Cornering Consciousness

Tuweep is a place that delivers you proportionately. Big earth, puny human. Like her not-so-distant relative, the North Rim, this more obscure Grand Canyon overlook shuts your mouth and opens your senses and your mind.  We were there only eleven months ago, the end of April last, to try out our new gear that we’ve since journeyed with throughout Utah, Nevada, California and Oregon . This trip capped off my Spring Break, setting things right again since our errant overnighter a couple of weeks ago on The Barracks trail .  This would be Ginger and Mary Anne’s first legit camping trip, having tricked them on that three-hour tour. This time we packed accordingly, and I rebuilt the front end of the Montero, repairing the damage from Barracks trip. From Saint George, Tuweep is about a 90 mile drive south, all of which is off-road at the Utah-Arizona border where we aired-down putting my latest Fathers’ Day Gift to use, the ARB deflator. Beats the back ache o...

There's a space we occupy as adventurers nestled between won't-it-be-great-when and this-is-it . It's an active tense of real versus ideal, a place we spent some time in over last weekend on what started out as a three-hour tour to The Barracks that turned into an overnighter in the steep canyon of Parunuweap, east of Zion Canyon. The Barracks is a range of high bluffs scored by the east fork of the Virgin River. A colleague and avid off-roader told me of this obscure trail that offers incredible views of Zion National park from the east side. I tried to find the trail on my USGS topo app to no avail, only the BLM-issued map available through the Kanab Field Office accurately depicts the routes through Elephant Gap, past Sandstone Butte, adjacent to Rock Canyon and on to The Barracks. As disappointing as this will be, I have no idea why they have that name. Perhaps a reader here can help out. As he talked about the trail it sounded as if it was a short jaunt that en...

My sisters used to play guitar and sing Peter, Paul and Mary's 500 Miles , a folk song that would haunt my earliest dreams as a four year-old kid. The memory of the dream is still pretty vivid; I'm on a road walking west to the horizon and it's getting dark. The feeling is even more vivid, a combination of fear and purpose. Throw in the Mamas & The Papas' California Dreaming and the sum for me is the reason I'm still drawn to the West Coast. That, and being land-locked in the Southwest. If you've been reading this blog you'll know we've been making the best of that as well. Mindy's always been patient and tolerant enough to go along for the ride. A trip we've been planning to Eugene to pick up our daughter from Duckland for a break turned into a trek up the northern extension of the Pacific Coast Highway; the Shoreline Highway, the Redwood Highway and the Oregon Coast Highway, that curvy undulating ribbon of black that forces all your ...