Lake Mead, NV & Zion, UT April-May 2023
ON OUR WAY
After a cold, windy, and snowy month in Fruita, CO, we were on our way south to enjoy paddle boarding in Nevada on Lake Mead. It was a 3-day trek of light driving days. On Day 2, we were like gobsmacked children depicted in a fairytale. We were wide-eyed and slack jawed while staring at the incredible red rock formations when we drove west out of Green River, UT, even though we’d seen them many times before.
ON OUR WAY
After a cold, windy, and snowy month in Fruita, CO, we were on our way south to enjoy paddle boarding in Nevada on Lake Mead. It was a 3-day trek of light driving days. On Day 2, we were like gobsmacked children depicted in a fairytale. We were wide-eyed and slack jawed while staring at the incredible red rock formations when we drove west out of Green River, UT, even though we’d seen them many times before.
A camper & his dog slept in his Tesla while it & his Starlink satellite receiver were plugged in.
The backdrop of partially blue sky and occasional bright sun highlighted the huge, multicolored, and contorted landforms. We each narrated aloud our experiences while pointing towards favorite, surprising shapes as the narrow road wound its way up to the summit and then, the show was abruptly over. The layered rocks were no longer visible, and scenery became drab and ordinary while we climbed higher into the mountains.
Like in the fairy tales when the clueless children take a wrong turn into the dark forest, our delight and awe turned to fear under the oppressive, darkening sky. We were having flashbacks; we were remembering traversing these same snowy passes on which our trailer tire was silently disintegrating a month ago in flurries and we unknowingly adverted disaster.
There was still snow on the slopes of the mountain peaks now only slightly above us. At first, the thick layers of roadbed de-icer on the shoulders looked like lingering snow. The temperature abruptly dropped and the winds picked-up. The scene had all the makings of bad ending. As I drove, I realized I’d forgotten how long a drive it was up, over, and down these bleak passes.
Fortunately, it was a non-event; it was only an old experience that lingered in our minds. The dark sky and winds persisted when we parked in Richfield for the night, the first town out of the mountains. Apparently, the snows were still fresh in the minds of many of the residents, as evidenced by the numerous snow shovels in arm’s reach of their front doors.
LAKE MEAD
Paddle Boarding on Lake Mead
“What happened to spring?!” and “I wasn’t ready for this!” were among the spontaneous comments of fellow campers at Lake Mead. Our first night at the lake, the overnight low temperature was 75° and it was only the last week in April!
Bill happily atop his board on our first outing in 2 years.
With gusts of 30 mph in which we struggled to stand upright on the trail, we knew there was zero possibility of paddle boarding on the water which was almost at arm’s reach. It would be a windy, unseasonably hot week that would make it difficult to enjoy being outside at all. But then the forecast shifted, and like clouds parting, 3 good boarding days appeared on the weather app. Some days the wind was lowest in the morning, other days it would be more favorable in the afternoon, and we would bend our schedule to fit its whims.
Everywhere we had gone this traveling season had abnormal weather. At Lake Mead, the overnight low of 75° was when the average high for the month was 77°, and three of our seven days were pushing 100°. At 8 o’clock another morning, it was already 80°; we certainly wouldn’t be longing for wetsuits to paddle board! It was ironic however: we always leave Palm Springs by March 1 to avoid the hot weather there and our Lake Mead temperatures were about the same as those in Palm Springs.
Palms & ocotillos, just like in Palm Springs.
At the turnaround on the second day, I started feeling slightly more confident and dared to get my body into the paddling motion, though halfway through our return I abruptly fell backwards. I didn’t go fully into the water. It was the wake of an unseen power boat behind me which knocked me onto my back.
Bill had alerted me that the swells were coming, and I was almost to my hands and knees when one hit my board hard, and I toppled over. Fortunately, I rolled straight backwards and stayed on my board. The bulky padding of my life jacket helped cushion my fall.
I felt the tail of the board sink enough to soak the backside of my clothes and life jacket and I believe the next little wave helped me lift to a sitting position. It wasn’t a hard fall, but my paddle got away from me. Fortunately, I grabbed my floating paddle when the movement of the water from the next wave directed it towards me. I considered myself lucky to have stayed on the board, but the incident further undermined my flagging confidence.
The third and last day on the water, was my worst. Perhaps it was weariness in my legs from the previous day’s long walk, but my legs trembled the entire outing. I spent almost all our time on the water sitting, rather than standing.
We surmised my atypical, poor performance on the board was likely caused by damage done to my pelvic proprioception due to the extensive bodywork I’d received over the winter to improve my back. Boarding is great cross training for us but unfortunately, my time on the water was an investment in rehab and not the play I’d anticipated. Bill, however, had a delightful time all 3 days rediscovering the peacefulness of being on the water and close-up views of the landscape.
Barb made it to standing but wasn’t at ease.
Wow! We likely got as close to fire walking that we’ll ever come when we walked for hours in 100° temperatures on our last day at Lake Mead. It was 100° with steady winds of 20 mph, occasional gusts going higher, and no measurable humidity. Just wow!
I stood in the scant shade of the RV park’s dated concrete block shower house after bathing, a shower during which I had tasted the dissolving salt from my upper lip draining off my face. I shouldn’t have been surprised: I’d walked for about 5 hours, I had multiple salt rings on my underwear, UPF pants, and backpack, and I’d drained my 1.5L water bladder spiked with extra salt. I scanned the lakeside scene, trying to fully take-in this hot, windy, experience, but it was only a little more extreme than the previous days. There really wasn’t anything new to see; nothing that visually punctuated the heat event. I did however notice that during my brief pause to see what might have changed and then walking across the single lane road to our trailer, that my hair had dried.
Walking in the extreme heat had been an amazing experience for both of us because, unlike in the past, it was no big deal. We each had discovered a new, unexpected, and baffling heat tolerance. Discussing it the next day, we concluded that it must have been triggered by the sports supplement, citrulline malate, we’d been taking since September.
The only online comment about citrulline’s effects on heat stress were in poultry, but it was a modicum of validation. Weeks later, I presumed that it was also the citrulline effects that had allowed us to comfortably paddle board in 90° heat the day before the superheated walk when conventional wisdom dictates that almost all boarders will intentionally seek refuge in the water at about 80°. We knew it was getting hot but weren’t alarmed or motivated to return to shore early.
Hoover Dam was a long walk on an abandoned railbed from our trailer.
I didn’t see anyone sitting near their fire ring, they just had a wood pile ablaze. Seeing the flames must have fulfilled a deep-seated need that I didn’t have when it was 90°. I too enjoy fires and have positive associations with them but clearly, they are strictly a winter sport for me.
ZION NATIONAL PARK
“Where Have All the Dirtbags Gone?”
“Dirtbag” is generally a pejorative term, but with its roots from the 1960’s rock-climbing culture in Yosemite National Park, it was a term of endearment and a badge of honor. When in Zion this season and its companion village of Springdale, I wondered to where the dirtbags had possibly evacuated.
The tourism pressure on the national parks and monuments that we had watched build since becoming RV’ers in 2011, exploded with covid. With it, the big-name hoteliers rapidly gentrified dirtbag refuges, like Moab. The modern version of the wild west spirit manifested by scrubby-looking, lean dudes in sandals driving beater 4-wheel drive rigs loaded with water and gas cans, were displaced by clean-as-a-whistle, $150,000 Jeep-things driven by clean-as-a-whistle older guys.
Sleepy Springdale adjacent to Zion had managed its rapid gentrification well, clearly exercising an iron fist with progressive zoning laws. The endless string of hotels, motels, restaurants, ice cream, and bike shops were all pleasing to the eye with their low profiles and rustic designs that echoed the color schemes of the grand geology towering above them. There was a Disneyland neatness and ethos without feeling cookie-cutter.
The West Rim Trail hoodoos are a favorite picnic view.
The upmarket had elbowed its way into these outdoor scenes, but where did the dirt baggers go? Zion NP itself had crowded them out in the spring of ’23 by closing the entire budget South Campground of 117 sites to improve the drainage, though the pricier, RV-friendly side was open. Our Springdale RV park claimed to be the only campground in town and it was $90 a night for a tent site and 2 people; RVs were only a little more. And with Kerry Gold butter an eye-popping $16 a pound in town, the budget crowd was again getting squeezed in all directions. With our 6 cubic foot refrigerator and electric cooler, we’d stockpiled much of our food for our 10-night stay, but dirt-baggers usually manage with bags of ice and a cooler. And the side of Cable Mountain literally fell off in August of 2019, eliminating access to many of the park’s major backpacking trails, likely for years to come. No private cars are allowed in the Canyon from April through October; in the off season only 300 cars are allowed a day.
I read that Yosemite’s original and iconic Camp 4 for climbers still exists, but at high season, with a 1-week limit. I personally don’t mind the crowds on the trails, but I don’t like being squeezed with lotteries for trail access and campgrounds and it is a nuisance to always need reservations and to make them far in advance. But my problems are small, and I lamented that a whole class of outdoors people were being excluded.
This delicate Sinuous mariposa turned our heads.
The massive Cable Mountain rockslide in 2019 that eliminated so much prime backpacking country access in the park for dirt baggers, also permanently closed 3 of our 4 favorite trails. The Forest Service has been monitoring the slide since 2019 and, unsurprisingly, the fallen material is still moving. Because of that, the trail rebuilding will likely be tackled from the top, but they haven't yet devised a plan. It sounds like a “not in our active lifetime” project to us.
Sadly, we were limited to walking on the paved Zion Canyon Scenic Drive that dead ended at the Temple of Sinawava, the 3.5 mile out-and-back Watchman Trail, and the longer Scout Outlook/West Rim Trail, plus a couple of heavily traveled short trails. We only walked the length of the Scenic Drive once and so around and around we went on the 2 longer trails. Luckily, they were situated on opposite sides of the gorge, so they delivered different views.
We skipped the crowded adventure trail to Angel’s Landing that now required a permit and were glad we’d already done the water walk in the Narrows because the water flow was four times the upper limit of what the Park Service tolerates for the unusual event. We felt the pressure of more visitors on fewer open trails, especially when a school bus discharged 50 or more animated students on a single trail. Hiking in Zion was a more compressed experience for us than in years past.
Wildflowers
Halfway through our 10-day stay at Zion, I overcame my resistance to having more stuff, and bought a “Zion National Park Wildflowers” book. The park’s bookstore’s 3rd of 3 books met my needs of being small and easy to use. Of course, it didn’t have all our finds and made me want to have a chat with the author about edits to the next revision, but it delightfully shifted our experience in Zion.
With essentially only 2 desirable trails available to us, we were getting a bit bored and needed some entertainment, and this reference did the trick. The timing wasn’t coincidental: the wildflowers were just beginning to bloom. While heading up the familiar Watchman's Trail one morning, we’d spotted 2 newly placed metal plant identification signs beneath 2 wildflowers, plants that we didn’t know, which prompted me to shop for a book in the afternoon. I gambled that more flowers would bloom in our remaining few days, and that they did. When the time is right for blooming, we’ll spot new blooms on the return from a hike that weren’t out when we went by in the morning, and this was one of those times. In a few days, we went from spotting and learning 2 new species to over 20 and saw a half a dozen old standbys.
Wild flowers spotted on the trail but not in our Zion book.
IT’S A WRAP!
With new blooms still bursting out, we packed our new Zion flower book and other gear to begin our slow journey home. Bill planned 9 days for us to drive a little over a thousand miles, and it was a good thing. Just like my back was thrown into chaos by the time we opened the door at home a year ago, I was unable to walk more than a few minutes after Day 3. We were changing drivers every 30 minutes, and it still wasn’t enough relief from who knows what. I felt like I was on the verge of losing all the gains I made in the last 4 months.
Presuming it was the truck seat position, which is better than the average vehicle, Bill dug out a place for me in the accumulated clutter in the backseat. When lying awake the night before, wondering how I would possibly survive the journey home at my current rate of collapse, he remembered that we’d always found the bench seat much more to our liking than the front bucket seats. He was right, moving to the backseat of the truck worked like a charm. My hobbling pain each afternoon and evening plateaued after the first day riding in the back and ever-so-slowly, the entrenched pain began to reverse. By the fifth morning, I was able to cautiously stroll a bit without limping pain. Our truck’s bench seat was so backfriendly that Bill also sat on it when I took my shortened driving shifts.
I stuck to the other half of the new plan, which was to eliminate all exercise until we were home. No more strength training, no more other exercises, no fitness walks, and no more assisting with the trailer hook-ups each morning and night. I adopted what felt like a near-vegetative state of primarily existing, but the subtle relief from pain was worth it for both of us.
A baby rattlesnake on an Idaho neighborhood street.
The non-back mini-dramas were few and far between on our trip home. We stopped one afternoon north of Salt Lake City for my 3rd coronary artery calcium scan for the bargain price of $69. Another partial day was spent in La Grande, OR for our annual trailer maintenance appointment and for Bill to fantasize about owning one of the latest new trailers on the lot. Our truck battery seemed to be on the verge of dying, so we were babying it along, preferring not to replace it before putting the truck in storage for 3 months over the summer.
The only substantial brush with disaster on the way home was having a huge cardboard box reinforced with metal brackets bounce out of the bed of the pickup truck in front of me on a 10-lane freeway in Idaho. Quite alarming, but inexplicably, I was able to navigate around it while it and I were gradually slowing, probably with thanks due to the wind. I only looked straight-ahead, but apparently the other drivers were equally successful with their evasive maneuvers. Everything is more complicated when pulling a trailer, especially since the driver has zero ability to see directly behind the trailer. It could have been devastating but quickly became a memory of another weird experience.
PS
Should you be interested in the long story about our 100° walk and the presumed beneficial effects of citrulline, scroll to the end of this previous piece: https://detail.travelfit.us/moredetail2018/page-14.