The Floggings Will Continue

(until morale improves)

Goblin Valley, Utah

"On the first part of the journey I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rain
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
After three days in the desert fun I was looking at a river bed
And the story it told of a river that flowed
Made me sad to think it was dead..."
...By America

My dear departed mother-in-law, Frieda, gave me an ashtray in 1970, I left it out on the RV’s running board and now it’s gone, after 37 years, on the roadside somewhere in the Utah desert. Frieda gave me the ashtray so that I would remember her each time I had a smoke. It was indestructible.


Yesterday we drove up into the Capitol Reef National park. After I took one picture, my camera batteries died. I’d forgotten to bring the spare batteries. We hike into the Grand Wash for two miles. It’s a very narrow two-mile long canyon that is subject to periodic 15-foot walls of flash floods. The government has posted dire warnings about hiking here in the rain.. The rock formations are interesting with typical desert patinas and petrified sand dune striations. The sky turns black and it starts to rain. Thunder rumbles down the canyon...


We see lots of missed photo ops and have conversations with a French couple and some German hikers from Munich. We keep a wary eye on potential place to climb above 15 feet, but the flash flood never materializes.


On the way back we stop at an organic farm in the desert. A boy sits picking a guitar on the front porch. I think of “Deliverance”. The only thing in season now is greens so we buy ½ pound which the farmer, dressed in a Lawrence of Arabia hat and overalls, picks for us in his greenhouse. We also get some homemade bread and cinnamon rolls.

When we return we find that a storm has passed though and destroyed our awning. It’s a $1,200 replacement item. Maybe we’ll check out our insurance coverage back in Florida. Mrs. Phred makes us a big salad to go with a ribeye steak.


As you can see by the pictures, today we checked out Goblin Valley. The town of Green River, up the road, has internet coverage. After three nights without it, I’ve developed a bad internet jones.

Butch Cassidy Und Sigrid War Hier

Glen Canyon Recreation Area, Utah
Hite Campground

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.

Flying Pig Escapes

Cadillac Ranch RV Park
Bluff, Utah

By now, you've probably heard that the inflatable Pink Floyd pig, broke loose at a California concert and flew high before exploding in the stratosphere. The pig had the word "Obama" stenciled on its belly, with a checkmark next to the word... The pig came to rest in tatters in two driveways in a California desert town. The inhabitants will split a $10,000 reward from Roger Waters.

In the morning, we hiked up to more Indian ruins. The story is the same: built from 1250 to 1275 A.D., dated by dendrochronology, abandoned for reasons unknown. I find an interesting looking bud on a cactus and eat it. I expect visions, but nothing happens.

We look at the Natural Bridges National Monument later in the day and have lunch. The monument was declared the first International Dark Sky Park. They have an astronomy program tonight and Sunday at 9PM. The weather report is for partly cloudy tonight and mostly cloudy Sunday evening.

I learn the difference between plateaus, mesas, buttes and pinnacles. They all have flat tops but are different sizes. It's just another crazy, imprecise human classification system like rivers, streams and creeks. Most of the red buttes and pinnacles we've been looking at lately are 250 million year old red petrified sand dunes.

My personal favorite is the Sipapu bridge. Sipapu is a Hopi word meaning place of original emergence. This is the place on earth from which the earliest humans emerged at the beginning of the world.


We wander down to Muley's Point and take in the vista carved by the San Juan river. Then down to the Goosenecks State Park to see the "meanders". Meanders occur when the river traps itself in a series of horseshoe bends by rapidly digging itself into soft rock. You can see the river travel ten miles to get downstream one mile.

I don't have a picture of the meanders. Even though we're looking down 1,000 feet from a bluff, you really need a helicopter to take in the bends. I do a video, but it's 76 megabytes, too big to be worth posting. The last two minutes of the video is of my tennis shoes after I put the camera strap back on my shoulder. I need to learn how to stop filming. I've got the start part figured out. The picture below is of the San Juan from the Muley's point overlook. You can just make out a dirt road below leading to the river.

There's a big "four-corners" Indian festival today right up the road in Blanding. The Zuni, Hopi and Navajo tribes will all be competing in an art festival.

I was up at 2:45 this morning. I slipped outside without spoiling my night vision and took in the stars and desert silence. For the first time I locate the Navigator's Triangle from the Milky Way, rather than the other way around. At 5 AM, the noise level has picked up. A coyote is yipping up on the bluff and someone close has a jackass. We may go camp in the Valley of the Gods today. We'll put out the lawn chairs, read novels and wait for darkfall.

Desert Drive

Southern Utah Desert

Hi. How you doin'?
I just got back into town,
I was out in the desert for awhile
Yeah. In the middle of it
Right...

Hey, listen, man, I really got a problem
When I was out on the desert, ya know
I don't know how to tell you
but, ah, I killed somebody

It's no big deal, ya know
I don't think anybody will find out about it, but...
just, ah...
- The Doors

Well....you know
We went on this drive
46 miles of unpaved road..,

We walked up into a box canyon
then, it..ah...just ended

We found a cave under a cliff
and desert wildflowers and strange stunted trees
we walked a mile into, like, a slot canyon
I walked out alone

Some of the mesas looked like, ah...
Variegated confectionaries
and, ah...
It's just that...

I'm worried that, ah...
somebody might find the body

So anyway...here's a slideshow of some Utah desert scenes...

On the Borderline

Lake Powell, Arizona

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.



Here are a few pictures of Lake Powell and Lee's Ferry.