Day 14: Taos Box and a Hippie Home

We awoke relatively early with the intentions of running the Taos Box section of the Rio Grande. The Box is 14 miles of class III-IV whitewater in the bottom of a spectacular 650 foot canyon. The shuttle drive unfortunately is 1.5 hours by car so we figured we would have to meet up with some other boaters to be able to run this section. We asked around town and talked with a few outfitters, and it seemed that the options were to MAYBE hire a shuttle at $80-100 or find some other Kayakers to shuttle with. Here’s the Put-In for this section. The Box only gets deeper from here to the take out.

We waited for a while and asked some of the raft companies, but we never were able to get a shuttle set up, so we had to give up. We drove to the middle of the run to the only bridge over the box. Here’s a shot from the bridge. Way down in the bottom there are two rafts that you can barely see for scale.

Near this bridge is the STAR community of a group called of homes called Earthships. The philosophy of these homes is to be completely off of the utility grid and rely solely on Rain, Sun, and Wind for all Energy and Water needs. The STAR community has one Earthship model that is open for a tour. The Earthship construction is made of used tires, packed with dirt, and then covered with Stucco. Each of the homes collects all of the water from rain and snow that falls on the roof in an indoor cistern that holds all rain water. In this area, the average rainfall is approximately 10” a year, so the water is used 4 times before it is discarded. Here’s the cistern in the model home. Lydia liked the stucco and tile work in the model’s bathroom shown here.

Gray water from the showers, sinks, etc is filtered by an internal “Jungle” area and re-used again. This shot shows the kitchen sink and the accompanying plants. Apparently many of the Earthships grow their own vegetables in this garden for further recycling.
Overall, the Earthship concept has a lot of very interesting ideas about energy conservation and living off of the grid, some of which could be incorporated into a more traditional house. According to the STAR community’s mission statement, they also believe that by not having mortgage payments (By building their own houses from recycled materials) and dependence on utilities they can cure all of the evils of the world from child abuse to war. Ummm… Yeah.

We had the oil changed in the Ody by Ms. Quick Lube (Tattoos and all) and hit the road headed east. Back towards the real world…

Day 13: Taos and the Rio Grande

For the first half of the day we made our way northward towards Taos, New Mexico to see some of the mountains in northern NM. Due to the hot temperatures, we headed straight for the Rio Grande outside of Pilar, NM to cool off with some Kayaking. The Pilar section of the Rio Grande is a relaxing Class III section with a few nice rapids to keep you from snoozing. We weren’t prepared to see as many commercial rafters, but they were generally easy to avoid. Fortunately the crowds also meant that catching a shuttle was easy, and we didn’t have to take out the bikes. Here’s the scene at the Put-in.
After the first rapid, we decided we needed to stop at the next decent spot and take some photos. This little rapid had an interesting slot line down the left bank. Lydia took the camera and took some pictures of me running the leftt side. As you can tell from the pictures, the water was refreshingly warm, and we didn’t have to wear all of our cold weather gear like in Colorado.
After another mile or so, we came to what the rafters kept referring to as “The Big One”. This was a larger wave train with a good size hole on the right. I got out and took pictures of Lydia as she snuck in between some rafts for her turn at “The Big One”.
I decided to try out the line over the hole on the right, and Lydia caught a good picture of me boofing over the hole. After getting off of the river, we headed into town for some good Northern New Mexican (Tex-Mex) cuisine. We decided over a late lunch that we should head out to Ojo Caliente to enjoy the natural hot springs. The springs have been developed into a bit of a resort/spa, but fortunately it wasn’t very busy and was very reasonable at only $12 each. The springs turned out to be just the thing to work out the stiffness and soreness from almost two weeks of traveling, hiking, biking, and boating. We made our way out of town to a good campsite recommended to us by an outfitter in town and caught a great night’s sleep.

Day 12: Petrified Forest and Painted Desert

We awoke this morning at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and had breakfast at the lodge on the North Rim. The Lodge itself is a magnificent stone and Log building with a very spectacular view of the canyon. Here’s a view of the sitting area at the back of the lobby and the canyon through the windows.
After breakfast we set out on the long drive out of the North Rim. After about 5 hours with one stop, we arrived at the Petrified Forest. The Petrified Forest is one of the more famous stops of the Route 66 era, and is home to the largest collection of petrified wood in the world. Here I am next to one of the largest specimens, named “Old Faithful”.
Most of the minerals in the petrified wood are Quartz, Agate, and Amethist, so the coloration can be quite spectacular. This one piece is a good example of the colors and the grain structure of the wood.
Also in the Petrified Forest National Park is a Pueblo Settlement with some very well preserved Pueblo Petroglyphs. I personally hope that the giant Man-Eating Sandpiper pictured here is extinct…
We then headed north to the Painted Desert section of the park. The various bright colored sedimentary layer s give the desert its signature painted look. From the main overlook there are some very nice views. It was a bit overcast and late in the day, so the colors are a bit muted.
After leaving the Painted Desert we continued east towards New Mexico. Without good detailed New Mexico Maps, we had some trouble finding a good route into the Cibola National Forest in New Mexico, so we were forced to spend the night in a Rest Area across from a Casino. With some creative towel placement we were able to block out the Neon and get some good sleep.

Day 11: Grand Canyon

After a filling breakfast at the Grand Canyon Lodge Diningroom with Mitch and Jessica, we headed off to do a hike down the North Kaibab trail. This is part of the trail that goes all the way across the canyon from the North to the South Rim. The hike we selected to do was down to Roaring Springs, and it was 5 miles each way and 3000 feet of vertical. Here's a good shot from the first overlook. We are headed down to the farthest part you can see in this picture.

Lydia especially wanted to do this section of trail because there is one tunnel and a lot of other spots where the trail is carved directly into the rock of the canyon walls.

Above is just one of those sections that had to be carved into the steep cliff walls. All along the trail we could hear and see these collared lizards scampering around. Lydia cornered one for a photo.

I tried a number of times to get good shots of how far we'd come from the bottom, but without a wide angle lens this was the best I could do. The overlook in the first picture is way off at the top.

And finally, here's a shot that shows one of the roaring springs in the distance and a giant flowering Yucca in the foreground. This particular Yucca must have been 15 feet high.

We're going to have dinner at the lodge tonight, then pack up and hit the road tomorrow for Flagstaff, AZ, then the Petrified forest and then hopefully cool off with some Kayaking near Taos. Sore legs out...

Day 10: Moab

At the end of Day 9, we drove out into the desert past the Slick Rock mountain biking area and found a place to camp.

We awoke the next morning, ate some bagels with peanut butter and headed for the trailhead. The slick rock loop is about 10 miles long, but the non stop up and downs make it feel much longer. Here's Lydia taking a break taking in the scenery.

At about mile 5, Lydia found a slow leak in her front tire, so we pulled out the spare and put it in. Unfortunately, while pumping the spare tube up we somehow broke the valve stem and all of the air immediately dumped out. We put in the tube with the slow leak and slowly made our way back to the parking lot, pumping the tire up every 1/3 of a mile. It took us forever. Here's a good shot of the way most of the trails look.
After finally finishing our ride, we went into town, grabbed lunch, and headed towards the Grand Canyon. By a gross mis-estimation, we thought this leg of the trip would take about 5 hours, but it turned out to be 400 miles and took almost 7 hours. At least we got to drive through the monument valley. We tried to make good time, so I snapped pictures as we drove by.We also passed this sign. Sometimes the first available road number doesn't end up working out for the long term....We finally met up with our friends Mitch and Jessica at 8:30 pm at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We just happened to have trips planned that crossed in the Grand Canyon, so we hung out with them for the evening and breakfast before parting ways. Tomorrow we might actually see the Grand Canyon (Since all we can see tonight is a big Black Hole)

Day 9: Mesa Verde

Lydia and I decided to take a day off from hard physical activity and do some sightseeing in Mesa Verde N.P. Mesa Verde is home to some of the best preserved and largest cliff dwellings in the world. Most of the largest dwellings can be seen by guided tour only, so we scheduled two tours, one to the Balcony House, dubbed the adventure tour, and one to the Cliff Palace, the largest of the dwellings. While we waited for our tours to begin, we first visited the Spruce House. Here's an overview of the spruce house.

This particular dwelling has a restored Kiva, which is an underground room which a family will use as a living room or a temple, depending on who you ask. Here's Lydia entering the Kiva.

The next dwelling we visited was the Balcony House. To access this dwelling, we had to climb a 30' wooden ladder. Here I am checking out this dwelling.The final dwelling we visited was the most famous, the cliff palace. Here's a very famous view of the Cliff Palace. The round structure the group is standing around is a Kiva, without the
restored roof like the one Lydia is climbing in. After touring the Cliff Palace, we loaded up and headed to Moab for some good mountain biking on the slick rock.

Day 8: Brown's Canyon

We woke up after an excellent night’s sleep above Buena Vista and drove down into town for a great breakfast of Huevos Rancheros at the Evergreen Café in town and headed off to the Brown’s Canyon section of the Arkansas River. We had arranged to meet some friends of our friend Will at the takeout at 11:00am. We got to the takeout at the Stone Bridge at 10:30 am and Lindsey and Greg were there shortly after. We loaded into Lindsey and Greg’s truck and headed for the put-in. The put-in for this section is like Six Flags over the Arkansas. Here’s Lydia getting suited up amongst the crowds.

The level was around 2800 CFS and this was a great big water level without any big scary holes. We scouted the first major rapid, the infamous Zoom Flume.... Here's Lydia in the entrance paddling for the large curler in the meat of the rapid

And then crashing through the curler...

...And behind her was Greg

And last, getting pushed around in her EZ was Lindsey

Overall the run was a nice big water run with a few bigger rapids to pick the pace up. Lydia ran the largest of the rapids, Seidel's Suck Hole and had a great line. After finishing up the run we parted ways with Greg and Lindsey and headed for Durango, CO so we would be close to Mesa Verde for our next stop. Off to Mesa Verde and then Moab for some sweet slickrock action!