Note: Visiting Butler Wash requires a pass. For more information, check out BLM Utah Cedar Mesa Permits and Passes Information. Our personal side canyon off of Butler Wash was the perfect place to spend the night, and though it was a bit warm - I think it only got down into the high 50s overnight - we were both extremely tired and so enjoyed the ten hours or so of horizontal existence immensely. Still, we knew that the best way to beat the heat of the day was to get going early, so when my alarm went off just before sunrise,…
6 CommentsTag: rock art
As we set off towards Utah, I mentioned to @mrs.turbodb that maybe we should have taken her car on this trip. After all, the entirety of our off-pavement driving was going to be all of about 30 miles. Most of our time would be spent on foot, hiking from ruin to pictograph, with the occasional petroglyph thrown in for good measure. It was going to be a blast! I'd gotten the crazy idea for this trip on my previous foray - Utah, Re-Ruined - when I'd naively assumed that I'd wrap up the ruins that Monte @Blackdawg had planned a few years…
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There aren't many people who have discovered the joys of the Owyhee Canyonlands. Nestled in the remote, southeastern corner of Oregon, the roads that crisscross this remote stretch of desert hold many wonderful secrets to explore for those who do venture into the folds of the landscape. Through it all, the Owyhee River runs south-to-north, carving the Grand Canyon of Oregon - thousands of feet down - through the volcanic surface. Nearly all explorations in Owyhee region start east of the river - that is, after all, where the most well-known landmarks lay. In fact, I know only one person…
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I can't say I was overjoyed when I heard @mrs.turbodb's alarm blaring away as she tried to find her phone in the mess of sheets to turn it off. It was 4:00am again, and just like the night before - a surprise, I know - the moon was still up. The winds had stopped only about 15 minutes before her alarm, and I think we were both in the middle of the best sleep we'd gotten all night. Except that now we were awake, and decided we might as well get out of the tent to take a look around.…
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Having missed all the sunrises to this point, I made a point of actually getting up when my alarm went off after a calm night up on Snow Flat. Turns out, that's a good way to actually see a sunrise - who knew? Layers. Looks like it's going to be a nice day! Comb Ridge silhouetted into the distance. Up early, I took care of breakfast and got the tent all packed away by the time rose up over the eastern horizon. I wasn't sure exactly what I'd get accomplished today, but I'd decided overnight to make one final run…
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Perched on my little knoll in the middle of the road, I was happy that the night passed mostly windlessly so I could get some much needed sleep after the last couple of nights where I got almost none. Having gone to bed with clouds in the sky, but with a forecast of clear skies each day, I hoped that morning would bring a beautiful sunrise, followed by clearing. As such, I was up way too early. Light on the horizon, but way too early. Shouldn't have gotten up. My alarm - set for a Pacific Time sunrise, rather than…
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We had unfinished business in Utah, after our Ruining Around Utah trip back in spring of 2019. An unseasonably wet winter that year meant that the higher elevation roads were still impassable due to snow, so one of our primary goals - the Lewis Lodge ruins - remained just out of reach. And none of us have gotten back to see it since. I'd had so much fun on that trip - searching for Native American ruins - that I decided it was time to go back. With only a month or so before the departure date, most of the…
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My night at Birch Creek Ranch ended as peacefully as it began - there was no wind through the night, and while outside temperatures were cold, I was as warm as could be in the tent. Of course, being near the river, there was plenty of dew, and it was frozen to both the inside and outside of the rain fly when I awoke. Even the little mud clumps on the Tacoma were frozen. Rather than wait for everything to dry out - I was at the bottom of the canyon after all, and waiting for the sun would have…
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We didn't know it when we woke up, but today would be our last day of the trip. But, I'm obviously getting significantly ahead of myself, so let's take a step - or three - back. Our amazing spot on the edge of the Grand Canyon, overlooking the Colorado River was just as spectacular when we woke up in the morning as it'd been the evening before. After a few gusts just before we climbed into the tent, I'd taken the hint and secured two full 5-gallon jerry cans of fuel to the ladder, eliminating any worry that a CVT-sandwich…
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Sleeping in our own little private wash was magical. If there was a lick of wind, it went right over our heads and at one of our lower elevations for the trip, it was reasonably warm as well. I think we'd gone to bed exhausted around 9:00pm, and when I woke up at 6:45am for sunrise, I was ready and raring for a new day! The view - a couple dozen short steps up the wash walls behind camp - was a nice motivator as well. We'd camped at the base of Bitter Ridge LWC. I'll need to go back…
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The winds tore through our camp as ferociously as ever the entire night. Even with 35lbs of water weighing down the ladder of the tent to keep that side from folding up on us, there were several points at which I was sure we were going to be the middle ingredients in a CVT sandwich. I even nudged @mrs.turbodb at 2:00am and yelled through the screaming wind and her earplugs to scoot down on the mattress so we had more of our weight on the cantilevered side of the tent. It wasn't lost on me that this wouldn't be an…
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I think we left off with our adrenaline pumping and three trucks parked right outside our tent, one of the occupants having just said, "What the f*@# is going on here?" Climbing down out of the tent, I walked over to the guys - all still clustered around their vehicles - to say good morning and ask if they were, as I suspected, workers on this particular construction site. It being a Saturday morning before 6:00am, I hadn't expected to see any workers, but I guess when houses are selling like hotcakes, every minute you're not building new ones is…
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Things don't always go as expected, and sometimes that is a good thing. It sure was this morning as I woke up and climbed down out of the tent to a dry day - none of the predicted snow or rain having materialized during the night! Silly Mt. Irish weather station, you said it would snow. There were - obviously - plenty of clouds in the sky at this point however, so we probably just lucked out - or at least @mrs.turbodb did, since she was still warm in bed! I on the other hand was freezing my tushy off.…
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I only woke up once in the middle of the night. I was mostly toasty under the comforters, but the top of my head was a bit chilly, so I put on my knit hat as I took a peek through the tent doors to see if it'd snowed yet. To my surprise, not only was there no snow on the ground, but the sky was crystal clear! And so, it was with happy thoughts that I drifted back to sleep - my alarm now set for early-o'clock, having hatched a new plan for sunrise! Of course, my happy plan…
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It was almost exactly noon when I rolled into the southeast corner of the Volcanic Tablelands from US-6. It was the same location that exactly a week earlier, I'd run over my Canon 80D and favorite lens, that I'd been using to shoot for the last three years. Needless to say, I hoped that my third time to this beautiful place would be the charm, as I made my way north along Fish Slough. I'd already decided that I'd take things a bit more slowly this time - I had two days set aside to wander - and before long,…
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Having recently visited the Volcanic Tablelands for the first time in search of and petroglyphs, we'd been delighted with what we'd found. So delighted, in fact, that I started researching the area for a return trip as soon as we got home! As I searched, I realized we could spend several days in the area, wandering. Additional petroglyph sites, old mines, and views - of the Sierra Mountains to the west and the White Mountains to the east - would fill our days. That sounded great to us. Unfortunately, things had a way of working themselves out just a little…
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We'll get to the "megaphone" in a bit. Relax. First - as you'll recall - we fell asleep on our last night in the preserve, under the stars, and in the shadow of the Granite Mountains. We were, however, reasonably near a paved road, and traffic continued through the night - rendering earplugs necessary for a peaceful sleep. And so, when my alarm sounded just a bit after 5:45am in the morning, I was happy to pull those puppies out of my ears and grab the camera - hoping that our little spot on the top of a rise would…
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Unlike the previous night, the wind at the mouth of Caruthers Canyon never abated, making for the worst sleep of the trip. Tossing and turning as the wind buffeted the tent, I was glad when my alarm went off - simply because it meant I could be done trying to sleep. Update: August 2023 The York Fire (wikipedia) (inciweb) has burned through Caruthers Canyon (and more than 93,000 acres), changing the landscape for our lifetimes. I visited again in December 2023, and the aftermath was stunning. An orange glow just poking up over the horizon, I climbed out of the…
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Anticipation. Hope. The Unknown. As much as we may try to plan various aspects of a trip, the best adventures are full of these elements. They are - in my mind - what define adventure. And so, as we headed north from Darwin, essentially on our way out of Death Valley, I was - perhaps - more excited than I'd been at any previous point on the trip. Now, we were headed north towards Bishop and the nearby Volcanic Tablelands - in search of the Petroglyphs. Some much needed snow in the Sierras, finally contained the Creek Fire. I'd discovered…
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Stage 1 - Pahrump to Oatman Like many of the medium-sized towns along the NVBDR, Pahrump has - I assume - grown since the route was created. As such, some of the roads that were once dirt have been paved, and we found ourselves on pavement for longer than we expected as we made our way south out of town, passing cross streets and developments that weren't even on our map. Eventually though we reached dirt, and thus began one of the least enjoyable segments of the entire BDR. (How's that for a glowing endorsement for the area south of…
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