Homeward Bound

Our final national park of the trip was Arches NP in Utah. We spent a full day driving, hiking, and rock scrambling through the park. It was another truly bizarre landscape to explore - brilliant red slick rock, towering arches, windows and holes, twisted scrubby junipers, and crystal blue skies.

We hiked a great loop trail through the Devil's Garden area at the north end of the park. It wound its way past some of the more well known formations, including Landscape Arch, pictured above. It was actually a fairly challenging hike, just trying to find the trail through the twisted maze of rock. It was marked with small carins, but often we would find the trail and remark, "It can't possibly go up there!" The hike required shoes with good traction and a bit of trust that you wouldn't slide straight down the face of the rock.

We enjoyed the park... and apparently so did about half the population of Utah who were there with us that day. It was very crowded, almost as bad as Yosemite Valley, due to a school vacation week in Utah (in October?). I guess it is so hot in July and August that late September and October are actually the busy season there. We must admit, the weather was splendid, perfect sunny days in the low 70's and down to the low 50's at night.

The park campground was full, not surprising, so in the late afternoon we left the park in search of a place to camp. There is a whole string of small BLM campgrounds along the Colorado River, extending northeast just outside the park. As our luck would have it, every single site was occupied, and before we knew it, our search had led us across the Colorado state line and into darkness. This was the first time in the entire trip that we could not find a place to camp. We finally ended up at a motel in Fruita, CO. It wasn't all bad though - there was a town festival in full swing, so we enjoyed a warm evening of live bluegrass music, pizza, and beer in the town square.

Having travelled so far from Arches and Canyonlands, it didn't make any sense to go back to Utah, so we found ourselves with an unexpected and unplanned day in the Colorado Rockies. This turned out to be one of our best days of the whole trip. We drove a couple of hours through the mountains and ended up on a forest service road to Kebier Pass and the back way into Crested Butte.

All the official forest service campgrounds had already closed for the season, but fortunately we stubbled upon a "horse camp" that appeared legitimate for open camping. There were a few horses tied up and some horse trailers parked, but we essentially had the place to ourselves. What an absolutely beautiful place to camp - big open meadow with a brook running through it, surrounded by stunning high mountains, cloaked in the golden glow of fall aspens and sunshine.

After setting up camp, we of course headed off for a quick five mile afternoon hike up to Beckwith Pass. Hunting season was in full swing, so we geared up with our brightest tie-dye and bandannas. We were awarded once again with stunning views -back to the valley we were camped in and of all the surrounding peaks.

This was our last night of camping, and we regretfully packed up the tent and gear one last time. We had officially run out of time and needed to high-tail-it back east. From here we basically made it back home in five days. Along the way we spent a night in Denver to stop in and visit with Larry (Tammara's board chair) and Nancy, and a night in St.Louis to visit with Jack (Tammara's brother) and Debbie. Both stops were a much needed break from the monotony of the interstates and we enjoyed the company, conversation, and hospitality immensely.

So after a little over 10,000 miles and eleven weeks on the road, we finally arrived home in Greenwich on Thursday, October 21. We were greeted nonchalantly by the cats, as if we had only been around the block. Things haven't changed too much since we left, the grass is still green, there's still a few colorful leaves on the trees, and the farm fields are pretty weedy - it just looks like home. After all the incredible places and beautiful scenery we have seen in the past weeks, there is still something special about this place... I think we'll stay for awhile.

PS: Thanks to everyone who followed us on the trip through this blog, and encouraged us to keep making posts. We really enjoyed sharing our experiences with all of you. If you want to check back in the future, we'll leave the site active for awhile (do blogs ever really go away), and hope to edit, label, and organize all the photos we've uploaded. Double click the mini-slide show box to link to our Picasa photo site.

Happy Trails,

Chris and Tammara

Vagabond Farmers