Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #3
Lake Mead National Recreation Area - Sat, 15 Feb 2025, 12:15pm

What's there to do in Las Vegas if you don't like gambling, shows, or fancy restaurants? There's hiking! And while it's not in Las Vegas it's also not far out of it.

Saturday morning we drove out to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area to the trailhead for Owl Canyon. Although we got a later start on the day than I wanted to I knew there was plenty of time left in the day— especially if this hike was all we wanted to do. And even at the trailhead I could tell we were in for an enjoyable time.



I mean, anytime a sign warns the trail is tough... that's generally code for, "Really fun for even moderately experienced hkers." It's scare-words for "Weak-sauce city folk STAY OUT." 🤣



The trail starts with a steep descent down from the the top of the bluff where the parking area and some picnic tables are. Ugh, that's going to be not-fun as the last part of the trail when we're coming back tired. At least it's not a huge climb out. I don't think it's more than about 100' ascent back up.



Across the wash at the bottom of the canyon the trail climbs over another bluff. This one's not so vertical as the one the trail starts from. It's prettier, though, with orange-red rocks and views across to the Las Vegas Wash.

Hawk and I took a detour to explore the top of the bluff instead of following the trail that quickly descended from a saddle point. Curiously there are lots of seashells up here.

How did all the shells get here? Our first thought was that birds dropped them after fishing the waters of the lake. But quickly we saw that there are thousands of shells up here. That's too many for birds dropping them after eating. This spot must've been underwater at some point in the past. ...But the water level in Lake Mead, which you can see in the pic above, looks to be at least 100' below us. How long ago would it have been high enough to cover this ground? It can't have been too many years ago as otherwise there wouldn't be so many shells in such good condition due to weathering. Also, the Hoover Dam that created Lake Mead only finished construction in 1935.



We walked along the bluff top, exploring the views from different angles. The views up here were just so beautiful we kept going instead of doubling back, hoping there might be an exit down the far side. Plus, it was special being up here because while we saw occasional small groups of hikers on the trail below, nobody else thought to explore up here atop this butte. Hooray, solitude!

Update: I learned in visiting the Hoover Dam the following day that the last time the lake level rose to a high of 1,225' elevation above sea level in 1983. The bluff we were standing on was at about 1,200' elevation. So possibly the seashells we were seeing atop this bluff have sat there undisturbed for 40 years. Now that is some solitude!



In this panoramic photo (above) you can see the trail winding around beneath the bluffs. In the distance is the actual Owl Canyon. We'll hike a loop that has us going up another canyon and then coming down Owl Canyon, exiting it in this area. Then we'll hike over the saddle point halfway up this bluff and climb the first bluff back up to the trailhead. But that could be hours from now, and now is now....



On the far side of the bluff we found this odd mineral deposit. It looks like snow! It's actually gypsum. We scrambled over a bunch of large gypsum boulders to climb down the bluff. We had to be careful on them as gypsum is a soft mineral. If we stepped on a thin deposit, it could crumble under our feet and send us tumbling.

We got down the rough backside of the bluff okay. Then we bushwhacked through a bunch of dead bushes in the wash where the lake level had been higher recently, and climbed back up the slope on the far side to rejoin the trail.

To be continued!

Panama Travelog #25
La Chorrera, Panama - Fri, 27 Dec 2024. 12pm.

Here's another blog from my Panama trip that I pushed the side so that my blogging wouldn't get too badly backlogged. Well, once I pushed it to the side it, along with several others, got stuck there for a few weeks. I'm going to try unwinding at least a few of them now.

After spending 4 days in El Valle de Antón we're driving back to Panama City. We'll spend 3 days there before flying home. The drive to Panama City would be about 130km if we were driving the shortest route, but we're taking slight side trips to visit two waterfalls along the way. The first of these is in La Chorrera... which is Spanish for The Waterfall. ...And that's the name of the town, BTW. The waterfall itself is named El Chorro, which is Spanish for The Stream. 🤷



Getting to the falls was quite the little adventure. And by "adventure" I mean it really tried my patience. ...No, it wasn't a tough hike. The view from the edge of the falls above was a stroll of 25 meters from where we parked the car. It was getting through La Chorrera that was crazy-making. Driving highways in Panama is relatively easy— aside from the poor signage for turns/exits— but driving in city-center traffic is like something out of a Mad Max movie. Anyway, I've written about that elsehwere, so I'll get back to the waterfalls here.



From the top of the falls we found an overgrown path leading down to the bottom. We picked our way over the slippery rocks near the falls for a better view.

You can see the interesting hexagonal pattern in the rocks we're standing on/next to at the near left. It's columnar basalt. Here's a wider angle that shows more of the rocks:



There were a few other cars of people at the top of the trail as we visited. Curiously nobody else came down to the bottom of the falls like we did, so we had the place to ourselves for the 15 minutes we spent down here.

West Virginia Travelog #3
New River Gorge National Park - Sat, 16 Sep 2023. 3:30pm

Well, we did it. We got to the the US's newest national park only... *checks watch*... 33 months after it was designated. One of our bucket lists is to visit every one of the (now) 63 national parks. As of today at New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia we are at 51 [loud tock sound] 52.

We didn't come here just to tick the box (or tock the clock), of course. We came here to enjoy doing the things we enjoy doing at parks. In beauty we walk!



Our first visit in the park this afternoon was to Sandstone Falls. It's at the south end of the sprawling park, near the surprisingly well kept little town of Hinton. This area is up-river from the rest of the park. Here the New River hasn't carved as deep a gorge through the Allegheny Mountains. "New River" is a horrible misnomer, BTW. This river is literally older than the mountains around it... and these mountains are old!



The trail here is easy; there's a boardwalk guiding visitors out partway across the river. But, as is often the case, we found the best views by stepping off the boardwalk and picking our way across the rocks.

In beauty we walk.

UPDATE: More ahead in part 2!

Our waterfalls-hiking agenda on Monday in the Oregon Cascades was a bit of a jumble. I had several browser tables open on my computer to various falls I wanted to hike, and a few sections bookmarked the old-fashioned way (i.e., with a scrap of paper) in Smedley's waterfall book. As we went through the day, having hiked 3 trails already, we were discussing tradeoffs on which ones to add to the list or skip.

"Watson Falls, hmm, I don't know," I said. Then I checked the notes. "272 feet tall, third highest falls in Oregon." Fuck no, we're not skipping that!

The trek to the base of Watson Falls is short but steep. Short, as in less than half a mile. Steep, as in it rises 300 feet in that short distance. But then views like this open up...



...and you forget about your aching legs and just focus on finding stable footing while not taking your eyes off the falls.

The trail proper turns away just behind where I'm standing. Yes, everyone in the frame, including yours truly taking the picture, is off trail. But how could we not?



A little ways up the social trail is a flat-ish rock to sit on. We sat down for a bit and enjoyed the lush undergrowth and gentle cascade in the foreground with the horsetail of Watson Falls swishing in the background. ...Yes, it really was swishing. Breeze in the canyon blew the water back and forth, left and right.



After a bit we picked our way back to the official trail. I mentioned it bent away at that point.... It climbs higher through a pair of switchbacks to a vantage point that's about one-third up the height of the falls. Oddly this vista was very uncrowded compared to the bottom of the falls. It's like everybody had energy to climb the slippery rocks at the bottom and make yoga poses for their Instagram accounts, but nobody had energy or was curious where the rest of the trail went.

BTW, the rock on the cliff here is also basalt, similar to the rock face at Toketee Falls. Here the columnar structure isn't so pronounced. A kiosk at the trailhead explains that this volcanic basalt filled the canyon sometime between 25,000 - 100,000 years ago when a volcano near the top of the pass erupted.

Grand Cayman Travelog #16
Hell - Thu, 18 May 2023, 12:30pm

This morning we picked up a rental car so we could do some self-guided touring today and tomorrow. But where would we go? One of the tour coordinators we'd chatted amiably with the past few days, who was still at the hotel because now he's working with another company that's running a president's club (there are signs), offered a suggestion when he saw us walking through the lobby to our car.

"Make sure you go to Hell," he suggested.

"Yeah, that's our plan," I answered. "We're going to Hell now. Then we're going to lunch."



Hell is a spot a few miles north of our hotel, on the northwest end of the island. It's an officially named place in the Cayman Islands. How official? There a Hell, CI post office here.

But what draws people here isn't just the post office, with its ability to send postcards officially date-stamped "HELL". That is only part of the allure. 😅 It's the jagged rocks in this area that gave it name that people come to see. Thus we pulled our car into the small parking lot aside a few families and minibuses to see it ourselves.



Don't remove Hell rocks! ...What are they going to do, though? Send you to hell? You're already there. 😂



So, what is Hell? Hell in the Cayman Islands is a small field of very jagged rocks. They look a bit like volcanic rock, which is one explanation for how the place got its name. A British official visiting the island long ago is said to have exclaimed, "My God, this is what Hell must look like!"

Actually the rock is limestone and dolomite. It was eroded into these jagged shapes not by wind or rain but by being eaten away by algae. The algae dissolves the calcium in limestone (limestone is calcium carbonated, CaCO3) leaving mostly dolomite. Scientifically this process is called phyto-karstification.

After touring the relatively small field of rocks we walked back out to the gift shops and post office. We bought a few postcards with pictures of Hell and mailed them to religious relatives so they'd be date-canceled as officially from Hell. 🔥😈🤣

Saturday morning we got up early to visit Sierra Vista Open Space in the mountains east of San Jose. Good news: We had a great hike overlooking the city. Bad news: It was kind of short. We were back at the car by 9:15. What to do? How about a two-fer! We refilled our water bottles at the car and went hiking on a trail on the other side of the road.



This is the Aquila Trail. At times in the past we've hiked it it's been a riot of a wildflowers. Today, not so much. In fact pretty much not at all. Wildflowers bloom when there's good rain followed by a few weeks of warm weather. This season we've had tons of rain— so the first key ingredient is there— but not yet the warm weather. Maybe in another few weeks these hillsides will look totally different.



The Aquila Trail is a short loop, about 1.2 miles around. Together with our hiking on the Kestrel Trail earlier we're hiking maybe 3 miles total. On the one hand that's not much. On the other hand it's pretty good for getting a hike in before errands and lunch.



Though there aren't wildflowers out today we enjoy the Aquila Trail for its remote feel. With vistas like this we can imagine we're well into the wilderness... even thought Silicon Valley with its millions of people is just over our shoulder.



On today's trek we noticed something we've overlooked before: fossils! Some of the rocks up here bear the imprint of what looks like organisms from an ancient sea floor.

Like I said, the hikes were both short. We were back at the car by 10am. The parking lot was already full, and rangers were aggressively turning people away. I'm glad we arrived at 8:15. We'll have to come early again when we return for wildflower season!

5 Days in the Desert travelog #20
Yermo, CA - Mon, 26 Dec 2022, 2pm

Today is shaping up to be as much about the driving as the hiking. But that's okay because the driving is purposefully scenic. The old Native American prayer, In Beauty I Walk, doesn't mean literally walking. It means journeying, as in the journey through life. Sometimes that journey is behind the wheel.

We finished up driving the Mojave Road through Afton Canyon by exiting at Basin Road, about 8 miles east of where we entered. The canyon, with its steep, colorful walls, had petered out by that point anyway. There were no more amazing side canyons like Spooky Canyon or the way nicer unnamed canyon. But it's still interesting to drive through a river. Here's a quick video:


Once back on dry, paved land we headed back toward Barstow, not to call it a day yet but merely to get lunch closer to town before heading back out across the desert. We ate at EddieWorld in Yermo. Yes, it's a bit tourist-trappy, but their food's pretty good and they have the biggest selection of stuffed animals I've ever seen under one roof. We bought a pizza, a chicken fingers basket, a couple of drinks, and a couple of sheep.

Up next: we'll head out east again to drive/hike at Pisgah Crater.

5 Days in the Desert travelog #15
Cima, CA - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 5pm

I left off in my last blog entry with us descending into the bowels of the earth after an hour+ long drive to the remote lava tubes in Mojave National Preserve. I decided that after all that effort I would not be deterred by having to crawl on my hands and knees a bit, so in I went.



Well, I didn't have to crawl right away. The entryway (above) was tall enough that I could pretty much stand and walk as I carefully lowered myself down the jagged rocks. Not far inside, though....



The ceiling dropped low, not much more than 3 feet high. "Is this the end?" we wondered.

Hawk delved deeper as she was able to navigate under the low ceiling merely by bending over and squatting. It opened up again after 10 feet or so.

"C'mon," she said. "It's worth it!"



On the other side of the low ceiling was this fairly sizable chamber. Overhead are three windows to the outside. Two are obvious at the top of the picture (above), split by a small arch. The third is at the far end of the chamber, where you can see an orange light filtering down. We'd seen the split window along the trail on the surface as we walked to the tube entrance but not the smaller window.

Good new/bad news: While this chamber was a great find, the lava tube definitely ended here. And the other direction from the ladder ended in about 15' with nothing but a pile of rubble from a collapsed roof. Oh, but there was one other thing on the way out....



This rock struck me as looking something like a geode. Well, not a geode because those aren't crystals hanging down from the topside. It's a volcanic rock shell with some smoother minerals on the underside.

Speaking of underside, it was time to leave the underside of the earth and get back to its surface.

We returned to the car and picked our way carefully down the lava 4x4 trail. Back at the Subaru parking area we met another pair of visitors arriving— in a Subaru— and chatted with them about road conditions. We'd seen them arriving from the opposite direction and wanted to know how passable routes other than the Mojave Road (link to my YouTube video) are.

It turned out to be a two-way exchange of information... like the best 4x4 backcountry conversations are. Our new acquaintances were Chinese visitors who spoke limited English. But their English was better than my extremely limited Chinese.

I unfolded a paper map and used that to help frame our halting conversation. They'd come from the north on different roads than we took from the east. Their route was obviously passable, though they warned they had to drive slowly, like 5mph in some difficult parts, and never faster tha 15mph in the best parts. I cast a side eye toward their Subaru and figured that we'd do better than that. In exchange, I explained for them how to drive the Mojave Road. They were using only Google Maps on a phone... and there really wasn't any signal out here, miles from the nearest paved road.

We parted ways; they went toward the cave while we started north.



Right away the road was smoother than the Mojave Road. It was graded dirt and did not have those whoop-de-doos (YouTube video link) that had forced us to keep our speed down— otherwise we'd have been looking like stunt drivers from The Dukes of Hazzard!

There was one tough part about a mile out where we climbed a rocky hill navigating past a mostly defunct mine. Our capable 4x4 walked it. After that it was smooth sailing. We picked up a route following along utility lines (pic above). That confirmed we were headed the right way. If in doubt, follow the telephone lines back to civilization!

5 Days in the Desert travelog #6
Amboy, CA - Say, 24 Dec 2022, 12:30pm

In my previous blog I wrote about driving to Amboy Crater in the Mojave Desert. ...Well, driving there and then hiking the first mile or so up to its base. From there it was up, up, up to the top.



That's all volcanic rock on the slope. Most of it is pumice so it's surprisingly light when you pick up a piece... but it's also sharp so you don't want to fool around with it too much. Or trip and fall on it.



The trail enters the side of the crater where it's kind of open. From here paths diverge and you can go into the middle or up around either side of the rim. We decided to loop the rim, taking the left branch first.



Climbing to the ridge was more up, up, up. Not a huge elevation change; remember it's only a few hundred feet vertical from the base to the highest point on the rim. But with this Martian landscape distances seem off.



Once atop the ridge it's still beautiful... in a Martian landscape kind of way.

At places the rim is very narrow, barely 2 feet wide with steep— and sharp— dropoffs on both sides.



Here's a panoramic picture from the top that shows the whole crater. Click the link to expand the picture if it's cropped or low-res on your screen.

In the last pic above you can see lower ridges inside the crater. The volcano here has erupted at least 4 times. The concentric ridges are subsequent eruptions. THe most recent was about 10,000 years ago.

After looping the ridge we headed back down the side— carefully!— and then a mile back across the desert plane to the parking area.

On our drive to our next adventure for the day we passed the town of Amboy. Yes, there is a town called Amboy. It's about a mile east of the crater. And it's a proverbial one-horse town. There are a handful of nondescript buildings around a gas station with two pumps... and the gas is an eye-watering $7.85/gallon. For context, that's more than double what we paid in Barstow ($3.79/gallon) last night.

Pacific Northwest September Travelog #9
Mount St. Helens National Monument - Sun, 4 Sep 2022, 12pm

Sunday morning we drove from our hotel in Vancouver, WA to Mount St. Helens. We've been to the park a few times before, but in different areas. Four weeks ago we visited Windy Ridge, on the east side. Years ago we visited Lava Canyon and its waterfalls on the south side. But until today we'd never visited the main part of the park, the Johnston Ridge Observatory. Oh, we tried once, several years ago. The mountain was all socked in with clouds. Sunday this past weekend was the clearest looking day in the weather forecasts for our three day trip, so we chose it for a visit. Our planning paid off with beautiful, clear weather most of the day.



The photo above is a view of Mount St. Helens from the Johnston Ridge Observatory. From this spot you see the northwest face of the mountain, the area where it blew open in a violent eruption in 1980.

The observatory was built in 1997 near the camp of volcanologist David Johnston, one of several scientists who perished in the explosion. Some people might sneer at Johnston's death as, "If he's such a smart scientist, why was he standing on a volcano that was about to erupt?" Understand that a) this spot is 4 miles away from the center of the crater and up a mountain. Such was the force of the eruption that the top of this ridge was scoured bare. And b) the field work of brave scientists like Johnston at Mount St. Helens contributed greatly to our understanding of volcanic eruptions. Scientists today are able to predict with much greater accuracy when and how other volcanoes will erupt, helping improve the safety of people who live nearby.

One of many things that's interesting in this scene is the river flowing down from the volcano. At this time of year many streams run dry. This one is fed by melt from a glacier that formed in the crater after the eruption.



Here's a zoomed-in shot of the inside of the crater (above). There are not one but two lava domes inside it. They formed at different times since the 1980 eruption. It's hard to understand scale in this photo, but those domes are 800' high. The whole mountain used to be 1300' taller than the rim of the crater... that's how much rock came rushing down the mountain as part of the eruption.

Also, all the clouds you see inside the crater are steam. Yes, the area is still volcanically active.

Anyway, we weren't here just to visit the observatory. We were here to hike.



From the observatory there's a great hike out along Johnston Ridge to the east, leading to Devil's Point. It's around the nose of that bald ridge you see in the middle ground of the photo above. That's where we're going this afternoon.

Beyond that bald ridge you can see a snow-capped peak peeking up. That's Mt. Adams, elev. 12,281 ft (3,743 m). On the right beyond the ridge you can see part of Spirit Lake. Beyond Spirit Lake is Windy Ridge. That low saddle point in the ridge above the lake is where I began climbing 439 stairs to Windy Ridge last month.

More to come....