Author Archives: geekemeritus

I Hiked the Hoodoos

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Hoodoos are a geological formation when erosion attacks a hard rock layer over a much softer rock. Some are small and others as tall as a 10-story building. Because of the minerals in the rock they can have spectacular colors. They are found all over the world, typically in dry, hot areas, and the most impressive are in Bryce Canyon National Park. If you want to know more about how they are formed, the National Park Service has a good explanation. As you can see in the photo below, as the mesa has eroded over the eons, freeze/thaw cycles and erosion has removed the rock, leaving spires of varying height – as if they were dug from the ground.

  • Erosion stages of the hoodoos
  • Erosion along the mesa. Note the hiking trail at the top
  • The hoodoos up close
Tropic Falls along the Mossy Cave Trail

North from the entrance to the National Park you will find the trailhead to Mossy Cave and Tropic Ditch. In 1892 pioneer setllers of the town of Tropic worked for over two years digging a canal to divert water from the Sevier River, over the cliffs of Bryce Canyon and into the Tropic valley, a distance of 15 miles and a drop of 1,500 feet. To reduce the labor, they followed natural courses where possible. Except for the drought of 2002, the water has flowed continuously for 130 years, giving life to the people and crops of Tropic Utah.

I spent two full days here, hiking through this magnificent landscape.

Canyonlands Dark Sky

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2022-06-03

CanyonLands is a relatively new National Park opened in the 60’s. It is a 90 minute drive from Moab; rugged and minimally developed. Ninety-five percent of the park can only be reached by hiking or 4×4 trails, many of them considered “high technical difficulty.” ATV’s are not allowed. There are no amenities like food, gas or cell phone service. The only flushing toilets are in the visitor center. The campsites are paved, but primarily to keep vehicles from damaging the surrounding desert.

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Canyonlands Cowboys and a Bit of Remembering

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From the 1890’s to as recently as 1975 Ranchers have run cattle in Canyonlands. This is not pasture grazing – this is high desert. I imagine the cattle only survived. The cattle and the cowboys that tended them were surely tough. The cowboys lived in open air “bunkhouses” under the overhanging rock for months at a time. The black is the smoke deposits from the stove behind the bush. (No, the white box in the center is not a beer cooler!)

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Medicine Bow Wyoming

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Medicine Bow is a really small town on the Lincoln Highway and the Oregon Trail, It’s history is as a bawdy town filled with bars, gunslingers and prostitutes. So much so that it inspired Owen Wister to write the novel, The Virginian, a story about western life, the Lincoln County Wars and the life of a ranch foreman he called The Virginian he placed it in Medicine Bow. I was able to gather much of Owen’s story from folks at the Medicine Bow museum. About 1884 Owen Wister suffered some sort of mental break resulting in vertigo, blinding headaches and hallucinations. His father had a friend in the “Wyoming Territory” and asked the friend if Owen could spend a summer on his ranch to recover, and all was arranged. Owen was met by the ranch foreman when he arrived on the train in Medicine Bow, and they proceeded north to the ranch somewhere near Jackson, Wyoming, a distance of maybe 200 miles. On the trip the foreman told Owen tales of the territory and the foreman’s adventures.

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Swedes Across America

2022-05-31

I stopped at the Lincoln Monument a few miles east of Laramie, and highest point on I-80/US-30. The visitor center there has a lot of information about the Lincoln Highway. It gives all the credit for the Lincoln Highway to Henry Joy, the president of Packard Motor Company and the first president of the Lincoln Highway Association. There is no mention of Carl Fisher, the man who originally conceived the idea. Curious oversight.

While there I met Henrik Bjorklund, a Swede who with 5 others is driving his 1959 Chrysler Imperial from Florida to Alaska, then ferrying from Alaska to Seattle and driving to LA. The cars in the tour are all Detroit chrome and iron before 1961. These cars are beautiful and immaculately restored. Henrik told me that they found the cars in the US, shipped them to Sweden, restored them and shipped them back for these tours.

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Ron’s Summer 2022 Begins

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Lincoln Highway Marker

I leave in the next few days for another 3-4 month trip into the great west. The only thing I know about this trip so far is I will follow the Lincoln Highway west from Iowa. If you want to follow along, there is an interactive map and a lot of information at the Lincoln Highway Association.

The Lincoln Highway was the first coast-to-coast route that started in Times Square and ended in Lincoln Park, San Francisco, passing through 14 states on the way.

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Small Town Iowa

2022-05-22

I spent time in two small towns, Missouri Valley Iowa and Cozad Nebraska. I stayed in their city park campgrounds and both experiences were great. These city parks are clean, safe and well kept… and inexpensive.

One of the reasons I like small towns and their parks is you come across truly interesting people and events. As it turns out Saturday night in Missouri Valley was the first dirt-track figure 8 race of the season. The eighth-mile track is a 5-minute walk from the Airstream.

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Moab on the Colorado

2022-05-22

I camped by the Colorado River in the Red Rocks Gorge north of Moab.1

The gorge is not as deep as some of other canyons, but the cliffs on both sides are nearly vertical through all of the 15 mile drive. You can’t get a feel of the size in the photographs. There are a couple of places along highway 128 where the cliffs overhang the highway. The downside of being at the bottom of a 2,000 foot canyon is that there is no cell service of any kind.

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  1. I wish I could remember all the times I have camped by the Colorado. The two I do remember are Needles California and Laughton Nevada. [↩]

THE Railroad Town

2022-05-24

North Platte Nebraska is THE railroad town. It was created by Missouri Pacific, and the railroad still dominates the city. When Grenville Dodge was laying out the route for the first transcontinental railroad, he identified this location in central Nebraska as the ideal location for a routing, service and maintenance facility – the midpoint between Salt Lake and Omaha with plenty of land and water. When the track-layers reached the location, they built multiple tracks, sidings, work buildings and housing for the yard. The railroad brought over 100 workers to man it all. The place did not have a name, but soon acquired the moniker “Hell on Wheels”. It was established as North Platte in 1866 and became the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad in 1867 until the railroad was extended to Laramie.

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