The Last Road Trip - Part 2

Sunday, March 17     Echo Bay, Lake Mead NRA, Nevada

It is 2pm (PDT) and nearly 75 degrees here in the Echo Bay Campground on the desiccated shoreline of Lake Mead.  I left Kanab just before 10am this morning, heading south to Fredonia Arizona.  Then west for many long miles along the Arizona Strip until the road gradually curved northward again back into Utah near Hurricane.

Yesterday was one of those stellar, bluebird days on the Colorado Plateau.  Cloudless skies and a light wind.  Mike and I drove south on hwy 89 toward the Kaibab Plateau, then hung a right on a little used roadway that eventually took us to a jeep road that would take us out to Gunsight Pass.  We passed through many miles of beat up, overgrazed public lands and oceans of stunted sage brush with an occasional juniper or cholla cactus to break the monotony.  But the long views were the attraction.  Mount Trumbull to the west, the Kaibab to the south, and to the north the multicolored tiers of the Grand Staircase backed by the snow-covered Pine Valley Mountains.

We swerved through sandy spots and skirted pools of standing water as we worked our way westward, gradually coming to the road’s end where the earth dropped off just beyond into a gaping precipice of tessellated mesas and dark gorges.  We were overlooking the confluence of Kanab Creek and Snake Gulch, a thousand feet below.  With the exception of four or five juniper trees, the landscape was covered with low growing sage, yucca and mountain mahogany.  Scalloped side canyons faded into the haze where Kanab Creek took a big turn toward its junction with the Grand Canyon.  A red tail hawk soared down into the abyss.  A couple of ravens did their aerial acrobatics on the updrafts.  And above all, there was a sweet silence.  And, with the exception of Mike and I, an absence of human beings.

It was a fine spot to sit and snack….seemingly on the edge of the infinite, and looking at a landscape almost primordial in its emptiness and mystery.  We spent the better part of an hour walking along the edge, scanning the Kaibab limestone below us, looking at lichens and scattered red stem filarees that were harbingers of spring. For the first time in a long time, I felt that soaring happiness within, that far flung familiarity with stone and space.  That deep connection with the Colorado Plateau.

We headed back in the afternoon with plenty of time to chill out back at the house.  Some more gin and tonics on the back porch.  And later that evening, more cinematic classics….The Mask of Dimitrios and Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole.

This morning I left it all behind me to continue west toward the “Super Bloom”.  From Saint George, Utah I dropped down quickly through the spectacular gorge of the Virgin River, leaving the Plateau country behind and entering the Great Basin deserts.  At 2000’ elevation, I was greeted by newly leafed-out cottonwood trees at Beaver Dam, Arizona.  As I entered Nevada, I began seeing brittle bush and Joshua Trees in bloom.  I went from late winter to spring in one 200-mile stretch.  Now ensconced in a campsite, I can see the distant edge of Lake Mead, slowly evaporating away in the distance.  The sparse campground is surrounded by oleander, creosote bush and a few spindly palm trees.  But it will do just fine for now.