Sometimes you just need to camp

It's been a long, icky sort of week, so we decided this weekend to camp at Lake Ouachita State Park. We planned to stay in the campground and go for a couple of bike rides from there. Mandy's had a bad cold, though, so the 25-mile route Bryan had planned for Saturday was scrapped in favor of just exploring the state park.



Since the park's mostly oriented toward fishing and watersports, it's very quiet in the wintertime. It was nearly deserted on Super Bowl weekend. We took the outermost walk in tent site, on a little peninsula, and had the whole place to ourselves. The water was glass-smooth and the woods were completely silent. It was almost like backpacking, but with a lot less work, and a warm bathhouse.



We call this 'Still Life with Camp Shoes and Kleenex.'



Mandy spent a pleasant, chilly evening sniffling and poking at her campfire. We had grilled brats and chips and beer and cream soda, which felt like a special treat compared to our usual fare of freeze dried backpacking dinners.



The low overnight was around freezing, and the morning didn't warm up as expected. This, combined with Mandy's persistent cold, meant that we cancelled our Sunday ride and rested after breakfast instead.



It wasn't a weekend of high adventure, but we enjoyed the quiet lake and the winter woods.

Colorado Vacation, Part 2: Great Sand Dunes

This is a multi-part trip report, if you haven't already you should start with Part 1. Remember too that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

Up before sunrise, we leave the tents and bundle up to drive to Great Sand Dunes National Park. The outlines of the mountains and dunes are visible as we get there, and we walk out into the softly lit sand (and cold wind) to watch the sunrise. The Sangre de Cristo mountains look distant still, in misty dawn light, but the dunes glow warm and pink as morning comes.


Click to see this panorama in a bigger size!

After some time spent taking photographs dunes around us, Mandy and I leave Bryan with his tripod and walk toward the nearest dunes. We reach the top of the first one just as the first rays appear.



Mandy stands at the lip of the next dune, with her camera held up. She looks for all the world like a very short National Geographic photographer, working in some exotic and dangerous foreign assignment. It's only for a moment, though; she holds her arms up, yells, and plunges down the side of the dune, suddenly a little kid again.



After a stop at the small but excellent visitors center, we fill out postcards and eat breakfast at the restaurant just outside the park. The food's no good but the decor features a mounted head with an antler protruding from the stuffed thing's forehead.



We make a quick stop back at San Luis Lakes to pack up camp, and Bryan naps in the car until a stop in Blanca where a detour to the tiny post office leads us past a fence made entirely of cross country skis.



In Pueblo we stop at Chipotle for an excellent lunch, and I nap until Colorado Springs. The drive up the front range is pretty, made even more fun by Mandy's excited amazement. "It's so beautiful," she says. "Wow, look at that one!"

The REI "Flagship Store" in Denver is huge, an old brick warehouse converted into a store, with exposed metal beams and a 45 foot indoor climbing wall. Arriving only an hour before closing time on Sunday afternoon, we practically jog through the store, stopping long enough to snag a few items on our list, including a new harness for Bryan and some purple climbing shoes for me. The store sits near the river, and there's a little park on the grounds with boulders for kids to climb on, statues of animals, and aspen trees. It's right on a walking and bike trail, next to Confluence Park's water play area. Even on a Sunday evening, the park is crowded with inner tubes and pool noodles and people splashing in the shallow water. The whole area is very busy, not with cars but with people on foot and on bikes.

In Boulder, we drive around until Bryan finds a place in memory: the Pearl Street Mall. It's a great outdoor shopping area with interesting stores and street performers and the smells of good food. After stuffing ourselves silly on pasta and cheesecake, we walk back to the car and drive to Rocky Mountain National Park.

We arrive late but the Moraine Park Campground people helpfully list the names of the campers arriving after the kiosk is shut down; we quickly find our name and campsite number and set up tents, again, in the glare of the headlights. We've driven 1353 miles since leaving home, and we'll sleep well tonight at over 8,000 feet.

The story continues...
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Colorado Vacation, Part 1: Home to San Luis Lakes

Remember that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

We leave Benton at six and arrive late at Lake Eufala State Park. We get a nice, flat tent site far away from anybody else, and we set up camp in the headlights of the car. The bugs are terrible and it's very hot; we'd packed sleeping bags expecting chilly temperatures at elevation, and didn't really think about the night or two we'd spend in the muggy midwestern summer.



We wake up sticky and gross, but since we leave before seven, the campsite's "free". We stop in Okemah to see the first exciting roadside attraction of our trip: a row of three water towers helpfully labeled "HOT", "COLD", and "HOME OF WOODY GUTHRIE." The hand dryers in the Valero gas station bathroom are incredibly powerful: we giggle as the skin on our hands and arms flaps loosely. We're in a place we've never been before, and it feels like our trip has started.



Bryan's been inexplicably excited about seeing the Oklahoma panhandle, so I helpfully drive so that he won't miss a minute of the tremendous excitingness of, um, not much. We play a game in which we have to find things starting with each letter of the alphabet. It takes nearly an hour and includes two minor arguments and such thrilling items as "C is for Cows" and "N is for Nothing."



I don't mind driving on trips, I really don't, and I try to explain this to Bryan. What I mind is that, when he's the passenger, he's bored. He sings. He pokes people. He makes stupid trumpet noises with his mouth. He starts arguments about dumb things just to entertain himself. Today he discovered "licking by proxy," a technique in which he slobbers on his hand and then tries to wipe it on the driver. This is incredibly irritating and, more importantly, seems tremendously unsafe. I try to get him to drive as much as possible; licking by proxy is much more difficult if Bryan is the driver.

On the advice of a coworker, we eat at a ratty-ass motel diner in Raton, New Mexico called The Oasis Restaurant. The review I read had indicated that the food was good but that the carpet in the rooms was threadbare pink shag. (We chose this eatery over the one with the review that said "Bring a gun.") We all order from the Mexican side of the menu: Damn. Yum.



About bedtime, we arrive at San Luis Lakes State Park in Colorado at 7,500 feet. We add layers of fleece and down before setting up tents next to the corrugated-metal ramada. It's the tallest thing here; all the trees and bushes are waist high. We don't know what it looks like by day, but the nearly-full moon rising over the nearby mountains, over the lake, is beautiful.



The story continues...
Part 1 - Part 2

2009 Tour de Meers

On Memorial Day weekend, we headed west to the Wichita Mountains in southwestern Oklahoma. We arrived at Camp Doris much too late to stake out a camping spot, so we went on to the pasture doubling as registration area for the annual Tour De Meers bike ride. The next morning, cars parked all around us as we staggered around our campsite, changing our clothes and cooking our breakfast. We set out to ride the longest loop, 67 miles, which would have taken us through the wildlife refuge and up through the country north and east of the park; we were turned around at about fifteen miles, though, by a bad thunderstorm. We were disappointed that our ride was only thirty miles long, but happy that this change meant we got to ride through the refuge twice.

It was a warm day, but we had plenty to drink. We have to remind Mandy to drink enough; it helps to keep powdered drink mix to make the water taste better.

Whose idea was it to give the little kid the number 69? It wasn't ours; we each got a bag full of goodies with tshirts, water bottles, ink pens, tourist junk, and our race numbers. The bag that said "Mandy" included a tag with her number on it.

One of the Wichita Wildlife Refuge's big attractions is the buffalo that range across big portions of the park. The entrances are protected by cattle guards, which means that the huge animals roam freely up to and across the roads within the refuge. We rode up about fifteen feet from this fellow and another male buffalo; later in the day, we counted nearly sixty females with their calves on a hillside as we passed. Every time we visit we have a buffalo encounter; last time it was a big male heading toward us on a trail in the parallel forest. (We stepped politely aside to let him pass.) This time, the night after our ride, we finally found a place to camp at Doris but unwittingly set up our tent in a favorite buffalo supper spot; Mandy and I ended up stuck inside the tent as we watched a big male buffalo crunching his way slowly toward us. We sat stock still in the tent door and listened to his breath against the grass; he came within about five feet of us before calmly moving on.

There's a long-abandoned rock bungalow along one of the roads in the refuge, complete with a cellar, this outbuilding, and what appears to be the remain of a roadside stand of some kind. The shade of the porch made a good picnic spot on Sunday morning, and the hill behind the house proved excellent for kite-flying and lizard-watching.

Just a we tucked the green kite under our arms to return to the car, a rangers' truck pulled up into the driveway. Two very serious people came across the yard toward us. "Is everything all right?" I asked. "Is this a non-kite-flying area?" They weren't sure how to respond to that; apparently not, they supposed we could fly a kite here, but most people don't, and they thought we might be digging up cactus or something. Apparently we just looked suspicious. I've never been almost arrested for flying a kite before.

On Monday morning, before leaving for home, we left our camp set up and climbed up Little Baldy, a short hike with a very impressive view of the Wichitas including a lake or two and the visitors' center. We always leave before we want to.

Here's a little guy we met on Monday morning. The warm pink granite boulders in the Wichitas shelter lots of lizards, and they tantalize Mandy; they're friendly enough to be interesting and ALMOST slow enough to catch. Also on Monday, I frightened a snake sunning itself in my path; he slithered quickly up a nearby tree and almost lost himself in its branches. Another favorite of Mandy's is the prairie dogs in the "town" near one of the roads; she could sit, stock still, and watch them for an hour or two if we'd let her.

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 10

This is a multi-part trip report... if you haven't already, you should start with Day 1.

Start: Monahans Sandhills State Park
End: Home!

Daily Mileage: 679
Total Mileage: 2870
(I know that doesn't add up but that's what the final odometer reading said)

We wake up amid sand dunes but far from a beach. Monahans is a weird place. I take down the tent and pack up while Bryan sets up the tripod for photos. The visitors center rents discs for a dollar and sandboards for two. I take the last picture of our gnome, walking up a dune toward the sunshine. Tonight we'll sleep in our own bed, at home.

There's nothing out here: the speed limit's 80 and that seems like a good idea. Dairy Queen has supplanted McDonald's as the fast food chain of choice. We drive past miles and miles of scruffy, ugly pasture land and oil rigs. Odessa is dirty and sad-looking and Midland, while surprisingly large, isn't much better. The businesses along the highway are all drill-rig and tank and pipeline suppliers. The sky is big, though, and blue.

Texas is interminable, never-ending. They're proud of being the "Lone Star State" but don't realize that this is nothing to be proud of: one star means BAD service. I drove a lot today but I don't think it helped much. We pull out all our long-trip tricks: Gogol Bordello, They Might Be Giants, Shel Silverstein. And we're not even in Arkansas yet.

We're torn between not wanting to end a great trip, and the realization that a hot bath in our own tub sounds wonderful. Both of us have very sore calves, odd since we felt good for the whole hike: maybe that long downhill at the end is what hurt us. (I'm pleased and surprised that my shins and knees (which are often a problem) are perfectly fine; the combination of trekking poles, good boots, and insoles saved me.) We must look funny, each time we stop to get gasoline, lurching and hobbling around the truck on our sore legs.

Click to see the panorama larger!

We arrive home before midnight. The house is fine, and so are the cats, in spite of our worry, or perhaps because of it. We unload the truck, close the garage, and go to sleep in our own bed.

Bryan told me the other day about a photographer who had assembled in one place a collection of his life's best work, a hundred great shots. Averaging 1/100 of a second each, the whole set represented one second of his life. One second.

Is this the way all our lives work? Is it the tiny details that are important, rather than the big story? At the end of my life, will there be a hundred little bits of beauty, shifts in perspective, pieces of kindness and truth and love and joy, that will represent my life? Could there be a book of a hundred pictures that will let me say "Look at these: this is what was important about the person I tried to be?"

Here are the photographs I would include from this trip: The feeling of a pack on my back as walk into the desert. The sound of Mandy's voice on the phone, eager and curious. The smell of bacon frying in a tent doorway. The sound of the snow falling on the trail past Juniper Basin. The way Bryan's hand felt in mine as we looked out together at the purple mountains.

Thanks for reading!


Bryan taking photos and Aly warming her feet in the bathroom at Monahans Sandhills State Park.

Don't forget to check out our Flickr page for more photos from our trip.

Also, let us know if you liked the "blog" format of our trip-report. If it goes over well, look for future adventures to be posted here at http://summerwood.blogspot.com.

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 9

This is a multi-part trip report... if you haven't already, you should start with Day 1.

Start: Tucson, AZ
End: Monahans Sandhills State Park

Daily Mileage: 565
Total Mileage: 1984

Our hotel room smells awful and looks like an REI explosion, but we're clean and fed and rested and all our gear is dry now. It's worth noting that the Fairfield Marriott has an excellent free breakfast, complete with good coffee, lots of pastry choices, a self serve Belgian waffle maker, and all the peanut butter packets you can sneak into your tote bag.


Our gnome likes his morning coffee, and he likes Belgian waffles too

We head east on I-10, a little sad to begin the end of our trip. We take an almost immediate detour and spend a lot of time finding a good spot to take panographic pictures of Tanque Verde Ridge. We hop a curb at an office building and Bryan uses his new pano tripod head, and I take pictures of him taking pictures, and of cholla in the snow.


Bryan and his tripod, camera, and pano head

In places, the towns are an hour apart, which makes for a miserable McDonald's line on a big travel weekend. We sit in an interminable drive thru; I attempt to use the bathroom but abort the mission when I count 34 other women in line. We listen to "Jesus Don't Want Me For A Sunbeam" (by Nirvana) on the iPod and then give up on McDonald's, getting back on the interstate. We'll get some nuggets somewhere else.

Here is a quote from my travel journal, written while flying down I-10 at 75 miles per hour:

Soaptree yuccas are stupid looking plants, like wandering midgets with bad hair, drunken and lost, lurching through the pasture grass. Some of them wave toilet brushes above their heads. Are they trying to hail cabs, out here in the weird, lonely west? Do they know how ridiculous they look?

We wander through an outlet mall, then eat supper at Chili's in El Paso, a generic choice but we're grumpy and tired. We talk to Mandy and enjoy hearing her cheerful voice, a bright spot in the evening. She is interested in our trip and glad to tell us that she's impressed her friends in Oklahoma by doing 168 sit ups.

For awhile we parallel the Mexican border, and after dark we enjoy the idea that we're looking miles away to the south at the lights from another country. About nine o'clock we pull off the interstate with all the other traffic to drive through a border patrol checkpoint. It is unexpectedly scary but after our truck is dog-sniffed and we tell the officers that we're American citizens, we're on our way again. The truck stop in Pecos is nasty, and we're tired and ready to stop long before bedtime.

We arrive at Monahans Sandhills State Park around midnight. The camping spots are all surrounded by dunes of soft, light sand. It's already below freezing but it's not windy. We quickly realize that the sand won't hold tent stakes, so we pull out the North Face 4-season tent Britt and Debbie sent with us. We've never set it up but it's simple and before long I'm sitting up inside it, a luxury after hunching over in the little backpacking tent. Bryan takes some photos while I pop a flash inside the tent.


The stars at night, are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas!

It's funny how we get accustomed to chill, and how much more comfortable good gear makes things. I think about the friends who'd never consider tent camping in winter, but I'm cheerfully ensconced in a cozy tent, snug and warm in my sleeping bag, dry socks, down booties and vest.

We all have strange little quirks, and I find one of mine: I can't sleep with a cold nose. I find a handwarmer and open it, put it on my nose, and quickly fall asleep again. The stars are clear and bright on this last night of our trip.

A selection of additional photos appears below, for more photos from the trip checkout our Flickr page.


Bryan taking a set of photos of Tanque Verde Ridge


An old train in front of the mountains


Teddy bear cholla


New Mexican sign: Their road map spells "Flying" and "Missile" wrong, too


Some of the overpasses in New Mexico were really neat.


Yes, that's a truck, in a truck, pulling a truck


Worst name for a car dealership? Ever?


West Texas' answer to the Chik-Fil-A advertising campaign; at least the ranchers can spell.

Day 8 - Day 9 - Day 10

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 5

This is a multi-part trip report... if you haven't already, you should start with Day 1.

Start: Colossal Cave Mountain Park (AZ)
End: Tucson, AZ

Daily Mileage: 22
Total Mileage: 1391

I hate getting up. Dawn's my favorite part of a backpacking day, when the light starts to filter through the fabric of the tent and the hazy outline of the day begins to form inside the warm padding of my down-filled sleeping-bag brain.

It begins to rain during breakfast and we enjoy the luxury of a stone picnic shelter. We each have our own old concrete table to spread out our gear and organize and pack our bags, well out of the wet. We should have left by nine, but the continuing rain and another headache made us move slowly. By early afternoon neither the headache nor the rain have abated, and with both getting worse and daylight wasting we decide not to hike the 14-mile day we'd planned.

We stop by the Visitors Center, amend our backcountry permit, and then head out to explore Tucson. The city looks scruffy, and I know why: no one has lawns. The plants that grow in front of fancy houses are the same as the plants in the bad neighborhoods, and those are the same things that grow on the roadsides and in the ditches: prickly pear, ocotillo, barrel cactus, and cholla. This gives even the most expensive neighborhoods the scroungy ambiance of a seedy trailer park.

Tonight's plans have changed from a backcountry camping permit to a nice hotel room (Fairfield Inn by Marriott), a hot shower, and an old Mexican restaurant. Bryan does a brief internet search and finds "El Charro", the oldest continuously operated family Mexican restaurant in the US. The directions provided by Google Maps are almost but not quite exactly wrong, but we find the restaurant anyway, tucked into an odd corner of old downtown Tucson. It's cheerful and interesting and every bit as good as the reviews: the service is excellent, the red salsa is the best I've ever eaten, the chicken and tomatillo tamales are amazing, and the chimichanga we share is as big as a stick of firewood.

In fact, according to their menu, El Charro was the place where the chimichanga was invented. It was first opened in the twenties by a French woman who'd moved to Arizona with her stone-cutter father. It was a family restaurant and her little nieces were often in the kitchen. So one day when she accidentally dropped a burrito into hot oil she stopped herself from cursing by saying "shi......michanga!" The fried burrito was found to be delicious, and the name stuck.


The picnic shelter at El Sevillo camping area, in the Colossal Cave Mountain Park

Day 4 - Day 5 - Day 6

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 4

This is a multi-part trip report... if you haven't already, you should start with Day 1.

Start: Truth or Consequences, NM
End: Colossal Cave Mountain Park (AZ)

Daily Mileage: 288
Total Mileage: 1369

Bryan wakes up feeling much better this morning. The weather channel reports that it's 14 degrees in Benton and -6 in Brookfield. Even New Orleans is chilly, with a wind chill of 25. There are winter storm systems scattered across the country and a lot of people will get a white Christmas this year. We imagine the newspaper headlines:

Nation Shudders Under Winter Cold,
Snowfall Heavy Everywhere,
Civilization Sinks Into Carnage,
and the Signorellis Go Backpacking

We're glad we decided against Grand Canyon; the forecast lows for the rim this week are around zero.

The day begins with a shopping trip in Truth or Consequences. Bryan says this is the most beautiful view from a Walmart parking lot he's ever seen; I just wanted to get a high school t-shirt. I was disappointed to learn that when the town was renamed, the high school wasn't, so the only thing available was a "Hot Springs Tigers" shirt. (I'd been hoping for something like "Truth or Consequences Badgers".) On the way through town we discovered that the elementary school's name had changed, and their mascot is hilarious; I should mail a check to the PTO and ask for a "Truth or Consequences Kittens" shirt.

The drive to Tucson is interesting. We visit Hatch, the Chili Pepper Capital of the World. A dozen little stands are set up along the road selling wreaths and ropes made from dried chilies. We enjoy the break from four-lane travel for awhile. Small mountain ranges dot the landscape, each different from the next. The Sierra de las Uvas to the south are smooth, like giant, soft hills of dirt. The Greg Mountains are a series of short, rocky mesa hills to the north. As we continue west the ranges get bigger and rockier and more imposing.

Near Tucson we stop for a terrible lunch at Jack in the Box, which serves something called a "Teriyaki Bowl" apparently made from leftover rice and cat food. I swear I will never eat there again. We turn north off the interstate and head toward the park and suddenly, saguaros start appearing in the desert near the road, huge human shapes out in distance. We've finally arrived!

The elderly volunteer ladies at the visitors center are less than confidence inspiring when they answer our questions. "Backpacking? You mean camping? Out THERE?" Fortunately, a ranger named Jeff arrives in time to answer our questions and give good advice. We'll camp on adjoining private park land tonight, but we have some good ideas and backcountry permits for the three nights after that.

We spend the night at Colossal Cave Mountain Park, in the La Sevilla group campsite. It's old but sprawling and clean and we have it to ourselves. After a supper of pasta primavera and a very pretty little campfire, we're in bed early. We'll sleep tonight under the friendly mesquite trees, with the saguaros standing sentinel.


Entrance to Saguaro National Park (East side)


Our campfire at La Sevilla group site at Colossal Cave Mountain Park

Day 3 - Day 4 - Day 5

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 3

This is a multi-part trip report... if you haven't already, you should start with Day 1.

Start: Santa Rosa State Park (NM)
End: Truth or Consequences, NM

Daily Mileage: 267
Total Mileage: 1081

Santa Rosa is a state park but feels more like a Corps of Engineers campground. Everything's made of cast concrete, even the picnic tables and heavy sun shelters over them.

The temperature last night dropped to sixteen degrees, according to our wireless thermometer, and the morning dawns sunny and dry and calm. While walking around the campground we stop to admire a "Casita" trailer, its occupants drinking steaming cups of hot coffee and waving cheerfully through its tiny windows. They have the look of veteran travelers, and on the back of their camper there's a sign: "The more one sees, the less one needs."

Somewhere between Santa Rosa and Albuquerque we begin to see a few white-topped mountains to the north, and the land's getting hillier. There are exits marked on the map that aren't towns, only truckstops.

Today becomes a lazy day of errands and replanning in Albuquerque. After using the free WiFi at McAlister's to find that the forecast for Grand Canyon's gone from bad to terrible, we do some research into other options to the south. We spend an hour or so at Barnes & Noble looking at guidebooks for Saguaro, Gila, and the area around Carlsbad. We'll get the weather we planned for, I think, though we'll have to move the trip south a state in order to get it. We spent some time at the REI store in Albuquerque, too, just browsing and getting the few last things on our shopping list.

It's a difficult decision. We've already changed our plans once, and now we have to do it again. Gila looks interesting but has wet trail crossings, which don't seem like a good idea in December. We'd like to see the Guads and Carlsbad but we know Mandy will never forgive us if we go there without her. We decide to head toward Saguaro National Park in Tucson, so after eating a bad supper at a fake Chinese restaurant, we start driving south toward Truth or Consequences. Bryan's had a bad headache all day, so we decide to get a hotel room there so that he can get a hot shower and a good night's sleep in a warm room.

We carry our backpacks into the room, just to be safe. My pack feels good on my back tonight. I'm tired of driving around; I'm ready to go for a walk.


Our garden gnome in the Super 8, Truth or Consequences, NM.

Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 2

This is a multi-part trip report... if you haven't already, you should start with Day 1.

Start: Lake Fort Smith State Park (AR)
End: Santa Rosa State Park (NM)

Daily Mileage: 642
Total Mileage: 814

It's cold today, and windy, and the shoppers at the Del City Walmart in Oklahoma City are bundled up like little children sent out to play. We see the cheerful retarded greeter coming on duty, happily shuffling along behind a helpful coworker, carrying his lunchbox. It's a little Playmate cooler, and he's carefully written "I Love Star Trek" across the white top with a magic marker. There are some Klingon words, too, but we can't read Klingon.

We pass some wind farms in the afternoon. Some turbines are very close to the road, closer than we've ever seen them, their elegant silvery arms spinning slowly in the blue sky: peace in motion. We see cotton bales the size of truck beds, lined up and waiting after harvest. We pass a field with a pickup parked at the edge, two little boys racing up and down on top of the long rows of last summer's round bales.

The land starts to look different in Texas, little red dirty canyons and miniature mesas in scrubby brush pastures. Sunset on the plains is prettier than in other places, I think. It's simpler; we see more light and fewer shapes.

After much discussion we drive past the Big Texan in Amarillo, that icon of great American gastronomic excess, to eat a smaller supper elsewhere. It's lit up and gaudy and the parking lot is jammed with fat men and pickups packed in for a steak supper. Everything in Texas has a star on it; it's the state shape.

We arrive in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, in the late evening. We're sure we've traveled back in time; this town must have been a major waypoint on old Route 66, and nothing's changed since. No one's painted, or even cleaned the gutters. The hotels and restaurants have names like "The Oasis" and "Bud's Place", with awkwardly angled 1950s-style roofs and pink neon lighting. The RV parks have teepees and concrete dinosaurs. The town is seedy and the road to the state park is badly marked.


Our garden gnome standing watch at Santa Rosa State Park.

Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3

Tucson Honeymoon: Day 1

Start: Home
End: Lake Fort Smith State Park (AR)

Daily Mileage: 172
Total Mileage: 172

Last summer was a busy one: we shopped for our house and bought it, we painted and cleaned and moved two households' worth of stuff and people and cats, we planned and held a wedding and entertained its attendant houseguests, and by the time it was all over we were too tired for a honeymoon. We decided to wait; we figured we'd enjoy a trip more if we had more time to plan and look forward to it.

So we've carefully planned a winter backpacking trip to Canyonlands National park in Utah. We've researched the average weather, ordered guidebooks and maps, talked with friends and friends' friends and even the park's rangers about winter trail conditions and water availability. We've spent the last two months making lists and upgrading gear and reading Edward Abbey and looking forward to a trip to the arches in the desert.

But we've watched the extended forecast for Canyonlands with growing concern, and one final check of the forecast this morning confirmed it: it's too cold and snowy. The trip to Utah is canceled until further notice, and we'll go somewhere else instead. We're disappointed but determined to have a good trip, and we're headed west on Interstate 40 toward Albuquerque and then, hopefully, the Grand Canyon.

On shuffle, the iPod chooses a bagpipe rendition of "Amazing Grace" as the first song of our trip.

Tonight we stay at the newly reopened Lake Fort Smith State Park just north of Alma. Earlier in the week, Bryan's coworkers had been appalled when they realized we planned to tent camp in state parks. But this place is marvelous, with clean bathrooms and hot showers and well-designed campsites. The visitors center even has a live turtle display. With all this luxury for $8.50, why pay for a hotel?


Aly enjoys geeky podcasts in the tent.

Day 1 - Day 2