Buckskin Gulch, Utah

After giving up on the hot, slow, circuitous “official” route to the Buckskin Gulch, we went back to our campsite and decided to take the original route the next morning.

Our campsite was still available, yay. It’s not an official campground, just one of those pull-outs off the road with a fire ring. We parked in a slightly different spot this time. It took a little more work getting the van level. We don’t have a fancy leveling system or even those plastic ramps that look like big lego blocks. We just scavenge rocks that we find sitting around near the campsite, put them where we need them, and drive up on top of them. We were able to get tucked away in the trees a bit better than the previous night.

We found this dog gravesite near our campsite. Awww. The rock says, “Roz Dog, A Good Girl, 1999-2015” I bet Roz had a good life.

We were glad that we had our new Starlink internet connection because that afternoon our house sale in Albuquerque nearly fell through. It wasn’t our buyer’s fault – it was the fault of our terrible, horrible, no good, relocation company. It was everything we could do to keep them from cancelling our sales contract – a contract that both us and our buyers were happy with!

By the way, we still haven’t closed on that house sale. We were supposed to have closed yesterday but our relocation company has once again messed up. Now it’s Memorial Day weekend and our best hope is Tuesday for closing. But back to my Utah story.

That next morning we drove to the trailhead that is supposed to be for “The Wave” trail, but is also (we discovered) the original, and closer, way to get to Buckskin Gulch. The first little bit of the trail was a wide wash and we walked with a bunch of Wave hikers.

The majority of the hikers soon took the Wave trail to the right, leaving only me, John, and a nice young man whose name I forgot, to continue down the wash toward the gulch. Our new friend said he was a computer programmer from Austin, Texas. He had wanted to hike the Wave trail but hadn’t managed to get a permit; they had sold out. The number of people allowed on that trail is limited by permit because it is so popular.

I have seen pictures of the Wave, and I don’t see why it’s such a big deal. I think some landmarks get famous and others don’t due to tipping point dynamics more than actual virtue. We’ve seen some truly amazing formations that aren’t on the internet, so no one is ever there.

We walked with our new friend for a short distance, and sure enough, there was the gulch! It was beautiful. Here you can see our friend walking up ahead with Biska.

This next picture shows a drop off. It’s not that far, but it’s too far to jump down it, and not easily scrambled. There used to be a ladder but the ladder had washed out. We turned back, because there really wasn’t a way down.

As we started to hike back out, someone else on the trail pointed out the route around the drop-off. There was a tiny trail sign, easy to miss. Similar to our scramble on our first night in a different wash, we had to go up and around and back down past the choke point. Up we went!

The next few pictures are of us after we’ve scrambled up, and we’re looking at the route back down into the canyon. It was not particularly difficult, but it was steep and exposed.

Yep, that’s the way down.

If we wanted to hike the gulch, we had to get all the way down into that.

Uhhh. Here I am, contemplating it.

By that time, two more guys had joined us. John and I went down first. Well, Biska went first. She had no problem! Can you see her down there in the crack?

The two other guys followed us with no problems, but our friend from Austin just didn’t have the confidence to do it. We offered to help him down but he just couldn’t get up the nerve.

John went back up to help. Here’s a picture of John talking to our friend about how to do it. It looks pretty imposing from this angle!

I felt bad for the guy because I really sympathized. Although this stretch was really not all that difficult for me. John and I had done more difficult sections near our campsite on the hike we took the first morning. I realized that I’m not too bad out there myself. I always compare myself to John, but that’s not a very fair comparison. John is a mountain goat!

Here we are after we got down. We hiked the short distance back up to the choke point to see what it looks like from below. The people above are asking me how we got down there, and I explained they had to backtrack and take the trail up and around and back down. You can see some remnants of the broken ladder.

It was very beautiful in the canyon – and dry! Often these slot canyons are wet and muddy. People will wade through hip deep muck. Not for me! They are also very dangerous if there is rain anywhere upstream. Don’t ever go into one of these if there’s rain forecast anywhere nearby.

Uh oh, Biska needs help. Luckily she’s smart enough not to jump too far.

John to the rescue.

Here’s John giving Biska some water – you can see remnants of the washed out ladder stuck high up in the canyon behind them.

Then first slot canyon joined a bigger canyon. It was here that we realized why the trailhead had been moved. They were routing people around that initial side canyon that had the broken ladder. The main canyon is also a slot canyon – the actual Buckskin Gulch. The new trailhead that we thought was too hot and long on the previous day was the slow, easy way to get to the main Buckskin Gulch slot canyon. The way we went this time was a pretty little side canyon and a short cut – if you don’t mind scrambling.

Here we are in the main canyon, with the opening of the slot hidden in the shadow.

The two guys who had come in with us took our photo.

This is looking back at the entrance to the side canyon.

Here’s the entrance to the main part of the slot canyon.

I love this next picture of the back of me, peering ahead (taken by John).

John is a happy guy!

I love the lighting on these next two.

A small cave

It was a great hike and worth the scramble!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Who moved my cheese?

The next morning, we drove up the road to a trailhead. I was looking forward to hiking on a real trail. No more crazy steep rock scrambling! Our destination was a slot canyon called Buckskin Gulch.

When we reached the highway turnoff for the Buckskin Gulch trailhead, John said something about it not being right. He had been there once before, but it was twenty or more years ago. How could he possibly remember?

The trailhead signs were entirely clear. This was the Buckskin Gulch trailhead. So we put on our boots, and off we went.

And we went, and went and went. It was a pretty trail, and easy. But where was the slot canyon? There were nearby rock formations, so surely we were almost there?

Almost there?

Almost there?

We trudged along this valley and it started getting pretty hot.

Surely we’re almost there?

By then the sun was high, and we’d made it to a few cliff faces, but we still hadn’t found the slot canyon.

Biska was hot, and we decided to turn around. Even if we were almost to the cool and shaded slot canyon, we had come too far on the open plain, and we’d have to hike back through it in the heat.

Here’s John with his Garmin trying to figure out – where are we? Turns out we were just over halfway to the slot canyon. That made no sense. This was marked as the trailhead to the slot canyon. We should have had half a mile of hiking to the canyon, not several miles.

Time to turn around and hike back out. There’s always tomorrow.

After we got back out, we discovered that it was indeed an unnecessarily long way to the slot canyon. There was a closer trailhead to the slot canyon that John was remembering, but it was no longer marked as the trailhead for the slot canyon. It was only marked as the trailhead for some other trails.

Our initial guess was that they were trying to divert some of the slot canyon traffic elsewhere because the original trailhead also went to a very popular rock formation called the Wave. You need a permit to go on that trail. We weren’t interested in hiking to the Wave, so we didn’t need a permit, but we wanted to park in the same parking lot as for the Wave. Do they no longer let slot canyon hikers park there? Is it now only people with permits the hike the Wave?

The new trailhead they came up with for the slot canyon turned out to be 6 extra miles of hiking (three in and three out) just to get to the canyon. That’s not ok! Not when there’s a closer trailhead, a mere half mile from the slot canyon!

We decided to try again the next morning, and this time we’d try to park at the original trailhead – if we could.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Crazy steep off-trail scramble

The next morning, we set off up the same wash as the previous evening. This time we had the whole day ahead of us.

Here’s where we quit the night before:

Here’s where we’re going to go up and around it. Yeah…hmmm.

It looked do-able here, although it was a lot steeper than it looks in the picture.

Ok, so far, so good. But it’s really steep.

The van is waaaay down there.

Hard to tell in the picture, but that’s basically a drop-off there under the snag. I’m not sure how I get myself into these things. It’s my fault. John’s not egging me on. It’s just that somehow it looks easier from below? Or I think I’m almost there? Or I forget that heights make me uncomfortable? I keep getting myself into these situations and regretting it!

Stupid steep.

Pretty though.

We decided to go over the top of this ridge to the right, rather than trying to go back down the side of the wash, which was both steep and rough. There was a decent chance that the slope down to the road would be gentler than the sides of the wash.

Yep, there’s the road, way down there. And there’s fewer big boulders on this side. John’s happy.

But I’m crouched with my back against a rock, contemplating the drop-off. I can see the van down there. Now if only I had wings, it would be easy! At least, with fewer boulders, it’ll be more of a butt-slide down than a rock climb.

Whew, made it down. Home sweet home.

Next time, a trail maybe?

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Evening walk from the campsite

We arrived in Utah a little later than expected due to our flat tire en route. This was the first camping spot we found near a trail we planned to hike the next day.

At first we figured it was a temporary spot just for that night, and we’d find a better spot the next day. But we ended up liking the spot better than we thought we would. Turns out there was good hiking right there.

These photos are from our evening walk. Or I should say, our evening rock scramble.

The sun was down and it was darker than the photos make it look like. We had a light on Biska in case she wandered too far.

Here’s where we quit. It was too dark to climb this. The next day we found a way around it, but we had enough evening walk/scramble for the first day.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Utah Trip – First Stop

Wait – that sign suggests we’re in between Flagstaff and Phoenix. That’s not Utah. Yeah, so we were driving along and several things happened, nearly all at once. First, Biska got up, farted, and looked anxious. I wondered if we needed to stop to give her a walk. At the same time, the van dashboard beeped and John said something about a tire, which I didn’t hear.

John said he was going to pull over (for the dog, I thought) and I objected; not along the side of a freeway (because Biska’s a good girl and she can wait), and then he said there’s an exit, and I said ok. There happened to be an exit nearly immediately – in fact, we almost passed it. He took the exit and started to park the van at the nearest possible location. I suggested he go a little further down the dirt road away from the freeway, and he said we shouldn’t. We had a flat tire! Oh. This wasn’t about the dog at all.

Yup, that’s a flat tire.

It was actually a great place to have a flat tire, assuming we didn’t need any amenities. Which we didn’t. I happily walked Biska on the dirt roads while John changed the tire.

Here is John, hamming for the camera. He wasn’t worried. He had everything he needed, including a full sized spare.

He also had a tire repair kit and and an electric air pump. He fixed the flat and stowed it away, in case we had any future issues.

Ironically, during the time that John was fixing our tire, a tow truck came for another vehicle. I’m glad that wasn’t us. That car was barely drivable. The tow truck driver was able to drive it a couple of feet to get it lined up with his trailer, but it was making some crazy engine noise.

We were soon on our way. Thanks John, for being prepared and saving the day!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

It’s a sock hop in the kitchen

Everybody’s in socks!

These are not actually dog booties. They do make dog booties for dogs to wear in rough hiking conditions, to protect the undersides of their paws. But they don’t seem to make them small enough for poodle mixes. Apparently only big dogs go on tough hikes?

Most of the time the trails we take are not a problem for dogs. But sometimes, on the ice or harsh desert rock, dogs paws can get rubbed raw. We’ve had issues with it on sandstone in Utah before. But how are we going to find dog booties small enough to fit such a little dog?

You won’t believe it but…these socks were made for chair legs!

They are designed to protect your floors from scratches. I like them because they dampen the screechy noise of the chair legs being dragged across the tile when people sit down or get up. I am quite noise sensitive. The chair socks have a firm stretch to them, to fit various size chair legs. They are actually quite small and barely fit over our chunky rustic furniture. They are designed for thinner, sleeker, round chair legs.

But they fit great on our dog! Now we’re ready for Utah!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Starlink

Packing and moving! Too much stuff! Organizing! Selling houses! Still remodeling! John’s new job starts! And…we’re going on more trips!?

After John got his job offer from Raytheon, everything happened fast. He had 29 years worth of work at Sandia to somehow wrap up and pass off to colleagues. And he has been mostly living in Albuquerque every since the pandemic restrictions were lifted and he couldn’t work remotely from Tucson anymore. So half our stuff was still out in Albuquerque.

John wanted to get fully moved to Tucson before starting his new Tucson job. Raytheon was eager for him to start, but he pushed back on his start date as far as he felt he could, and we scheduled movers as fast as we could. We shipped his 4Runner to Tucson – I don’t know if I mentioned, but awhile ago somebody turned down the wrong way on a one-way street and ran into him. Everyone was ok, but his 4Runner is all bashed up. There was a long wait to get it fixed in Albuquerque so he had it shipped on a truck to Tucson, and we plan to get it fixed here.

While this was going on, one day, in mid-April, I decided that John really, really needed some sort of break! Everyone advises taking a long vacation between jobs, but when you’re in middle of moving, that’s not often realistic. There’s no time! But surely we could do something to help ease the stress of everything? We considered a brief trip to Hawaii, but even that seemed difficult.

John’s happy place is southern Utah. Only problem – huge swaths of southern Utah have no cell reception. And we were putting our house on the market and we had a tenant leaving one of the rentals, and John was in middle of all the logistics of retiring from Sandia and starting a new job. We couldn’t be unreachable, with completely no internet or cell tower. Not with a house on the market. Not with so much going on.

I had an idea. Earlier this winter, when I met Laura in Atascadero, I spent the night halfway at a campground in Joshua Tree. I had no cell reception there at all. But a young man I ended up talking to (because his off-leash dog came over and made friends with Biska), said he had been at the campground all week, working remotely using a Starlink. It uses satellites to provide a wifi link. He was able to keep up with his email and even join his zoom meetings from his campsite. I could see his Starlink on his picnic table, gleaming in the sun.

I was very impressed and determined to buy one. But then John told me that his brother has one and was unhappy with it. They’re expensive, and I wasn’t sure how often we’d use it, so I shelved the idea.

Now suddenly, we needed one! So I bit the bullet and ordered it. But I didn’t think it would arrive in time. The website said it could be several weeks before it even shipped. Oh, well, we’ll have it for next time.

It arrived unexpectedly quickly – one day before we had wanted to leave on the trip. We could do our trip after all. We could have internet, from anywhere! Even Utah!

I took photos as I unpacked it. I needed to remember how to repack it, if we had to send it back.

Setting it up was surprisingly easy. There was no instruction manual. I downloaded the app on my phone and the app walked me through it.

Here I have it set up in the backyard to test it. It automatically tilts to face the correct part of the sky.

Wow, that’s a good read-out!

Utah, here we come!

My next set of posts are going to be a series about our trip to Utah. Some of you know I have also been to Ann Arbor and back since then. I’ll write about that later. Utah, then Ann Arbor. Lots to post!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

April California Trip – Walks, Cafés, and Easter Brunch

After John flew back to Tucson, I stayed with my good friend, Tracey. The weather was beautiful and I loved sitting on her back patio. She’s been doing some work in her yard. I was very intrigued by her super-realistic artificial lawn in her side yard. It was amazing, it looked so real.

Even close up:

Here’s a super close-up shot so you can see how it was made, complete with a realistic withering underlay:

John likes having a lawn for the dog, but we live in Tucson, so our little patch of grass always looks horrible. I hate dead grass almost as bad as I hate mud. There’s just some things from my childhood up north that I don’t want in my life anymore. Mud, rain, dead grass, puddles so large that passing cars drench the pedestrians on the sidewalk, black ice, sleet, darkness at 3:00 PM, mold, mildew, mosquitos – oh wait – we get mosquitoes in Tucson. Well, to the extent possible, at least!

Not only did Tracey have a lovely new lawn, she also magically expanded her backyard patio and now has a beautiful swimming pool! Ok, I’m joking. Her back fence had blown down and I doubt I could have gotten away with swimming in her neighbor’s pool, no matter how inviting it looked over there.

Their fence guy had done a disappearing act (just like the fence), so her husband, Bob, was having to build it himself. Sounds familiar, right, John?

Speaking of pools, while I was in California, John invited his brother and sister-in-law, Dan and Dawn, and their three kids over for one final dip in our pool before they headed back up to Minnesota for the summer.

You can see my crappy half-dead lawn in the left edge of the photos, to Dawn’s right. We have a big swath of that dirty-muddy-bumpy struggling, incongruous desert (!) lawn. We didn’t plant it ourselves. It volunteered after the monsoon rains one year, and I haven’t managed to make it quite go away since. It still hangs on, but barely. The fact that John intermittently waters it, is not helping. In my opinion, we just need to hasten the inevitable, and let it go! There are so many beautiful, desert hardy plants I want to grow – we don’t have enough acreage to plant them all. And certainly not with a large chunk of property being squandered with half-dead grass and dirt patches.

The family visit looks fun. I was sorry to miss it, but they will be back in the fall. Dan and Dawn spend every winter in Tucson, and now that we’re finally in Tucson permanently we hope to see them on a more regular basis.

Speaking of keeping up with family, one day Tracey and I met Tamara and Michael for lunch. Tamara is Alex’s mom, and Michael is Tamara’s partner. So essentially they are Laura’s in-laws. Tamara and Michael live in Pleasanton, which is right next to Livermore. I thought it would be fun to get to know them better. Family bonding time!

Tamara and Michael are extensive travelers and we enjoyed hearing about their adventures. Tamara is from Kazakhstan and I believe Michael is from the Ukraine. Michael told incredibly interesting stories, including how he is currently supporting a family in the Ukraine whose predecessors had rescued his predecessors during WWII (Michael is Jewish). So wow, so much history.

I appear to have failed to take any pictures of us at lunch, but here is a gas station. LOL. I forget to take pictures of family but I captured the gas station. Hmmm, priority check needed, maybe?!? I just thought it was amusing how fancified this gas station was.

I also took a picture of this cute little car.

We eventually plan to replace my Mini Cooper with an electric car. I’m keeping my eye out for something small. We’re not really ready to embark on a big new car-buying project right now though, so hopefully my 2007 Mini keeps chugging along for awhile yet.

Here’s another BMW i3 in Tracey’s neighborhood.

The BMW i3 has unfortunately has already been discontinued and replaced with the larger (and longer range) i4 and iX. They also make an electric Mini, so we will just have to see what’s available when we’re ready to start seriously researching cars.

That weekend was Easter. Tracey and I had a great time with this Easter egg kit – complete with stickers!

When we ran out of stickers, Tracey got out a paint set.

Tracey’s daughter, Amy, who is the same age as Laura and lives in Oakland, came out for brunch. Laura came too. We’ve been meaning to get them together for a long time, so that was fun. I failed to take pictures of them too. But it was really nice, chatting around the patio table.

Bob grilled salmon and we made a variety of gluten-free and vegan side dishes, plus two salads. The weather was perfect and we enjoyed eating outside – in Tracey’s newly expanded (visually at least) backyard 😉

That afternoon Laura drove me back to Santa Clara, and I flew out of San Jose the next morning. It was a great trip!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

April California Trip – Ruth Bancroft Garden

John was only out in California a few days for his business trip. After he flew back to Albuquerque, I stayed in Livermore with my friend, Tracey. We had a great time doing outdoor springtime activities. Here’s photos from the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek.

Here’s Tracey, looking very happy, showing off how enormous that plant was! It was presumably some sort of agave, but I am still just learning.

That’s it for today’s post – just a lot of pretty pictures! I love plants, lol.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

April California Trip – John’s retirement

As I may have mentioned, John is retiring after 29 years with his company, and then starting a new job in Tucson. His retirement party was in Livermore, California rather than Albuquerque because that’s where his team is based.

On Sunday afternoon, the first week of April, John arrived in California, picked me up from Laura’s house, and we went to Livermore. We got a hotel in a convenient location, near a walking trail and an outdoor mall and plenty of restaurants. John went into work on Monday and Tuesday, and I used the time to catch up with my life coaching client sessions.

On Wednesday at lunchtime I got to go to John’s retirement party. It wasn’t a fancy party, just some pizza in a conference room and a slide show of a few of his many accomplishments and some funny times he and his coworkers had together. It was great to hear what his coworkers were saying. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take pictures of his coworkers, the party banners, or the slide show, due to security restraints. I was lucky to be able to go at all – they had to get me a special badge and I had to be escorted wherever I went. But I’m glad I was able to go, because it is a very big deal.

John was there for 29 years and did all kinds of very interesting science. He is both a materials scientist and an engineer. Early in his career he had a lab where he did materials experiments at the micro and nano scales. For example, for awhile he was looking into why over time batteries slowly lose their ability to charge back up. He used some amazingly powerful microscopes to take movies of exactly what the crystals were doing in there.

Later in his career he was designing and testing electronics. In particular, they were looking at how well the electronics did in extreme environments (such as during an explosion or impact). First the theoretical scientists would model how they thought the electronics would do. Then John’s team would design a physical test – such as actually shooting them out cannons or other fun stuff – and interpret the resulting data stream, and compare it to the models. That way they could learn how to make their electronics tougher.

John’s coworkers had many funny stories, but I think the biggest sentiment was, “Oh shit, what are we going to do without him?!?!” John is really very respected there.

Happy Retirement John, and congratulations!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism