Many park visitors will carve out a day (or more) to see Big Bend’s dramatic canyons—some 1,500 feet deep—from the Rio Grande. “There are a number of day trips that can be done if the water is high enough, and a number of guide services have concessions to lead trips along the river,” Dave explained. “Most sections of the river are very calm, though if you float the Santa Elena Canyon, there is a Class IV rapid that’s best done with a guide or by experienced paddlers. One way to see some of the canyon without white water is to do what we call a ‘boomerang’ trip. You put in your raft or kayak at the Santa Elena Canyon trailhead and paddle upstream a few miles to Fern Canyon, then float back down with the current. In my opinion, no visit to the park is complete without some time on the river.”
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DAVID ELKOWITZ is the chief of interpretation (chief naturalist) at Big Bend National Park. He has been a National Park Service ranger since 1985, during which time he has served at six national parks, including southwestern parks such as Carlsbad Caverns, El Malpais, and Padre Island National Seashore. David is a graduate of the University of Connecticut with a BS in wildlife biology. He is a lifelong naturalist with special interest in ornithology and herpetology.
If You Go
Getting There: The airport nearest Big Bend is in Midland/Odessa (235 miles from park headquarters), and is served by Continental Airlines (800-523-3273; www.continental.com) and American Airlines (800-433-7300; www.aa.com).
Best Time to Visit: Big Bend sees most of its visitors in the winter and early spring. The park is open in the summer, and Dave recommends this as a great time to come if you stay in the Chisos, where it’s cooler.
Campgrounds: There are three park-service campgrounds in Big Bend: Rio Grande Village (one hundred sites), Chisos Basin (sixty sites), and Cottonwood (twenty-four sites). Basic amenities (but no hookups) are available; sites are $14/night. Limited reservations are available through Recreation.gov (877-444-6777). A privately run RV campground with hookups is available at Rio Grande Village (877-386-4383).
Activities: Hiking, bird watching, paddling, scenic drives/four-wheel drives, fishing.
Thi Lo Su is the most majestic of Thai waterfalls, attracting both domestic and international travelers.
Thailand
UMPHANG WILDLIFE SANCTUARY
RECOMMENDED BY Chris Clifford
Whether it’s the bountiful release of air-cleansing negative ions, the crashing roar of thundering columns of water, or the visual splendor of those columns sparkling in the sun, humans have long been drawn to waterfalls. In Thailand, the waterfall that stands above all others is Thi Lo Su, in the province of Tak.
“When Thai people travel, they tend to stay in Thailand,” began Chris Clifford. “And when they’re looking for a chance to experience cold weather—cold in this case being twenty degrees Celsius—they come north to Chiang Mai and the surrounding region. While the area immediately around Chiang Mai has become more developed, parts of the province of Tak to the west are still isolated and thus less crowded. I’m a white-water kayaker, and I became acquainted with the area—including the Umphang Wildlife Sanctuary—scouting out rivers to run in the wet season. A few times, I even used elephants to shuttle my kayak. As I’ve gotten older and now have a family I do less kayaking, but I’ve discovered the camping possibilities of the region.”
The Umphang district rests toward the southern tip of the Tak province in northern Thailand. It’s bordered by Mae Wong and Khlong Lan National Parks to the east, the border with Myanmar (Burma) to the west, and the Thung Yai and Huay Kha Kaeng wildlife sanctuaries to the south. Its thick forests—a tapestry of evergreen and deciduous trees—are dotted with teak, bamboo, and ironwood and provide shelter for elephants, leopards, langurs, bears, tigers, tapirs, and a host of rare birds, including the elusive hornbill. Wild-animal encounters are always a roll of the dice, but the centerpiece of the Umphang experience—the Thi Lo Su waterfall—is a constant. A number of drops combine to give Thi Lo Su an elevation of more than 650 feet; its width is roughly a quarter mile. “The falls are about a mile from the camping area,” Chris continued. “There’s a good path along a lovely little creek that leads to the main falls. You can hear the roar of the falls well before you see them. When you do come around the bluff to the falls, the colors at Thi Lo Su are tremendous. The water is a stunning turquoise, and it’s framed by the green rain forest and the caramel-shaded schist. There are three main stages of the falls and huge pools at each level where you can swim. If you wish, you can climb up all the way to the top to the Mae Klong, the fall’s source.”
Buddhism, the primary faith of Thailand, stresses that the path is the goal. This is certainly a good way to approach an adventure to Umphang and Thi Lo Su. First, there’s the hundred-mile road leading to the town of Umphang from Mae Sot, which has been dubbed the “Death Highway.” Highway 1090 boasts more than 1,200 curves as it climbs through agricultural land into the mist-clad mountains, though its eerie sobriquet stems from clashes between soldiers and communist insurgents in the late 1970s when the road was being constructed. Travel is not fast on the Death Highway, but it does offer great vistas of the rain forest and exposure to the different people that call this hill country home. These include ethnic communities of Karen, Hmong, Lahu, Lisu, Akha, and Yao. Once you reach the town of Umphang, it’s another seven miles to the entrance of the sanctuary, and fifteen miles to the sanctuary’s headquarters and campground. The campground is near the sanctuary’s administrative headquarters. “The campground rests in a grass field interspersed with rain forest trees,” Chris described, “and while there’s no electricity for caravans, there are centralized showers and toilets, plus a cooking area. There’s a small store that has electricity, and you can charge your camera or laptop there. People from one of the nearby Karen villages will often come into camp to visit and sell food and handicrafts. When they visit, they might offer a glass of Lao Khao, a local rice whiskey.”
Though more and more people are discovering the Umphang region, its thick forests still maintain a wilderness aura, as Chris learned firsthand. “For me, camping is an excuse to go out in the forest,” he mused. “It serves as a kind of meditation. A few years back, I hiked into the forest near Thi Lo Su. I had my four Labrador Retrievers with me. It was a moonlit night, and at bedtime, I set myself up under a mosquito net with a tent fly over the netting. Sometime in the night, I was awoken by some heavy purring. I turned around, and three feet from my face there was a full-grown male black panther. I was looking straight into its big emerald eyes, all very visible in the moonlight. I’d spent ten years in northern Australia working around big crocodiles and tended to be fairly calm around big wild animals. So I started speaking to the cat. I said, ‘I’m not going to stay here, I’m just passing through.’ Then the cat started pacing back and forth along the tent, the way you see big cats pace at the zoo. At one point it pawed the tent fly, and I pushed it away with my pillow. In retrospect, I think it was just hungry. Eventually it moved away from the tent to the base of a tree and sat down. It sat there for an hour, and I kept talking to it. Then it moved off. I had no idea where my dogs were the whole time. They must have smelled the cat and slipped away.”
* * *
CHRIS CLIFFORD is field coordinator with the Border Consortium, which has been working with refugees who fled conflict in Burma/Myanmar since 1984 to provide food, shelter, and other forms of support in camps in western Thailand. Chris was previously land and sea management coordinator at Lockhart River Aboriginal Community for ten years, where he also completed his PhD in community-based planning. Originally from Narrabeen Beach in Sydney, Australia, Chris has always been enthusiastic about all water sports, particularly snorkeling, fishing, and surfing. During his university years, he became more interested in ecology and wilderness experiences, including outdoor activities such as bushwalking, camping, and white-water kayaking. Later, working with Aborigines on the remote Cape York Peninsula, he became more interested in unde
rstanding wilderness from a cross-cultural perspective.
If You Go
Getting There: Umphang Wildlife Sanctuary is roughly seven hours from Chiang Mai by car, nine hours from Bangkok. Flights are available from Bangkok to Mae Sot (which is roughly four hours from Umphang) via Nok Air (www.nokair.com) and Solar Air (www.solarair.co.th).
Best Time to Visit: The dry season—from October to mid-March—is the best time to visit northern Thailand.
Campgrounds: Camping is available on the grounds of the Umphang Wildlife Sanctuary headquarters. Toilets and showers are available.
Activities: Hiking, swimming, rafting, elephant riding, cultural sightseeing.
The limestone formations at Bryce Canyon create an otherworldly landscape amidst the deserts of southern Utah.
Utah
BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK
RECOMMENDED BY Christopher Martens
“Camping has been part of my life since I was very young,” Christopher Martens recalled. “When I was twelve, I was on the Appalachian Trail for a week, and it set the mood for my career. In my early twenties, I drove from Florida to Alaska, camping the entire way—that was seventeen thousand miles! I’ve staked a tent in lots of places, but one camping experience that stands out is a trip I took with my family to Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.”
Bryce Canyon National Park sits near the bottom of southwestern Utah, about 140 miles northeast of the town of St. George, or 80 miles northeast of Zion National Park. At 56 square miles, Bryce is diminutive by western national park standards; Grand Canyon National Park, not far to the southwest as the crow flies, tops out at more than 1,900 square miles. But Bryce packs an incredible punch in its modest space. Much of the park is taken over with a series of 14 horseshoe-shaped “amphitheaters.” (Canyon is a misnomer, as these large hollowed-out areas were created by a long geological history of sedimentation and erosion from rain, not from the force of a river.) The amphitheaters are populated with bizarre limestone formations that create an otherworldly landscape of slot canyons, arches, and spires called hoodoos. The hoodoos, a result of both frost-wedging (freeze/thaw cycles that creates cracks in the rocks) and eons of rain, take on a veritable Rorschach test of shapes—some look like people, some animals, one is even identified as E.T.! A blaze of colors and contours, the hoodoos are frequently bunched together to create mazes of wonderment.
Though Fremont and Anasazi people spent time in the Bryce Canyon area from 200 to 1200 AD, it was the Paiute Indians that occupied the region for much of the second half of the twentieth century. The Paiutes, incidentally, have a slightly different explanation for Bryce’s geologic wonders, as shared by a Paiute elder named Indian Dick to a naturalist in 1936:
Before there were any Indians, the Legend People, To-when-an-ung-wa, lived in that place. There were many of them. They were of many kinds—birds, animals, lizards and such things, but they looked like people. They were not people. They had power to make themselves look that way. For some reason the Legend People in that place were bad; they did something that was not good, perhaps a fight, perhaps some stole something . . . the tale is not clear at this point. Because they were bad, Coyote turned them all into rocks. You can see them in that place now all turned into rocks; some standing in rows, some sitting down, some holding on to others. You can see their faces, with paint on them just as they were before they became rocks. The name of that place is Angka-ku-wass-a-wits (red painted faces).
It was John Wesley Powell—the one-armed adventurer who first floated the Colorado through the Grand Canyon—and Captain Clarence Dutton who brought the existence of Bryce to the outside world . . . though it was a Mormon emissary named Ebenezer Bryce who would displace the Paiutes and create a small settlement. Bryce and his family eventually moved on to northern Arizona, but the name stuck. Bryce was originally to be known as Utah National Park, but in 1928, the park was renamed Bryce Canyon.
“My family and I were doing the southwest park circuit,” Christopher continued. “We’d flown into Las Vegas and spent a few days, and then headed to the Grand Canyon, then on to Bryce, and finally to Zion. At each park, we were trying to find the coolest campsite, and at Bryce, we thought we’d found a pretty good one. We had to hike our stuff up a little ways, but the site looked out over the campground. My family was setting all the gear up as I jumped in the car to run to the store. When I got back a few minutes later, my kids came running down. ‘Dad, you’ve gotta see this.’ I followed them up a small trail behind the campsite, up a slight hill. There, at the top of the hill, we were on the edge of Bryce Amphitheater, looking east at all the spires, over the whole canyon. The look of wonder on their faces was unforgettable. It was like we’d found a national park in our backyard . . . which we had!”
Bryce boasts two campgrounds, North and Sunset. Both are located a short distance from the visitor center, the Bryce Canyon Lodge, a general store, and the Bryce Amphitheater, and both offer similar amenities—flush toilets, potable water, and pay showers/laundry nearby. Bryce sits at an elevation of eight thousand feet, and both campsites are greener than you might expect in these arid climes, shaded by ponderosa pines and dotted with summer wildflowers. (Though days can be warm in the summer, temps cool down nicely for comfortable sleeping.) Thanks to its elevation, isolation, and low humidity, Bryce boasts exceedingly good air quality; on a clear day from the highest points in the park, you can see more than one hundred miles. The air clarity and lack of light pollution make Bryce Canyon National Park one of North America’s darkest spots and thus a premier stargazing locale; one can see some 7,500 stars with the naked eye here, whereas only 2,000 stars can be viewed in most places (far fewer in cities). The park’s proximity to the heavens is celebrated each June with the Bryce Canyon Astronomy Festival.
As to the exact location of Christopher’s killer campsite, you’ll have to explore Bryce for yourself!
There are a number of ways to take in the park’s geologic wonders. The most popular is to drive the park road to Rainbow Point, roughly eighteen miles. There are thirteen pullouts along the way, so you can take in different perspectives of the amphitheaters and their panoply of pinnacles. Horseback riding (through a concessionaire near Bryce Canyon Lodge) is another way to tour the park. If time permits, consider a hike that drops down into the Bryce Amphitheater so you can roam amongst the fanciful rock formations. The Queen’s Garden Trail is gentle and takes you past Queens Castle and Queen Victoria. The Navajo Loop Trail is a bit steeper but perhaps even more dramatic. It takes you through “Wall Street” (a narrow slot between sheer cliffs) and provides grand views of Thor’s Hammer, perhaps Bryce’s most photographed formation, as well as the Silent City, a formation that resembles a cityscape.
* * *
CHRISTOPHER MARTENS is business director of camping for Johnson Outdoors, a global outdoor recreation equipment products company whose brands include Eureka!, Silva, Jetboil, and Old Town® canoes and kayaks. Before joining Johnson Outdoors, Christopher served as CEO of Respect Your Universe, business director and merchandise director at Nike, Inc., global business director of apparel for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and divisional merchandise manager for Global Nike ACG and Global Nike Outerwear. He also spent eleven years at EMS (Eastern Mountain Sports) in a variety of positions, including product manager of tents, sleeping bags, and cooking (stoves, hydration, food, energy products).
If You Go
Getting There: The nearest commercial airport to Bryce is in St. George, Utah (roughly 140 miles away), and is served by Delta (800-221-1212; www.delta.com) and United (800-864-8331; www.united.com). Las Vegas is the closest major airport (roughly 270 miles away).
Best Time to Visit: Bryce is open year-round, though parts of the park are closed in the winter. July sees the warmest temperatures, but it cools down nicely at night. Mid-April through October should be snow-free.
Campgrounds: There are two campgrounds in Bryce—North (99 sites) and Sunset (100 sites). Both are located near the visitor
center and Bryce Amphitheater, and both have flush toilets and potable water. Limited RV spots (no hookups) and reserved sites are available; contact Recreation.gov (877-444-6777) to make a reservation. Tent sites are $15.
Activities: Hiking, horseback riding, various naturalist/interpretive activities.
A National Park Ranger offers dinosaur insights at the wall of bones at the Quarry Exhibit Hall.
Utah/Colorado
DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT
RECOMMENDED BY Dan Johnson
If Dinosaur National Monument were to pen an advertising slogan, it might go something like this:
Come for the dinosaurs. Stay for the rafting and camping.
“I think the name of the monument is both a blessing and a curse,” began Dan Johnson. “Lots of people come to see the dinosaurs. Of course, there are no dinosaurs. But you can see many fossils. And with 211,000 acres of terrain, there’s much more beyond the dinosaur fossils for people to explore. There are two world-class rivers in the park—the Green and the Yampa—to explore. There are also a number of cultural sites, ranging from petroglyphs carved by the Native American people who used to call this canyon country home to old pioneer homesteads. A facet of Dinosaur that I appreciate is that it’s not as developed as some parks. It’s more rugged, cut through with backcountry roads that demand four-wheel drive. A visit here is a chance to step back into the history of the northern Colorado plateau. The land is little changed.”
Fifty Places to Camp Before You Die Page 18