On the Road with Bernie and Elinor I--White Rim Trail

Dave and I had often peered over this overlook, at Island in the Sky, Canyonlands National Park.  Below is the White Rim Trail, the only road winding through the vast, red desert bowl encircled by the Green and Colorado Rivers.  Someday we hoped to go there, but it required skillful four-wheel driving and a night's campout--skills we lacked.

Enter our forever-friends from the 1970s, Bernie and Elinor Engelhard.  Bernie is a fearless and talented off-road driver who drives a jeep near his home in Tucson, Arizona.  Bernie and Elinor are both campers.  We invited Bernie and Elinor to explore the White Rim Trail and Moab with us between April 24 and 28, 2013. 

 

Our first challenge was snaking down the escarpment along narrow, sandy roads.  We held our breath as Bernie maneuvered.

 

 We meandered along the 100-mile trail, which followed a water-eroded shelf of light-colored sandstone.

 

 

Soon we could see the Colorado River, bordering one side of the trail.

 

 

We passed various points of interest along the trail, such as Musselman Arch, Washer Woman Arch, and Monster Tower.

Musselman Arch is an arch underneath the shelf, rather than above it (see below).  It was not an iconic Delicate Arch, but it was worth a rest stop.

 

 

 

Bernie was the driver over all rough spots--skinny trails with precipices yawning below; trails with grade so steep we couldn't see the trail at all because the front end of the jeep was tipped so high; corners so tight that Bernie had to inch back and forth over and over till he could squeeze past.  On the even, straight patches, Dave took over.  Elinor also took her turn at the driving the powerful jeep.

Streams finding their way to the Colorado River carved deep, crenelated canyons.

 

One mark of the experienced camper is his ability to fit an impossible number of objects into the trunk of a vehicle.  Packing was an art with Bernie.  

 

We arrived at our campsite, Candlestick, late in the afternoon.  We set up camp, including a large, sturdy tent for Bernie and Elinor and a tiny, flimsy one for us.  I opted to sleep in the car, after our air mattresses started leaking and I decided that David and I were so scrunched that we couldn't even label it "romantic."

 

We had the ultimate luxury--our own outhouse, scented like coconut.  We were the sole occupants of the Candlestick campground, and the Parks Service personnel were masters at hiding odors.  The outhouse even had a sculptured, monumental look to it, to match its surroundings!

For Bernie and Elinor, camp cooking is part of the adventure.  We ate home-cooked chili for supper and enjoyed the million dollar view.

 

The night was very dark.  Towards morning, as I huddled in the car, some sort of animal began scratching and rooting around in the camp.  In the stillness, it sounded as if the animal had climbed into the jeep with me, but the next morning Bernie and Elinor said, no, it was scratching around their tent.  It could have been anything--kangaroo rat, desert fox, porcupine.

 

Dawn was as spectacular as sunset, with a full moon hanging above the red rock formations.

We cleaned up and fixed breakfast.

 

 

 

The red rock cliffs glowed in the morning light.

 

Bernie scrambled eggs for breakfast, and we fixed the fruit salad.  A red rock shelf was our buffet.

 

As we gathered all our belongings by the car, Bernie again confronted that puzzle of how to fit all that junk inside.

 

We left behind the Candlestick formation and drove to the Green River, which we followed for many miles.

 

Wild flowers grew by the side of the trail.

There were more "rough spots," including this narrow trail with slickrock falling away steeply below.

Finally, we passed the last view of the Green River and the last red rock monuments before climbing back up to the mesa, "Island in the Sky," and heading back to Moab.

 

 

 

Living High in Vegas

The 2013 Durham Jones & Pinegar Shareholders Retreat was held over the weekend of April 18, 2013, in Las Vegas.  Dave and I stayed at the gold-colored Trump Tower, in a spacious room with views across the city.

 

Meetings and a dinner party were held at the elegant Smith Center, the new, Art Deco performing arts center for Las Vegas.

 

 

The highlight of the retreat, for me, was racing stock cars, with Dave and other attorneys, at the Las Vegas raceway.  My 0 to 60 feet time was the highest in my heat! 

 

Saturday afternoon, after the retreat ended, Dave and I drove to El Dorado, an hour outside of Las Vegas, and toured an abandoned gold mine.  The battered buildings, antique cars and mining equipment, and expansive desert views seemed a world away from the glitz of Vegas.  We reminded ourselves that, before there was gambling in Nevada, the state's economy was based on mining.

 

 

 

 

Restoration of the gold mine and surrounding buildings was a family business.  The owners were so successful that busloads of tourists came from Vegas to tour the mine, and the buildings were rented for special events.  A wedding was going on while we were there. 

The El Dorado had a great collection of gently rusting cars and trucks.

 

 

We walked through the mine, with its mazes of wooden stairways following veins of ore up and down for hundreds of feet.  We also admired the picturesque mining equipment, rusting in the desert heat.  There was even an airplane, rusty from exposure following its use in a Hollywood movie filmed at El Dorado.

 

 

 

 

Our mine guide was beyond picturesque, at 6'4" with a Fu Manchu beard, sunglasses, and crushed hat.  Alas, the lobby of the El Dorado café was too dim and my $6 disposable camera too weak to catch the magic of the human characters and the luscious clutter of chunks of ore, animal trophies, and old photographs inside.