My Journey

[Ace Brown]

That washboard photo looks like breaking surf. It didn’t use to look that bad. First time I did the whole road it was only bad in sections. But even then I swore I’d never do it again.

That antler and skull looks like an antelope to me. Note the namesake “pronghorn”.


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[Sierra Valley]

That washboard photo looks like breaking surf. It didn’t use to look that bad. First time I did the whole road it was only bad in sections. But even then I swore I’d never do it again.

That antler and skull looks like an antelope to me. Note the namesake “pronghorn”.


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The antler is most certainly a deer.

 

[YukonMontanaTannerTrapper]

esh.....we still haven't made it to the warmer temperatures to the south of Utah but that is indeed on my "To Do List".....

Sierra Valley.....I chose deer due to the number of points.....

Alan.....here's a quote from peakbagger.com where a climber recorded his experience on Hole In The Rock Road in April, 2014. Conditions sure have changed.....the BLM now recommends it for high clearance and 4x4 vehicles only.....on the bright side.....less people will come.....

"The road surface condition is high-speed gravel-- you can always go at least 30 mph, often 40. At 33.5 miles, the road dips across Hurricane Wash. At 34.6 miles is another wash. At 39.2 miles is Carcass Wash. At 40.2 miles is Sooner Wash. Additional washes follow at 42.0 and 42.7 miles. The wash crossings are often 50 feet deep and the road often makes 2 or 3 switchbacks climbing in and out of each one. Except possibly for the steep and rocky climbs at the wash crossings, the road is suitable for any street-legal vehicle. The wash crossings themselves are graded and pose no impediment."



"To Travel Is To Live".....

— Hans Christian Andersen



With the Jeep now unhitched we decided to take it further south on Hole In The Rock Road and now 5 miles further south down the road we took a turn to the right, drove to the west for two plus miles nearly to the base of the Straight Cliffs to visit the Battys Pass Cave site.....



I had met a few locals a few days prior and they told me about numerous places of interest that were somewhat nearby.....and Battys Pass Cave was one of these somewhat nearby places.....



I came here with a bit of trepidation actually.....I've spent the past few months absorbing myself in & with nature and that's really what I've been loving & that's where I wanted to be. This place was a mix of both man and nature, therefore came the bit of trepidation.....but.....



.....the story that took place here was enough to peak my interest.....two brothers came to this place way back in the 50's and they blasted out three caves in the cliffs which they made into their home and workplace.....







And apparently here they learned their craft of building table top checkerboards, and other articles out of petrified wood, jasper and other stone.....



Of the three caves that they had built, two were used as workshops and one was used as their living quarters.....

 

[YukonMontanaTannerTrapper]

And this would be one of the workshops.....







I can't even imagine choosing this for my workplace.....





Not too sure what this contraption was used for.....







We signed the visitors log and of course read their one page biography.....



The decision was simple.....I prefer nature.....

 

[YukonMontanaTannerTrapper]

JANUARY 01, 2021.....DAY #1,177 ON THIS CURRENT ROAD TRIP.....


LOOKING BACK.....


MILES TRAVELED BY VEHICLE.....300,000 +

I began the truck camper lifestyle in July, 2005 with the purchase of a 2005 BigFoot truck camper mounted on a 2005 Chevrolet 2500HD. That truck had in excess of 240,000 miles when I traded it in on a 2018 Renegade 37' Classic Motorcoach. That motorcoach didn't stay with us long.....and I sold it with less than 5,000 miles. A few months later I purchased the 2018 Ford F350 which now has approximately 50,000 miles. And the Jeep.....who knows ? It's on its way to 200,000 miles now. So yea.....we are certainly in excess of 300,000 miles on the road.....

MILES TRAVELED BY FOOT.....26,749.73 + (does not include a trekking trip to Nepal)

I purchased my first Fitbit in January, 2015 and it has changed my life. I immediately lost 20 pounds and I was not fat the day that I purchased it. That simple device has an impact on everyday of my life since. For 6 straight years I've crawled, walked, hiked & climbed over 4,000 miles per year and the last 2 years I've exceeded 5,000 miles per year.....

DOGS LOVED.....3

YUKON.....I was on my way to Alaska in July, 2008 when I stopped in St. Ignatius, Montana and grabbed my sweet girl.....for nearly 11 years we traveled the roads and hiked the hills. She succumbed to cancer in February, 2020.....







MONTANA.....I found Montana in the Appalachian Mountains a few days before Xmas in December, 2012. He had been shot 3 times and was nearly dead.....we took him in and he traveled the roads and hiked the hills as well, and he too succumbed to cancer.....in July, 2017.....







TANNER.....2 weeks after the death of Montana, Yukon & I drove to Idaho and in July, 2017 Tanner too began to travel the roads and hike the hills.....









LOOKING FORWARD.....


I really don't know what the future holds for Tanner & me. I often find myself daydreaming about South America and one last epic road trip.....a return to the Andes Mountains & the Amazon Jungle.....to the places that first quenched my thirst for travel decades ago. I've been thinking a lot about a Kimbo truck camper on a Ford F150 4x4. I also think about having a home once again.....maybe that log cabin that I write about at times. A man begins to wear down while living on the road yet I know my years are numbered now and I often wonder if I want to spend the last years of my life pushing my lawn mower and looking out the window. Maybe we will just continue to do what we do.....travel the roads and hike the hills.....

Tanner & I.....we're just so very thankful to be healthy and have the choices that come with living in a free world.....


(Picture below is my first backpack.....I bought it decades ago and immediately hitchhiked to South America.....today it sits in a storage unit just waiting on that next adventure).....

 

[halseyt]

Happy New Year Jerry and Tanner

always a pleasure to see your posts

 

[jgaz]

JANUARY 01, 2021.....DAY #1,177 ON THIS CURRENT ROAD TRIP.....


LOOKING BACK.....


MILES TRAVELED BY VEHICLE.....300,000 +

I began the truck camper lifestyle in July, 2005 with the purchase of a 2005 BigFoot truck camper mounted on a 2005 Chevrolet 2500HD. That truck had in excess of 240,000 miles when I traded it in on a 2018 Renegade 37' Classic Motorcoach. That motorcoach didn't stay with us long.....and I sold it with less than 5,000 miles. A few months later I purchased the 2018 Ford F350 which now has approximately 50,000 miles. And the Jeep.....who knows ? It's on its way to 200,000 miles now. So yea.....we are certainly in excess of 300,000 miles on the road.....

MILES TRAVELED BY FOOT.....26,749.73 + (does not include a trekking trip to Nepal)

I purchased my first Fitbit in January, 2015 and it has changed my life. I immediately lost 20 pounds and I was not fat the day that I purchased it. That simple device has an impact on everyday of my life since. For 6 straight years I've crawled, walked, hiked & climbed over 4,000 miles per year and the last 2 years I've exceeded 5,000 miles per year.....

DOGS LOVED.....3

YUKON.....I was on my way to Alaska in July, 2008 when I stopped in St. Ignatius, Montana and grabbed my sweet girl.....for nearly 11 years we traveled the roads and hiked the hills. She succumbed to cancer in February, 2020.....

View attachment 634409

View attachment 634410

View attachment 634411

MONTANA.....I found Montana in the Appalachian Mountains a few days before Xmas in December, 2012. He had been shot 3 times and was nearly dead.....we took him in and he traveled the roads and hiked the hills as well, and he too succumbed to cancer.....in July, 2017.....

View attachment 634412

View attachment 634413

View attachment 634414

TANNER.....2 weeks after the death of Montana, Yukon & I drove to Idaho and in July, 2017 Tanner too began to travel the roads and hike the hills.....

View attachment 634417

View attachment 634416

View attachment 634419



LOOKING FORWARD.....


I really don't know what the future holds for Tanner & me. I often find myself daydreaming about South America and one last epic road trip.....a return to the Andes Mountains & the Amazon Jungle.....to the places that first quenched my thirst for travel decades ago. I've been thinking a lot about a Kimbo truck camper on a Ford F150 4x4. I also think about having a home once again.....maybe that log cabin that I write about at times. A man begins to wear down while living on the road yet I know my years are numbered now and I often wonder if I want to spend the last years of my life pushing my lawn mower and looking out the window. Maybe we will just continue to do what we do.....travel the roads and hike the hills.....

Tanner & I.....we're just so very thankful to be healthy and have the choices that come with living in a free world.....


(Picture below is my first backpack.....I bought it decades ago and immediately hitchhiked to South America.....today it sits in a storage unit just waiting on that next adventure).....

View attachment 634420

Beautiful dogs. Beautiful post.

 

[ITTOG]

Man Jerry, what a life you have had. But you have big decisions coming up and I wish you the best in those and a happy new year.

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[YukonMontanaTannerTrapper]

halseyt.....thank you.....I always appreciate a nice post.....hope you have a wonderful & safe 2021.....

jgaz.....thank you.....once again I say....."I always appreciate a nice post.....hope you have a wonderful & safe 2021".....

ITTOG.....my life has been much like the mountains that I love to climb.....full of peaks and valleys. It's been a good ride and now I find myself well into "the winter of my life". The dogs have taught me that all I need to be happy is to have the freedom to hang my head out the window and let the cool breeze blow in my face.....

Thanks and I wish you & your family (& your build project) a great 2021.....



At this point in our life on the Hole In The Rock Road along the Straight Cliffs of the Kaiparowits Plateau, we were beginning to experience many obstacles that made me think it was time to move on. At some point, and I honestly do not know when, I pulled a muscle in my groin, and rather than rest it, I chose to do just the opposite, and we continued to crawl, walk, hike & climb. And now the most simplist of activities that I attempted became increasingly difficult & quite painful as well.....





In addition to that one issue, we were now running low on supplies.....no fresh fruit nor vegetables, at most half of one propane tank was left, water too was beginning to run low.....



We had been battling the lack of solar power.....in December we had 7 nights without heat. This I think is not such a big deal when you're out on a camping trip for a weekend or a week or two, but when its your home I think it takes on a whole new perspective.....plus.....it was really, really cold outside.....



Our goal had been to make it to milepost 51.....here was the trailhead for Reflection Canyon.....here is where we would have hiked 20 miles to the northern shores of Lake Powell.....





Just the name alone intrigued me when I first came across it.....and once I saw the photographs of this place of reflection, I immediately thought I needed to go there.....



If we had continued on, with everything that was going on, we would certainly have had to drive the remaining 29 miles to the trailhead, hike the 20 miles, and then return 51 miles back to the pavement, and then 150 more miles to a major city, all within a 48 hour period at most.....



Most of that I think we could have achieved, except for the driving of Hole In The Rock Road.....that washboard road was just more than we (at least me) could endure in such a small amount of time.....



So we hiked along the cliffs one last time to explore.....and that is where these pictures in this post come from. And before we left, we had one last place that I wanted to visit, before we left the solitude behind. And the last place that we visited was so extraordinary in so many ways.....I found it to be the most fantastic of all.....maybe it should be renamed Reflection Rocks.....

 

[chet6.7]

Jerry,good luck on the groin strain,I had one for a year,every time it would get better I would have to engage in some rapid movement at my job and it would come back.
Maybe there is something here you don't already know.

Groin Strain - Symptoms, Causes, Treatment & Rehabilitation Exercises

A groin strain is a tear or rupture to any of the adductor muscles on the inside of the thigh. Here we explain groin strain treatment.

www.sportsinjuryclinic.net

 

[longhorn1]

Happy New Year to both you and Tanner. Those little aches manafest themselves as we get older. Our body says slow down but our brain says keep moving at our fast pace. The dog pictures got me to thinking about when I started following your travels, back close to the beginning in 2012. Keep on trucking Jerry.

 

[tgil]

I've been distracted for several days now, but as I looked forward to catching up my first thought was about that washboard road. I don't suppose you can "air down" on a heavy rig like yours to make the ride more tolerable. Over the summer, one of our days in the San Juans, I think we had gone across three passes. We came to a point in the trail where we could've gone back towards Ouray (where we were staying), another choice was either Silverton or Telluride (can't remember which) and the third was Lake City. I let the kid pick the route. She decided we should see Lake City since we hadn't been there before. That washboard getting there was about the end of me that day! I finally realized I hadn't aired down and that helped tremendously! It was too late to salvage my mood by that point though.

Post #3652 wins the internet!

 

[wyowandering]

Jerry - I think you mentioned earlier that you acquired Tanner in ID....Wasn't Twin Falls by chance was it?

 

[YukonMontanaTannerTrapper]

wyowandering.....I got Tanner from a woman in Caldwell, Idaho.....

chet6.7.....thanks for the link. I Googled some stuff earlier and here's what I decided to do after my self diagnosis. First I reduced my average miles walked from nearly 15 miles per day to 10 miles per day. I also reduced my stride length by maybe 30 %. And last, I only walk on firm, flat surfaces. No steep inclines ever. No medication. I've actually seen a huge improvement so I'm hopeful that's a sign that maybe it was not a terribly bad tear. Your situation would be (and is) my biggest fear.....

tgil.....it took me more than a few minutes to figure out what the heck "Post #3652 wins the internet!" means. Thanks.....

I've never aired down my tires and I don't have an on board air compressor so I'm guessing that's not an option for us.....

JD & tgil.....and maybe others (I don't actually recall).....have asked about my hiking boots in previous posts so as a follow up to those questions I thought that what I'm posting below might be of interest. I doubt anyone here is following the climbing teams that are attempting to make the first winter summit of K2 but I do. I'm following their attempts on a climbing website that I belong to called explorersweb. Anyhow I mentioned that I use La Sportiva boots and yesterday I saw that one of the climbers also used La Sportiva boots.....and he posted this picture.....



I also saw this poll on that same website regarding boots in general and more specifically La Sportiva boots.....they are number one by far with this particular audience.....



I can't wait to get back out in my quest to find the answer.....

 

[Pacific Northwest yetti]

on board air would be required, for airing down. Makes a huge difference though, I air down and am 9kibs. But, i also installed stage 3 icon suspension and remote reservoir shocks. Its not uncommon for my to spend a week or more in bad roads.

Stay Frosty thanks for continuing to post.