The Windmill Posts

It’s been a crazy couple of days. Many miles and many adventures. Here are two tales to keep you patiently waiting for real content. The photo above is my current view. That view plus 5G? I’ll take it!

Dancing in the moonlight

Canyonlands National Park was one of the remotest locations I enjoyed. The road from the highway to the park is 34 miles. They mean it when they go big. When I checked in I talked with the ranger at the booth and she said the campground was pretty empty, no issues except one of the sites has a resident rattlesnake. I checked my reservation. What luck! She said it hadn’t been seen in a day or more, so it might not be an issue. Just stay away from the bushes. If I wanted to check it out or pick another site, she said I could choose.

I drive out and the site assigned to me had a neighbor who was really quite close. I walked around and hoped to hear hissing but nothing came up. Still, I was a little apprehensive, so I went for another site. The loop ran around a huge rock formation (you can scuttle up top) and I chose a spot with a great view and no neighbors for a long ways. After I set up I went for a walk to check out the toilet situation. Imagine my surprise when they had flush bathrooms! So much for primitive. Distant, but comfortable.

It’s another one of the official Darkness Zones, so the night sky is supposed to be amazing. I did the whole dinner thing and spent time typing, but went to bed early, setting an alarm for midnight so I could see the stars.

Except the moon was out. Like a stadium light it was so bright. Shadows and all. Went back to bed, set an alarm for 2, same deal. Finally at 4 the moon was going down mostly, so I got my blanket out, laid it out on the picnic table with my pillow, and laid back to look at the stars. Worth it. Oh and the ground temperature the day before was 138 so it was nice and warm. Look it up, it’s a thing.

Double Triple Breathtaking

The altitude around here is high anyway, so when you do a pass (drive over a mountain) you get to altitudes well above 10,000. The gold mountain fire smoke was around, as well. Both of those affect your breathing, right? I found a third.

I love driving. I love driving switchbacks. I love beautiful views from mountains. But today apparently we set all of that aside. As I was going over the Slumgullion pass, the edges of the outside bounds of the turns started to be closer, and with less protection (guards, etc.) so it felt and looked like the very edge of the road was the very edge of the mountain. It started to bother me a bit, and eventually I started working on a nice panic attack – the ones where you can’t breathe. Eventually I was going around those curves so slowly, and finally I just kinda locked up. It was like I forgot how to drive, and I just stopped. After a few seconds I came back to my senses, but I was still freaking out. I stopped at a pullout to take a breath and drink some water, but I was nowhere near the summit. I knew there was no way to avoid it, so I set off again.

No locking up, but I was having a lot of problems breathing and just feeling like I was about to fall off the mountain. I saw an official turnout/scenic view, and pulled off there. I parked and took some water and walked around, did the 12345 counting skill, and basically tried my best to get reasonable so I could get down the mountain. I did take a PRN which helped, but didn’t take much because I was driving.

I found my zen and put on Sigur Ros and headed down the mountain. Mostly breathing again, I continued on the route north, working on becoming comfortable with those bare edges. (There weren’t that many from there on. However, it was the beginning of an exciting road. Image show my arrow backwards, I had the northern part remaining!