Big Natives and Little Aliens

After spending a great week exploring southern Utah, it was time to head home. It's a 1000-mile drive from Moab, Utah to Santa Rosa, California, with the entire state of Nevada in the way. Not a drive to make in a single day, especially when you're traveling alone. I decided to take the most direct route, although not necessarily the fastest, by cutting across Utah at State Highway 56 out of Cedar City, then on into Nevada to US 93, up State Highway 375 (the so-called "Extraterrestrial Highway") past the infamous Area 51 in the middle of the state to Tonopah, then on to California. Whoever titled US 50 through Nevada "Loneliest Road in America" never took this route.

I got a bit of a late start and took my time exploring along the way, including an hour's detour digging for trilobites at Oak Springs Summit off Highway 93. The sun was setting as I drove up Highway 375, and ominous-looking clouds were brewing to the west. The nearest large town, Tonopah, was still three hours away. After a week in the desert, I wasn't looking forward to camping out along this remote stretch of road, but my prospects for finding a room in Tonopah at 10 o'clock at night weren't all that great.

I remembered from a previous drive a tiny outpost somewhere along the Extraterrestrial Highway, so I pressed on. Sure enough, I soon reached the isolated town of Rachel, Nevada, population 98 humans. I pulled into the only motel in town, the Little A'Le'Inn. At the front of the hotel stood a tow truck with a flying saucer suspended from its winch.

I walked to what I thought was the motel entrance. A rough-looking character holding a beer in hand eyed me suspiciously from the porch. I asked if this was the motel office and he pointed to a nearby door. As I went in, he followed quickly behind me, put down his beer, and went behind the counter to check me in. Welcome to Rachel.

He turned out to be a pleasant fellow. Rooms were $49.95 a night, and he invited me to come back over to the office/restaurant for dinner once I got settled. Then he walked me over to my room, a double-wide mobile home with a couple of bedrooms. Grainy black-and-white photos of UFO sightings taken in the 1950s and 1960s lined the walls. "You've got the whole place to yourself tonight, so feel free to spread out." Then he disappeared.

I dumped my stuff in the room and headed back over to the restaurant for dinner. The "dining room" turned out to be a set of wooden picnic tables lined up in rows, cafeteria style. Several locals were sitting at the bar, tended to by the bartender--the same fellow who checked me in. A souvenir stand stood at the end of the bar next to the cash register, and a pool table sat unused in the back.

The picnic tables were empty, so not wanting to appear unsociable I took a seat at the bar between two of the locals. We soon struck up a conversation right out of a Hemingway novel. The man on my left was Ken Langley, descendent of Samuel P. Langley, the man who lost the race to be first in flight to the Wright Brothers. (The elder Langley didn't do too badly, though, with both an airfield and the Navy's first aircraft carrier named after him.) Ken was lamenting that his brand-new Jaguar XF, sporting Nevada License Plates "Agent 51," was in the shop in Las Vegas (a 4-hour drive) getting repainted after being accidentally scratched up by a couple of tourists who sat on it while taking photos of themselves. To my right sat an elderly prospector-type who spent the first hour playing a stack of CDs on an even more ancient boom-box. Dwayne (I never got his last name) was originally a cowboy from Texas who had once been a navigator for the Air Force, first on B36's, then onto B47's, and eventually B52s. He later moved to Brazil, married a local woman, and did some clandestine work for the US government. I never did find out how he ended up in Rachel, although I asked several times. Perhaps he was hiding out from South American insurgents.

Dinner was a "World Famous A'Le'Inn Burger," a hamburger patty with cheese, lettuce, and tomato on a sandwich bun, with macaroni salad. I washed it down with a bottle of Heineken. As I was nearing the end of my meal, Ken reached up and rang a bell suspended overhead--the symbol that he was buying drinks for everyone in the bar. So I reluctantly downed another Heineken. Total bill for dinner was $10.75.

Who knows how much of what I heard that night was actually true. I like to believe most of it was. In any event, it was certainly the most entertaining evening of the whole trip. And I managed to survive the entire night without a single alien encounter.

Desert Rains

It’s not supposed to rain in the desert.

Of course it does rain once in awhile, but never when you’re visiting.  By definition, a desert is a place that gets less than 10 inches (250mm) of rain a year.  Moab, Utah, averages even less at just 9 inches a year, with much of that coming during summer thundershowers.  It’s not unusual in Canyon Country to watch clouds billowing overhead, rain streaking thickly from their underbellies, only to see it evaporate before it ever hits the ground.  For the denizens of a parched, sunbaked land, it makes for a special kind of torture.

With that in mind, I was expecting only sun for my ascent from the Moab Valley into the high canyons of Arches National Park.  Even when I learned that rain was forecast, I imagined it would only be a light sprinkle lasting no more than an hour.  What I got was a deluge.

By dawn, clouds already obscured the sky so sunrise was a non-event.  Cold winds whipped into the alcoves at Cove of Caves, through the dual openings of Double Arch, and past the tenuous spire of Balanced Rock.  In the distant La Salle Mountains, it was snowing.  By midmorning, a steady rain showed no sign of letting up.  I ate lunch in my car while watching waves of rain roll across Fiery Furnace to the north.  Far down a drenched four-wheel-drive road at the end of Salt Valley, the minarets known as Marching Men stood nearly obscured by clouds.  It was a fascinating afternoon, but it made for dull and uninspired photography.

The rain eventually stopped late in the day and the sun poked tentatively through the clouds.  I raced along the road, stopping at various points for photos—Garden of Eden, Petrified Dunes, Courthouse Towers.  I spent a good hour shooting the water-filled potholes and brilliant yellow cottonwoods at Courthouse Wash.  Sunset was not overly spectacular—clouds to the west obscured the sun, but overall, the afternoon shoot was a winner.  It was long after dark before I drove the winding road down the side of the cliffs and back to Moab for the night.

Next Up: Big Natives and Little Aliens

Island In The Sky

One of the destinations on my recent trip to Utah was Canyonlands National Park.  If you've never been there before, it's hard to describe in words.  The closest comparison might be the Grand Canyon, but that doesn't really do it justice.  While the Grand Canyon is a long but narrow canyon centered along the Colorado River and its tributaries, the vast expanses Canyonlands stretch across two river systems and four districts: Island in the Sky, The Needles, The Maze, and Horseshoe Canyon.  The Green and Colorado Rivers serve as the boundaries between the first three districts and with their own ecosystems, can be thought of as a kind of fifth district.

Over the years I've explored much of the park, from the arches and cliff dwellings of Salt Creek to the grand vistas of Island in the Sky.  As for the Maze--the most remote and inaccessible region of the lower 48 states--I've only gazed from above and pondered its mysteries.  Exploring its hoodoo spires and hidden pictographs is on my to-do list, hopefully before I get too old to make the trek.

For this trip, I picked Island in the Sky.  It's been twenty years since I've been there.  Being the most popular and most easily accessible part of the park, I tend to avoid it.  But it was time to refresh my old 35mm slides with new digital images, so off I went.  My first stop was Mesa Arch, an easy quarter-mile hike from the road.  While morning photos of the arch have become common, the pastel glow of the backlit arch is a site I never tire of.  The trick is to try to find a new vantage point rather than plunking your tripod down into the same three holes everyone else does.

Next up was Buck Canyon, a sharply carved tributary of the Colorado.  There are several good vantage points from the road, but to really see it, you need to get out of your car and walk.  It's not overly strenuous, but like much of Island in the Sky, when you get to the precipice there are no railings.  Its a 1400 foot drop straight down.  Keep small children in check.

There were plenty of other sights to see along the road, with such names as Green River Overlook, Upheaval Dome, and Grand View Point.  For a different perspective on that last viewpoint, check out Edward Abbey's classic, Desert Solitaire, from your local library and read the chapter titled "The Dead Man at Grand View Point."

Next up: Arches National Park in a Rainstorm

Exploring Horseshoe Canyon

Fall is an especially wonderful time in southern Utah. The weather is mild, the crowds are gone, and the cottonwoods are a brilliant yellow.  I recently spent a week  exploring such well-traveled national parks as Arches, Canyonlands, and Capitol Reef, as well as remote, out-of-the-way places where I was all alone.  As usual, I enjoyed the solitary spaces best, but the whole trip was inspiring.  I won't attempt to recount the entire adventure here.  Instead, in my next few blog entries I'll describe some of the highlights, starting with a strenuous hike through Horseshoe Canyon.

Canyonlands National Park is one of the lesser-visited national parks, and Horseshoe Canyon, a detached unit far to the west, is even more remote.  Horseshoe Canyon is famous for its haunting anthropomorphic pictographs, remnants of an ancient civilization known as the Barrier Canyon culture that died out centuries before the arrival of the earliest Anasazi basketmakers.  Some experts estimate the figures in Horseshoe Canyon to be more than five thousand years old. 

From Moab, it's a 4-hour drive: north on Utah 191 to Interstate 70, west on I70 to Utah 24, south on Utah 24 for 24 miles to the Horseshoe Canyon turnoff, then another 25 miles down a dirt road to a dirt parking lot.  Then it's a 700-foot descent and a six-mile hike through soft sand to reach the Great Gallery, the greatest collection of pictographs in all of North America.  Along the way, you pass several other sites nearly as grand.  When I was there I saw only one other hiker the entire day.

The figures themselves are enigmas.  Elongated human forms with no arms or legs stare blankly out from the walls.  Winged humanoid figures look ready to take off in flight.  Spirit-like shapes rise ominously over lesser figures.  What do they mean?  No one knows.  The featureless forms could be bodies wrapped in funeral blankets.  The winged figures and ghostly shapes could be visions conjured up by shamans during vision quests.  But this is only speculation.  No one alive knows for sure.

I spent an entire day hiking the canyon, exploring the rock art panels and trying to picture what it was like to live in this canyon five millennia ago.  The climate was probably more temperate--the earth was still emerging from its last ice age--but the canyon walls were no less steep, the rocks no less angular, than they are today.  And yet, the long-ago inhabitants of this remote canyon probably didn't regret their fate.  Game would have been plentiful.  Water would have run through the canyon year round.  And the environment would have been just as inspiring to them as it is to visitors today.

Next time you're in southern Utah, take a day to visit Horseshoe Canyon.  Bring good hiking boots, a camera, and plenty of water.  As you hike, take your time and look for the many pictographs along the way.  Just remember to only look, not touch.  Let's keep these ancient relics intact for those that follow to admire for another five thousand years.

Railroads Driving Airlines Out of Business

Now there's a headline you don't see every day. But according to Air Transport World Daily, that's the case in China, at least for certain domestic routes. Spring Air, a regional airline, has decided to cut back on short-haul routes of 600 miles or less because of heavy competition from trains. Separately, a China Southern Airlines spokesman commented on the benefits of rail travel compared to air travel: a better safety record, more convenience, and lower fares. This has driven China Southern to focus more on international travel in the coming years (though I'm not sure I'd want to travel any airline whose safety record isn't as good as a railroad's).

Here in the US, it will probably be some time before we see anything similar. With the exception of a few routes in the Northeast Corridor, rail travel in the US is not serious competition for the airlines. That may change in the future, though, as more federal stimulus money gets released. In California, the prospect of a high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco is looking more encouraging, although it will be many years before it's complete. The expected 3-hour travel time would give airlines serious competition.

If you've ever spent much time in Europe or Asia, you'll recognize just how far behind the rest of the world our rail system is. Take the train from Frankfurt to Stuttgart, or from Geneva to Switzerland, or from Kyoto to Tokyo, and you'll quickly realize what a well-run rail system can offer. I doubt we'll ever again see railroads seriously compete for long-haul routes such as San Francisco to Chicago or Los Angeles to New York, but for those city pairs 600 miles or less away, it just might be possible.

Here's the link to the ATW Daily article: www.atwonline.com/news/other.html?issueDate=11%2F13%2F2009

GPS - Creaking at the Seams?

Regular readers of my blog know I occasionally update you on the status of Galileo, the European eqivalent of GPS. It’s been entertaining to watch the various factions argue about the cost of Galileo and its eventual fate. With luck, according to the current schedule it should become operational around 2013.

One of the major arguments against Galileo is that it won’t provide any capability that isn’t already provided by GPS. According to its critics, why waste billions of euros on Galileo when you can already get everything you need from GPS, for free? The US GPS community has taken a similar stance, amused that Europe thinks they need their own independent system.

Now it turns out that GPS might not be the rock of stability its supporters have made it out to be. A recent report issued by the US Government Accounting Office lists a litany of problems with GPS, some so serious that it is entirely possible the system may fall below the necessary minimum number of satellites as early as next year.

This might seem surprising since GPS requires a minimum of 24 operational satellites and there are now 30 in operation. But the report shows that 8 satellites are currently only one component away from total failure, and new satellites aren’t being launched as rapidly as old ones fail. Part of the problem is that the contract for the most recent satellites, the IIF series, was given to a new contractor, Boeing. (Previous series were built by Lockheed-Martin.) Boeing has experienced a series of delays and cost overruns that have put them almost three years behind their original schedule.

The one glimmer of hope is that in a typically conservative government approach, GAO’s concern arises because the probability of maintaining a full constellation of satellites falls below 95% for the years 2010-2014. That’s only a 5 percent chance of disaster. Nevertheless, for a system as critical to the world as GPS, that’s an unacceptably high risk. It just goes to show that maybe Galileo’s advocates have a legitimate case for why this potentially redundant satellite navigation system isn’t such a bad investment after all.

Pros and Cons of GPS-Enabled Smartphones

Now that cell phone technology has become ubiquitous in the new generation of smart mobile phones, the question on everyone’s mind is whether you can now get rid of your separate hand-held GPS receivers. If your primary use is highway navigation, the answer is a qualified “Maybe,” but if you use your GPS at all in the outdoors, the answer today is still “No.”

This might surprise some people. “My iPhone has a true GPS receiver just like a Garmin, so why should I need anything else?” they ask. The answer comes from design tradeoffs made by mobile phone designers. For the moment, don’t even worry about the fact a Garmin outdoor receiver is much more rugged than an iPhone. The fact is, the iPhone (and other GPS-enabled smartphones) won’t always find your position when you are far in the wilderness. I know. I’ve tried it, and it doesn’t always work. And if you do any amount of research on the Internet, you’ll come across many other people who have had similar experiences.

Before you say something like, “Steve, you must have a bad iPhone,” hear me out. The issue comes from a technology called “Assisted GPS” or simply “A-GPS.” It’s a great technology that allows the GPS in your mobile phone to find it’s position very rapidly. I won’t go into all the details of A-GPS here, I’ll just point out one tradeoff mobile phone designers typically make.

You probably know that a GPS receiver uses signals from satellites overhead to find its position. In order to do so, it needs to know precisely where in the sky each satellite is located any given instant. For this, it uses two sets of data stored in its memory about satellite orbits: almanac data and ephemeris data. Both almanac and ephemeris data need to be updated regularly because satellite orbits are never truly stable; there is always a small amount of variation as their orbits slowly decay. Also, new satellites are occasionally added to the system and old ones retired. The almanac data stored in your receiver’s memory remains valid for a few months, but ephemeris data needs to be updated every day.

The satellites themselves broadcast the almanac and ephemeris data for your GPS receiver to update its memory, but this is a slow process. Each satellite can only transmit the data at 50 bits per second (!). At this rate, it takes a minimum of 12.5 minutes to update almanac data and around 2 minutes to update ephemeris data. This would be a serious limitation for the typical mobile phone user, who expects to know his position within a few seconds.

Mobile phone designers realized they didn’t need to depend on the satellites to update the almanac and ephemeris data. Because their receiver is also a phone, they can simply program it to call up and get the current data from the network, where they’re not limited to a 50 bps transfer rate. This allows the GPS-enabled mobile phone to find its position much more rapidly than a dedicated GPS receiver, which can’t call up a network to get the data. (But beware, it also means you are transmitting and receiving data, for which you could be charged depending on your rate plan.)

This all works fine as long as you are within the coverage area of a WiFi or cellular network. But if you’re not, you could have real trouble. Here’s an example from my own experience. I was out on the Sonoma Coast with my iPhone, on a hiking trail well outside the range of a cellular network. I hadn’t used its GPS feature in a few days. When I turned it on, I waited and waited, and it eventually said it couldn’t find its position. I tried again and again, with no success. I finally gave up and drove to the nearby town of Bodega Bay, where I tried again. This time it had no trouble finding its position. Later, I went back to the same trail, and to my surprise this time the iPhone again had no trouble finding its position.

Here’s the explanation. When I first turned on the iPhone out on the trail, the ephemeris data was invalid because it was several days old. But since I was not in range of any kind of network, the iPhone had no way to get updated information, so it gave up. When I drove to Bodega Bay, I was again inside AT&T’s coverage area, so the iPhone downloaded the new ephemeris data and easily found its position. Then, when I went back to the trail, it already had current ephemeris data so it didn’t need to connect to the network to find its position.

The moral of this story is that if you’re going to use your GPS-enabled smartphone in the wilderness, make sure you give it a chance to acquire valid almanac and ephemeris data from a network before you head out. I haven’t done enough experimentation to know whether the iPhone will keep the ephemeris data updated from the satellites once it has found its position. This would have implications if you were planning to use it on a multi-day backpacking trip. I’d be interested in hearing from readers about their own experiences with GPS-enabled smartphones in the outdoors.