We left Santee, and headed north to Barstow. This route was
beautiful,
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| It is amazing where some people choose to live! |
through mountains,
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| Mountains |
plains and into the desert.
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| Into the desert |
We could see a
mountain with snow on it,
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| We could see the other side of this mountain from the backyard too. |
so it must have been cooler here than Santee. We
stayed a few days with our friends, taking a couple of rides in the ATV across
the desert, one to the dunes and one to an old mine site.
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| Along the Up-Side-Down river, the Mohave River |
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| Climbing up a 'cliff' |
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| The old mine site |
we headed for Las Vegas. We were at 4000 feet, and passed fields of Joshua
trees.
We checked into South Point
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| The Casino floor |
and enjoyed their dinner buffet. Our flight
was not until 11 the next night, so we left our bags after breakfast [with our Bloody Mary's] and walked the strip.
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| Excalibur Casino |
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| The bridge across to New York New York and its roller coaster |
It was crowded as is usual on a beautiful day. We particularly enjoyed the Bellagio Fountains.
It was an uneventful flight, but the red-eye is not my
favourite flight. Neither of us got much sleep. We had a tail wind all the way
so actually arrived at ¼ to 7 in the morning, but couldn’t land until 7am due
to the curfew at Montreal’s airport. We picked up the rental car and drove to
John’s Mum’s. We were so tired we slept
most of the day. After a short, but packed visit -shopping, visits with friends
to catch up on all the news, and dinners out, - we headed back to the airport
at 5 am a few days later. The weather was beautiful, and the view out the
window fascinating. It was good to see snow disappear except on the mountains,
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| Snow on the Mountains from my plane window |
and red canyons appear.
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| Having now seen so many canyons, we are not sure which these are! |
Before we drove back, we drove downtown past the wedding chapels,
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| There was the Elvis Chapel too, but the picture was no good |
to the Fremont Street Experience, the original casinos in a covered pedestrian road.
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| Fremont, an original Casino |
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| The original Golden Nugget |
Back in Barstow, we enjoyed a quiet visit with much
reminiscing and laughs. We had to stay until Saturday, so John could go off in
the ATV and have a chance to practise his shooting!
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| The Sharpshooter! |
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| Shooting "on the run" |
Then at night several couples
came over for their monthly Games Night- the host picks the game. After a
wonderful German Pot-Luck dinner, we headed into the desert- in the dark- to
play croquet. [The hoops had solar lights pointing at them.] Everyone groaned
at first when we were set up in pairs, but it wasn’t long before flashlights
and sneaky strategies took over. Laughter could be heard everywhere. [Sorry, no pictures, it was too dark!!]
Time to move on to the Grand Canyon. We couldn’t get a site
at the Mather Campground for the first three nights, so we stayed in the Grand
Canyon KOA in Williams. We scouted out the Grand Canyon Park the first day. We decided,
since we were going to be in quite a few National Parks and Monuments, to get
the year’s Pass. It was $80US, but we could come and go as we wished. There are
three free hop-on-hop-off shuttle bus routes, blue, red, and orange which run
every 10 to 15 minutes. They enable you
to go to various places along the rim and into the village. You can get off,
hike for a while to the next stop or two, then pick up a bus again. First we
went to the Visitors” Centre and took the short walk to Mather’s Point on
the rim.
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| Mather's Point from the Rim |
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| We saw more than just the Canyon-Elk came to see us too |
The Grand Canyon is stupendous. It was sunny, with a bit of a haze, so
we had an amazing view with interesting shadows.
The many colours are
incredible, maroons, rusts, oranges, greys, greens, and dark reds. I expected the brilliant colours you see in
pictures, but these are usually seen when the sun or sunset shines on the
cliffs. The colours we saw were much more subtle. It is incredible to look at the Colorado River one mile down
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| Colorado River |
and imagine
the creation of the canyons carved by time, wind, freeze/ thaw and water erosion,
and to realize we are seeing rocks from Kaibab Formation formed 270 million
years ago, to Vishnu Basement rocks formed 1,840 million years ago. It is
believed that the erosion of the canyon, from the Colorado Plateau, began 5-6
million years ago.
We took the blue shuttle to the end and transferred to the
red shuttle to “Hermits Rest”, a rustic looking resting structure
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| The entrance to the park |
with the requisite
gift shop (and an awful café/snack bar), designed and built by architect Mary
Elizabeth Jane Coulter. On the way, we got off and walked
part of the rim trail, then hopped back on.
It was very windy with gusts up to 50mph. I started to walk out to Powell’s
Point,
when a gust hit me, nearly knocking me over. John had gone ahead so he
was fine. The cold front moved in and it was -10C that night.
The second day, before we moved up to the Campground in the
Park, we went into Williams. It is a lovely little town,
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| Main Street |
on the last section of
Route 66 to be replaced by the I-40 highway.
We found a fabulous coffee house-
326 Café- on the main street. There are many, many Route 66 shops with
souvenirs and restaurants-
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| Cafe |
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| Even a Statue of Elvis as part of the cafe |
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| Route 66 stores |
many of them rather pricey. However, there are also
some stores with beautiful leather-work, saddles, and boots, unique gifts and
clothes, and several with beautiful jewellery, Indian carvings and pottery
We drove up to Mather Campground right in the Village-
beautiful sites in lightly shaded forest. We did not even unhitch as the Blue Shuttle
Bus stopped just 5 minutes from our site. We were in and settled early so we
walked the Rim Trail
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| The clouds started to move in |
from the Mather Point by the Visitors’ Centre to the Geological Museum at Yavapai Point.
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| Geological Museum |
This is extremely well done, explaining the
geology of the Grand Canyon, why we see the magnificent sights we see. Unfortunately, the weather continued to get
worse-we had 2 inches of snow the first night, and no services. The solar panel doesn’t work too well when covered with snow!
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| The view from the bedroom window! |
However, it did not stop our hike along the
rim- from Mather Point to South Kaibob Trailhead, a beautiful paved trail
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| This part of the Rim Trail is paved and easy walking |
with clear views of the magnificent canyons.
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| Cape Royal on the left, Wotan's Throne in the middle, Vishnu Temple on the right |
and the wildlife!
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| Elk beside the path |
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| Across the path - Mule Deer- one of 3 |
We rode the Orange shuttle to Pike’s
Peak where some of the mules are housed. We found out though that you have to
book a mule ride, down the canyon to the Colorado River, a year in advance.
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| Trails to the Colorado River |
The
shuttles took us back to the village for lunch, then John walked part of Bright
Angel trail
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| Before the walk.... |
going down into the canyon. I started, but the first part is a
switch-back with a cliff on the open side- not for me!
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| The Arch- At the beginning of Bright Angel Trail seen from the top |
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| The trail |
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| The arch from John's perspective on the Bright Angel Trail |
I waited at the top,
walked part of a trail to Kolb Studio, people-watched, and read my book on the
Geology of the Grand Canyon. The Kolb brothers decided to make their home in
the Grand Canyon in 1902, and were the first to document a boat trip down the
Colorado River with a movie camera.
The next day on our way out we drove the rim highway east to
Desert View. This is at the east end of the Grand Canyon where it meets the
Painted Desert.
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| The Painted Desert beyond the Canyon |
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| The east end of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon |
We stopped at Tusayan Ruin and Museum.
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| The Museum |
This is the ruins of a
Pueblo village.
The structures have not been reconstructed, but
stabilized.
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| Living Quarters |
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| Storage Rooms |
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| Kiva - a Ceremonial room for rites, festivals and ceremonies |
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Humphreys Peak, highest point in Arizona, one of San Francisco Peaks
perhaps viewed as a spiritual place, as Hopi people did. |
This is one of more than
4000 archeological sites recorded in the Grand Canyon. People began
construction of this site about 1185AD. It probably housed 16 – 20 people. The
museum contains artifacts collected by archeologists in 1930’s, and their
interpretation of the lives of people in this community.
At Desert View there is a magnificent 70 ft. Watchtower,
one of the most prominent architectural features of the south Rim.
It was designed
and built in 1932 by the architect, Mary Coulter in collaboration with Hopi
artisans of the day, including well known Hopi artist Fred Kaboutie. Mary
Coulter’s work is magnificent. It fits in with the environment and appears to
have been there forever. In fact it is relatively new. On the walls of the
tower are pictographs murals by Kaboutie, representative of those found in the
Canyon.
Desert View is at the east end of the Canyon where it meets the Painted
Desert.
Our next stop was Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park on the
Arizona-Utah border, in the heart of the Navajo Nation. We were booked into
Gouldings’ Campground, dry- camping area in Utah. When we checked in and
enquired about the dry-camping [no facilities] area, we were directed to the
large sandy parking lot across the street. However, on the plus side, it was at
the bottom of a beautiful red rock cliff, and we were the only campers.
We were
able to use the pool, laundry, wifi and showers in the main building. There
were also water fill stations. John got up one morning to take pictures
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| Sunrise at Monument Valley |
and hike to the top of the cliff by the camp.
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| He found an arch! |
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| ...and looked down on the campground |
We
discovered that as you drive into the Valley, you drive back into Arizona.
Harry Goulding and his wife, Leone [Mike], came to Monument
Valley in the early 1920’s. In 1928, they built a Trading Post, conducting
business with the local Navajo Indians, trading silver jewelry and hand-woven
rugs for food and supplies. During the Depression, however, Monument Valley
suffered. Down to his last $60, Harry and Mike headed to Hollywood as they had
herd that Producer John Ford was looking for a new site for a movie.
Persevering until they saw him, they showed him pictures of the Valley and a
movie site was ‘born’. Within a month, Ford and his crew began to shoot
“Stagecoach” with John Wayne, the first of his nine movies shot in the Valley.
Today, it is still used as a movie and commercial location. Gouldings has grown
to a large Lodge complex with a museum in their original house
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| Gouldings' Original House and Trading Post |
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| John Wayne's house when he was filming |
and Trading Post,
restaurants, a grocery store, garage, medical clinic, Earth Spirit movie
theatre which shows a documentary on the culture of the Navajo people and a
John Wayne movie each night and a campground.
The first day, we took a Gouldings’ tour given by a Navajo
women. It was interesting to hear the extra input from her memories as a child
and from her family, living in a Hogan.
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| Navajo Hogan |
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| View to the East out the Hogan door |
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| Navajo woman weaving |
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| There are no nails in the Hogan |
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| The Summer Shelter. Herbs and fruits were dried on the roof |
Driving into the Park, you see a
beautiful Hotel complex called “The View”,
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| The View |
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| Looking at the Valley from The View |
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| Looking up at The View from the Valley |
perched on the rim of the canyon.
They also have cabins perched on the rim, and a campground, but there are no
services at all, no water accessible, and no dump station.
The Valley is magnificent. At the Grand Canyon, we were
looking down into the canyon from the top. In Monument Valley Tribal Park, you
drive right into the valley on Wildcat Trail,
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| Wildcat Trail through the Valley |
with massive monolithic
structures rising above you.
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| Large Mesa |
Many of them have names- sometimes named by the
Navajo, sometimes by the Gouldings, sometimes by early pioneers. You gaze in
awe, and wonder – how could these structures form, rising from the canyon
floor, some large like mesas and buttes,
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| Merrick Butte |
and some small, sometimes close to another,
sometime completely by themselves. There are the Mittens- left and right,
[In Stagecoach, John Wayne rides off between
the Mittens at the beginning and back between the Mittens at the end.], Mesas, Buttes
[smaller than Mesas], Snoopy,
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| Snoopy - on his back on the dog house! |
the Three Sisters,
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| The Three Sisters [Nuns] |
The Totem Poles,
a Castle,
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| The Castle through the North Window |
Brigham Young's Tomb
and the John Ford Point, where you can take a picture of a cowboy on a
horse.
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| The cowboy posed for us. Can you find the car? |
From one Viewpoint in the Valley, we looked out on the Colorado Plain stretching to the east.
Many of the cliffs have dark streaks on them.
This is called Desert Varnish. It is a thin coating of clay minerals, manganese and iron which appears as black streaks on exposed rock surfaces, brought out by the rain. At most of the viewpoint stops on the route through the Valley there are
several Navajos with tables set up displaying a variety of items of handmade
jewellery.
We decided to check out the Goosenecks State Park as we
wanted to stay there one day, on our way to the Grand Canyon. We passed through Mexican Hat,
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| We figured out where the town got its name! |
and some amazing folded cliffs,
before we turned off the main highway. We drove into Gooseneck State Park,
oohed and awed as we looked down,
then drove up to the Moki Dugway, which winds 1200 feet from
bottom to top, on 3 miles of graded gravel at an 11% grade. We watched cars go
up the first two switchbacks and disappear into the cliff. The road actually
continues snaking up to the highway to the north.
We then drove, from West to East, into the Valley of the
Gods on the gravel and clay road, so narrow in places, we had to pull over for a car to pass. The massive cliffs are to the north as you drive into the Valley.
This was the way to go. You first pass a small ranch house, the Valley
of the Gods’ B&B. You can see the various amazing cliffs, mesas and buttes
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| The only other truck we saw on the trail |
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| We thought this looked like a Pharaoh |
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| The winding road ahead into the valley |
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| As we got closer... |
in the distance, standing like sandstone sentinels, which have been eroded by
wind and water over eons of time, rising from the valley floor. Each one
becomes more clear and takes shape as you drive closer. It is named “Valley of
the Gods” as a miniature Monument Valley. Much of the Valley looks like a Mayan
ruins.
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| This was actually taken later in the afternoon |
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| Flat-topped Mesas and Buttes |
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| The last three in the Valley |
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| Every Valley has a Castle |
Many of the mesas are stepped like pyramids. These features are sculpted
from Cedar Mesa sandstone dating to the Permian age, 250 million years ago. The
sandstone is cemented by calcium carbonate and was deposited in huge dunes near
the shore of an ancient sea. We felt as
if we were the only ones around. We didn’t see another car until we were almost
half way through the 17mile journey.
As we left Monument Valley, we had to stop and take the iconic picture of the long straight highway leading to the monuments.
We did move on to boondock for one night at Gooseneck State
Park.
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| Where we planned to camp... |
What a wondrous view as we looked at the San Juan River 1000 feet below.
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| The Goosenecks of the San Juan River |
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| San Juan River |
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| Enjoying a cup of tea by the rim |
This is one of the most impressive examples of an entrenched river meander in North America. The river twists and
turns flowing over six miles, while only advancing 1 1/2 miles west.
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| Sunset at Gooseneck SP |
As we travelled, we saw many cacti and wildflowers just beginning to open, so we stopped often to take pictures of them. They are so vibrant.
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| Claret Cup, Hedgehog cacti |
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| Fish-hook Barrel Cactus |
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| San Raphael Prickly Poppy |
Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Dead Horse State
Park and Capitol Reef National Park are to come….
