The Dawn’s Early Light
I am sitting in the Great Room at The Lodge at Red River Ranch in the middle of Southern Utah’s amazing Canyonlands. There is red rock in every direction I can look. It’s a cool 60 degrees after a typically high desert night and there is not a cloud in the sky. A light breeze sways the cottonwoods and the bison herd in the front yard as grazing contentedly.
It is my habit to rise early, no matter where I am and what I am doing there. It is a longstanding family tradition that I wake up well before anyone else in the family and can usually be found sitting in some quiet corner tap tapping away at my iPad as I am now. I have been coming to this Lodge for about 20 years now and the last thing Charlene said to me last night as I left the dining room was that she knew she would see me early in the morning in the Great Room, typing away at my iPad (she actually said computer). I guess that means that I am predictable to all. There are many reasons why I saw the dawn this morning, but a troubled mind is not one of them. To begin with, I am traveling with my family and that always feels good. I have Kim beside me and nothing could be better than that. She is the best partner a man could ever ask for. It is a great testament to her than everyone who knows us is well aware that I got the better part of this deal. Everyone loves Kim, even my ex-wives.
The biggest single reason I woke up so early was that I couldn’t sleep (Duh!). I couldn’t sleep because I have always been affected by altitude and we are at 6,900 feet here at Red River Ranch. That does two things to me and pretty much all mammals. It makes me mildly short of breath and it dries you out to a fair thee well. When you use a CPAP like I do to sleep, and you have your travel version without the humidifier attachment (I’m too lazy to bother traveling with it and lugging around distilled water to make it workable), you dry out your nose and sinuses, making them their own patch of desert. I spent 5:00am to 5:45am listening to myself breath through my CPAP mask willing myself to go back to sleep. There comes a moment in such things when you just have to rip that damn mask off and submit to the will of nature that you are going to have to make it though the day on ¾ tank of sleep. After my morning ablutions, I snuck out of the room (Kim was actually awake by then) and came into this very familiar Great Room with its western motif of Buffalo and Moose heads on the wall and Navajo blankets casually draped over the stair railing. The Van Dyke family is in its third generation of managing this Lodge and Charlene, the hostess in charge, does a wonderful job of using her western design instincts to make this place very reminiscent of what such a longe would have been like 150 years ago when this territory was first being settled, mostly by Mormon families drifting south from the Great Salt Lake basin.
The Red River Ranch is 2,000 acres of prime grazing land that runs along the Fremont River, which originates in the Fishlake National Forrest, which is the southern extension of the Manti-LaSal Mountains. It runs mostly eastward through Capital Reefs National Park and finds it sway into Glen Canyon to form the northern-most part of Lake Powell. Today we will drive its length and cross the bridge at Glen Canyon to begin our trek east across the Aquarius Plateau and Fry Canyon to the Ute Mountain Reservation, which occupies much of the Southeast corner of the state. There we will go down the picturesque Moki Dugway to the Valley of the Gods and eventually Mexican Hat. We will take a small detour to the Forrest Gump Point to look at Monument Valley off in the distance before wending our way down Montezuma Creek to Four Corners Monument.
I have great clarity about all the roads here in Southern Utah because I have ridden them in every direction over many years. The number of times I have been awake at dawn at this wonderful place is hard to remember. The most spectacular part about it is the way the light bounces off the red rock bluffs that surround us here. This is must as beautiful as Sedona or Moab, but less well-known and therefore less crowded. Such places are harder and harder to come by in the world, but I believe that Southern Utah is among the best of them.
The Lodge is starting to come to life now, first with the girls and my daughter coming down from their large and comfortable room upstairs. Then Tommy Van Dyke comes in and turns on the various lamps in the Great Room (he has been well trained by his mother, Charlene). He is brewing coffee for those who like that sort of thing and the rest of the Lodge is slowly coming to life. Son-in-law John is down from above now and Kim will likely be coming out soon enough. It is still only 7:30am so we will not press our gracious hosts for breakfast too aggressively since we are all ahead of schedule. We plan to leave to start our day’s journey at 8:30, so naturally, we finally got out of the place at 9:15.
The day went pretty much as planned, we stopped at Glen Canyon so the girls could get a look at Lake Powell, such as it is these days. The big decision was whether to get to Mexican Hat via the slightly scary Moki Dugway, a three mile gravel set of switchbacks that raises the little hairs on your neck. I’ve only ever done on a motorcycle and I must say its much easier on four wheels been though the narrowness and wash-outs keep you on your toes nonetheless. It certainly helped that we did not encounter one other vehicle on the entire stretch. I’m glad to report that Mexican Hat hasn’t changed a bit in 30 years. The Swinging Steak restaurant is still there and still never open for business when we’re in town. We drove out to the Forrest Gump Point, made famous in the movie, which is as close to Monument Valley as we chose to get. Lots of people had the same idea, but it was still a good photo opportunity. Given the limited commerce in Mexican Hat, we headed up to Bluff to dine at Twin Rocks Cafe, with its obligatory Navajo Fry Bread. Then on to Four Corners to give the Navajo Nation their due to take another photo straddling the four corners. Evelyn did the splits (something she diligently practices every day) for a photo opportunity on the monument.
Then it was on to Durango and noting that we has transgressed 6 western states on this trip. Let’s see what the dawn’s early light poses for us….hopefully a slighter later dawn for the sake of ny sleep status.