Valleyed

2025-09-13
UT, AZ

I woke up to beautiful scenery in Snow Canyon. The park is based at 3200 feet of elevation, so it's the lowest I've been since leaving Kansas. I could tell because my air mattress was a bit floppy when I got it out of the car. It's also the furthest west that I plan to go. So once I packed up everything (including rolling my air mattress in preparation for a hotel stint) I headed southeast. Coincidentally, it was also uphill so I ended the day at 4300 feet.

Today I was supposed to visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately there was a large fire that burned the lodge among other things and they have closed the entire North Rim for the year.

I traveled along the AZ-UT border today, flipping back and forth between states occasionally. Arizona doesn't follow DST, sticking with MST all year long. Unless, of course, you're on the Navajo Nation, then it switches to MDT. The clocks on my car and phone seldom agreed. I know that the phone might pick up a tower on the other side of the state line and that the GPS maps in the car haven't been updated since 2018 so either one may think it's elsewhere. This is just half the fun. Tomorrow I'm going on a tour that starts at 11:45 and meets in the Navajo Nation and I don't know which time zone my phone is telling me. What time should I leave the hotel? I'm going to have to call to make sure.

My first stop was Pipe Springs National Monument. It was conveniently on the way. The movie tells a story of how Brigham Young and the Mormons started a cattle ranch at this natural spring, taking all the water and overgrazing the grasslands such that they drove the Paiute Indians off of the land. It also talks about how they used the ranch to hide second and third wives once Utah denounced polygamy on its way to statehood. The government wasn't looking in Arizona; it was still a territory. The Mormons built a fort over the spring itself, and the water flows out into pools used for irrigation and livestock.

The fort. Notice the tower where they would station a 10-13 year old child as a lookout for the law

Common rooms downstairs, bedrooms upstairs

The spring was covered up on the other side of the house, but runs through this trough in the kitchen before going to the pond outside

They also have a half-mile trail up to the top of the hill behind the fort. I needed the exercise.

Lizard-on-the-hill's eye view of the fort, AKA "Winsor Castle" after the first rancher Anson Winsor. Terrible for the land, good for puns.

It was too early to go to a hotel, so I stopped at a Lake Powell overlook. You can see the marina and part of the lake from up here.

I was still running early for a hotel check-in, so I stopped at the Glen Canyon Dam. They don't have a tour any more, but you can take all the dam pictures you want. It's easy to get out on the bridge and shoot through specific holes cut in the chain link fence; I got a quarter-mile worth of exercise doing that. There is also a visitor center with exhibits and information.

Currently Lake Powell is at 3546 ft of elevation and a full pool is 3700 ft. That's 154 ft down, which they say leaves the lake at 27% of a full pool. They also say the water is 79 degrees F.

You can see the "bath tub ring" of minerals left on the walls of the canyon when the water was higher

I have a room in Page, Arizona for a few nights. Tonight I picked up some more chicken packets for camp suppers and did a load of rather expensive (but convenient) laundry.

Hiking distance: 0.75 miles