Promontory Point

In the spring of 1869, the Central Pacific was building east, the Union Pacific was building west, and I guess it was pretty clear they were going to meet somewhere in northern Utah. They both had built railroad grade well past the other - creating parallel roadbed for 250 miles from Wells, Nevada, to Echo Summit, Utah. Each was laying track as fast on the new roadbed as it could. On May 10th, they connected their track work at the summit north of Promontory Point, completing the first transcontinental railroad in North America.

I had been more focused on getting out to the Spiral Jetty, so we didn't spend much time at the Golden Spike Historic Site. We did catch the tail end of a staged reenactment of the ceremony, although I wish they could have had the whole scene recreated, including the face to face steam locomotives. But they keep those safely tucked away in a nearby engine house -- I suspect they still bring them out for special occasions.

The twin rail grades wind down the hill to the east. Neither has any track as the railroad long ago shifted its route farther south, skirting the southern tip of Promontory Point, and across the Great Salt Lake itself. But the 19th century hand-built grades present a technological contrast to the massive Orbital ATK Aerospace complex, which sprawls across the desert mountainside above the old railroad

I guess this is where they test rocket engines and other propulsion systems. Orbital ATK, which was just acquired by Northrop Grumman, builds rockets, missiles, satellite components, and apparently an awful lot of regular ammunition, too. Sort of your ultimate arms merchant - defense contractor. Unfortunately, I don't have any shots of their complex and the old railroad lines running by it, but the facility shows up well on Google Earth - the railroad a little less so.

Spiral Jetty

The northern edge of Great Salt Lake is pretty desolate. Promontory Point is little more than mountains and rocks and sagebrush extending down to the salt flats that rim the lake. The edge of the lake is marked by a rocky beach and salt-encrusted sand. The north arm of the lake is cut off from the rest of Great Salt Lake by a railroad causeway and is much saltier than the rest of the lake. The high salinity supports purplish bacteria that tint the entire arm of the lake red.

This is the obvious place to create public art.

The Spiral Jetty was created by Robert Smithson in 1970 (he died in an airplane crash a few years later while scouting out another land art site) and has become a pretty iconic example of this kind of sculpture. It disappeared for a couple of decades when lake levels rose in the 1980s and 1990s, but has since re-emerged. As matter of fact, the lake has now fallen well below the sculpture and there is some question as to whether it will ever rise this high again. The site itself is owned by the Dia Art Foundation. Everything else around here is pretty sparse public and private rangeland.

Dia Art Foundation: Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty

I wasn't sure M would be very excited about yet another gravel road in the middle of nowhere - and this was quite a bit nearer the middle of nowhere than some of our previous forays. It turns out it was only16 miles of gravel beyond the end of pavement (at the Golden Spike National Historic Site) and the road was both easier to follow and in better condition than I had feared. It still wouldn't be a good place to learn that your engine cooling fans weren't working right.

I had hesitated to mention this idea to M, but was prompted to do so two evenings earlier when I discovered I could order a Spiral Jetty IPA (Epic Brewing, Salt Lake City) at the Hell's Backbone Grill in Boulder.

Bryce Canyon

Originally, Bryce wasn't on the itinerary. Leaving Boulder, we had three days to get back to Seattle and I figured maybe we would have to start driving northwest, not farther south. But at breakfast, we decided it didn't make that much difference and that Bryce would be worth a few extra miles. Plus, I wanted to drive that road south to Escalante anyway.

Dark clouds and rain threatened, and I guess there were a few drops, but when the sun came out, Bryce just lit up. There were crowds - no surprise. The tour buses and the guide books routinely include Zion and Bryce - which is one thing that makes Capital Reef and Grand Staircase-Escalante a little less crazy.

Bryce Canyon is a bit of a misnomer - since it's sort of a one-sided canyon. The bulk of the red rock hoodoos are around the edge of large bowls in the side of a high ridge. I think this might be better referred to around here as a break (as in Cedar Breaks National Monument, nearby), although the Visitor's Center also referred to the bowls as amphitheaters. But whatever you call it, the red and orange and white sedimentary rocks of the Claron Formation (old lake beds - limestones, silts, sands) weather to form a fantastic landscape of pinnacles and fins and narrow slot canyons.

The Colorado Plateau is basically a thick stack of rock layers - these are pretty much at the top of the stack. The precambrian metamorphic rocks at the bottom of the Grand Canyon are the basement. Zion and Capitol Reef and Canyonlands are all in the middle.

Boulder UT

Boulder (a couple hundred people and a sharp bend in Utah Hwy 12) is located between the Aquarius Plateau on the west and the canyon country to the east. It and Escalante to the south are caught in the political battles between folks wanting more federal management in this region and those wanting less. Both towns are capitalizing on outdoor recreation and a lot more tourists looking for alternatives to the traditional suite of National Parks in southern Utah, but there are also those who believe that more traditional resource based industries would be better for the local communities (or simply begrudge outside "control" over their lands).

The Boulder Mountain Lodge was a nice contrast to the isolation of the lower parts of the Burr Trail. It would have been nice to hang out longer, but a bit pricey, too. The next morning, I rode my bike several miles back down the Burr Trail. Pretty much had it to myself. And added yet another wonderful sunrise bike ride to my trip's highlights. Breakfast, and dinner the night before, were at the Hell's Backbone Grill.

The road from Boulder to Escalante is one of the country's most touted scenic byways. For good reason. And freshly repaved, too! And at the bottom of the hill, where the road crosses the Escalante, there's the Kiva Koffeehouse. Nice morning.

Burr Trail

The Burr Trail winds its way up from Glen Canyon (Lake Powell) to Boulder through Utah's southern canyon country and what is now the southern portion of Capital Reef National Park and northern portions of Grand Staircase-Escalante NM.

It began as a cattle trail, but is now a relatively good, albeit lightly traveled road. A central section remains unpaved, including its famous switchbacks up through the Waterpocket Fold, but with the Subaru's clearance and dry weather was no problem. The paved sections are fine - though they cross a couple of low washes where heavy rains might present a challenge (and a danger).

The whole road is very isolated, however, so I was glad we'd fixed the slow leak in the tire while back in Taos. We passed only two cars in the first fifty miles or so - a few more when we got back to the paved section nearer to Boulder itself. Of course, as we headed away from the Lake, we noticed the AC was fading in and out. Not a big deal in itself - the temperatures were cooling as we climbed anyway - but I learned two weeks later back in Seattle, it was a secondary consequence of the engine cooling fans having given out -- glad I didn't realize that at the time!

Lake Powell

Our route across southern Utah took us from Blanding, west to Natural Bridges National Monument, and then on UT 276 down to Hall's Crossing on Lake Powell. The temperatures rose as we dropped down to lake level (below 4000' and the first time we'd been anywhere this near sea level since somewhere in western Nebraska). It was well into the 90s at the lake.

We lined up (with two other cars and two motorcycles) on the big paved ramp and got on the 2PM boat. It's a 30-minute crossing to Bullfrog and the westward continuation of UT 276. We stopped at the marina and I walked out and picked up some more water and drinks at the store, anticipating the long, isolated drive we still had in front of us that afternoon. It was partly the heat and partly the remote location, but there was something sort of surreal about the Bullfrog Marina. A little hub of activity, all centered on houseboats and jet skis and other pleasure craft, on a floating terminal in the middle of the desert.

The ferry's not a big one, but certainly far too big to pull in on a trailer. I assume they must have had to assemble it down here - it's not like they could sail it in from some shipyard somewhere.

Salt Flats

D wanted to drive the long, hot straight stretch across the bottom of Lake Bonneville, probably thinking it gave him license to drive the family station wagon 100 mph. Which it didn't, if only because Dad had visions of the rocket box getting ripped off the top of the car at about the same time the all-season radials disintegrated beneath it. But it was a good place to learn how Subaru's cruise control worked - albeit at a more modest 80 mph.

We drove across here 15 or so years ago, on a marathon day from Salt Lake City to San Francisco. This time, our day stretched from Rawlins to Winnemucca.

Island in the Sky

Canyonlands: Part II. I arrived fairly late in the afternoon after my long drive across Utah. There were impressive rain clouds working their way across the canyons, which left me with a neat mix of rain, dark skies, and late day sunshine.

Island in the Sky is essentially a large mesa, connected to the rest of the rim rock at a very narrow spot called the Neck. It's the only way, short of climbing the cliffs, of getting on or off the "Island." I got as far as Grandview Point, but didn't have time to go up to Upheaval Dome.

I had made a reservation for that evening in Grand Junction, so I didn't have time to swing through Arches (let alone do it justice). I swung into Moab for fast food and then drove up the Colorado River valley past Fisher Towers (I love that stretch upstream of Moab) and back to I-70 and into Colorado.

Canyonlands

I've somewhat arbitrarily broken up my photos from my brief trip to the northern unit of Canyonlands (Island in the Sky) into two posts.  They're all from the same general area. This is just one portion of Canyonlands National Park, upstream and between the confluence of the Green (drains western Wyoming) and Colorado (drains western Colorado) Rivers.  On the way in, you pass the turnoff for Dead Horse Point (a state park and where Thelma and Louise finished their movie).

Canyonlands isn't as deep as the Grand Canyon, and really describes a landscape of canyons more than a single river valley. South of I-70, it spreads out to cover much of southeastern Utah, including Lake Powell, the houseboat-friendly version of Glen Canyon (we visited the plug at its southern end a few years ago: Page 2009).

San Rafael Swell

My introduction to the geology of the Colorado Plateau came during STRETCH (field camp) in 1979, when we traveled to Utah to watch thick layers of red and buff rocks dive in and out of a landscape of canyons and mesas.  Unlike New Hampshire, where the rocks were messy and covered with trees, the geology here looked like the pictures in the text books. Actually, these were the pictures in the text books.

One of our stops was the San Rafael Reef, where Interstate 70 cuts through the steeply dipping beds on the east side of the San Rafael Swell, a large asymmetric anticline west of Green River.  For those unwilling to leave the Interstate, this is a great preview of the country you're missing.