Colorado National Monument

October 31, 2009
Today we collected all of Colorado National Monument. The pavement computer had a bad morning, I had to restart it three times before it was happy. We also had a campground to collect and since it is off season two of the loops were locked. We had to go to the Visitor Center and track someone down to open the gates. We ended up spending about an hour in the campground that only had 4 routes dealing with the pavement computer and locked gates....that is a long time so such a few number of routes. After that the day went pretty smooth.

This is the last park of our program's cycle 4. This means that this is the last park I had to collect with this truck! The new truck is currently being put together and should be ready in January! I'll write more about that later but I'm pretty excited. Today was a big milestone and it means I've traveled a lot of miles and been to a lot of parks.

To Grand Junction, CO.

October 30, 2009
Well, today is Friday and were are also checking out of our hotel and have all of our stuff in the truck...that is two strikes against us even before the day starts. Yesterday I had some problems with our grade reading in the afternoon, nothing horrible but something needed to be fixed. We took out the grade box and looked at all of the connections and cleaned things up hoping that would help but no luck. This morning the grade readings were still bad. After some pondering I thought it couldn't really be the grade sensor itself so we decided to take out one of the computers and take out the grade timer card. We cleaned things up and replaced the card and it fixed our problem. It was only about a 20 minutes set back. On the way to the South end of Canyonlands the roads were pretty wet and there was a pile of snow in the middle of each lane. It was very discouraging. It was that way for about 25 miles and then when we were about 3 miles from the start of our route it was like magic...the roads cleared up and they were dry! It must not have snowed that much in the park. I can't believe how much luck we have had on this trip. It seems I only have bad luck with the truck and the weather but this trip we have been so lucky and we are getting things done without any real delay...crazy! Maybe this will be how my life is when we get the new truck...little problems and less stress. We finished up Canyonlands today and drove to Grand Junction and will collect Colorado Monument tomorrow.

I posted a photo of an arch in Canyonlands called wooden shoe arch, it looks like a wooden shoe!

Oh, and just an FYI - in Canyonlands the view from the North side is much more impressive than the view from the South side. The North side looks similar to the Grand Canyon!

During the drive to Grand Junction a radio station was asking people to call in with Halloween jokes. I thought this one was cute...
Q: Why didn't the skeleton cross the road?
A: Because he didn't have any guts!

Arches and Canyonlands National Parks

October 29, 2008
Today I woke up to a dry parking lot! I was surprised it didn't snow overnight. What luck. The roads were dry in Arches and the North section of Canyonlands. We collected about 101 miles today which is a pretty good day. We found a few more arches today...not even close to the 2000 that are supposed to be in the park but I might be up to 15 if I'm lucky. The parks here are pretty empty I think because it is so cold. We didn't have anyone ask us about the truck today....amazing.

To Moab, UT

October 28, 2009
Today I expected to wake up to snow on the ground but there was nothing in Flagstaff. The 5 1/2 hour drive North to Moab, UT went well. That is the 2nd time I've driven that same exact route during this job...annoying. There isn't much to look at along the way and only a couple of small towns. There is a pretty big snow storm over Colorado and it was supposed to hit Eastern Utah but in Moab there are only a few flurries and nothing on the ground (yet). I'm happy about that! We arrived in Moab around 3:30 (back to MTN time) and decided to go to Arches to check out the roads. They looked slightly damp so we didn't collect. We decided to take a few photos and go on a short hike...very short because it was cold outside. The park was not really what I was expecting. We only saw two arches but apparently there are over 2,000 arches in the park so I'm still looking. I was also surprised to see a lot of sand. I was expecting more rocky soil. The picture of the snow I took using my zoom. There is no snow in the park but looking South this is what we could see. Tomorrow could be a bust if it snows a lot tonight or it could be a pretty good day...it is too early to predict.

Wupatki, Sunset Crater and Walnut Canyon National Monuments

October 27, 2009
Today we collected three smaller parks in the Flagstaff, AZ area. Wupatki (dates back to the 1100s) and Walnut Canyon (dates between 1125 to 1250) both are ruins of old communities. Sunset Crater is an old volcano "Sunset Crater Volcano was born in a series of eruptions sometime between 1040 and 1100. Lava flows and cinders still look as fresh and rugged as the day they formed." http://www.nps.gov/sucr/index.htm
It was very windy outside today. The truck was blowing around and sage brush was hitting the truck with quite a bit of force. I took a photo of some sage brush blowing across the road. Despite the wind the truck held up pretty well. I only got 2 errors that caused a re-run. The pavement cameras didn't initialize right one time but those were the only three issues we had today. We were done collecting around 2pm so we took a short 1 mile hike in Walnut Canyon to look at the ruins there. It was a nice hike but there was an 185 foot elevation drop at the beginning, which was fine on the way down but on the way back up asthma set in again...so much for living in denial. Looks like another DRs visit might be in my future to get an inhaler (which I haven't had since about 2001)...uhhhh.