2017 Moab Adventure 5K Race

 A few years ago we went to Moab and I participated in an Adventure 5K race and the kids did an Adventure 1K race. It was so much fun I wanted to do it again, and the kids are now old enough they could do it too. We invited our friend, Brooke, who had moved to Colorado to join us, and fortunately she was able to. We met the night before at a hotel and went swimming (warm November!). The next morning we got up and headed to the race site. The marathoners had already started and the half-marathoners were in the process of leaving in waves.

We had time to do a little warm-up dancing.

Brooke got a family photo for us.


And I wanted a photo with Brooke. Can you spot our little photobomber?

The Adventure 5K started in four waves: competitive men, competitive women, recreational, and family and friends. Brooke, Desert Boy, and I started in the third wave, and my husband and Desert Girl started in the fourth wave. The trail quickly became single track.

Soon we were jumping across a creek.

Then it was up a hill and through a cave.

We could see a line forming on the other side of a ravine for the first rope section.

We climbed a ladder and got in line. We had about a 15-20 minute wait.

The line behind us was even longer, and my husband and Desert Girl had to wait an hour here.

Desert Boy was glad when it was his turn, and he scrambled right up.

We had some nice slickrock running on the other side. Here the trail was marked with flour.

Desert Boy started getting really tired here.

Soon we had some downhill, including another roped section.

Then run through a culvert!

Next came the obstacle course. We had to crawl under the cargo nets.

There was even a burlap sack hop.

The balancing was a bit tricky. So was the frisbee golf.

Brooke finished quite fast, sixth woman overall. And a young lady was the overall winner for the Adventure 5K.

Because of their long wait, we had time to go back and find my husband and Desert Girl at the obstacle course.

We've since implemented a couple of these obstacles in our yard!

It would be fun to put in even more.

Here they are near the end.

This adventure 5k race is a little pricey, but a lot of fun. We didn't like the waits for the cliff, so if we do it again, we'll try to be faster in the first part (and not start in the last wave). I'm also really tempted to do the half-marathon, it would be a super pretty course.

Next post: the rest of the Moab trip. You can't go to Moab and just do one thing!

A Trip to Ozark Caves in Arkansas

We're going to take a trip out of the desert for this post. In mid-October I headed to northwest Arkansas. For the first few days, I was at beautiful Blanchard Springs Caverns, an amazing US Forest Service (USFS) show cave. It has huge passageways and huge speleothems. It also has amazing cave biota, including at least two kinds of cave salamanders, plus isopods, pseudoscorpions, and more. 

The reason I was there was to assist with a USFS video for CavesLIVE. This is an educational project, and in mid-February, a free video will be available on their website. In mid-March, there will be a live question and answer session. It's geared towards grades 4-8, but anyone is welcome to view the video and check out all the resources on the website. Plus, You might recognize someone in the video! 

The video was filmed by a professional film company, but most of us definitely weren't professional actors! Fortunately there was a teleprompter and the crew was very friendly. Below are two friends in Tyvek suits ready to do the hydrology part of the filming where they put some dye into a spring. I loved how the yellow stood out!

We had filming in various parts outside and inside the cave.  It was great to get to know these ladies better and everyone else involved.

It was really interesting observing the filming process. We filmed the opening and closing the first day. The next two days it was the middle parts. We hoped we had good continuity!

Next it was on to Eureka Springs, Arkansas for the National Cave and Karst Management Symposium. Eureka Springs is an interesting town, built there because of its 60+ springs, which were thought to have medicinal healing value. Now they are all polluted and you shouldn't drink from any of them. It's still a gorgeous place, and I made it a point to get out and run every morning so I could do some sightseeing.


This little free library was so cute.

A Carnegie librarie. There was moss growing on rocks and building stones everywhere. It was so different than the desert!

The Catholic Church up on the hill.

 We had a field trip one day, and I chose to go on the geology trip down the Buffalo National River, the first national river in the U.S. It's 135 miles of free-flowing water. We just saw a few miles.

We visited a couple shelter caves, saw awesome fossils, and learned more about some of the issues facing the river. Here I am with my paddling partner.

A little more view of the river.

And some friends paddling in to the take-out spot.

Eureka Springs is very hilly, and the Crescent Hotel is up at the top. Sunrise one morning...

I found the trail network near Harmon Park and surprised these deer.

And there are hidden secrets all over.

CaveSim came. This is a trailer with a simulated cave in it. What makes it extra special is that there are sensors in the speleothems and cave critters. Anytime you touch one, the sensor records it. Your goal is to go through the cave without touching anything fragile and as fast as you can. It is so much fun! We're hoping Great Basin National Park might be able to get one to take to various places and teach about cave conservation.

The keynote speaker was Tom Aley, a longtime caver and hydrologist from Ozark Underground Laboratory. He spoke about the history of NCKMS and also related some entertaining tales, such as a house in a cave that leaked a lot. Hmm, go figure.

It was an enjoyable getaway to a part of the country I had never visited before. I did feel a little claustrophobic with all the trees around. And everything was so wet and moldy! I actually missed the desert dryness. But it was a great place to visit, and I'm grateful that I had the opportunity.

If you're every heading to Arkansas, I highly recommend Blanchard Springs Caverns and the Buffalo National River.

Wherever you are, don't forget to check out the CavesLIVE website! The goal of CavesLIVE is to raise awareness and understanding of caves and karst - a resource that is seldom seen and considered mysterious - and connect it to people's everyday lives.

Exploring Central Nevada-Part 2: Ghost Towns and Fossils

Second post of a three-part series. Find the first installment here.

After enjoying hot springs, it was time to head to Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. We followed the signs off Highway 50 west of Austin into Reese River Valley and kept driving and driving. And then we drove some more! It was a long way, mostly on gravel roads, to the state park. We drove up a long gravel slope and saw the flags blowing in the distance. Whew, we had finally made it!

Did I mention a long way on gravel roads? Here's the view from where we had just come from.

We found a campsite in the campground (beware the fiberglass picnic tables, which gave us nasty splinters!), and then set off for a short hike to the fossil site. Along the way, Desert Girl smelled the fragrant blooming cliff rose.

We reached the fossil house, which protects about nine ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles. The house is only open during guided tours to protect the fossils.

Outside is a life-size replica of the ichthyosaur Shoshonis popularis. It was the largest predator around, with teeth like sharks', that could regrow as needed.

We peeked into the windows of the fossil house to see the in situ fossils. We knew we wanted to learn a lot more, so planned to come back the next day for one of the tours.

After an early dinner, we headed to the entrance, where the ghost town of Berlin is preserved. This cabin serves as the visitor center and park offices.

We looking into some of the other cabins to get a glimpse of what mining life was like.

I really liked how the afternoon light lit up the bottles inside this cabin.

Then we started on a hike around some of the structures. It was so beautiful walking around, imagining how different life would have been when the mine was in production.

The state park requires that dogs be on leashes. That was a little bit of a struggle with all the jackrabbits around!

One of the cool things about Berlin is how much of it is left. Nevada is nicknamed the Silver State, as so much silver (and gold and copper and tungsten and other minerals) have been found in it. Mining towns have come and gone all over the state. Most of the time when they disappear, the buildings are dismantled or moved so they can be put up somewhere else. But in Berlin, nearly everything was left as is.

Some of the cars didn't even make it out of town!

The machine shop was gorgeous in the golden light.

Inside we got a nice view of the mill.


I didn't know what a lot of the machinery was for, but it looked cool.

We slept well that night, then the next morning I went for a trail run and we packed up camp. We headed over to the fossil building and waited for a tour. We thought that since it was a Saturday, it might be really crowded, so we go there early. While we were waiting, we noticed a fossil on the ground. Turns out it used to have a shelter over it, but a big wind storm a number of years ago blew the shelter off and the roof off the fossil building. It cost so much to put up a new roof on the fossil building that there wasn't money left to recover this fossil.

With about eight other people, we went into the fossil house and learned all sorts of amazing things about ichthyosaurs, in particular about the Shonisaurus popularis fossils found here. (Click on the links to read more.)

Early miners used their vertebrae as dinner plates. Heavy dinner plates!

They are still finding more ichthyosaur fossils in the area. Ichthyosaurs are the state fossil of Nevada, and it was really cool learning more about them.

After the tour, we headed to the visitor center. When we had checked earlier, the tour to Diana Mine was full, but I just had a feeling we should go check if there was a cancellation. Luckily for us, there was, and we put on helmets and got flashlights to go visit this mine.

I usually don't go into mines, as they aren't as safe as caves, and I'm not a miner. But we thought it would be a fun opportunity.

We saw some of the tools of the trade.

It wasn't so reassuring when the guide pointed out the crack in the rock over our heads. That's why they put up the wooden beams.

Desert Boy was enthralled.

We saw several dead ends, where the ore vein had ended, and then the miners started in a different direction.

Our guide demonstrated how they mined, including how they made holes for the dynamite.

This was our emergency exit if the adit entrance we had come through somehow collapsed. By now we were a couple hundred feet under the hillside, so we were all hoping not to try it.

The guide mentioned that he had explored more of the mine, but we weren't allowed to go further because of bad air and collapsing tunnels.


A close up of the front of the ore cart.

On the way out we took some more photos.

It was great to get back to daylight!

We felt like we had really experienced Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. So it was time to start heading home. We returned through Ione, Nevada. Their motto is the "The Town That Refused to Die." Population 41. We saw some nice buildings in town.

As we returned along the gravel roads, we saw an awesome dust devil in Reese River Valley.

Soon, though, we'd be exploring the mountains...