New Mexico to Nevada
After the Sunday Wheeler Peak climb in northern New Mexico, my plan was to drive to Los Alamos and get a motel room for the night. As it turns out, the Wheeler Peak climb went faster than expected so I ended up getting to Los Alamos pretty early in the day and I spontaneously decided to continue west and stop for the night in either Cuba or Farmington, New Mexico. This would put me ahead of schedule for Monday.
I was impressed with Los Alamos; it was a good-looking little city and seemed like a nice place to live. Too hot for me, but otherwise pretty nice.
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| This is now a roadside rest stop |
Following my GPS guidance, I departed Los Alamos going west on Highway 501. I was a little confused when this route looped around and took me to a set of gates, one for each lane, where I had to show my driver's license to a guard.
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| Suddenly, gates... |
I told the guard I was not sure why I had ended up at these gates, and I was only trying to travel west on the highway and I was not trying to enter any sort of restricted area. I asked him if this was highway 501 and he said he didn't know. Really? You work here in a little booth right in the middle of this road every day, and you don't know what road it is? Seems like knowing where you are should be a job requirement. At any rate, he returned my license and waved me through, and there I was, driving through Los Alamos National Laboratory. Okaaaay...
Leaving the expansive laboratory grounds, I found myself traveling through the Valles Caldera National Preserve, which is a beautiful forested, mountainous area. The scenery was spectacular, and it distracted me to the point where I almost ran myself out of gas. Instead of continuing west towards Cuba, I had to detour south on Highway 4 in hopes of finding some gas, which I did find in San Ysidro. I put 19.9 gallons into my 19 gallon tank. That was close.
It was still early in the day, so I decided to push on northward through Cuba and all the way to Farmington for the night. I've never actually been to Farmington, but I've flown over it countless times in my Air Force career. It was a large farming town; pretty much as I expected.
Anyway, I rolled into town at dinnertime, and finding no local offerings that looked good, I settled on the Golden Corral for dinner. Hungry after a long day, I had seconds and dessert before waddling over to the local La Quinta to get a room for the night.
On Monday my destination was southwest Utah, but I'd allotted a couple of hours along the way to explore a bit of Canyon de Chelly (pronounced Canyon de Shey) National Monument in northwestern Arizona, so I headed southwest from Farmington and passed through Shiprock once again along the way.
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| Shiprock |
Canyon de Chelly has an incredible history as home and strategic stronghold of the Navajo, and a tactical nightmare for the US Calvary in the 1860's. I've wanted to see it for many years, and it didn't disappoint. It's a visually striking geological feature with sweeping views and sheer cliffs, and it's full of natural caves and ancient adobe dwellings. To tour inside the canyon you must make arrangements with a Navajo guide and my schedule didn't really allow for that, but I did stop and explore at several rim viewpoints. I hope to come back soon with my daughter and explore inside the canyon with a guide.
My plan for Tuesday was to hike the iconic Angel's Landing trail in Zion National Park (even though I never seem to have good experiences at national parks due to overcrowding), so I'd made a hotel reservation in the tiny town of Hildale in southwest Utah. The Hildale hotel seemed to be a good bargain compared to expensive rooms a similar distance from Zion in the Kanab, Hurricane or Springdale areas. But Hildale turned out to be a very strange place...
I rolled into town and immediately had trouble finding the hotel. I found a modest sign for the hotel on a tall brick wall that surrounded a compound of sorts that took up one fourth of a large city block. After circling the block looking for the entrance, I pulled into the compound through an open gate, and found a door that looked like a residential front door. There was an unplugged 'Open' sign above the door, but no indication that this was the hotel, and I felt like I'd be walking into someone's living room if I went in. I called the hotel and was told I was at the right place and to come in, so I did. The young woman at the desk in what looked like a dorm day room checked me in, charging my card and completing the check-in process on her iPhone. She gave me an old-fashioned metal key and led me through long winding hallways to my room. This place didn't look like a hotel. It looked like a very large dormitory. There were hallway alcoves with washers and dryers. There were intercom speakers everywhere, and thermostats along the hallways that anybody could adjust. My room was a bit of a rundown room with a ceiling fan and basic hotel accouterments. There were no signs about fire exit routes or check-out times or anything like that. I wondered what the original purpose of this building was.
The vibe of this place was just strange. And a little unsettling. As I headed out to find some dinner at one of the three places in town that served food, I found the town to be just downright creepy. Many homes were extra large and surrounded by high brick or steel panel walls. Like 8 to 12 feet high. Gates were solid and there were no decorative openings or breaks of any sort in the walls or gates. Living in one of these houses has to be like living in a prison with no view of the outside world. There was no pedestrian traffic in town. No kids playing in yards. It was just so strange...
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| This is a totally normal home in Hildale |
While waiting for my dinner, I googled the town and learned something along the lines of what I already suspected. Hildale is the headquarters of the FLDS, the Fundamentalist branch of the LDS church, and that most (or all?) residents were members, and many Hildale families are plural marriage families. Yeah, remember that guy, Warren Jeffs? This is his town. I knew that bigamy was still a thing in southwest Utah, but I didn't expect to find myself in the middle of it like this. And probably support it to a small degree with my money.
So that explains the walls. Yeesh. I should have paid more and stayed somewhere else. It did not feel good at all to be a strange face in a strange car with out-of-state plates in this town. I felt like everybody was giving me the eye. I went back to my creepy hotel and went to bed, and got up early on Tuesday morning and left before anyone at the hotel was up. I wound my way through the dark hallways with my little flashlight and left my key on the front desk, threw my stuff into my car and jumped on the highway heading out of town.
Anywhoo...
It took me an hour or so to get to Zion National Park west entrance, and the $35 entrance fee set me off right away. I was expecting $20 or $30, but $35? Remember when our taxes paid for our parks? Remember when every American could afford to visit a park? I guess it's more important for rich people to have lower taxes. What's it going to be next year, $50? And then the gate ranger just outright badgered me for not having exact change, and for not wanting to pay with a credit card. She said, "It's early and we're low on fives." Okay, how is that my fault or my problem? I'm sorry I don't have what you want, now please get off my ass and let me in, is what I was thinking. I gave her the stink-eye, she relented and 'fessed up my change, and I rolled into the park already in a bad mood.
I headed for the Grotto trailhead, and was very surprised to find that only shuttles were allowed on that road; the only road to get there. I was hoping to avoid the hordes of people today, but I guess I was going to have to go back to the entrance and get on a shuttle. Crowd management; I understand. Not what I wanted to do; not what I planned on, but I understand. So I headed back to the entrance.
I then find that, even before 7 AM on a Tuesday in the off season, the shuttle parking lot is packed and absolutely gridlocked. You can't even get in there because there are so many people looking for a spot and queueing up for the shuttle. That was the last straw for me. I turned around and headed for the east park exit. All of my experiences with National Parks are like this. Big expenses, grand plans and high hopes, always trashed by hordes of people. I'm absolutely done with national parks. Never again will I enter or try to do anything in a national park.
I looped around from the Zion east gate, up through the Dixie national forest (which is quite beautiful, by the way), and got some breakfast at the IHOP in Cedar City. Then I crossed over into Nevada and headed west on the Extraterrestrial Highway to Tonopah, then down to Bishop, California for the night.
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| Nevada is weird |
The forecast for 13,147-foot Boundary Peak on the very western edge of Nevada was nearly perfect, so climbing that state high point was the plan for Wednesday....
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