the car. It was pushing our buttons and that was to show as the day proceeded.

We had decided to check out the Escalante Petrified Forest before we left town and so headed to the west end of town. We thought we would get in a cool little hike and see some petrified wood. The entrance to the park was down a short gravel road off of UT18 and we were there in short order. Not knowing what to expect we pulled into parking area and up to one of the informational displays. I hopped out to get the skinny on the park and learned a couple of things: it was going to cost $6 ($6!!) to get all three of us in, and the hiking was sort of steep. I think it was the general malaise that was upon us but there seemed to be resistance to doing anything that just didn't fall exactly into our expectations. So we decided to leave Escalante, stopping for some coffee and souvenirs on the way out of town.

As we drove back out on the gravel road towards UT18 a dog ran onto the road to intercept us. TClog was driving and sped up. I urged him to slow down. He sped up more and pulled to the left away from the dog. I urged him to slow down in more insistent tones. The dog was very close to the car, so close that I'm not sure TCLog could see it from the driver's seat. Regardless, he seemed to me to be handling this situation completely wrong and was freaking me out. The dog was so close that any unexpected action by the dog or by us could have led to catastrophe (at least as I saw it). So I smacked Tclog in the head and once again asked him to slow down, principally because his actions seemed reckless and he was ignoring everything I had said. Obviously there is another side of the story and that would play out as the day went on.

Being smacked sent the jazzed-o-meter to record lows, and the fact that I continued my excoriation until we were well onto UT18 and the dog was long gone probably didn't help, but I had been genuinely concerned for the life of that dog and TClog appeared to not. My viewpoint was that there wasn't any other creature on Earth that TClog would have acted that way for. We'd already had an incident way back at the beginning of the trip where a bird collided with the car. That put the first big dent into the jazz level, leaving TClog seriously bummed for quite a long time. So for me it was as if the dog's life was somehow less valuable than the bird's and it left me stunned.

I relented on my ranting as we headed back into town but TClog was seriously funked out. We stopped and got coffee and souvenirs (I made an attempt at a gesture of reconcilliation in the souvenir shop) in Escalante and then headed back over the Hog's Back and towards the Dixie National Forest where we hoped to find a good day hike in a new ecological environment. Not surprisingly, there wasn't much talking for the first while and we were once again heading back through well trodden ground no matter how stunning. Dan for his part remained honorably neutral through this whole event, leaving it generally to TClog and I to work things out.

So, back over the Hog's Back and to Boulder, UT which marked the beginning of Dixie National Forest. Once into the forest proper we had almost innumerable opportunities for hikes, but the malaise that afflicted us made it almost impossible to reach a consensus. Dan had scouted a couple of trails that were most loop-like, but when we stopped at a trailhead we learned that it would require driving (or hiking) on a seriously rutted trail (road) and that again wasn't meeting expectations. So we went on, Dan pointing out all sorts of opportunities but no consensus could be achieved. Eventually we got to a sort of ranger station/welcome center for the forest and stopped.

I needed to take care of some business and so Dan and TClog went to talk to someone about a good hike to do. When they returned we pow-wowed about the trail and TClog got to elaborate on his viewpoint of this morning's events. He viewed the dog as a typical car chasing farm dog and felt that getting past the dog as quickly as possible was the best thing to do. Being hit, especially in the head, was completely off the charts in terms of acceptability. I apologized for the hit, recounted my view of the situation, and we resolved to get over it.

The trail we were going to take started across the road, and hilariously enough it was a little difficult to figure out where it started. Another classic adventure begun exactly as you'd expect. But we found it in short order and headed down a trail which had been described as being misleading about the amount of elevation it dropped. I don't think we were at all fooled about the amount it dropped. It wasn't the slickrock from the day before, but it dropped pretty fast. We were in principally an alpine forest, with exposed ledge to the left of us and lots of rocks of all sizes everywhere. There were a bunch of crickets/grasshoppers that seemed to be everywhere with a very distinctive and loud buzz from its wings. Other than that was just the sound of the creek splashing along beside us and the wind in the trees.

The trip down the trail was pleasant enough, it being somewhat cooler out than we'd experienced lately and we saw a few cool things. TClog discovered the remains of a deer in an area that seemed to him to be a near perfect bear den. There was tangle of logs that seemed to allow for a good hiding place and of course, the deer carcass. I'm not sure how often this trail is used, but it seems odd to have a bear den so close to a frequented trail. There were also some remains of long abandon houses from intrepid pioneers that tried to make a life, or at least a living here. We eventually got to the part of the trail where it splits, one leg crossing the creek and heading off to the south, and the other continuing straight to the east eventually bending to the north and heading off along the edge of the mountain. We spent some pleasant moments at the edge of the creek. The water was cold, the kind of cold that causes discomfort after a few moments of immersion.

More coming soon....
(sorry for the lack of pictures - TClog was the only one with camera capacity at this point in the trip - I had filled my memory card and Dan had not gotten his battery charged due to the power outage - I did take video however) I'm waiting for a disc from TClog.