Whoops! I’ve been back in Lamy, NM for nearly a week, so I must get the rest of this great road trip logged here before I lose track of it. So this is actually written on Sunday, September 27th.
After Cedar Breaks NM, I continued east. Red Canyon is on the way to Bryce Canyon, and is genuinely red, due to enough iron in the soil. This is all gorgeous country.
Red Canyon, heading toward Bryce Canyon.
Bryce Canyon scene: a natural bridge.
Bryce Canyon, which isn’t a canyon at all; more a huge escarpment, where the road is atop a mesa, looking down on eroded sandstone.
Near the visitor center is a federally funded PV system, as many parks now have. But this one is a CPV, or concentrating photovoltaic array, where the sun’s daily path is precisely tracked, and lenses concentrate the sun’s rays on tiny high-performance solar cells. This is something best afforded by taxpayer dollars — that’s not a criticism — as it is too high-tech and expensive for typical homeowners.
The photo shows the scale, as the ranger who made this happen is in the photo too. I was able to ask him questions, and he appreciated conversation from such another solar industry geek as myself. Each of the two huge trackers is rated at 70 kilowatts of PV, although he predicts 80 kW due to high elevation and cold temperatures.
The park ranger who is managing the installation shows the scale of the two tracked arrays.
After Bryce I head through Escalante, Utah. I called good friend and long-ago Positive Energy star Dan Rice, who once lived there and still owns a rental home there. He gave me some good locals’ advice, and I camped just east of town, just off the public road and quite private.
The next morning, after coffee and breakfast at Kiva Coffee, a coffeehouse restaurant set beautifully into a rock, where WiFi helped me post the previous blog entries, I passed through Boulder, Utah, and headed on.
Coming into Boulder, Utah, one of the most beautiful and most remote settings for a town anywhere. Boulder was the last post office in the US to have mail delivered by mule train
At Dan’s suggestion I stopped at Kane Gulch Ranger Station, an off grid visitors’ center for the explorers of the ancient canyons and their earlier human inhabitants.
Aspens and cottonwoods thriving in the same canyon, near the head of Kane Gulch.
Dan had built the latest iteration of the off grid PV system that runs the visitor center, ranger station and remote residences there. Needless to say, I learned that the PV system continues to work well. No surprise there, given Dan’s skill and the quality of his work.
Driving down a cliff: the Moki Dugway
South of Kane Gulch the highway suddenly becomes a narrow dirt road for a couple of miles as it drops over a cliff of maybe 1,500′ drop. This is the infamous Moki Dugway.
After the cliff I still had to cross the Colorado River at Bullfrog Marina. I arrived in time for the last ferry of the day at 3pm,and found that I was the only fare. I was invited into the pilot house; altogether an effective but informal operation.
On the ferry across Lake Powell. Mine was the only vehicle.
The ferry’s pilot house – this was an informal operation.
After a half hour’s wait for the ferry and another half hour crossing Lake Powell, as we were landing on the south bank (which had been relocated to accommodate the low water level in recent years) I hear on the ferry’s radio that a rock slide had occurred on the road I was about to head down. The road was suddenly closed – the word was that the rock slide was still occurring. So the ferry was called back into service, to take me back. So I had in total about four hours and 140 miles to make up. All just part of the adventure. If it was predictable much of the enjoyment would be lost…