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After leaving Santa Fe, the initial goal was to make the 6 hour drive to Island in the Sky district in Canyonlands National Park. My friend James and I had visited here briefly back in 1988 and this place is vast, so I hoped Patricia and I could explore it more fully.
After realizing that our arrival time would be after 6pm, however, we started looking for something a little closer, setting up camp in the dark during freezing weather, especially with the wind, is not the best. Bringing up the UC app, we found two possibilities in a place called “Hovenweep.” One camping option was in Colorado and was free but primitive with “dispersed camping.” The other was in Utah for $15 a night with restrooms and running water. Google took us to the latter, and as it turns out, Patricia’s Park Pass brought the cost to $7 a night, sweet.
Hovenweep is a National Monument and was established in 1923. The word is from the Paiute/Ute tribes and means “deserted valley.” It overlaps with the “less developed” Canyons of the Ancients managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
Well, once again, we were astounded at our find. The campground was immaculate, the restrooms clean (and heated). And this place, being absolutely in the middle of nowhere, had much better phone signal than my homes in either Tullahoma or Monteagle!
It’s becoming harder to post pictures, nothing seems to capture our surroundings properly. It’s all Big Sky, any photo will be just a little snippet of a much larger surround. But we’ll try.
The Buildings
The Ancients of this land created some phenomenal structures, just look at how the foundation is integrated onto the boulder it sits on. This one may have been built to provide protected storage. All the structures date to around 1200 A.D. but there is evidence that people inhabited the area for over 8,000 years.
Over the centuries the boulder under the structure on the left has begun to slide off the escarpment.
The Cold!
We spent two nights here, each night running about 20 degrees. A couple of issues arose. One, we didn’t quite have the gear we needed, our double sleeping bag was only rated for 40 degrees. Two, the nights are long so you’re ready for bed by 7pm! We did stay warm, and developed this process:
- Put on two or three base layers
- Add heavy socks
- Put down jackets on top of sleeping bag
- Add comforter, tuck in around bag
- Slide into sleeping bag
- Wrestle with zippers and each other
- Add hats
- Stuff down vest in between us to stop drafts
Shoot! I gotta pee.
- Reverse above
- Repeat as necessary
The Quiet
I cannot remember a place as quiet as this. It’s like having sound protective muffs on. The first night there was no wind and I could actually hear the frost growing on my tent! Just a light crinkling sound, pretty cool.
The Night
Hovenweep is the 14th International Dark Sky Park, and for good reason. The sky rivaled my “DZ” experience the first night! We bundled up, pulled our sleeping bag and pads out, found a flat rock, and just watched the Milky Way for an hour or two.
Just before retiring to the tent, I set up my iPhone with an extra battery and using a small tripod and the NightCap app, tried to capture some star trails by pointing the camera at the North Star. It was a long exposure but clouds moved in at some point. It looks like I captured a few airliners as well! You can see their blinking lights forming the straight lines in the lower left corner.
The Sky
Well, the clouds ruined the viewing the second night. But then, they have their own rewards. A nice sun halo…
…and a couple of sun dogs, the little rainbows on either side. So-called because they “dog the sun.”
The Soil
Do you see all that lumpy black stuff? If you look closely, it seems to grow vertically, kind of like that needle ice you sometimes see coming out of the ground. This stuff is called biological soil crust and it’s a mix of fungi, lichens, cyanobacteria, and algae. It can take decades to grow and is fundamental is establishing a ‘beachhead’ for soils to develop and larger plants to grow. It holds moisture, prevents erosion…and…can be crushed with a single footstep. So one must watch where one steps. There is much going on here, it’s just on a different time scale.
The Camp
Luxury camping in our opinion!
The Hike
A beautiful 8-mile round trip to the Holly Ruins. We’ve never seen so many different colors of lichen!
Rock cairns are a vital part of the trail systems out here. There are few trees and lots of bare rock or sandy washes, getting lost is easy! Little stacks of rocks along the trail guide the way.
I’ve seen many types of rock cairns, but this is my first “cow cairn.”
