Moab Area: Ken's Lake Campground, Faux Falls, Arches NP - Delicate Arch

Life is always better with monkeys!

Our nephew, Joe was on spring break from college and asked if we could meet for some camping. He lives in Salt Lake City. We wanted to meet somewhere half-way. I've been wanting to see Faux Falls since seeing it on a PBS fundraising special a year ago. Faux Falls is in Spanish Valley just south of Moab, Utah. There is a nice BLM campground called Ken's Lake Campground just below Faux Falls. That is where we met our nephew, his fiance Jen and his mom Merrily, last weekend. We arrived on Thursday at about 6:45 pm.

There are 31 sites. As we drove up, the camp host was collecting the money out of the entrance box. He told us that there were four spots left. Wow! Popular place. It filled up completely a couple hours after we arrived. I guess this is prime time for Moab.

Ken's Lake Campground Entry Board

Ken's Lake Campground Trail Map

We had a nice campfire and then went to bed.

After breakfast at our campsite, we headed out for the nearby hike to Faux Falls. Faux Falls was created where there was no falls before 1981. A tunnel was drilled from Mill Creek over nearby Brimley Ridge. A pipe delivers water where if flows out of the ground and then flows down a red rock area to Ken's Lake for storage. It is a pretty amazing sight to see this beautiful falls and creek out in the middle of these red rock area. It's impressive.

Faux Falls

Faux Falls

The source pipes of Faux Falls

Faux Falls

Faux Falls with Ken's Lake Campground in the background

Video of Faux Falls

We continued hiking over Brimley Ridge and the short drop to see Mill Creek. Some folks on ATVs told us about a cave if we followed Mill Creek a short way north to where the creek crosses the dirt road. The cave was not deep but it was fun to walk inside. The walls of the canyon were very impressive.

Jen near the top of the ridge

Checking out the cave

You get to cross a small creek/river to get to and from the cave

We returned to our campsite (#9) and had lunch. Later in the afternoon, Joe, his fiance and I took the short hike to a steep bouldery hill just north of our campsite. It was more of a climb than a hike. The view from the top was spectacular.

Jen at the top of the hill

Video at the top of nearby boulders

A 360 degree photosphere view from a nearby boulder hill

Back at our campsite, Karen and Merrily had created a great veggie delight dish and we cooked it on our portable propane fire pit. Delish!!!!

Enjoying our campsite

One problem with Ken's Campground was all the dust. Cars were driving in, constantly, desperate for a campsite and were kicking up a lot of dust. On top of that, our neighbors were five teenage guys with two ATVs. They were constantly driving in and out of the campground and raising lots of dust, as young guys tend to do. Oh well, they say that Americans don't tend to get enough dirt exposure these days. We did this weekend for sure!

We had another nice wood fire and went to bed a bit late watching the stars.

Ken's Lake

The next morning after breakfast at camp we headed north to Arches National Park. I had picked out the Delicate Arch Trail as a good one for all of us. We arrived at the Delicate Arch parking area just before noon. The place was packed with cars, but we got lucky and found a spot. We headed for the bathrooms only to find a fairly long line. Someone had left a cell phone in a bathroom and I volunteered to get the phone to a ranger.

The hike to Delicate Arch is beautiful. You cross a lot of slick rock on the way up. It's pretty much all uphill. It was hot and was a tiring hike. It's about a mile and a half to the Arch but it felt a lot longer. Along the way, Merrily unknowingly dropped her phone. When she discovered it was not in her pocket she decided to head back down and look for it. Karen and I went down a ways to help search and then realized that someone must have picked it up, so we continue on to the Arch while Merrily headed back to look for it.

The Arch was pretty amazing. None of us had seen it before except on Utah license plates. It's definitely worth a trip to Arches.

Funny sign in the bathroom at Arches National Park 

Hiking along the slick rock

Greg, Merrily and Karen taking a short break on the trail up to the Delicate Arch

We made it! 

Joe, Jen, Karen and Greg. People stood in a long line for a picture under the arch.
This was a much better vantage point.

Delicate Arch

Leaving delicate Arch Video

360 Photosphere of Delicate Arch

On the trail back down, we found Merrily. She was asking folks if they had seen her phone. When we got back to the trail head, someone had put up a note about the phone I found. I called them and left a message that their phone would be at the Arches Visitors Center in about an hour.

Headed back from Delicate Arch

Slick Rock on the Delicate Arch Trail

As we drove to the visitors center, Karen called Merrily's phone to see if maybe someone had found it too. The ranger at the Visitors Center answered. What a relief! Some very nice person turned in her phone with the rangers.

Merrily's phone and her only view of Delicate Arch this trip.
Karen and Merrily went to Arches when they were kiddos.

We stopped in Moab at El Charro Loco Mexican Restaurant. It's a small hole-in-the-wall type restaurant with amazing food. We all loved our meals and highly recommend it if you're in the area.

Fantastic Mexican food at El Charro Loco in Moab, Utah
This is Karen's veggie taco salad. 

That afternoon, Karen, Merrily and I took a walk around the lake. It's a fishing lake and very pleasant.

Walking around Ken's Lake

Walking the plank on the way back

That night we didn't make a wood fire as Karen was showing asthma symptoms from the previous two nights of wood fires. We lit up the propane fire pit and enjoyed smores.

Gluten-free smores

After another great night's sleep, we all headed out for home. On the way back home, Karen and I stopped for pizza at our favorite place in Pagosa Springs (Rosie's Pizzeria) and then got our 10,000 steps in with a hike around downtown Pagosa Springs. We started the hike near The Springs hotel and headed towards Pagosa Springs High School. This is a favorite walk that we like to do anytime we are staying in Pagosa or just passing through.

Walking around Pagosa Springs, Colorado

This was a great spring season trip. We will be back!!!!

Sign we saw in Pagosa Springs

NM To San Diego: Part 2 (El Dorado Hot Springs, West of Phoenix)

After leaving Faywood Springs, Google Maps suggested a short cut to Lordsburg NM that would save us about 20 minutes.  I told Karen we should trust Google Maps to give us a good route. Karen was very leery.

An hour later, Karen was right to be leery.  After heading a long way down a bumpy, dirt road we came upon a big, deep, dark mud puddle of water out in the middle of nowhere. There was no cell signal and no one else for miles. We decided it was best to back up for about half a mile until we could turn around and go back to Deming, NM on the regular paved route. From now on I will double check Google's suggestions better. The good news about this detour is that we were able to see a few really cool red tail hawks.

A bridge we crossed.

Backing up till we could turn around.

One of the hawks we saw in flight.

Once we got back to Deming, we were hungry and stopped at the town's Denny's for a good breakfast. We like Denny's. It's very consistent and always good. There were a lot of panhandlers out in front of Denny's. They appeared to be older, immigrant men. On the way into the restaurant we gave a few bucks to one of the guys in the area who came up to us.  On the way out, we were hit up very aggressively. We told this guy that we already gave to another guy. He was not pleased by our previous generosity.

We are always concerned that our handouts to panhandlers will be spent on drugs or alcohol. Yesterday, I read a New York Times article that has me thinking we shouldn't worry about how our charity will be spent: The Pope on Panhandling: Give Without Worry.

We jumped back on to highway 10 and headed west toward Tucson. This is a beautiful stretch of road. We are excited about exploring this area in detail once we are full-timers in a few years. There is a lot to explore in the southern corners of Arizona and New Mexico.

We continued on 10 past Tucson and then took highway 8 towards Gila Bend. Next, we headed north on highway 85 towards Tonopah. We didn't want to go near Phoenix as it was going to be close to commuter hours, so this bypass worked out great.

We got to El Dorado Hot Springs about an hour after sunset. The place was funky and rustic. As Karen signed up for a campsite in the office, the guy taking our info got up and grabbed a baseball bat and headed over to one of the pool areas. Karen and I looked at each other and asked each other if we had made a mistake picking this place to stay the night.

It turned out that two dudes had jumped into a private soak pool without paying the fee and the office manager liked to have his trusty bat when dealing with freeloaders.  We calmed down after he explained the situation. He was really helpful and friendly after he put the bat away.

We drove to our spot, set up our bed and headed to the public soaking area to soak away the strain of a long drive.

We hopped into a couple of old-timey iron legged bathtubs.  It felt great. Karen noticed something big moving on top of a nearby fence. We couldn't quite make out what it was. It looked like a big pigeon. It turned out to be a female peacock that was resting against the top of a fence.

After a good soak we headed to bed and slept really well.

Each campsite comes with 2 hours of private pool soaking each day.  We had signed up for the Sunset Pool for first thing in the morning. It was fantastic. We took our breakfast to the pool area. There was a table with chairs and some lounge chairs. The soaking was great. You have a large private area with views of the desert and a nice hot pool.

There are about five private pool areas. Each one is pretty nice. Next time, I would pick the Desert View soak pool as it had the nicest view of the desert and some nearby mountains.

There is a downside to the place that we discovered at the end of our visit.  As we were packing up to go, about thirty big house flies flew into our van.

A couple of the many peacocks at El Dorado Hot Springs

One of the soaks in the public area.

We soaked in the two bathtubs and the pool here. They were nice!

The funky office area.

Our campsite with friends.

Other occupied campsites on the property.

The corral pool.

The toilet area is open to the sky, but private with the surrounding fences. 

Breakfast at the Sunset Pool

Some of the campsites.

The Desert View Pool. We thought this was the one with the best view.

The Stargate Pool

Walking from the Sunset Pool.

A view of the area.

A huge industrial chicken raising and processing plant was built very near El Dorado Hot Springs in recent years. Apparently, the smells from the chicken plant can be overwhelming at times.

We were lucky in that we arrived on a windy / drizzly evening, so the flies and the smells were not noticeable. But, as we were about to leave the next morning, the winds died down, it got sunny and the smell and the flies arrived with a vengeance.

The flies all got into our van. We should have stopped a few miles away, opened up all the doors and windows and shooed them out. Instead, for three days we had flies, one by one, enter the front seat area of our van and bug us until we got them to go out a window.  Many times they would fly right back into our van, even after we had already shushed them out the window. They didn't want to leave the van for some reason!!!!  It is a cool van.

We would go back to El Dorado Hot Springs again as it was a really nice place to soak, but we do worry about what the flies and smells would be like on a hot and windless day. We hope to not ever find out.

Next up: Heading to Lake Havasu for some an amazing fireworks show.

El Dorado Hot Springs maintains it's funky rustic feel and prices are not high for this type of facility.
http://el-dorado.com/

NM to San Diego Trip - Part 1 (Faywood Hot Springs)

It was time for a trip to a warmer climate.  It's cold at our home base of Los Alamos in late February. We decided we would head south for a soak at Faywood Hot Springs, drive west of Phoenix to funky El Dorado Hot Springs, drive up to Lake Havasu to watch some really great fireworks and some desert boondocking, head to Anza-Borrego for some great boondocking, then off to Claremont,CA (near Los Angeles) to visit with family and help move some furniture, drive to San Diego to stay at a great lake side campground, visit Balboa Park in San Diego, head back east to boondock in a casino parking lot near Yuma, AZ, drive back to Faywood Hot Springs for another round of soaking and finally back to the frozen north of Los Alamos.

Our first stop was for our favorite road meal at Sweet Tomatoes in Albuquerque. Now that is a Salad!!!!!

The entrance to Faywood Hot Springs

The new Visitor's Center check in.

The new Faywood Office

The new Faywood Store and Museum area.

The Camping Area with electric and water hookups. 

Soak Pool Area Art Work.

The campground hot soaks.  Far side HOT, middle COOL, closest JUST RIGHT!!!!! There is a shower and bathrooms adjacent.

There are a ton of cute and hungry cats on the property (peacocks too, but we didn't see them this visit).

One of the clothing required pools.

One of the Private "Watsu" Pools (extra fee).

One of the soaks near the clothing optional campsites. It was cleaning morning. The water is normally very clear.

Which one is Greg?

We really enjoy visiting Faywood to camp and soak. Our favorite thing is to go out late at night when everyone else has gone to bed and soak and view the stars, hoping to see meteorites streak by.  We have a contest to determine who sees the most meteorites. We're learning about the constellations. We know about six or seven of them now.

We've visited Faywood quite a few times. We like to go there to warm up during winter months. Faywood maintains a rustic charm and prices that are lower then a lot of other hot springs places we have visited that have been yuppified in recent years.

The amazing City of Rocks State Park is just a few miles north and well worth a visit for a cool hike.

You can read about our previous Faywood visits:
http://sockmonkeytrekkers.blogspot.com/2015/05/new-mexico-faywood-hot-springs-silver.html
http://sockmonkeytrekkers.blogspot.com/2015/03/colorado-river-trip-part-1-los-alamos.html


Next up: Headed to El Dorado Hot Springs, West of Phoenix.