The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

The next destination is Toroweep or sometimes Tuweep, which lies on the North Ridge of the Grand Canyon. I flee all the people at Bryce and pass through Kanab and Sedonia to end up at Pipe Springs. I have been through a lot of correspondence to get a backcountry permit to allow me to camp at Toroweep. The solution is that I pick one up at Pipe Springs National Monument. When I get there Pipe Springs National Monument is closed because of the Government shutdown. The fragility of planning.

I take the road to Toroweep. This is a 61 mile dirt road over a blasted heath. It is not bad but at times washboardish, inducing shuddering that makes me shudder for my airbags.

Notwithstanding, it is a great drive as the sun goes down to my right and I know I have left madding crowd far behind.

Just before I get to Toroweep I am met by a Ranger. It is way past sunset and very cold. He explains that he saw my lights 20 miles away.

“ Can’t stay here, sir. Toroweep is a dawn to sunset camp. Best I can offer are  forest campsites 7 miles back, turn left on the Mt Trumbull road.”

7 miles is nothing on the scale of my current travels and I find an ideal site that I would love to come back to, er, when it is warmer.

I am back at the Toroweep Ranger station early. They give me a backcountry permit with no more difficulty than er a hot knife through butter, falling off a log. Do not get caught up in planning anxiety.

The Toroweep campsite is the best place in the world. It is 500 meters from the North Ridge of the Grand Canyon. There is nobody here. The weather is perfect with sunshine and blue, blue skies.  I could no more go to the established viewpoints of the Canyon than er, um, fill in stuff you do not like here. 

I walk to the Canyon rim in the late afternoon to take photos. The Canyon is not easy to photograph. During most of the day, light covers one wall of the Canyon whilst the other wall is in shade. You have to be there very early in the morning or at sunset to get a light-uniform view.

I spend a very cosy night in the camper and after an early photography session at the rim, I take a long hike that ends up back at the camp.

The sky is black. By the time I reach base it is snowing. No point sitting in the camper all day so I hightail it er slowly, back to Kanab.

There are few places as amazing as Toroweep.

Red Canyon is only 15 miles from its more famous colleague, Bryce Canyon. Few stop there as they want to get to Bryce.

It is equally amazing and, on a freezing December day, deserted.

I decide to go for a little stroll to stretch my legs. The path leads up towards the remarkable rock formations. I follow it into a gully expecting it to lead to the plateau allowing views over the canyon. The trail becomes increasingly indistinct mainly because of the snow. I find myself at the bottom of a steep shale climb but the plateau is on 30 meters up so I decide to go on. Big mistake!

Half way up I realize the one slip and I will tumble down and do myself a lot of damage. I place each foot only after digging out a little platform in the shale. I am scared. I have a couple of slips but avoid sliding. I am panting. I do get to the plateau but I have to spend several minutes to recompose myself.

I look around for the footprints that I expect to indicate the way down. There are none. I realize that my little plateau is by no means the top of the canyon and start a long and very exhausting climb. There are no human prints but the snow is covered in Bear prints. I have not seen a soul since starting out.

I finally reach the top after about 2 hours. I can only see one obvious gully that appears to lead back to the road but its head is about another 4 miles distant. There are several closer, smaller ravines that lead into the main gully but they are full of snow and there are no foot prints leading into them.

So I head down one of these. Snow up to my knees at times, I flounder down the gulch. I worry that I will come across a slope that is too steep and I will have to climb back up. Hmmm, not good as I am tired and my gloveless hands are frozen.

After many crashes into the snow I emerge into the wider gully that I had seen from the top. I walk down and finally see a human footprint. Such happiness. I get back to the truck 4 hours after I had set off for my little stroll. I am exhausted but elated. Phew!

On to Bryce Canyon, so different! The place is swarming with people principally busloads of Chinese tourists. The Government shutdown results in all campgrounds closed and only main viewing point open. I stay 15 minutes.

I head off to Toroweep on the Grand Canyon.

I set off on a month long ramble around the South West hopefully arriving at the Bosque del Apache https://www.fws.gov/refuge/bosque_del_apache/   

There I will take a 5 day bird photography course in early January. After that, the plan is to cross over into Mexico and watch Mexican birds. I hope to get back to San Francisco at the end of January.

I thunder over the Sierras and take Highway 50, “The Loneliest Road.”

The road is cold. I had not realized how sub tropical I have become and the cold is astonishing. Even with gloves, the end of my fingers become numb after a minute or so. The first night I stay in Austin, an old mining town, as are all the settlements along the road.

I stop at the Austin gas station, where I meet Dave. He is so delighted to see me that he buys me a Highway 50 pin and a T-shirt.

There is only one turn on Highway 50 – I missed it! In the middle of the town of Ely there is a right turn that I do not see and go trundling along the main road. 60 miles later I suspect there is something wrong as I have seen 4 cars in the last 15 minutes, far too many. Nothing for it but to turn around.

I finally turn onto Highway 21. Highway 50 is not the Loneliest Highway, Highway 21 is. Incredible country.

I finally get to Wilford UT and spend the night in the rodeo stadium parking lot. Freezing.

My imagined cheery cooking sessions outside each evening have not occurred as I would die of cold. I gobble gas station sandwiches in the camper.

I get together with Bebo to chew the Yuletide fat. We have coffee in Cole Valley, which is where, had I $3,000,000, I would like to live.

I then go off to my Boxing Conditioning class at the USF gym.  Long time readers may remember that I took a similar class 8 years ago, which had the all time great name of, “Boxing Boot Camp with Roxie.” https://spikekalashnikov.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/thanks-roxie/

I am 8 years older with bad knees. The class is a killer but  I have lost 5 kilos. The new instructor is called Christian, not the same ring as Roxie.

So you may remember that I lost my camper on top of a mountain. https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2018/12/05/thank-you-jesus/

Sean interviewed me in situ for his very cool podcast, “The Truck Show.”

Check it out here. Subscribe to the Podcast!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-truck-show-podcast/id1357401021?mt=2

Click  ‘View in Itunes’ on Episode 45. It may take a couple of seconds for the iTunes screen to show. The interview is around 55 mins into the show. Such fun – thanks Sean!

San Francisco is a very easy city to get around. I use the bus. I have a Senior’s Clipper Card, which cost very little. It allows me to take anybus, anytime, anywhere. My Clipper card makes a pleasing beep as I press it against the sensor as I board the #7 down Haight.

I had noticed a little sign announcing a Ralph Steadman exhibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Steadman outside a nondescript building in Lower Haight.  Steadman, a Welsh cartoonist and illustrator had a major impact on er contemporary culture in the 60s and 70s in Britain.  

I loved Steadman’s cartoons in Private Eye.

I was driving around the U.S. in the Summer of 1972 with George Watson, during the McGovern campaign. Rolling Stone’s serialization of Hunter S Thompson’s, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” illustrated by Steadman, had a big impact on me.

The exhibition is incredible! It has hundreds of Steadman originals.

World class exhibition lurking on Haight. Go there!  https://haightstreetart.org

I got a mild sunburn during my trip to the mountains. I bought a bottle of moisturizer cream named Oil of Olay. On the bottle was marked in big letters “ultra hydratant”,”ultra moisture.” Oh good I thought and slathered it on my face.

A few hours later the sunburn had got worse and my face was painful. Lots more cream. I woke up to find extreme sunburn and much pain. Lots more cream. I was confused as I have just been through the blazing Okinawa Summer with no real problems yet a few hours in the Sierras has apparently scorched my face.

Anyway after 2 days of applying loads of cream, my face is covered in some kind of crud and I begin to suspect that something is not right. I look at the bottle and way down at the bottom in small print is marked “shampoo.”

Lots of concentrated shampoo is very bad for your skin. It is caustic.

Always read the small print!

I don’t think I mentioned that another victim of the Cerro Gordo road was one of my suspension air bags.  The stock springs can not take the weight of the camper. The airbags lift the back of the truck and generally give a better ride.   Anyway, one blew 3 weeks after I had them installed in San Francisco.  This put the truck on a tilt so I had to empty the air from the other airbag.

I limp back, with a pronounced fore-aft list, to Woodland where the folks at 4Wheel Campers have been more than helpful.

The journey was exceptional in its own way as there had been a lot of snow and some parts of the road were very bad. 45 mph most of the time.

I made it to Woodland after dark but Aaron from 4Wheel Campers had offered to let me stay in the camper on their site.

8:30 the next morning they grab my rig and start fixing it. These are busy people and I really appreciate that they change their schedule to get me back on the road.

Yay! Aaron at 8:30 and we are off

They fix  various cosmetic damage with new trim, install special safety chains, which would stop the camper sliding out if ever the turnbuckles loosen. However to stop that eventuality, they install lock nuts on all the turnbuckles that should prevent them from moving.

Jessica!

They also refit the electrical connection from the truck to the camper, which had been ripped out, and carefully slide the camper back onto the bed of the truck. All better!

TLC

They do not charge me.

It is when things go wrong that you have the most rewarding experiences – well up to a point. Everyone I have met during this, er, incident has been wonderful. None more so than the 4 Wheel Camper crew, who did everything possible to help me get my dream of bumbling around the West, watching birds and sleeping in the camper, back on track.

Thanks 4 Wheel Campers. Amazing service!

Today has been remarkable! I set off to drive the Cerro Gordo Road. http://www.theadventureportal.com/death-valley-national-park/cerro-gordo-road/

I tried to drive this road 11 years ago in a Range Rover. Alas, it kept breaking down, down and I never made it. I am very confident that the Tacoma/Camper combo can make it.

Beware.

The trail is tough, with many patches of very broken road and steep inclines. The Tacoma does really well and we reach the half way point without too much trouble.

Looking down into the valley. Collapsed pylons from !903  block the view.

On we go, up and up. I stop the truck to walk up the next stretch to reconnoiter the difficulty. Returning I notice something. There is no longer a camper on the truck! I had felt nothing. She must have slipped off the back very discretely. About half a mile down the road, I find this.

Oh dear

Oh dear, oh dear

This is very, very bad news. I am truly in the middle of nowhere.  7000 feet up and 20 miles of very narrow broken road before you hit paved highway. To get here you have to have a very capable 4 wheel drive vehicle. I will need crane to lift the camper back onto the truck. How many off-road machines with cranes are there? Oh dear.

Anyway, I managed to drive the truck around the road-blocking camper and set off back to civilization.  I am very down.  The logistics of getting the camper back on my truck  are very daunting.  A mega-off/road, crane truck? Maybe they have one somewhere in the States. I cannot leave her there in the middle of the road and I foresee a helicopter lifting her up and dumping her at the side of the road. All options involve thousands of dollars. So much for my dream of bumbling around the U.S. watching birds and sleeping in the camper. I have only owned her for 3 weeks!

I slowly make my way down and meet this.

What!

2019 models comparison

Twelve of America’s top off-road experts are doing a comparative test of the 2019 models. There is at least $500,000 of truck in a line.  Range Rovers, Toyotas, General Motors,  Jeep, Ford, the creme de la creme of off road machines. They are writing articles, making videos and recording podcasts. Buy Four Wheeler Magazine. Go to their website: http://www.fourwheeler.com , listen to their podcasts: @truckshowpodcast.

They are equally surprised to see me as I am to see them. We are in a very remote place.

There are 12 guys. ” No problem Neil, we can find a way to get her off the mountain.”

Let’s get to work

We chock her up on boulders.

We manage to lift her back on the truck. These guys are very skilled and a major problem becomes a minor hiccup.

Back where she belongs.

What are the chances? I must buy a lottery ticket.

So I do interviews for the podcast, a Scot, living in Japan with a disconnected camper on the notorious Cerro Gordo Road is a good story. They shepherd me down the mountain and after effusive thanks, I head back home.

I think I have have mentioned my good luck before. I cannot shake it off.  After a disaster, what chances of meeting the 12 most qualified people to help, an hour later, high up on a very lonely mountain? Thank you er Jesus.

Seriously though, I am for ever indebted to Sean, Verne and all the other guys, who I am sure were on a very tight schedule, but dropped everything to help me.  People are good.

The goal of the trip is to drive the Saline Valley Road.

https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/1018-saline-valley-usa.html

It is a beautiful day and I am looking forward to seeing how the Truck/Camper combo will perform off-road.

We amble along without a care. The scenery is  – choose your adjective.

Looking back to the Sierras from the Saline Valley Road

We go up high into the snow.

We come down into an old mine, of which there are several. Here we meet Richard and Zack, the only people I see on the whole trip.

Zack,Richard, me

They are amazing. They are archeologist/archivists, working for the Federal Government, surveying the mining camps in the West. They have been camping out for the last three days. It is very cold. They tell me wonderful things about the logistics of gold mining in these lost places in the 1890s but I am in too much of a hurry to pass it on to you.

Gold Mine

Some views.

Empty desert.

The Who. 

I have to hurry. Great trip. I get back to Alabama Hills, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Hills and camp.

Where I camp.

Sorry to rush you.

I am going to rush through the next two posts as the third is unbelievable.

I set off Sunday morning towards Big Pine to drive the Saline Valley Road. This means crossing the Sierras and then driving way down South on 395. This is always a great trip but this time it is complicated by a heavy snowfall.

Driving up 150

There are flashing signs as early as Sacramento blasting out ” Chain Checks on summit of 150!” I do not have chains but am damned if I am going to buy some, as I am a total cheapskate and have big snow tires and 4 wheel drive on the truck.  I am not one

of the selected to check if I have chains. I have such good luck! The drive is however very freaky as there is much snow, not enough however to worry the truck.

Mono Lake is beautiful. America is so big.

Even 395 has  portions that are snow covered. Such fun.

I arrive at Big Pine after dark and snuggle down in the camper. The furnace is excellent. It is below freezing outside but I am toasty.

Campsite at 7:30

View from Campsite. So cold, I am not used to this.

Different view of the same thing.

Ready for a big day.