<![CDATA[Amateur Radio, Traveling in Blanquillo AND MORE

<![CDATA[Amateur Radio, Traveling in Blanquillo AND MORE - 2018 Colorado-Arizona]]>Sun, 25 Jan 2026 15:57:07 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[September, 2018, trip to Utah, Colorado, and Arizona]]>Mon, 01 Oct 2018 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.dornbush.net/2018-colorado-arizona/september-2018-trip-to-utah-colorado-and-arizonaWe traveled to Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado National Monument, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, Monument Valley, Grand Canyon, and upper Antelope Canyon. I tracked our journey using amateur radio APRS where radio stations picked up our location and put it on a map which we can show courtesy of Google Earth.

]]><![CDATA[Upper Antelope Canyon, and Glen Canyon NRA]]>Fri, 28 Sep 2018 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.dornbush.net/2018-colorado-arizona/upper-antelope-canyon-and-glen-canyon-nra

For our last stop on this trip, we stayed in Page, Arizona, and visited Antelope Canyon. This is on Navajo land and you must take a tour guide to visit. You ride about 10 minutes on a jeep-like vehicle to the mouth of the canyon. We chose to visit the upper canyon which has a level floor. Once you arrive at the canyon, you (and hundreds of others) walk up the narrow canyon about 100 yards. The canyon walls are breathtaking. All you see was carved by water through the sandstone. There is a very real danger of flash floods so they only tour when the weather is clear. I don't know what else to say about it but as you see, the canyon is truly fabulous.

While we were waiting for our tour time, we visited Glen Canyon which is dammed just outside Page. In fact, Page was built for dam workers. We only saw a small part of the Recreation Area as it is rather large. We always are impressed with these enormous dams built to conserve water and generate power. Unfortunately, the dams permanently alter how the river flows, as the sediment is trapped behind the dams and therefore cannot flow down the river, so the river cannot deposit the sediment as beaches after the rainy season. But we do need the water that we can conserve through the dams.

We stayed at Page-Lake Powell Campground in site 51. It, like many RV parks, has a large number of permanent residents as well as daily visitors like us. The park did a good job of separating us so it was easier to get around. This campground had both RV and tent sites, and I felt bad for those sweltering in the 100 degree heat in a tent. But we still ran our air conditioner in the trailer. Their check-in time was noon, and they made us wait until then to enter the park. That gave us the time to visit Glen Canyon so it was a nice delay.

On the way back, we stopped at the Needles KOA (HOT! it was over 100 degrees and cooled down to 81 overnight) and Santa Nella RV Park (not nearly as hot).

]]><![CDATA[Grand Canyon National Park]]>Thu, 27 Sep 2018 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.dornbush.net/2018-colorado-arizona/grand-canyon-national-park

What trip to Arizona scenic wonders would be complete without a stop at the Grand Canyon? We had never seen the north rim so we decided to include it. Since we made this decision late, we couldn't get reservations at the Grand Canyon North Rim campground, but we found that there were some national forest campgrounds in the area that were available. We got a spot in Jacob Lake campground and found that it was a really nice one. We were 40 miles north of the North Rim but any trip we made to the North Rim had to go right by Jacob Lake so we felt it was a good place to stay, and it was.

The North Rim is higher than the South Rim by about 1400 feet. The way the erosion occurred, the distance from the north rim to the Colorado River is about 7 miles while the distance from the south rim to the river is about 3 miles, so the south slopes are steeper. This gives a rather different feel to the canyon. You must judge for yourself which view, if either, you prefer.

On the way back, we decided to drive through the south rim and have lunch there. Fortunately, we had made sandwiches as the parking at the south rim visitor center was completely full, so we drove back out the entrance road and found a parking space for the Jeep and trailer at Pipe Creek Vista, so we had our lunch and a quick view of the Grand Canyon from both rims.

]]><![CDATA[Monument Valley]]>Wed, 26 Sep 2018 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.dornbush.net/2018-colorado-arizona/monument-valley

Monument Valley is in the Navajo Nation at the border of Arizona and Utah. There is a 13 mile Valley Drive which goes down switchbacks to get to the valley, then this dirt road wanders around the monuments and other formations in the valley. You will recognize much of the scenery as it was made famous in many John Ford movies, some starring John Wayne.

We arrived around noon and parked our trailer in Goulding's Campground, across the Rt 163 highway from Monument Valley, where we stayed for 2 nights. Well, it is across the highway but it is about a 4 mile drive from the highway to the campground and another 4 mile drive from the highway to the visitor center. After seeing the visitor center, we drove around the Valley Drive. The monuments are certainly a wonder to behold.

After taking the Valley Drive, we returned to the campground and booked ourselves on the Deluxe Tour. It covers the same Valley Drive and also visits some parts of the valley that we are not permitted to drive to without a guide. This 3.5 hour tour was great as we heard much of the history of the valley and were able to see some natural arches and petroglyphs that we would not otherwise see. We took this tour the following morning.

That night, we took the shuttle to Goulding's Trading Post where we saw several movies that explained the history of the valley. The Navajo have, of course, been here for hundreds of years. The Gouldings built a trading post where they traded with the Navajo, crafts for flour, etc. Goulding got the idea to pitch the location to John Ford who then made a number of movies in the valley, greatly expanding who knew about it.

Today, movies and commercials are still made in the valley.

Goulding's Campground provides full hookups for RVs and some tent sites as well, although I wouldn't want to camp in the heat there. We booked a "small back-in site" good for 22 foot RVs. This would have been fine for an RV but not for a trailer. We fit our trailer in the site but there was no space for our Jeep. Their web site clearly said this but I didn't envision having to either squeeze our Jeep into the space between our site and the next site, or park it quite a distance away. Fortunately, we were able to fit the Jeep in when we moved the picnic table to the back of the site but just barely. There were no 50 foot pull through sites available so we stayed here but fortunately there was no one in the neighboring site, so all was fine. My advice: take the pull through site. The campground is a great setting and the facilities are good as long as you book an adequate site.

]]><![CDATA[Great Sand Dunes National Park]]>Tue, 25 Sep 2018 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.dornbush.net/2018-colorado-arizona/great-sand-dunes-national-park

The winds blow across the plain from the San Juan Mountains toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, blowing sand. When the winds hit the Sangre de Cristo, the sand gets deposited against the Mountain. Result: a great sand dune. This is not your ordinary sand pile. These dunes are hundreds of feet high (as much as 755 feet) and cover many square miles of space. I didn't expect this in Colorado. We saw sand dunes in Michigan along the shore of Lake Michigan, the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and along the pacific coast, but here in a semi-arid place? Surprising. And quite interesting. Could you resist climbing at least a little of the dunes?

We had heard about the park from Heather, and we finally made it this far east to see them. Worth the trip. And we got a chance to try our Jeep's 4 wheel drive sand traction. We decided to not drive across the dry sand where they said we needed to deflate our tires or we would get stuck, but at least we had a little test.

We viewed the dunes from the Dunes Parking then decided to walk up to them. It was a trek. Then we walked up a dune. When we got to the top, we saw that there were more, taller dunes beyond. Yes, it is a massive place.

As we were walking back, we saw some small tracks in the sand so we followed them, thinking they might be some mouse or other rodent. We were surprised to see that they were from a Great Sand Dunes Tiger Beetle. Our nature contact for the day!

The name of the place is Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. What's up with that? Turns out that some humters didn't want to give up their hunting grounds in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, so the part in the mountains is a preserve so hunting is allowed, unlike the National Park.

We stayed at the Great Sand Dunes Oasis, an RV park just outside the national park. We found that their laundry was closed and of course, we had to do some laundry, so we asked about the nearest town with a laundromat. Turns out that Alamosa was 20 miles away but if you need clean socks, off you go. The RV park was not very inviting, so we cut short our stay and headed early to our next destination, Monument Valley, by way of Durango. We stayed at KOA Durango, which was good.

]]><![CDATA[Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park]]>Mon, 24 Sep 2018 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.dornbush.net/2018-colorado-arizona/black-canyon-of-the-gunnison-national-park

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is a place we recently learned about. It is not one of the better known national parks. That said, it is pretty spectacular. The Gunnison River runs from south to north through a steep and narrow canyon that the river carved through some very dark rock. There is the south rim of the canyon where most visit, and then there is the north rim which is harder to get to, and there is no road directly connecting the two rims. We visited the south rim as it was more visited and we have learned that this probably means it is the better side to visit. I don't know for sure in this case but I would select the side with paved roads rather than dirt roads.

After the day before we arrived, they did not allow campground reservations, so we decided to show up and there was no problem finding a camp site for the two nights we were there. The campground was almost full in the B loop where we stayed and that was probably due to its being best for RVs as they provided electric connection which is always nice. Water is trucked in from the valley below so there were no hookups or provision to put water in our trailer but we had planned for that. We knew we had plenty of tank capacity and that we were staying after this in an RV park with hookups so we were going to be fine. And we were.

The only problem was that the first spot we selected did not have working electric. We noticed that the power pedestal was leaning, and we guessed that someone backed into it and therefore broke the connections. The site next to it was quite acceptable and its power worked so that became our camp site. I recently read about the value in checking your electric before plugging in your RV or unhooking, and this advice proved its worth at this campsite. This was the second time in two years that we ran into a power problem at a camp site so I will continue to follow Mike Sokol's advice that I read in RV Travel newsletter.

Now back to the fun stuff. We started driving around the South Rim Road and stopping at the view points. In a way, it is similar to Colorado National Monument with a rim road and viewpoints but the scenery couldn't be more different. The canyon is very steep and narrow - and the stone walls were not black but certainly very dark. The canyon is a real geology lesson with all the mixed rock formations. They were not really layers but one mineral that squeezed into another where it had cracked giving the rocks a striped appearance.

The canyon is up to 2,700 feet deep and at its narrowest point, the width at the river is 40 feet (and 1,100 feet wide at the top). That's pretty darn narrow and steep as many parts of the canyon wall seem straight down.

After viewing the canyon from the south rim road, we took the East Portal Road which drops to the river. The road is steep and narrow with 16% grades and a maximum vehicle length of 22 feet due to the narrow road and tight switchbacks. At the bottom, we learned about the tunnel that had been bored to divert water to a neighboring valley for irrigation, turning a dry valley into farming land. Of course, they had to build three dams upstream and all this has permanently changed how the river flows. This is a problem here and wherever dams are built as they change the flow from seasonal to very consistent. That's good for water management but bad for the river's natural ways.

]]><![CDATA[Colorado National Monument]]>Sun, 23 Sep 2018 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.dornbush.net/2018-colorado-arizona/colorado-national-monument

The Colorado National Monument is in southern Colorado near Grand Junction. To reach it, you drive up about 4 miles through switchbacks and tunnels until you reach the Uncompahgre Plateau, about 2000 feet above the valley where the Colorado River flows. There, you can follow the only park road, Rim Rock Drive, where you drive along the top of the eroded features below you. This doesn't really describe it very well but you look out on pinnacles, canyons, "monuments," and mesas.

The Rim Rock Drive is the main way to see the features. There are some trails but they mostly go deep into the canyons so we stayed on more level ground. All of the monuments have names, and I understand that one of the popular sports is to rock climb up these monuments.

We drove into the Colorado NM early afternoon, and got a camping spot in the campground. One loop is for reserved campsites and the other is first come, first served. We found a spot that was a pull through and found it took a little work to get the trailer level and to unhitch and hitch, but the spot worked really well for a night. We were about a mile from the visitor center, and there were several short hikes right near us.

We spent the rest of the day driving the Rim Rock Drive and stopping at many of the pullouts to see the various features.

The next day, we decided to drive the rest of the way out Rim Rock Drive and down the other side exit road toward Grand Junction, and then on to our next stop, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

On the way to Colorado NM, we had planned to stay at Buck N Bull RV Park in Rangely, CO, but we decided to move on as we had the time. We don't recommend this park.

]]><![CDATA[Dinosaur National Monument]]>Sat, 22 Sep 2018 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.dornbush.net/2018-colorado-arizona/dinosaur-national-monument

On September 7-8, 2018, we visited Dinosaur National Monument. The NM is half in Utah (the dinosaur fossils) and half in Colorado (the Green River, Harpers Corner, and Echo Valley). We planned to spend one day at the dinosaur fossil part and one day in the Harper Corners Road part but the dinosaur fossil part was really only a morning, although it was very interesting. I discovered that the fossils were discovered about 100 years ago and some virtually intact skeletons were taken to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, where I saw them as a child and marveled at them. It was so cool to see the site now, and to see where they found all of the fossils.

We used the rest of the first day to go to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area which we visited about 13 years ago and got to see again. It is upstream of the NM along the Green River and there is a dam that created the NRA. The gorge above the NRA (and the NM) are spectacular.

The next day, we traveled to the Harpers Corner side of the NM and it was equally spectacular to Flaming Gorge and the west side of the NM. The road goes out a ridge high above the Green River which loops around it. We walked the Harpers Corner trail which goes to the end of the high ridge where you are on a knife edge of land way above the river. Then we drove down Echo Valley Road to Echo Valley, a spot along the Green River. This "high clearance" gravel road took us down from the high ridge to the river through a set of valley cuts that were spectacular.

On the way to Dinosaur NM, we stayed at New Frontier RV Park in Winnemucca, NV, and Mountain Valley RV Resort in Heber City, UT. Both were good.

]]>