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