I'm not much in a writing mood, which is anathema for a blogger. I put it down to nicotine withdrawal and my umpteenth attempt to kick the habit. I find myself with shortness of breath walking uphill at 7,000 feet. It's time to quit.
The drift down the Colorado starts in Page, at the Glen Canyon Dam, and ends about 30 miles downriver at Lee's ferry. After Lee's Ferry it's another 220 miles downriver, though the Grand Canyon to Lake Mead.
This part of the country is mostly Navajo Sandstone. It's old Jurassic sand dunes, solidified with minerals. It's full of fossils, dinosaurs and other strange creatures.
The walls of the river here average between 1,000 and 1,500 feet of elevation, mostly straight up.
View from the Navajo bridge near Lee's Ferry.
More Lake Powell pictures.
Sunday morning! Time to get the show on the road and depart for parts unknown.
Maybe it would be a good day for the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument? The Vermillion Cliffs National Monument? Zion National Park? It's hard to find wine up in Utah, but they have pretty geology. I remember a tennis court outside Zion.
From a few miles away, the Colorado looks like a little crack in the desert.
After hanging around Sedona three more days, we decided to head north to Lake Powell and Page, Arizona.
I've got hundreds of amazing photos of Antelope Canyon. It's a slot canyon on the Navajo reservation. You need a guide to go there. On sunny days it's wall-to-wall with tourists like me trying to take pictures.
The Navajo offer another trip to "Canyon X". Only six photographers a day are allowed in. It's a six hour trip, lunch included.
We ran into a bus full of Japanese tourists in Sedona. They were kind enough to pose for me.
Mrs. Phred is talking about renting a houseboat or a motorboat to explore the more remote parts of Lake Powell.
Page, which is nearby has six public tennis courts.
You can raft 40 miles down the Colorado from the dam to Lee's Ferry. The week long trips though the Grand Canyon launch at Lee's ferry.
We pull into a completely empty campground surrounded by red Navajo sandstone buttes with Lake Powell below us. Its “dry-camping”, with no water, electric, sewer, cable TV, laundry or Wi-Fi. The weather is moderate enough that we can open all the windows and let the cool breeze blow in while we sleep.
The morning started off well with two sets of tennis on the municipal courts in Blanding, Utah. However, when I tried to pull out the rear slide to get to my tennis shorts, I found that both the front and rear slide-outs were inoperative.
I checked the two 15 amp fuses in the fuse box, however unlikely it was that both of them would blow at once. That eliminated, I went into the house battery compartment in the “basement” to examine the rat’s nest of wiring down below. I found an unattached, large-gauge, purple wire. When I touched it to the hot side a relay closed. At that point, the two relays for the slides began to work again and the slides were operational.
We finished our game and set out though 90 miles of wilderness to Hite. After 45 miles, one of the four rear tires had a catastrophic failure. There was no cell phone coverage, so I unhooked the Toyota and sent Mrs. Phred back to Blanding for help. Fortunately, she had insisted that I buy a spare a year ago, but it is not mounted on a rim. I filled the tires to 80 PSI at sea level. Here, at 7,000 feet, they were up to 92 PSI. That might have been a contributing factor.
As I wait in my lawn chair in the desert, reading Elmore Leonard, a stream of Samaritans stops to offer assistance. After two hours, a taciturn tow truck driver from 100 miles away showed up and spent an hour putting us back on the road.
At the campground, the slide-outs didn’t work again until I touched the purple wire to the hot side and hear the relay close. I’m beginning to think about risking connecting the purple wire directly to a hot lead. Mrs. Phred is counseling the need to wait for civilization in case of an electrical fire or explosion, which she has known me to sometimes create in my wiring efforts. The year I spent in an Air Force electronics school might have done more long-term harm than good.
We got a great night’s sleep in the cool breeze. I cooked sausage, eggs, bagels (with tofu cream cheese) and coffee for breakfast. There is no cell coverage or even FM radio here. This is where the Snake, Colorado, Green and Dirty Devil Rivers converge at the beginning of Lake Powell, I like it here. We have plenty of unread books. I see red coyote eyes in the starlight.
The lake here, at the upper end, is interesting. It has apparently dropped at least 100 feet, revealing a layer of sediment deposited as the result of creating the dam. Here the lake has become more of a river, cutting though a delta of its own sediment. It’s at least 500 yards from the mouth of the boat launch to the water. 173million tons of sediment, which used to go downstream, end up each year in the upper reaches of the lake.
As we stare at this environmental mess, Mrs. Phred wonders why they would build a dam in the first place. I give her a few reasons: electric power, recreation, flood control and water regulation.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid used to rustle cattle around here and swim them across the river. Butch was maybe the last western outlaw. When things got too hot for him after the turn of the century he and Sundance sought new opportunity in Bolivia. We find new petroglyphs on a sandstone wall, “Sigrid und Inga – 05/05/08”. I can’t believe we just missed them.
We're parked about 100 feet from the Utah border. This seems to be the houseboat world capital. The big lake winds though 100 miles of sandstone canyons which used to be the Colorado River. The water flowing out from the dam is now clear and a constant 47 degrees. The 173 million tons of red sediment that used to flow downstream is now deposited in the upper reaches of Lake Powell. The fish downstream are probably confused by all this.
We're taking a modest raft trip from the base of the dam to Lee's Ferry about 20 miles down the Colorado. That's probably the last place to get out before Bright Angel in the Grand Canyon National Park.
We'll be heading up to the Capitol Reef National Park and then Moab from here. We've made a reservation to park the RV when we fly out to visit the grandchildren.
I found a hike to a slot canyon for today. To see it you need a rope so you can rappel down 40 feet into the canyon. Mrs. Phred has expressed doubts about my rappeling ability.
Lee's Ferry is where the big 6 and 10 day raft trips though the Grand Canyon begin. The picture below is a supply raft, which will accompany a group of rafters that are due in by helicopter from Las Vegas in the afternoon. At the end of the trip they will be airlifted out.
Lake Powell is a huge lake created on the Colorado River by the Powell dam. It is about 100 miles long and winds though spectacular desert sandstone canyons.
The red sandstone rock here crumbles in your fingers. The softness allows the wind and rain to carve mysterious shapes.
Just to our south is the town of Page, Arizona. Page has tennis courts. We will get in a couple of sets this morning before meeting our Navajo guide to go into Antelope Canyon. The pix here are from our last visit to the canyon.
Downstream 20 Miles is Lee's Ferry, considered to be the beginning of the Grand Canyon. The raft trips there last from 3 days to 2 weeks. They tend to be booked up a year in advance. We'll check into it, but we don't expect much.
This land was confiscated from the surrounding Navajo Reservation when the Federal Government decided that a dam and lake would be a good idea. Apparently, these treaties can be unilaterally renegotiated. In the Navajo Nation, not walking near the edge of cliffs is taught as a taboo so that the creatures who throw people down the cliffs won't grab you. I respect that.
We make an unplanned stop in the small town of Page, Arizona, near the Utah border and Lake Powell, two hours north of the Grand Canyon.
We meet a big, ugly Harley-Davidson biker with beard, leather clothing and a several nose rings on a scenic overlook for lake Powell. I'm betting there are tattoos under his leathers. He is studying the lake and the colourful canyons and spires rising around it. He walks over to us, carrying a poetry book to examine us and our little motorbike. I step in front of Mrs Phred and bravely greet him. He has moved here from Orange County, California. We tell him that we were planning to go to Bryce Canyon and he tells us that it would be a huge mistake to skip Zion National Park. He described the Zion geology and said that Bryce was also beautiful, sort of like looking down at colourful snow cones. He seems to be a gentle soul. We decide to follow his advice.
The Powell dam was built in the 1960s to control the ravaging floods of the Colorado River. Powell was the explorer who first navigated the Colorado by boat in 1869. We missed the dam tour but will try again. It takes six attempts to get though the metal detector and into the secure area due to the incredible array of junk in my pockets (batteries, keys, foil wrappers, assorted small screws, jump drives, tools).
I get a haircut and we sign up for a trip to see Antelope Canyon, a most unusual 'slot' canyon in Navajo territory. Due to the loss of eleven tourists in a 'flash flood', a guide is required. All the guide operations are run by Navajo Indians. Listening to them talk, I am reminded of the Navajo 'code-talkers' used in the Pacific campaign in WWII.
There is a Powell museum, municipal tennis courts, and a movie theatre in Page. We've also identified a hike near the dam. Powell was a one-armed Civil war veteran who first explored the Colorado river in a three month trip that displayed incredible bravery and leadership.
The National Recreation Area near the Dam offers great campsites overlooking the lake. You can rent houseboats and explore the vast lake and its canyons. One of the things in the canyon is 'Rainbow Bridge', the world's largest natural stone arch. A lot of the rock formations here are 'Navajo sandstone', an orange rock formed from sand dunes which were cemented together by minerals in the ground water. It's a material that wind and water find easy to carve into spectacular sculptures.
