One more quick update before we leave on our trip, as I suspect the garden will…er…not look like this by the time we return… I spent awhile weeding and tying up the tomatoes today, let alone mowing and trimming. It’s looking good, so figured some evidence wouldn’t hurt!
The big deal for the day was getting the tomatoes and peppers prepped (see what I did there?) and ready. I put in the posts, one per tomato plant, and one per shared grouping of peppers. In the past, we’ve used twine and “rope” made from old t-shirts to get the tomato plants suspended, but this year, we’re just going to try one plant, one post, and see how it goes. I’m pretty sure I only snapped one tomato plant (and only one branch…nothing too crazy….), so not bad, overall!
The weather has been especially good for the eggplant, acorn squash, and zucchini plants. They’re spreading their leaves wide, but no flowers on them yet. A bit early, I suppose, but again, we’ve never grown eggplant, so I don’t have a good sense of what to expect on that one. The popcorn and sweet potatoes keep truckin’ along, too.
The sorghum….may just be a lost cause, at this point. The plants are getting taller, so that’s a plus, but there just aren’t many of them. Some seeds were planted in the holes between larger stalks, but I’m just not seeing a lot of evidence that they’re doing very much. Hopefully this is one of those things that turns around substantially while we’re gone!
And last, we’ve got the beans. They look really good! By the time we’re back, they’ll probably be gigantic. No flowers on them just yet, but July is typically when we’d expect them to really get going, so it’s somewhat soon.
Regardless, we’re leaving the garden in good shape. The sorghum has quite a few weeds around them, but most of the rest of the plots are looking pretty good. Was this post necessary after the last one a week ago? Probably not….but again, I wanted some evidence of how it looked before we were gone for over a week. I suspect I’ve got my work cut out for me upon our return…
I’ve been pretty lax on getting things posted this season, but honestly, there’s been a lot going on between going on the Field Biology trip in May and preparing for the vacation Brooke and I are about to go on (more on that eventually!!). The garden’s looking pretty good, though, so I wanted to get something on record while it’s still June!
Brooke planted a few new things this year, including eggplant (upper left); acorn squash (middle); and zucchini (not new, but oh well). We’ve also got sweet potatoes in this plot this year.
The rest of this plot, though, looks mostly terrible. Brooke planted popcorn this year (it’s been a few years since we planted that!) and sorghum, but the latter has been pretty slow to establish. She added a few more seeds to fill some gaps, but even they’ve struggled to come up. We initially thought it was because of the unseasonably cooler weather we’ve had this “summer” thus far, but the longer it goes on, it seems like we may just get nothin’ from the sorghum. The popcorn isn’t perfect, but at least it’s doing something!
The beans appear to be doing alright. She’s got green beans and soup beans mostly in this plot, though we didn’t plant very many green beans this year. We didn’t get as many soup beans as we expected last year, so Brooke’s kinda “flipped” the proportions a bit for this one.
For that bottom row, Brooke put in cantaloupe. We don’t usually have much luck with melons, but hey, can’t win if you don’t play, right?
I also want to note that the edging looks good, right??? Calvin helped a bit with weeding, but I’m trying to keep on it more than I usually do to keep it looking nice. We’ll see how long this lasts….
I need to tie them up still, but here we’ve got 9 tomato plants and a series of pepper plants. This time, Brooke’s got four plants per spot for the peppers (left-hand side) and multiple tomato plants in two rows on the right. I’m a bit curious as to how this will go, as this plot frequently is used for things like kale and lettuce because it stays relatively shaded for most of the morning. We’ve had tomato plants here before, though, so hopefully we have a good year!
In other “planting new things” news, we’re trying asparagus! These are just south of the strawberry plot, currently outside the official confines of the strawberries (not that they ever stay within said confines….). It’s going to take a few years before these really take off, but again, gotta start somewhere…
Speaking of strawberries….. we had another good harvest from them this year! Probably three or four of these containers’ worth of them? They were kinda small, but there were some good-sized ones occasionally, as well. Brooke made some jam and froze quite a bit of them for smoothies in the fall, or whatever else she thinks of! Not a ton of slugs this year on them, but something definitely ate on them a bit.
The potatoes are looking pretty good! Given all the rain we’ve had, some of the leaves have “yellowed” a bit, but there’s plenty of greenery on there. Like last year with the above-ground bags (pictured to the right, yet unplanted this year), we’ll just tip over the soil to get the potatoes out rather than having to dig them up. “Work smarter, not harder”….
Not a literal “metric ton,” but we picked at least 10 gallons of cherries. And there are still cherries up there I can’t reach with a ladder. Tons more. So many more.
For whatever reason, it seems that the birds just don’t like them? We’ve never really had a problem with birds going after them like they did my parents’ tree back when I was growing up, so that’s helped get us a good harvest, I guess.
What did we do with all of them (at least, the ones that didn’t mold? We had to throw a bunch out that I’d picked because they went bad too fast…alas, we’re doing fine on cherries……)? Brooke made some cherry preserves, froze a lot of them (again, for smoothies), and she dehydrated a bunch of them to add to salads or otherwise snack on. Pretty versatile uses, honestly! We’ll see what next year brings, but this was definitely the most we’ve ever gotten!
One last “new addition:” gooseberries! I don’t even like gooseberries, but Calvin, for whatever reason, found out he loved them when participating in Missouri River Bird Observatory’s Young Explorer’s Camp last year in Arrow Rock. Brooke and Calvin started a plant from a single berry and it took forever to establish itself (remember Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree? That’s what it looked like after sitting in our house for almost a year…). Calvin and I went to Arrow Rock for a festival in late April and bought a more established plant (pictured) and we put it in the back yard behind the clothesline. We also planted his “from seed” plant and that thing has taken off since being moved outside. It’s looking a lot better!
Like the asparagus, it’s going to take a bit for these plants to get big enough to where Calvin can get a bunch of berries, but again, gotta start somewhere!
And last, but never least, the bees. Soooooo, the southernmost hive survived the winter, so they’re the most established of the three hives we currently have. The other two came from swarms! Funny story about that…
In late April, I got a text from someone we know over on Eastwood that said they had a swarm. She asked if we wanted it, so Brooke went over after she got home (an hour or two later?), and by then, they were gone. Shucks… Well, that following Sunday, Meg and I are at our Philharmonic Concert and Brooke and Calvin are about to start walking over when they notice a swarm in our apple tree! They quickly grab their gear and get it put into a hive box. A few days later, there’s another one in the exact same tree! So yeah, she’d never caught a swarm before and this year, she caught two within a few days of one another. Crazy!
Thus far, the bees appear to be alive, but Brooke and Calvin have hopped in a few times so far and have struggled to find brood….and yet, there are still bees in there, suggesting that they’re sustaining themselves somehow?? We’ll see how this progresses, but we’re not in the time of the year that we’d expect them to go anywhere. Fingers-crossed they like their new home and share some honey with us!
<whew> Big update for June! I may do another one before we take off on our vacation…we’ll see if I have time… I don’t expect things to be radically different by then, but honestly, I kinda want a record of what it looked like before we left….so I can blame Calvin when things fall apart in our absence…. 😉
Things got pretty crazy between November and March. School got busy, with Meg being in High School and Calvin being in 5th grade, meaning that both kids have orchestra concerts and piano lessons/recitals, Meg has band and musical, and Calvin now has robotics with GATE. Maybe I’ll circle back to the winter months, since we actually had a decent amount of snow and cold.
For now, though, we begin with this year’s garden plot! We’ve had some weird “heat waves,” of sorts, on and off these past few weeks. We were up to 77 F yesterday, so we took the time to get some yard work done.
I went and secured the burn permit for the garden and Brooke got started taking care of the plots. She and Calvin raked the leaves and detritus up from the yard last week and got it ready to go, but it’s been so windy these past few weeks, we weren’t sure when we’d be able to actually burn. Thankfully, we hit the sweet spot: an overcast Saturday with low wind and somewhat elevated humidity.
The burning itself was done by 10:30ish, so we took a break and went outside to hit some of the other plots, pulling up some weeds and cutting some small trees that were going to create problems in a few months. Our neighbor was outside and we chatted a bit, and he reminded me that he bought a tiller for his tractor that he had offered to share (really, I think he bought a toy that he doesn’t have many excuses to actually use, so we present an opportunity for him!). He kindly came over, we moved the edging bricks out of the way, and he went to work! We used Brooke’s Dad’s rear tine tiller years ago to establish the gardens, but since then, we’ve used our other neighbor’s front tine tiller to reset the gardens each year. The rear tine variety just goes deeper than a front tine, so it’s been a few years since we got a really good turn-over of the garden. We were very appreciative!
Regardless, the plots look really good now! Brooke went ahead and planted some kale, lettuce, and parsley to get the season started, but we’ll wait to put beans and such in. I don’t think we’re going with anything “exotic” this year, but Brooke’s talking about putting popcorn in the ground again. It’s been since 2017 when we last planted it, so excited to see how it goes.
In other news, Meg got her driver’s permit a few weeks ago, on account of her turning 15 this year (!!!!!!). Calvin is starting to run an engine of his own, now tall enough to move the push mower around! Granted, he isn’t quite tall enough to maneuver the mower around the yard, but he’ll get used to it as he gets bigger. We aren’t planning on him making this a regular chore or anything this year, but we’re moving slowly in that direction. He’s at least showing some interest in helping out!
I meant to post something about this awhile back, but our “new reality” of Meg being in high school has meant that our evening time is at a substantial premium in recent weeks. Basically, Meg decided to start playing golf so that she would have something athletic to put down on her college applications when the time comes. Golf also made sense because it’s a relatively short season, giving her more time to focus on music practice, among other things. Golf is also a “lifetime sport:” something she can continually learn about while also playing for the rest of her life.
Well, golf season started a few weeks before school started, right around the time marching band started (more on that in another post). So for the first few months of school, Meg had to be at school for marching band at 7:30, then she needed to get to the golf course after school for practice from 3:30 – 5:30 (depending on the day). Then, in early September, she started practicing for the musical from 6:00 to 8:00 (and the musical is this week, so that’s been going on for a loooooong time…).
Regardless, we didn’t really know what to expect with golf! We picked up a second-hand set of clubs from Play it Again Sports, but quickly found that they probably weren’t adequate. Meg was also missing a few key clubs, so we ended up borrowing a set from the clubhouse that had been sitting there, unclaimed. We also used a push cart that the school had, and eventually, she had a school-issued golf bag with the Marshall Owls logo on it (at one time, we had four golf bags in our garage….ug…).
At practice, her coach was always insistent that Meg was improving! Her scores didn’t really reflect it, but we could tell that she was getting closer and closer to the green each time. Apparently, at least in girl’s high school golf, they get 8 shots to get the ball to the green. After 8 shots, they can pick up the ball and take that score, rather than continuing further. More often than not, she hit the max score, not reaching the green, but by the end of the season, she was more consistently getting there, even getting to putt!
Meg’s coach says that her putting and her chipping are both pretty good! It’s clear that her driving isn’t getting very far, so that’s where we need to put in some work before next season.
Initially, we didn’t think Meg would travel much with the team, given the fact that she was brand new to the sport, but there were quite a few times where other teams would come to Marshall to play 9 holes, so Meg got to play some rounds in a relatively non-competitive context. There was one home tournament, playing 18 holes. Otherwise, she traveled to Boonville and Hannibal, so she got some longer games under her belt for her first season.
Ultimately, the thing we appreciated most about the experience is how supportive the other girls were of Meg! She was clearly not doing well compared to them, but she was there, maintained a positive attitude, and she seemed to be having a good time! It’s also a different group of girls than she’s used to interacting with. These weren’t “band kids,” though one of the other girls is in the musical, so there were some connections to Meg’s other interests.
We’re already making plans for next summer. The public course here in town has family rates, so we’ll probably pick up another set of clubs that Brooke and I can “make do” with (because neither of us know anything, either!!) so that we can go out with her a few times a week. We’ll probably schedule it where Meg and I go out to play 9 holes a few days a week, and maybe she and Brooke will go to the driving range in the early evening or on the weekends as she has more time.
It’s a brave new world for us, though! It’s kind of exciting to participate in something completely new, something where none of us have any clue what we’re doing. We look forward to seeing how far she goes in the next few years, and maybe Brooke and I will learn something in the process!
Turns out it’s been a minute since I updated on the garden. I got the mowing done and Brooke did some weeding, so figured now was a good time. Overall, it’s been a “good” summer for the garden, but not its most spectacular year. We’ve had produce all year, but despite getting a pretty reasonable amount of rain, strangely, the product coming out of it has been kinda limited.
First of all, zucchini and cucumbers did pretty well! We’ve gotten enough zucchini: there’s only a few things we like to do with zucchini, anyway, so we got what we wanted out of it (gotta get some fried zucchini in, like, once a summer…). The cucumbers we ate on as they appeared, and Brooke tried pickling them, but they shriveled up more than we were expecting in the canning jars. Not really sure what happened there, but maybe they’ll be good??? She sliced and pickled some, as well, and those seem to have turned out better.
What you’re seeing above is mostly sweet potatoes, which we’ll dig up in a month or two. Given how much foliage is on there, surely they turned out alright!
The kale and the green beans are done, as well as the corn. We ended up with almost 20 cans of green beans, but again, it was kind of a “down year” for them. Usually, Brooke will can 20 jars of them and we’ll eat on the rest, and give some away, but we didn’t really have excess this year, for whatever reason. She got some dried beans, as well, and the soup beans are trailing up the corn stalks, so we’ll get that harvest over the next month. Those always do well, and this year’s no different.
The tomatoes are another thing. None of the paste tomatoes really took off, and while we got a few good slicers, a lot of the are more of the heirloom-type tomato that ended up going well. As usual, cherry tomatoes (two varieties this year) always are very productive, but those aren’t as good for making tomato sauce (though Brooke throws them in, anyway….you just don’t get much from a small tomato…).
The pepper plants are doing pretty well, though. The red ones above are kind of a sweet jalapeño, so we’ve tossed those onto nachos all summer. They aren’t very hot: mostly sweet with a slight “kick.” Also pictured above, the heirloom tomatoes and a zucchini (again, like, one a week? “Enough” of them…).
We’ve also got bell peppers like these doing pretty well. Nothing too fancy. Our bell peppers are usually kind of “gamey,” for lack of a better word, so they aren’t as good to eat sliced for lunch, for example, but they’ll still go in mixtures of other things well. Grilled kielbasa, peppers, and potatoes have been a summer favorite of ours this year.
Pretty good harvest of “rattlesnake” beans this year! Last year, we didn’t get all that many, but the pods this time around are pretty substantial. Still not enough to have for a meal, but fun to throw into something this winter.
The bees are doing their thing, too! Calvin’s been really helpful with the hives this summer. The “north hive” has two supers on it, and a week ago when Brooke and Calvin got in there, the top super didn’t have much, but the bottom was full, yet uncapped. Today, it was 93 F, so they were “bearding” quite a bit.
The “south hive” is also doing okay…we think? We got a package to establish the hive months ago, and we think the bees killed their queen. They slowly kept building, but never really left, so we tried to “re-queen” with one we ordered to see if it would work. Brooke got in a month ago and couldn’t find much evidence of the queen we had put in, but when she and Calvin got in last week, they found some younger bees in there (still didn’t see a queen, but they didn’t want to disturb it any more than they already were). There’s hope for that one, but we won’t get any honey out of it this year. The northern hive will do the heavy lifting this time around!
And last, but not least, Brooke’s “cut flower” bed. We put some bricks to help block it off from the rest of the yard and it’s really taken off this year! The zinnias have been going all summer long, and in the past few weeks, the mix of sunflower varieties has been fun to watch grow. They’re rather annoying to mow/trim around, frankly, since they’re tall enough that they bend into the rest of the yard, but that’s a minor complaint. It’s been nice having fresh flowers around the house all the time!
No promises on when the next post will be about the garden, but it’s clearly waning into its twilight. Probably one more as a wrap-up, of sorts, but now that school has started, the garden will become an afterthought. Until next year!
As the date above implies, I took these pictures awhile back, but given that I was still working on vacation posts, I waited to put this one together. Ah well.
Overall, the garden’s looking pretty good! These pictures are taken from after we did some weeding of the middle of each plot and the edging, as well as mowing the lawn, so things were looking good at the time. Since I took these, the plants have just gotten larger!
The kale is starting to slow down, but Brooke dehydrated and powdered about a pint of it this past week. We’re still working on it, and Calvin’s going out and grabbing leaves occasionally for Barnaby. There’s quite a bit out there, yet, and as of now, it hasn’t “gone to seed,” so we probably have a few more weeks left.
It helps that we had 5″ of rain last week. I only had to water the garden a bit in mid-May, but since then, we’ve had some consistent rain that has helped maintain the leafy stuff longer than we’d normally get.
Brooke’s also been picking some green beans this past week, though we haven’t gotten a ton of them yet. If anything, it’s been rather disappointing, only a few handfuls thus far. She noted that one of the rows she planted appears to not actually be green beans, but some other kind of flat-pod variety? She’s probably going to plant some more next to the sweet potato plants, in another plot, to extend the growing season and get us some more.
The pepper and tomato plants are bigger now, though we don’t have a ton going on there as of the past few days. There are a few good-sized green “slicer” varieties, but nothing that’s been ready to pick. The cherry tomatoes look pretty close to being ready to pick, so within the next week or so, we’ll probably start working on them.
A few days ago, I had still only seen some flowers on these. Again, we probably planted too many of these in close succession, but at the time, we figured a few of them would probably die off and we wouldn’t need to worry about it. Apparently we were wrong?
This is the plot that looks the most different from the pictures taken on June 24 and what they look like today. Those zucchini plants are gigantic and flowering, so we’ll have some zucchini as soon as this week. The sweet potatoes are also quite a bit bigger than that. Just beyond them, there’s dry grass clippings trying (poorly….) to limit growth of weeds, and that’s where Brooke’s probably going to plant some more green beans.
The potatoes look pretty good! I’m still unclear on whether the carrots are doing much in these bags, but the leaves on the potatoes portend good things to come. Brooke was thinking that they’re probably close to done, already, so we may be digging those up in the next week or so, as well!
Aaaaaaaaaaand, the bees… The middle hive died, likely with the bees within not accepting the queen they were given. The northern hive looked good enough last time Brooke got in there that she added a super, and last time she looked, it seemed as though the super was getting pretty full, so we think <fingers crossed> we’re actually going to get some honey from it this summer!
The southern hive, on the other hand, still had bees, but when Brooke looked, she couldn’t find much evidence of brood. She ordered a queen (and a few “attendants”) for around $50 that were shipped via USPS to us, and she added the queen to that hive. If the existing bees “accept” her, then hopefully that hive will turn around, though given the state of it, the likelihood we’ll get much honey from that hive is minimal.
Still, if this works, it’ll give us more confidence to try similar things in the future, adding new queens to existing hives in an effort to revitalize them.
The “herb garden” is doing its thing, especially with bee balm that’s attracting mostly bumble bees. The chives continue to come back (year after year) and the basil that Brooke planted is doing its thing.
You can see a stalk of lettuce growing upwards in the background. It’s really the only plant we’ve had successfully take off this year, so that’s the one we’ve been relying on for ham and turkey sandwiches. Still, always nice to go outside and pick something fresh before adding it to lunch!
And last, but not least, Brooke’s “fresh cut” flower bed. We’re still fighting with the weeds growing in this raised bed, but it’s been a bit more manageable with the bricks we added to separate it from the rest of the yard. The zinnias are lovely and Brooke’s been getting bouquets each week. She also planted some sunflowers in the beds – they aren’t ready yet, but they’re getting taller every day.
Pretty typical of our “mid-summer” garden status, with the exception of the green beans. The weeding is in full swing because of all the rain we’ve had, but that’s a good problem to have!
For our last day in Utah, we visited the famed Four Corners site, where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado all meet. Brooke had been there before, so she kinda knew what to expect. It was a nice facility, with different vendors in booths a la a farmer’s market selling things ranging from shirts and magnets to hand-made jewelry, knives, and arrows.
There wasn’t much of a line, thankfully, so we got our obligatory pictures, did a little shopping, and then got a snack before heading out.
We knew we wanted to do something else that Thursday afternoon, and my vote was more hiking (since we really hadn’t done much….). The downside is that it was 108 F outside (the car said 113 F….eeeeeesh….), so we wanted to limit the mileage a bit.
We searched around for trails and came across one that was about a mile out toward a cave. We had to go off-roading a bit to get to this site, so that provided a little adventure, but at least it wasn’t the hours of “off the beaten path” we did a few days prior.
You can see the cave off in the distance, and we thought, “hey, that doesn’t look too far!” Turns out it would be harder than we thought!
We parked near the main road, unsure of what our options would be further down, so we left the car and walked down a road until it hit the trail. It started out fine, but it was pretty sandy and there wasn’t much shade, unfortunately. There were bits, but there were long stretches of none, which was pretty draining.
We did see some outcroppings with what looked as if they used to be dwellings, but they weren’t preserved, so there wasn’t a lot to see. Given the heat, and the fact there weren’t really trails heading toward spots like this, we mostly looked and then kept going.
By the time we got to our destination, we saw a relatively steep slick rock face heading up to the cave entrance, and given our potential for heat exhaustion, Brooke and Meg hung back to have some water in a shady spot while I proceeded to get a better look. This image is with the telephoto, so I didn’t get nearly this close, but it was enough to see that it looked pretty cool! There was a lot of vegetation between the slick rock and the cave, though….and it was very hot….so I took a few pictures and went back down. Calvin came part of the way up the hill with me, but by then, we were getting a bit concerned about his condition.
Brooke and Meg walked back and I hung out with Calvin in the shade a bit. He looked like he was overheating, so he cooled off a bit, drank some water, and when he was ready, we kept going. He was taking it a bit slower, but I don’t think it was anything really serious. It was hot and he’s small: simple as that.
That night, we had dinner and stayed up late to watch the sunset outside of town. We were hoping to see the Milky Way, but we probably would have had to wait a lot longer and none of us were really in the mood to stay up. It was nice to experience the stars away from pesky lights in town, though, and it was cool to be in the middle of literally nowhere!
After that, it was time to head home on Friday! We went through southern Colorado this time, so it was a different route through the Rockies. We stopped for lunch up in the mountains (Brooke made sandwiches) next to a river, which is always a lovely experience. We stopped in Garden City, KS for dinner that night at a nice Mexican restaurant, and then drove another hour-ish to Dodge City, KS for the night. Similar to our trip out west in the first place, we put in a lot of hours on that Friday so that we would get home at a reasonable time on Saturday afternoon.
In the end, we drove 3151 miles on this trip, which was a little over half what we did when we drove the Pacific Coast Highway.
We’re in an interesting “spot,” so far as our next vacation goes. Brooke and I have our 20th wedding anniversary next year, so we’ll do a trip by ourselves, but we will still need to do something with the kids (….I mean…I guess we need to??), so it may be “expensive trip” for the two of us and “shorter/cheaper trip” for the four of us. We’ll see!
We had reservations for Mesa Verde National Park on Tuesday of our vacation, so this was kinda the one day we really had “locked in” so far as flexibility with everything else went. Brooke had been there before, but it had been many years. She knew generally what to expect, and she’d been on the main tour, Cliff Palace, previously. She really wanted to go to Square Tower house, as that was the most “exclusive,” difficult to attend, tour. The only way to do it was to secure reservations up to 2 weeks in advance, with 10 slots opening at 9:00 am CDT. Two weeks ahead, I sit at my computer, refresh the page at exactly 9:00 am, and within, no joke, 20 seconds, all 10 reservations were taken. Ug. The next day, I tried again, but this time, I actually got to the CAPTCHA verification. It put me through three rounds of verification (motorcycle, bus, crosswalk….)….and then it still didn’t give me any tickets…. Ug ug.
After that, we gave up and went with Balcony House, which wasn’t the main tour everyone does, but it wasn’t the most exclusive one, either. Alas, it would be fine.
Regardless, we made the drive from Blanding to Mesa Verde (an hour and a half-ish), taking a somewhat scenic route through reservation lands, before hitting their impressive-looking visitor center. We didn’t stay long, as we wanted lunch and we were going to do a driving tour of the area.
I should also note that the drive from the visitor center to where the towers are was kinda long? We had to drive up to the top of Mesa Verde, which wasn’t a trivial drive, taking another 30-45 minutes to complete. It was really pretty, though, and surprisingly lush up there (hence where the “verde” name comes in).
One of the neat things about the site is that there are kivas all over the place, but along the driving tour, they were laid out chronologically, so we got to see an older version of one, then a newer one, then a much more ornate one, giving us a sense of how they evolved over generations. The National Park Service also has them covered to protect them from the elements, while also providing shade for tourists like us.
Here’s the view of Cliff Palace from across the canyon, complete with a tour group checking things out. They are truly remarkable structures to see up close, let alone in the distance. One wonders how the residents of these structures got down and up all the time, as the would be farming on the top of the mesa, then returning down to the dwellings in the rock face.
The Balcony House tour took off from a parking lot above the dwelling and, while it wasn’t a strenuous trip down, it wasn’t necessarily simple, either. It took about 10 minutes to get down there, down a paved path, first, then down some metal stairs to a walkway that went alongside the mesa.
The tour guide said he has had people “freak out” due to heights while being down there, so he told everyone that it’s probably not a good idea to go if you think you’re going to run into issues. He said someone had to be airlifted out because they couldn’t be carried from the site below.
Now, I’m not a huge fan of heights, personally, but I thought this was fine. It was far from the edge and there were plenty of railings. Not a big deal. However, there was a spot later on where, if I were much bigger than I am, I would have struggled to get through.
We climbed a ladder to get up to the cliff dwelling, two-by-two, which again is something some folks have problems with. Not a big deal for any of us, though. Kinda neat to get to a tourist site, though!
Once we were up there (also, after kids and adults asked way too many questions, like, right before climbing the ladder! Seriously, hold up with the questions until we’re up there!), the tour guide started pointing out the various structures and some key aspects of the architecture. For example, wooden beams made differently than one another, suggesting that one structure was built first, and then they made changes before the next one. Another kid noticed that each room was labeled a bit differently. The tour guide noted that archaeologists label sites they have investigated in different ways, so it was probably one person “numbering” rooms, and another person came through and “lettered” them, instead. There were multiple architectural anecdotes like that as we continued on.
And at the end, we still see another enormous kiva, deep into the rock. How they dug into the rock face this far is unclear, though it was probably chipping away at rocks for years. This kiva was relatively deep, and it would have had a thatched roof for people to walk across on top. Couldn’t really beat the view from up there, either!
The return trip to leave went through a small tunnel. The tunnel was 18 in wide by 27 in tall, so yeah: small. And it was about 12 ft long. I had my backpack on, so it would have been easier on me if I didn’t… The kids and Brooke didn’t have any issues, but I suspect folks like my father-in-law wouldn’t be all that comfortable trying to climb through.
After that, we headed back to Blanding! Mesa Verde was pretty cool! In some ways, it was kind of like Shenandoah National Park, which we visited last year, where a lot of the trip was driving to and from the park, and driving within the park. Unlike Shenandoah, though, we got to take much longer breaks to see things like Balcony House, or the other kivas along the driving tour.
The following day was spent in Blanding, doing nothing! We had spent a lot of time driving and sightseeing, so we built in a day midweek where nothing was really planned. We watched some “Psych,” we played some cards, we read books – it was a good time to get some relaxing in before our last day before heading home!
The next day, we headed toward Canyonlands National Park, which is just south of Moab, UT. On the way in, we stopped at Newspaper Rock, which is a petroglyph site with drawings dating back at least 1500 years. Like many other petroglyphs and dwellings in the region, these were drawn under a rock face, which has protected the drawings for that period of time.
Other than the petroglyphs, there wasn’t much else to see, so it was a quick stop on our way into Canyonlands!
I should note, since I didn’t earlier, but Calvin happened to be done with 4th grade during this trip. The National Park Service offers the Every Kid Outdoors pass, which allows kids during their 4th grade year (and the summer after!) access to national park lands….for free! …and their families! So yeah, we got to go to Natural Bridges, Canyonlands, and Mesa Verde without having to pay an access fee. We saved at least $150 by taking advantage of it, so thanks for being the right age for this trip, Calvin!
We stopped at the visitor center first, which I’ve been to a number of times going to Utah for our Field Biology course the past few years. I am used to going on longer hikes in this particular park, but the kids weren’t really excited about it, so we opted for shorter trips. One of them was a 1 mile hike that featured flat rock hiking, a few ladders to climb, and some old timey cowboy encampments that illustrated how ranchers used to use the overhanging rocks for shelter.
It was neat to see just how far some of the overhangs went back, like the picture above. It was tall enough that putting horses in there wouldn’t have been an issue, so it’s no wonder ranchers used spaces like these for years. Above, Calvin is standing in front of a spring, where water slowly leached through from the surface above when it rained, again showing the utility of these spaces.
A lot of the hiking in this region is called “flat rock,” which is just as it sounds: walking over flat surfaces rather than on gravel or sand. Due to the Field Biology class I’ve helped out with, I’ve hit a bunch of areas like this, but in Canyonlands, flat rock hiking like this is pretty common. You end up having to find cairns, which are small piles of rocks that indicate the direction of the trail. Since there’s no soil, there’s no way to place a sign telling hikers where to go, so cairns are the norm.
The section of Canyonlands we were in was called the Needles District. There is a really good loop trail that takes you right up to the “needles,” or the rock formations behind us in this picture. That trail is over 10 miles long, though, so we didn’t push it. Next time, hopefully!
Like I said, I’ve gone to this area a few times with our Field Biology course and usually we stay on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands. We camp, of course, but you can pitch a tent for free on publicly managed spaces, like those near Canyonlands.
I got the bright idea to go find one of our campsites with the family after we were done at the national park so they could see where I’ve been sleeping, out in the middle of nowhere. However, as evidenced by the picture above, there had been enough rain recently that the road was covered by water. Could the Outback have made it through the puddle? Probably. Did we really want to risk that? Uh, no. So we didn’t. Next time!
We hit Canyonlands that morning, so the plan was to visit Moab, UT for the afternoon. We took in a late lunch at Moab Brewery and picked up some beer to take back with us, including a growler. We didn’t eat until 1:30 pm that day, so given the anticipation, we were all pretty happy with it.
We walked around Moab looking for souvenirs afterwards and mostly struck out. A lot of the shirts, for example, were representing Moab itself or Arches National Park (which is practically in Moab…), which we weren’t visiting, so nothing really jumped out at us.
There were a lot of folks in Moab, though, but we noted that a lot of them seemed like fellow travelers, or otherwise people who were “living the life of the southwest.” Brooke had been to Moab before, but she made it sound like the “Moab” of her childhood is long gone, instead replaced with a much more commercialized town made up of tourists moreso than folks who actually live there.
After we were done in Moab, we headed back to Blanding for the night! Onward to Mesa Verde the next day!
I’ve been down in southeast Utah a few times in the past two years, and Brooke was down here for family vacations and for her 8th grade “LEAP” experience to Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. My family never ventured this far for vacations, so Brooke has a bit more of a “connection” to the region. Thus, it’s always been on the list for our own family to someday visit.
There are multiple reasons to visit this area. For one, the desert environment is pretty foreign compared to what we’re used to in Missouri. Secondly, depending on when you go, the “dry heat” effect means that 90 F is still remarkably pleasant compared to the same temperature in Missouri. This time of year, the evenings are in the high-50s/low-60s, so it cools off right as the sun goes down. Not bad!
The are also a lot of outdoor adventuring activities to consider, especially around Moab, UT, where you can rent off-road vehicles and you’ll see countless trailers and camper vans to be jealous of.
And finally, there’s the Ancestral Pueblo culture. One could argue that this is the big reason to come here, as there are only a few places in the world where sites like these are preserved for people to see.
In short, for thousands of years, Ancestral Puebloans settled in this region, likely beginning around the 12th century BCE. They inhabited the area and, again due to the climate, many artifacts have survived from that time frame all the way up through around 1300 CE, when most of the sites we visited were ultimately abandoned.
A big misconception that’s been rectified in the last few decades is that the people of this region did not “disappear” for some strange reason: instead, they simply migrated elsewhere as anyone else would. Many of them settled in areas around the Rio Grande river basin, where agriculture was a bit easier. Still, the archaeologists who study this culture have been able to trace the development of advanced pottery and architectural techniques, making for a fascinating area to explore.
That….all….being…..said…. We first stopped at Edge of the Cedars State Park, which happened to be in Blanding! They’ve got world-class research facilities and artifacts, including the room pictured above. They’ve got pottery dating back over a thousand years, and with the computer in the bottom-left, you can select an artifact and learn more about where it was discovered and what was painted on the pots, if anything. It was a pretty neat display!
Out behind the museum, they also have a ruin that can be entered. We saw many such ruins, called kivas, as we visited various sites in the region. These were the “village centers” of small communities, where the structure would be dug into the ground, then bricks stacked in a circle around, and then finally a roof thatched with timbers and clay that was strong enough to walk on. In the center of the structure, a fire could be set up, and a ladder would descend from a hole in the top that allowed smoke to come out from the fire. They Ancestral Puebloans believed that passing through the smoke was a spiritual experience.
There was also more modern art along a short trail behind the museum, including this piece that acted as a sundial. You can see the shapes cut into the piece, including antelope and dancers, and the sun would then pass through those shapes, projecting to the inside. On the summer and winter solstices, those images combine to form a line on the inside, which is probably pretty cool, though we aren’t planning on driving back in late June to find out!
After we were done at Edge of the Cedars, we headed toward “House on Fire,” which is in Mule Canyon, but on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. Before we went in, we visited another ancient kiva that was preserved until a permanent shelter. Here, you can get a better sense of what a lot of these look like. Typically, they are in a circular shape like this one, however the bottom of this one has more sand in it, rather than a fire pit. You can see what looks like a tombstone on the right-hand side of the floor, and that was a “reflector,” of sorts, so the fire in the center of the kiva wouldn’t be blown out by the air vent coming in from the right side (the hole in the bottom on the direct other side of the “tombstone;” that hole went to another hole further from the kiva, coming out of the ground).
We then took the trail toward House on Fire. As this is BLM land, trails aren’t as well marked as we’d like, so we weren’t entirely sure we were going the right way for awhile! No one else was with us, though we’d eventually run into some others as we got closer to the site. The trail was up in the grass, but also down in this “wash” picture above. We moved back and forth between the two routes. I was wearing my Chacos, so I wasn’t as well-prepared as others (I didn’t know we were going to be in a sandy ditch….sue me….), but it worked out alright. The hike was less than a mile out before we reached our destination.
“House on Fire” gets its name because, well, there’s a house built under the rock face, but also because depending on the time of day and how the sun is hitting, the erosion in the rock face looks like it’s…..”on fire.” We unfortunately didn’t get to see anything so spectacular, but it was still pretty cool! There was another couple there who had been there since 9:30 and they hadn’t seen anything, either. We were told 10:00-11:00 was probably the best time of day to be there, and we arrived closer to 11:30, but again, apparently we didn’t miss much. For our first “up close” cliff dwelling, it was pretty neat!
The walk back, again, featured the same trip we’d already taken, but I wanted to point out the varied terrain. Unlike what we see in Missouri, where a trail is a trail is a trail, in Utah, you can be in a sandy “wash” like we had above, or through a more grassy soil, or on flat rock like above. We’d hit other trails later on in the vacation more like this, but I think it was interesting for the kids to experience such a difference!
Calvin, at least, found it interesting. Meg mostly grumbled.
Our last stop of the day was Natural Bridges National Monument. Arches National Park is near Moab, UT, which makes it a very popular tourist destination. We’d already decided that we didn’t want to deal with that, so instead, we figured that the kids need to see some arches, but maybe bridges would be close enough!
The difference is that an “arch” is formed by any number of things, like erosion from seeping moisture, whereas a “bridge” is formed by erosive action of moving water. For example, water hitting a rock face and being diverted around it: over time, that water would eventually punch through the rock, creating a direct route underneath, whereas the original, diverted water would now exclusively flow in the new channel, leaving the old one dry.
There are three main bridges in the area, all of which can be seen and hiked to. Sipapu Bridge and Kachina Bridge involve relatively strenuous hikes down, so the kids weren’t all that enthusiastic about trying that (they also weren’t crazy about an 8.6 mi hike to see all three of them…).
Luckily, Owachomo Bridge was pretty easy to get to, and it’s the largest one, so that’s what we did! I mostly wanted to include this picture because it’s a good one, but….
This shot provides better scale to see just how big it is. Meg is standing in the middle of it, at the bottom. Pretty cool!
After we left Natural Bridges National Monument, the real adventure began. Brooke wanted to try an “off road” trip that wasn’t necessarily difficult, but still took up off the beaten path a bit. Leaving Natural Bridges, we noticed a dirt road that went around Bears Ears National Monument, which is one of the newest in the system. The sign said “15 miles,” though we admittedly can’t remember specifically to where it was indicating, and given where we ended up going, it may have simply meant “to the end of the road you’re getting on right now.”
This trip took us nearly 2 hours to do what we thought was 15 miles. Brooke was driving (thankfully), and we were going pretty slowly. Some stretches were fine, with some slow ups and downs, but others took us at a 4 degree angle up a one-lane cliff where I didn’t want to look over Brooke’s shoulder to the canyon below. We kept watching the mountain on our right wondering where the pass was going to cut through, and it continued to not do so.
I’m still working on my best estimate as to how far we actually went, but 45 miles is what I’ve got as of writing this (I may edit it as I plug through Google Maps to figure out which road(s) we were actually on). I know we were on Burch Canyon Road for most of the scary stuff, and then we got off onto Wooden Shoe Road for awhile before passing right by Bears Ears East. The GPS tag on the pictures I took confirm we made it at least that far. We also know we ended up on CO-95 when we finally hit pavement again, but specifically where is what I’m a bit fuzzy on. Still, it took quite a bit longer than planned and, after all that, it was time to head home so we could decompress a bit.
It’s good to have an adventure like that sometimes! Next time, maybe we’ll do it at a lower elevation!
The next day brought new challenges, though, when we hit Canyonlands National Park!
