Fruita, Colorado March-April 2023.
A Stumbling Escape
We left the Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) on a 2-day dash, that became 3 days, to Grand Junction/Fruita, Colorado. Departing a day early, we expected to beat Atmospheric River #12, but didn’t.
The forecast late Sunday afternoon rain began instead as snow at 1:30 pm and didn’t stop falling all night. The next morning, for the first time ever, we had to use our ladder and an extendable closet rod to remove the snow overloading the awning “topper” on our trailer slide-out. We couldn’t pull in the slide without intervening, which meant that we couldn’t drive without clearing the topper. It wasn’t hard to do but it was darn cold work in the still-falling snow, and it slowed our departure. At least it was still snow and not ice on the topper.
Setback #2 occurred when we encountered the “Road Closed” sign 10 minutes later, on the alternate route out of the GCNP; it was closed due to ice. At that point, we had to reroute, taking 3 days instead of 2 to make the journey to Fruita, significantly increasing the total driving time in what the meteorologists called a “wintery mix.” Fortunately, we had a new driving app with roadway temperatures to assist us. And incredibly, when we left the GCNP on Monday in falling snow to avoid the worst of the approaching storm, there was a long line of intrepid tourists waiting to enter at the gate.
We left in a light snow flurry the next morning as well from Kanab, UT with the temperature right at freezing. Luckily, we were expecting to advance into warming, rather than cooling conditions, which was the case. We watched our truck’s temperature gauge bounce around just above the freezing point almost all the time, but it occasionally dipped below the magic number. It snowed much of the first 2-3 hours of driving, with poor visibility at times, but there was no ice. The following day’s drive into Fruita was also forecast to be borderline conditions, but was dry though quite windy.
A Stumbling Escape
We left the Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) on a 2-day dash, that became 3 days, to Grand Junction/Fruita, Colorado. Departing a day early, we expected to beat Atmospheric River #12, but didn’t.
The forecast late Sunday afternoon rain began instead as snow at 1:30 pm and didn’t stop falling all night. The next morning, for the first time ever, we had to use our ladder and an extendable closet rod to remove the snow overloading the awning “topper” on our trailer slide-out. We couldn’t pull in the slide without intervening, which meant that we couldn’t drive without clearing the topper. It wasn’t hard to do but it was darn cold work in the still-falling snow, and it slowed our departure. At least it was still snow and not ice on the topper.
Setback #2 occurred when we encountered the “Road Closed” sign 10 minutes later, on the alternate route out of the GCNP; it was closed due to ice. At that point, we had to reroute, taking 3 days instead of 2 to make the journey to Fruita, significantly increasing the total driving time in what the meteorologists called a “wintery mix.” Fortunately, we had a new driving app with roadway temperatures to assist us. And incredibly, when we left the GCNP on Monday in falling snow to avoid the worst of the approaching storm, there was a long line of intrepid tourists waiting to enter at the gate.
We left in a light snow flurry the next morning as well from Kanab, UT with the temperature right at freezing. Luckily, we were expecting to advance into warming, rather than cooling conditions, which was the case. We watched our truck’s temperature gauge bounce around just above the freezing point almost all the time, but it occasionally dipped below the magic number. It snowed much of the first 2-3 hours of driving, with poor visibility at times, but there was no ice. The following day’s drive into Fruita was also forecast to be borderline conditions, but was dry though quite windy.
Egads! This happened sometime during our 2 days of driving over snowy passes.
We were horrified! We gasped when we began to recall the perilous conditions in which we’d been driving the previous 2 days and were aghast to visualize dealing with a shredded tire on one of the many remote, snowy summits we’d crossed where there was no cell or internet service. It could have been a cascade of one bad circumstance after another; it had been a very close call, a potential brush with disaster.
After cringing at our individual and shared mental dramas with what could have been, we returned to the actual problem at hand, the bum tire. Luckily, we had spent the night in a little town off the highway and the RV park staff indicated that there was a tire shop down the road.
The crummy weather was making every business in the region desperate for customers and the shop’s bored men got right on switching out our split tire with our spare. A few hours later, we made it into Grand Junction with Bill calling tire shops while I drove. He lined up 4 new tires of a higher “load range,” which should have been the upgrade in quality that we had always been told we couldn’t have. They were heavier, heavier duty, almost double the price of what we had been using, and we were thrilled. We never wanted to be in this situation again.
Like at the little repair shop in the morning, the Discount Tire shop was slow by their standards because of the horrible weather, and they were able to replace the tires promptly. The shop was bustling to our eyes, but not as busy as they usually were.
We were thrilled to spend our bonus time buying tires on this day, time we’d created by driving extra miles the day before to clear the last high pass on our route. Now, we’d be able to park the trailer and leave it be for a month rather than taking too much of another day to pack away our interior gear and haul the trailer to a shop for new tires. We were relieved and delighted to have dodged a catastrophic situation and to finally have the better tires we have longed for; money happily spent!
Brr! Snow along the Colorado River.
Once parked for the the night and the month, I slowly limped to the nearby shower house, struggled to bend enough to remove my clothes to bathe, and was barely able to get into bed without help. Amazingly, and like always, the pain didn’t interfere with my sleep, but I awoke feeling barely alive: I had no energy, no emotion, and stared at the ceiling from bed for an hour. I couldn’t participate in the efficient start to the day that we’d been enjoying; I felt like the unanimated blob of seaweed that was currently polluting the east coast beaches. It took most of the day to shed the deep malaise.
No Idling Allowed
“Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals,“ by Oliver Burkeman, filled our airwaves during our pre-dawn, pre-breakfast, exercise routines some mornings while in Fruita. Bill was eager hear new perspectives on one’s relationship to this precious resource and this audiobook was his pick. In contrast, I had always thought of myself as a maven of efficiency, but I was game for new tricks.
I am a bit of a nuisance with my constant striving for little, new timesavers, like using 1 less utensil or dish when cooking breakfast, re-sequencing hand movements to speed-up dish washing, or using my massage gun on my quads while doing an adductor stretch and listening to the morning news. Surprisingly, this self-proclaimed time management geek’s primary message was “Chill, you’ll never get it all done.” His somewhat muddled discussions of leisure and idle time did however motivate me to look more closely at my unproductive time that also wasn’t satisfying.
Some who hike with us are exasperated by our 45-minute, mid-outing lunches during which we stare into the distance. We always look for an auspicious place to eat, preferably with the wind and the sun at our backs, a rock to sit on, and a mesmerizing view with both foreground and background interest. My personal efficiency expert is off the clock at these times, times that are restorative and move towards meditation. In contrast, the same lack of activity sitting at our trailer dinette after a meal or at the end of the day usually registers as wasted time because I’m not enjoying myself. I’m sitting there staring because I’m tired, discouraged, or mildly distressed and it was this wasted time that I targeted to capture and make more fulfilling.
Ah! Our way of savoring the day.
Additionally, for months, too many hours a day had slipped away from my control while the brain fog of pain engulfed me. I was slower in every way and yet needed to speed-up to keep my head above water with other daily activities. My excruciatingly slow recovery was terrifying on many levels.
Since my body pushed back when I tried to resume my old tempo, I set out to capture as many minutes as possible from neglected corners of my days. For months, I struggled just to arise from sitting. It would often take 10 or 20 minutes of silently chanting “Stand-up!” to arise onto my feet because of my distress. Now that I was feeling a little better, I vowed to trim that transition time back to standing to 2-3 minutes. I would often give myself 30 minutes in bed waiting for the trailer to warm before arising while checking the headline news, emails, and the weather on my phone, and I trimmed it to 10 minutes most days.
To help maintain tempo, I recommitted to spending a few minutes in standing every 20 minutes. Twenty to 30 minutes is the recommended maximum time in sitting to optimize DNA repair that occurs when moving about. I started a countdown timer on my phone and would brush my teeth, wash a few dishes, set out clothes for the day, or do other unavoidable chores during these breaks. I wasn’t adding tasks, only re-sequencing them. The mini-breaks helped keep me alert and time-sliced little chores so I didn’t need to carve out bigger chunks of time for them later.
Monument Valley: Bill’s favorite hike in Colorado National Monument.
Bill also joined me in my new “no idling allowed” policy. When I noticed him staring off into space or at the computer too long, I’d ask “Are you doing what you want to to be doing?” Usually, the answer was “No” and he would get up and start moving again.
We were both immediately delighted with our “no idling campaign” because we were clearing more niggly chores off our To-Do lists each day. Some evenings, it seemed we were harvesting an additional 60 to 90 minutes to spend on activities we valued more than our habitual uses of that time.
Especially in the late afternoons when our neighbors had Happy Hour on their minds, I felt like we were in boot camp with our new “no idling’’ mantra. Rather than sit and rest like I felt like I needed to do, I pushed against my building inertia to do nothing and instead, kept moving. Doing anything, even clipping toenails, or deleting some emails, bought us more time the next day than kicking back did, so we pressed on. The new discipline paid dividends every day. It was only a matter of days before our satisfaction with getting chores done was self-reinforcing and we were doing more and more. The “no idling” campaign borne from adversity was a monumental success.
Going in Circles
In Fruita, I literally resorted to going in circles to increase my activity tolerance while Bill enjoyed making long, scenic hikes. I never knew when the daily pains of exertion would hit, or how disabling they would be, so circles were a good strategy for me, albeit, boring.
A new favorite venue for me in Fruita was Dinosaur Hill, a little more than a mile from our trailer. It was an historic site we’d never taken the time to visit because we feared it was “low yield” and indeed, it was pitiful. The mine shaft entrance from which they extracted dinosaur bones over 100 years ago looked like any other closed mine entrance and it was unrewarding to peer at the rocks where casts of dinosaur bones were located until being vandalized. But no matter, Dinosaur Hill was a gold mine for me.
From the trailhead to the top and around the hill was a little short of a mile and about 170’ of gain. It was modest, but for the time spent, I could accumulate more feet of precious gain than anywhere else near us in a given distance. It was just what my de-conditioned knees needed: lots of up and down for a few minutes at a time.
And that’s all there was to see at Dinosaur Hill.
Around and around, I would go: first counterclockwise, and then clockwise. Changing direction with every lap meant that my experience of the views only repeated every 2 miles, not every mile. There were a couple of places to sit if I couldn’t go on and a pit toilet for my convenience. It was tedious but so much better than doing laps in the RV park.
Dinosaur Hill was one of my 3 regular venues, the other 2 being a paved bike path between the freeway and the Colorado River, and the maze of dirt trails at McInnis Canyons across the road from Dinosaur Hill. Over and over again I reminded myself that my goal wasn’t to be hiking or exploring new areas, but to be rehab’ing and these were top-notch rehab venues for me at this time.
Woe Is Me!
The aging-related changes we were experiencing weren’t fun, but alarmingly, too many people around us were dropping away entirely at this time. My very supportive and caring OB/Gyn retired abruptly and early because of breast cancer; our treasured Aston Patterning body worker was forced to retire early after teenagers’ joy riding in a stolen car crashed into her; our GI doctor and dentist both retired, hopefully by choice; and our attentive ophthomologist was retiring in May.
Additionally, our beloved Portland REI outdoor store would be shuttering because of crime and our new apartment building was being hit by package thieves inside the building and people slipping into the gated garage to break into cars. Yikes! Sometimes our bodies felt like leaky boats we were struggling to keep afloat, but we had believed we were in a stable sea, and we were not.
A first: biking alongside lingering icicles near the road summit in Colorado National Monument.
Yes, yes, these are all normal changes, but this season they’d all lumped together. Like our time management author had recommended, we’d been living life relatively in the moment and not striving to accomplish big objectives, but these were unwelcome changes to our foundation. We had become accustomed to having the backdrop to our relatively tranquil life be stable. In the past, big disruptions in our external worlds usually appeared at a gentle rate of less than one a year until the big pile-up this winter.
“The Winter of ‘23”
As prior flu seasons paled in comparison to the pandemic, previous bad winters paled in comparison to the “Winter of ‘23”. The more than a dozen atmospheric rivers, with the heavy snows they brought to the Far West, and the anticipated flooding and landslides from the massive snow melts, just didn’t stop.
We were absolutely dumbfounded that during the 4th and last week of our stay in Fruita, it was again freezing at night and, incredibly, it snowed during a hike. The forecast was for a remote chance of rain and blimey, at 10 am, it started to snow, and not just a little bit! Bill had dropped me off at my McInnis Canyon trailhead and was on his way to a favorite, scenic hike, when it started snowing. Fortunately, we both had cell service and he returned to pick me up and to fetch our rain suits.
It was frightfully cold in the strong wind, but it was tolerable because we could brush the snow off, and then the snow turned to rain. At noon, we bailed on our hikes and returned to the trailer. Around 3 pm, the sun was out, and we both decided to do a few more miles around the trailer park. It wasn’t long before it was hailing! The usual unpredictability of spring was compounded by the ongoing ferocity of the Winter of ’23.
Our next venue was Lake Mead, Nevada where we hoped to revive our fledging new sport of paddle boarding that abruptly stopped in the extreme wildfire smoke of the Summer of ’21. I was afraid to look at the forecast for Lake Mead: the way the spring weather had been trending, I feared we would be ice skating instead paddle boarding!