Weird and Beautiful: Lake Powell and Monument Valley

Lake Powell was a weird place, like something out of a sci-fi painting. I was in between being impressed by the scale of it and depressed by the ruination of a beautiful natural place by human intervention. The Mechanical Engineer and Environmentalist were pitted against each other and I'm pretty solidly on the side of nature now.


The landscapes in Southern Utah were stunning, especially this flower-studded moon dust field on the edge of Escalante National Monument. I had the good fortune to drive back and forth through this beautiful place a number of times as I shuttled everyone back and forth to hiking and camping spots in the one car we had that could handle the high clearance roads.


We stayed overnight at Monument valley on the Navajo Reservation, definitely a different feel than the national lands that I'm so used to. The signs were different, the rules were different and there were vendors at every viewpoint selling jewelry and food. We couldn't figure out where to camp the first night, accidentally set up in the wrong place and had to move along when a Navajo woman came by in a truck and chided us. Above are the "Mittens".

Rez Dogs and children were wandering around the place. Some of the homesteads had a really nice family feel. We met a bunch of great people just getting by in their ancestral home, including a very motivated high school student editing an essay on the Son of Sam. Southern Utah is a place that demands more exploration.

Whoever Is Reading Moby Dick...Your Tent Is F***ed

Gale force winds whipped across Mormon Flats this hitch, claiming 6 of our 11 tents...but nobody got it worse than poor Keith. As we worked on the trail, blissfully unaware of the destruction going on below us, our project partner hiked up to pass on the bad news. Of course the question on everybody's lips was, "Whose tent is it?". "Whoever is reading Moby Dick, your tent is f***ed." The 60 mph wind snapped the aluminum poles on three tents and destroyed the rain flies on three more, and with a storm coming in, the decision was to hike out and camp on the South Rim for the duration of the hitch.

The storm hit and dropped temperatures to around 20 deg F at night, in addition to dusting us with snow. NPS provided some sweet little Mountain Hardwear solo tents for those of us whose tents were destroyed on Mormon Flats, so we did alright.

Cold nights were softened with big campfires, and cold mornings meant trips to the Grand Canyon Cafe for breakfast burritos and fresh hot coffee! A tough hitch turned into something special as we soldiered through rough weather and treated ourselves to the perks of frontcountry camping.

After accomplishing some great work on the South Kaibab trail, including repairing an eroded Mule Bar at Cedar Ridge and covering all kinds of check steps, we were rewarded with a hike to view some hidden petroglyphs and a scramble down into a cave on the rim. This was the last hitch with all of the AmeriCorps members together and will go down for me as one of the toughest and most rewarding tours in the Canyon.