Reading my blog I remembered how much fun it had been making it, and will continue even if no-one reads it, for my own benefit. I still have my notes to finish the Grand Tour which I will. It was just an awesome vacation and we have been recalling it a lot lately as it was just over one year ago that we wre there (this would have been a better year weather-wise!)

I have started painting some of my favorite parts - Arches mainly - but watercolor was not going to work on those colored rocks so I am using gouache...

We got up to clear blue skies and sun and a very dewy wet tent. The sun soon dried it off and we left, after a quick look at our accommodation in daylight: the dam held not much of a lake. If this is a reservoir then the water supply is indeed sorely depleted.

We had been awakened by a number of unusual bird calls but all we had seen was a number of jackrabbits on the site – and some nice cacti. As we drove out the park heavy gray cloud moved in and it was raining before we got back on the I-40 which runs parallel to route 66. We got gas and went to the ATM and had a fruitless search for decent coffee.

The landscape became desolate once again. I don’t think I could live in this landscape even if the weather was not so nasty. Beside the road every so often we would see piles of vehicles left to rot, not in a junkyard just a heap. We passed a used car lot where every one of the vehicles was not so much used as abused….smacked in fronts, sides and backs but on sale anyway. The cows were chewing on tough little bushes and dried out grass, the ranches up for sale…in the numerous tiny towns restaurants were boarded up, motels had broken windows and peeling signs…though the big chain hotels and motels seemed to be doing well enough.

We passed a sign to”Rodeopia: a Cowboy Utopia”...

At the Texas state line we were informed of the fact AND told we were entering Central Time (now just one hour different from home!) and we were Welcome to Texas, though I think they are…

Talking to youngest daughter about her computer problems (solved)..and yes, we are back in cellphone contact….I told her Texas smelled of gasoline…we had just passed a filling station and the smell clung to us…in fact Texas had other smells:

We have passed many a cow farm, many of them Angus as these were, but only the ones in Texas smelled and these ones were truly obnoxious. The cows were penned in small fenced corrals and standing in deep mud and ….and …you know…what a smell! Poor cows, too. The sign proclaimed: Quality Beef …I beg to differ.

Texas had 2 speeds on the highway. 70 daytime and 65 at night and even the trucks were obeying it. Many states had forbidden trucks to go that fast, but at least they were not going above it, but no-one was.

One newly refurbished enterprise advertised itself frequently: Horses Hotel signs offered a free 72oz steak and the billboards were at regular intervals for dozens of miles. Getting closer it turns out that to get it free one person must consume the 4 and a half pounds of beef in under one hour! Yuk! Let me repeat myself: poor cows.

We passed a huge windmill farm with 20-30 windmills making use of the very blustery winds. We saw a Halliburton truck – Yuk. We passed a truck the back of which had John 3:16-17 on it and another one (we have seen a few of them) who enlighten following drivers with biblical quotes: it ain’t New York.

The Texan landscape was dreary and bleak, even grim. The oilfields AAA insisted we were crossing were not in evidence. Maybe Texas just says it gets money from oil and beef.

We did get Starbucks coffee and a great salad buffet in Amarillo TX and the servers were very friendly and sweet. It was the home of the Quarter Horse Museum, too.

As we came close to the border with Oklahoma there was a last hurrah! a dump of cars just left beside the road in the middle of nowhere and on the other side bleak yellow land with barely a tree…I was ready to leave (we did only see one Bush Cheney 2004 sign though on desperate and desolate ranch land).

Then we were in Oklahoma and instantly, really immediately, the landscape changed.

Different land use.

The fields were green and there were trees dotted everywhere, in groups of 10-12 even without an accompanying home, as well as individually. The contrast was amazing.

At Elk City we were informed that Susan Powell was Miss America in 1981. Clinton has yet another route 66 museum.

The lay of the land was a gently rolling –at first sight rather English- looking: the red soil contrasted with the green trees and cows grazing in green fields. And hedges! Lots of hedges. The sky was blue with white clouds and there were bright yellow wildflowers on the verge. And yes, there were differences: oilfields here and there, including many donkey engines – beam engines – it seems there is even one in the grounds of the State Capitol in Oklahoma City.

Another difference from the previous state is that, having cleaned the windshield in Amarillo nothing hit it till OK. There was nothing alive in Texas! No insects…once we got to more bearable scenery, the bugs started to collide with us once again. Texas is scary. They even have a town called Bushland: we did not go.

We had dropped over 1000 feet in elevation in the day. Other things had changed too: RV Parks now advertised that they has storm cellars!

Weatherford proudly proclaimed itself the home of Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford and United Methodist Churches showed up again.

Mike liked the fake police sign: a post with the same lights as a police car to make cars slow down as they saw it in the distance. We had dinner on the edge of Oklahoma City : Horse Show Capital of the World; saw turn-offs for Bethany and EdmOnd, and the signs for the National Memorial made us quiet and sad as we remembered that day.

We did not stop at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum – surprised? But motored on to Tulsa. The road is a toll road, fast, not corrugated like the ones that preceded it and we moved quickly. The song may say it’s 24 hours to Tulsa but we can tell you it’s $3.50 paid half way along the road (if you get off before the end you have to show your receipt for a refund: go figure!) and we made our way to Broken Arrow and a really great deal on a Comfort Inn with the nicest person at the desk and the ability to sign on, pay bills and update this blog…

Tomorrow we head to Kansas and beyond…mileage to date: 5821.

We started the day at Gallup, NM on route 66. On our way to the Petrified Forest we had passed a teepee motel ( guests stay in teepees) a place I recently saw on a PBS show on the roadside attractions and “follies” of the 30s and 40s. The motels opposite it had broken windows and the area showed signs of serious depression which was sad.

Albuquerque was being hammered by a rainstorm, lightning and golf-ball hail just ahead of us and on the TV we heard tell of 3 feet of rain standing in the streets. There has hardly been a day when we have not seen a thunderstorm happening, though we have not actually been in one. The other side of the Grand Canyon had lightning most days and heavy rain while we got just a few spots of rain.

Gallup got just a little rain overnight. Today we spent a little time in Gallup, looking at items in the Indian Trading stores and then left to investigate historic scenic byway 53 through the Zuni Mountains. We did a little shopping in Zuni itself buying some pieces by Indian artists and then drove along to El Morro National Monument.

El Morro ...

Further along the road we visited the information center for El Malpais National monument – Mal pais is Spanish for badlands too but these very different. The area is made up of an exploded volcano, last eruption 1000 years ago, and the lava flow it left behind. For cavers this is a great place. When we went in to ask what we could see in a short time, the ranger was giving instructions to a man and his party who wanted to go in the caves: “go in, get used to the light level, then put on a warm jacket, acclimatize, then explore…” hypothermia can occur within minutes if not careful, the outside temp being 40-50 degrees above the cave’s. The group was going in to watch the thousands of bats leave for their evening meal. Many of the bat species have already left on migration but still thousands of resident bats would be there.

We took a short walk up to see the huge lava flow from a limestone escarpment, along the road was a natural stone arch but we had seen many this trip and it was getting late and we wanted to camp out as this would probably be our last chance.

We passed Albuquerque in the dusk – telescopes dotted the hills outside the town and drove till after dark. The sky was awesome. Again we saw lightning to the south (on our right.) we could make out large mountains around us as we drove up and then down into lower altitudes. Between Albuquerque and Santa Rosa where we camped, we stopped at a rest area where the facilities had a board so you could post your approval or disapproval of the rest area by pushing the relevant button. The restrooms were clean enough but I did wonder what to press after going in here and seeing the sign: this restroom is under video surveillance….

We had passed the 5000th mile of the trip just a mile or two after el Morro...we got our first gas under $2 a gallon since before Yellowstone 2 weeks ago and we were making eastward progress.

We camped in the dark at the Santa Rosa State Park under a glorious sky but with heavy dew even before bedtime. There was only one other tent on the site (the RV park had half a dozen campers.)

We ended the day with mileage of 5270.

We left Grand Canyon National Park at 10:30 am. The mileage for the trip so far: 4594 miles. we stopped by the post office on iste with more postcards and to send home a CD of our pictures so far:there's a lot of them! Each evening , using the power inverter (becausethis laptop's battery is really bad) we donload from the camera to the machine, then make a CD every few days. We did this in California last year so that if the machine was stolen out pictures would not go with it.

We had breakfast at the internet cafe and actually got those last entries online at last, then crossed the road for a latte because the man in there even beats Starbucks at them, then off to Flagstaff, route 66 (which we will travel on- off and on- for a couple of days)with our first stop at Walnut Canyon National Monument on the edge of Flagstaff.

We were stiull not sure of our plans...one option was....

As well as that i really was not enjoying the intensity of the sun and the heat and the thought of it getting even nastier did not thrill me. I wanted Mike to make the decision as the driver. He decided the cactus frterst would be fun but not worth that: we decided to spend a day in New Mexico which was on the way, being east of Flagstaff.

Another advantage was I would not see that wretched Coconina Forest sign again! This "forest" wraps itself around the Grand Canyon area and you travel in and out of it. In local terms, it's a forest in my terms it is a disappointment: I really miss real trees. The Coconina one is just juniper and pin(y)on pine trees and few are bigger than me and each surrounded by a large patch of scrubby yellow grass...I had not realized how much I would miss trees, decent sized and especially deciduous trees...

Walnut Canyon is a wonderful canyon with nature walk and ruins from around 1000 years ago, when the local Native Americans built stone homes between cave floor and overhanging stone ledges. we did not have time to walk it all as we had other plans and a way to go.

The idea was to travel east, past the meteor crater and to get to The Petrified Forest National Park and from there see a little of the Painted Desert.

It was quite a haul. even taking the fast road and the Arizona desert scenery just desolate. the sun fierce through the tinted windows of the car...we had to move quickly to see this extended park but it was worth the trip. The tree trunks are in a huge range of colors and scattered over a huge area.

This was never a forest - the trees were washed down to the site from somewhere else long ago. As the road continues we drove into what is known as the Badlands of the South. The area of the Painted Desert we got to see has similarities and differences from the Badlands which started out this trip for us. The formations are of a soft clay, eroding at a quarter inch a year and look like the ones in the north west but are of a different color (they have more lavenders and blue-grays) and are more spread out and in fact, there are examples over the huge area from Monument Valley eastwards. As home of the Hopi Indians much of the desert is not open to the public and not accessible but the part that is is spectacular. We got to see most of it just as the sun was setting for the day.

With no known campsite in the area we traveled on and found a motel in Gallup, New Mexico for the night - run by a British man from Lancashire and his London wife When we got there we disocvered e had crososed the time zone and were in Mountain time - daylight savings version and now only 2 hours behind the east coast: we felt we were really were starting homewards, though tomorrow will be a day to look around rather than make huge progress.
We passed the Arizona Divide

Day Sixteen

I woke up at the very time church would be starting back home: local time was 7:30 a.m. This would be our last day at the Grand Canyon and we still had things we wanted to do.

We had started doing the rim trail. We had done the easternmost part just after arriving. We had done the westernmost part on Friday. There remained an easy, paved trail close to the visitor centers and stores and one area less easy to walk just west of the main tourist area. So we set off to do that part, from Hopi point to Grand Canyon Village.

We took care to ride in the front part of the shuttle this time.

The shuttle buses in this area, because it is popular, especially at sunset, have a short front part and a trailing section. Friday we rode in the trailer at my insistence, in the back seat to be precise. I have never experienced anything so bumpy in my life. The old wagon trains, when rushing downhill must have felt like that!

When the girls were young and we were pushing them in their strollers over pebbles or cobblestones we would encourage them to say “ahhhh” and enjoy the warbly sound they made. So that’s what I did, between laughing hysterically. It struck me as hilarious. Mike sort-of looked on in wonder and a young woman up front gave me a haughty look but what did I care? I just ahhhh-ed on and enjoyed the ride.

Mike refused to do it again. He said it hurt his insides and his back. Probably true. I suggested he rush and tell people not to get in the trailer. He seemed to think they needed to find out for themselves.

It was a much warmer day and the sun very bright. At a couple of the overlooks tour buses spilled out their passengers and we hid till they had gone so we could enjoy the place in peace. At one point you walk past an old uranium mine which the Park only acquired in 1988. It mined the nation’s finest uranium ore and was before that a silver and valadium mine.

We walked and gazed for about four hours, went back to the site for a very late lunch (soup from a Safeways!) and then to Tusayan to try again at downloading the blog: success (apart from the order…11 really should come between 10 and 12.)

We got to the park in time for sunset which at first looked cloudy but which turned out okay. The best site is a shuttle bus ride away and we had decided we would rather not do it than stand with a crowd, but we found a quieter spot we could drive to.

Back at the site I started packing things up and Mike cooked dinner and we had English cider, also from Safeway’s in Flagstaff. After it was dark and the moon rising, we went back to take a look at the canyon by moonlight. The sky was clear, the stars awesome and visible to the horizon in each direction. The howling wind in the canyon sounded like a stormy seashore and we could see the lights of the Lodge on the North rim and a light in the bottom of the canyon at Indian Garden ` where some of the hikers we saw leaving today on Bright Angel Trail would be spending the night (you are not supposed to try and go down and back in one day – it has, literally, killed people.)

One of the strange things about life at this altitude is the way packaging responds to the air pressure. There is a newish item on the store shelves, cups of mini cookies that have a foil top. They don’t stand up in the store here. The tops and bottoms are so bulged they wobble over. Yogurt tops bulge out too making them look very suspect, as do those thin tubes of peanuts which are round and tight: stuff I never thought about.

Tomorrow we move on to the Petrified Forest.

We set off out of the park after a leisurely breakfast. Mike had declared the previous breakfast, bought in Market Plaza as: ” so deeply unsatisfying (he) felt that nutrition had been removed from (his) body.” We cooked our own. Bacon and scrambled eggs, preceded by grapefruit juice and cereal and lots of coffee. We were set for the day!

Odometer reading for the trip as we set off: 4222.

We left the park a little before 10a.m. and traveled due south to Williams and turned east towards Flagstaff. Just a few miles on the road we passed Lance Armstrong’s bicycle tour promoting the need for cancer awareness/ funds for finding cures going north as we were headed south. They were going to be at the internet café where we will be uploading this tomorrow morning.

The Campsite at Grand Canyon National Park has internet access, at least, a chance to browse the web but no wireless and no opportunity to input from CD, plus the service is only available during the day when we have been busy. Show how things are changing though!

Our agenda for the day was to visit the Meteor Crater first and then whatever else we had time to do.

I have wanted to visit this crater since I was about 6 years old. A friend of the family, Alf, introduced me to a few constellations and gave me a guide to the London Planetarium and a book about the stars and the stories behind the naming of the constellations, both of which I still have. From that point on I have loved the stars and the visible planets. I never walk outside without looking up, even when I know it is raining, I just do it.

Just a few years later Telstar was launched. Followed by other artificial satellites. At the time, being so novel and so few, the passage times of these satellites were printed in the family’s newspaper; the Daily Telegraph ( hey! Don’t blame me I was still in single digits remember!) My father was dragged out into the yard to help me locate them, night after night. I now wonder if that had something to do with the switch to the Daily Mail (I know! But thsi was pre- tabloid format, had Big Chief I-Spy in it, a good cryptic crossword puzzle and at the time was politically favorable to the DT at least. )

As a teenager I was insistent I did not want to visit America except to see this crater, the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest and the big, big trees…

Traveling along we realized we had the now novel experience of having cell phone service! In fact, both cell phone systems suddenly cranked up. I called the 2 stateside daughters, one was not answering; the youngest was in and having computer problems. So once we got a good and crackle-free reception in the outskirts of Flagstaff, Mike walked her through some steps to try and locate the problem, which she had basically worked out already.

After that was done, and it took a while, we set off again for Meteor Crater, east of Flagstaff.

As you approach there is a sudden patch of greenery and trees in the scrubby flat desert. The Barringer family who have owned the carter site for a hundred years also have a gas station, a couple of Subway franchises and a camping site, hence the trees. You take a right off the interstate and head 5 mile sup the road to the crater which looms ahead, a shallow rim across a slight mound of debris in the flat landscape.

We were concerned it might be poorly done or amateur but that was far from the case. The scientific display was excellent; the store was the usual mix of items for school groups and tours but with some nice meteorite pieces and meteorite dust from the site itself. There were a couple of larger pieces of the meteorite discovered long ago – most of it vaporized on impact. And you get to walk out on a little of the rim and just look at the huge hole before you.

The scale is enormous and hard to take in except they did one thing which we had jokingly said was needed at Grand Canyon (where the 8 – 12 mile view across the canyon is hard to grasp) – on the crater floor, in the middle, they have stuck a 6 foot astronaut figure and a large US flag (like the moon-walk image from long ago). Fixed telescopes look at this and other objects. Having seen it in the telescope and still finding it hard to locate without it, really helps to make the point: this carter is huge (one mile across). I loved it, though it was hot and the sun uncomfortably bright now we were out of the canyon area.

We shared a Subway sandwich before leaving and setting off for two national monuments on one piece of land with a glimpse of a third!

Sunset Crater National Monument was not created by a whopping big meteorite but by volcanic action. The whole area is covered in volcanic ash, dust and amazing lava formations. This volcano did not explode – it oozed. Between the mid 1000s to the 1200s A.D. this volcano created cinder cones in the area and created waves of lava which today look like what happens when you break up a road surface: plates of black, tarry looking rock. On the hillsides there is a fine ashy dust which, in many places, is only now beginning to be populated with plants. Yet another odd landscape in this vacation of wild and weird scenery.

As you go on further in this park you start to get glimpses of the Painted Desert: pink and peach rocks and sands and, in the misty distance, strange cone shaped rock formations.

We continued round as the road turns into Wupatki National Monument, a park with Hopi ruins. The Hopi lived here until almost the time when the volcano became dormant. They lived in the red clay and brick structures people call pueblo dwellings though that is not a word they would have used, arriving later with Mexican Indians who followed them on this land. There are around 10 sets of ruins in different shapes and conditions, 4-5 are named and have information on hand. It was getting darker but we got to all but one of the named ones.

The Wupatki set are the largest and best preserved. The part I loved most was - what a surprise! a geological feature. The village had a blow hole. We knew about blow holes in seaside situations (caves where water rushed in and expels the air from the cave up onto the cliff) but this one is all about air pressure. There is a cave beneath the desert floor. When air pressure is high outside and low inside, air is sucked in, only to be expelled when the air pressure drops outside. We were fortunate in that the air pressure was low and after a thousand years the blow hole was still doing its thing and a breath-like puff of air could be felt escaping. To the Hopi this was one of their gods breathing his life on them….

As it became dark we returned to Flagstaff still hoping to find a place to get on the internet and put the previous 3 (actually 4, that’s why they are in the wrong order, I thought I had done day 11 already) but found nothing. Did find Starbucks and a New Mexican restaurant where the food is lighter and high cuisine but at really decent prices. We both had things we had not had before and they were excellent.

Flagstaff is the world’s first Dark City – home of the Lowell Observatory, the streetlights are a pale orange, do not throw light into the sky and are generally much dimmer than usual. There is none of the ghostly and ghastly glow which usually heralds you are approaching an urban center. Not knowing the place it took us some time to locate a central area for this meal and to buy a few necessities for the evening: ice, wood, wine…

Back to the campsite, late. It looks like there may have been a nice sunset in the canyon, though maybe not. Each evening clouds have rolled in minutes before sunset and there were clouds around when we were leaving Sunset Crater and Wupatki. Tomorrow is our last chance for a good sunset….

We managed to have a very cosy night and it turned out the temperature did not fall below the mid- thirties. Tonight may be different though. The clearing of the skies promised for days is still a little slow so now at 8pm we have the most fabulous clear sky, but during the day the weather was more mixed so the ground has not warmed up much and now we have the most gorgeous, crisp dry air and the stars are amazing.

After laying on the picnic bench looking at the stars, spotting planes (many) and satellites (5) and meteors (2) I decided to come in and type so Mike could play with fire and make lots of smoke…a roaring fire will warm us up ready for bedtime.

(We just discovered that the night vision scope I bought him is really great on the Milky Way…)

Anyway…to today.

We got up fairly early for us, had breakfast at the Market Plaza, came back and prepared for our day and left before 9 for the shuttle buses. It took 3 of them to get us to where we wanted to go. We decided when we got here we would like to walk the rim trails. These are fairly easy hikes along the top of the canyon. In some places the walks are even handicapped accessible. The canyon changes how it looks throughout he day. What you can see depends on the light in the sky, of course, but also the amount of pollution coming in from Southern California, Southern Arizona and from Mexico. Visibility can be as much as 100 miles or as low as 18 miles. Judging from the shadowy shape of Mount Trumbull, 60 miles away, our visibility was mid-way in the scale. In addition as you walk you twist and turn in what you see and so there are different shadows and light plays from the clouds and the sun.

We had thought we would take the shuttle to the end of the trail at Hermit’s Rest and hike back. If it rained or got too hot or we were tired we would hop back on the shuttle at the next stop. Not so easy! The buses stop at different stops in each direction, or not at all and in the end it made sense to walk towards Hermit’s Rest. We got off the bus at Hopi Point and set off. At this point the trail becomes stony and rough quite quickly. We walked along through the trees, beside sheer drops down to the Canyon bottom – not quite to the Colorado ( red with dissolved clay from all the recent rain) as that is always out a way from the South Rim ( but very far from the North Rim.)

In the 1.9 miles the trail drops 10000 feet. It is slow walking—there are overhanging tree branches that snatch your sunhat, and tree roots and loose stones at your feet – but the scenery is, of course, fantastic.

We walked/ looked/ drank our water for almost 6 hours, several times meeting back up with the shuttle bus route and the people who were not walking. In the whole time only 10 people – four couples and 2 individuals were going the other way. It was a really peaceful hike.

1.2 miles before the end of the trail there is a shuttle stop and several people obviously decided they would do the end of the trail on foot. I felt vaguely irritated at them…I mean, we had walked miles along that rim, drinking the water, eating the salty snacks, raising the legs for part of each hour to compensate for the high altitude, being so obedient and now here they were waltzing around in front of us as if they had been walking all along…we passed several of these couples, one pair I could not stay behind: they had designer jeans on with the sharpest creases in them I have ever seen – it’s HIKING for heaven’s sake! We ended up doing the last part of the trail in the fastest time because I had been wanting to get that restroom for hours, they sure were not going to beat me to it!

It reminded Mike and I of an incident years ago, when we used to vacation as a family in North Yorkshire, staying in a cottage in Sinnington which belonged to my pastor. We did not have a car and so we would walk miles to get shopping and on the days we did not need to shop we would walk miles for pleasure. Our oldest 2 daughters were often dragged 15 or 20 miles in a day while the youngest wallowed in her stroller…anyway, on this occasional we were going to Lastingham.

Opposite the tiny ancient stone church where St. Cedd or Chad (they were brothers I believe) or maybe both are buried, there is a pub with a garden and we would eat there.

Lastingham is in a steep valley and as we came down the hill a man passed us in his car. Then, as we tottered down the hill we saw him stop the car by the side of the road a few hundred yards before the pub, put on his hiking socks and boots, pick up his backpack and a hat and a long walking stick and “hike” to the pub! By the time he got there he was comfortable and eating his food. Just as we were leaving, up he got walked to the, changed back to his other clothes and drove on! After all these years – nearly 20 I guess- I still wonder what all that was about!? It created much amusement anyway.

No tarantulas today, to Mike’s disappointment. Every time we come back onto the site there are mule deer around, large female deer, sometimes with a young one. They have enormous ears. Very cute. We saw swallows and swifts in the canyon and lots of ravens, nothing more exotic – it is very hard to see a condor but it would have been fun. Some interesting plants though. And last night the coyotes were making such a racket; one was quite close to us.

After that we decided to take a short trip out of the park to nearby Tusayan as I had seen advertising boasting of an internet café. In fact there were 2 espresso internet cafes in only about 20 businesses just outside the Park but one had no wireless and the other one had wireless but no-one knew the access code. That is the third time that has happened – the connection is there but not the necessary information! So hopefully, tomorrow, Saturday, we will find somewhere to upload all three days. The lattes were excellent though so the trip was not a total waste of time.

We came back to the campsite had a quick look to see if the sunset was great on the rocks, but it was not – the cloud had come in at the last moment again, there were a few spots of rain and a rainbow but not in the canyon. So we went back to the campsite, where Mike made an excellent dinner and I gazed at the sky…

As for our upcoming plans: we still have a little of our rim route to do, going in the other direction but just 2-3 miles and we have a couple of days here yet. Tomorrow we think we will take a day trip out of the Park as we suspect Saturday will be a busier day and we have been spoiled by having so much space to ourselves.

Long term our plans keep changing. We had intended going to the North Rim, which closes very soon for winter. We had also considered going to Las Vegas as a contrast. I don’t expect to like Las Vegas, loathing gambling as I do, not liking shows and being uncomfortable with a lot of commercialism but it would be incredible to see all this opulence in a desert. I have always thought it would be such a waste to go there/ spend that time and money on something I don’t think I will enjoy. To fit a day of it into this trip seemed ideal. What we think we may do one day, though, is fly to Las Vegas to do the pleasurable things we did not have time for this trip. That way we see the place at the start and end and in between we hire a car and go to Zion and Bryce National Parks (so many people on this trip have told us we will love them) and The North Rim of the Canyon. Having made this decision has allowed the last week to be far less stressful. We leave here Monday morning and will head to the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert for a night, visit anything else we like in the area or start to wander back to New York State, a route taking us some 2300 miles and several states. We have a goal in mind for getting home but don’t intend to be bound by it. We have to be back for the Tuesday after Columbus Day for work, anything before that gives us time to unpack and unwind…

We were not as cold as we expected but the temperature had fallen below 40f overnight. During the night I heard coyotes and in the morning the huge flapping wings of ravens flying around the campsite: I love ravens mostly because of a great series of children’s books I read to my daughters years ago – from that point on all ravens are Mortimer to me - a bright- and wonderfully ill-behaved - bird..

We got up (47 degrees and fairly cloudy) and made breakfast– grinding the Starbucks beans (the supermarket here sells Starbucks beans – we brought our own, plus electric grinder…and the power inverter and the Coleman’s power supply….

Then we headed off on our first walk along the rim, calling in at the Visitor Center for some ideas. It is a new construction in a large plaza and meant to service the thousands of people a day who are here in summer. We were alone in the vast hall save for two Rangers at the info desk and a man asking a question. Immediate help! The cool, weather, it is unusually so, is a nuisance but to have this place so much to ours is such a treat!

The part of the Grand Canyon, South Rim that people get to visit has a number of easy rim walks. You can take the free shuttles as private cars cannot drive most of the roads (not enough parking I suspect.) The shuttles are every 15 minutes at this time of year and you can stay on and ride or get off and look at the view and hop on the next one, or like us, you can take the shuttle to the extreme point and walk back.

After our experience at Yellowstone, which found a surfeit of ways to imagine your demise, the Grand Canyon is less exotic. Obviously you can fall over the side which they say happens pretty rarely (though we saw guys who were trying their best to do it.)
There is a book out about all the people who have succeeded. It seems that just about no-one survives the first 300 feet…and there is plenty more rock after that. Unlike Yellowstone they do not have bob cats, wolves, bear, moose and bison. Anyway, apart from falling, they do warn about the mountain lions and the rutting elk, common with their neighbor to the north, and then it gets sketchier…the mule deer, as adorable and totally disinterested as they have seemed to us, can be upset if you want their space…oh – and- er – it’s hawk migration season….and er…male tarantula migrating season too.

The hawk migration seemed to be more troubling to rodents than ourselves and the spider thing just weird…like an addendum. With the mountain lions they told you what to do – star at them, back off, scream etc…but nothing else was said about the 8-legged furries…and where are they going from and to? And what about the females?! I sort of mocked the whole thing.

Well, guess what was on the path as we walked from to Mather Point? A tarantula who posed nicely for a photograph. We also saw turkey vultures hanging on out on a rock; eagles, more ravens and a lot of smaller birds I do not recognize. No mountain lions this time.

After our walk, we decided we deserved a latte. The other dire warnings are about altitude sickness and what might happen if we walk too far or too fast up here in the thin air and especially the sun. In current conditions I reckon we are pretty safe from heat exhaustion or sun stroke…the hypothermia is much more likely.

While it is to be 88 degrees down by the Colorado today we will be lucky top get to 60…
Tonight could get below freezing if the anticipated clear skies arrive.

Signs warn : this is no place to diet, and all are encouraged to drink lots of water, stop and rest, eat salty snacks and have good , hearty meals…the drinking water comes all the way from the North Rim and tastes great.

Anyway, we came back to the campsite, read, did crosswords puzzles, cooked, ate and headed to the evening Ranger Tour in the “Shrine of Ages” auditorium: on the geology of the GC. It was pretty good. And so now I am having a drink of tea and Mike is tending to the fire. At dinnertime we shared a can of Beamish Stout made just 10 miles from where we used to live…! I guess the park Service is trying to make all the Brits feel at home because most of them appear to be here. (The pound is very strong and the dollar weak.)

Silliest sight of the day: a new, small pickup towing a car filled with the owners’ camping gear – to the roof - with sleeping bags, blankets, clothes etc.

As for the GC itself…there is no way to describe it. No photo, even those on the walls of the museums and visitor centers, captures what it is like. The scale is just overwhelming. Yes, indeed, it is possible to make me speechless.

We began the day in our little Mormon motel, getting up early in the rain, taking an English muffin from the breakfast area but heading over the road for an espresso – even little Blanding had an Indian gift store with lattes.

The storm or rains had wiped out all credit card and ATM functions in the area which was a little problem as I had not realized Mike had as little cash as I had. We ,managed to get the coffees and set off. (The free stuff at the hotel was just too nasty to rink but then I was surprised Mormons would serve it. Mike’s comment was: “ that stuff bear so little resemblance to coffee even Mormons could drink it.”)

In Bluff 12 miles south of Blanding, we stopped take a photo of the Navajo Twins rock formations and read the historical markers. This town, too, was founded by Mormon pioneers in 1880. One of their log homes, actually three homes converted into one by the leading family, remains there to this day. Beside the4 village has re-constructed the meeting house of the time that served as worship space, fellowship hall and anything else needed it would seem.

Five miles south of Blanding, and listed as b being in a campground at Sand River Valley, though this was not exactly the came, I ha found reference to a wall with petroglyphs with the famous drawing of Kokapelli, the little dancing, flute playing figure with the spiky head. We clambered around a while before locating the figures though once we found one, we found others quickly. There were scores of drawings. The rain stopped for our walk along the cliff base and the sun tried to shine through a layer of cloud.

Back in the car, the rain resumed. The scenery was imposing, huge cliffs, strange shapes and moody under the dark sky and very low clouds and rain. The rain had formed deep red puddles on the fields sometimes in an area with still visible cracks in the recently dried out surface. The rivers and streams were thick and red, full of clay and sand. The mesas were particularly impressive surrounded as they were by low cloud almost to the base. The red rock, so receptive to low sunlight , looked surprisingly impressive a bold in the gray day around them. In the mist the looming shape looked like castles with fortifications or oriental temples on hills! As we approached Valley of the Gods, layer upon layer of them came into sight through the mist.

As we approached Mexican Hat in sixthly improved weather we saw the rock that gave the village its name. We were hoping this might be a sizable place as we had seen no habitation, signs of human involvement in the landscape for some 40 miles. Mexican Hat was tiny, a couple of motels, a couple of filling stations, a café and gift shop and about 6 homes. At the Shell gas station we managed to get cash from their ATM and of we set again – we did not get gas which was $2.27 a gallon, but nowhere is a whole lot less.

17 miles before Monument Valley we entered Navajo lands. Monument Valley is famous for all the movies that have been shot there – john Ford liked to film westerns there and the area has been sued for numerous commercials it seems. Of course neither Mike nor I had even heard of most of the movies and never seen any of them but there was a vague familiarity in the shapes, strills seen through low cloud, so it must come from those times when I could not avoid seeing part of the imported Western TV shows at homes I was visiting as a child. We did not watch them my home, nor Mike’s. In fact, when I saw parts fo them they always upset me: I rooted for the Indians! Presumably this was because of or the reason for my dislike of guns as I did not see guns anywhere else. Not until the first Gulf War did I see an English poluceman with a gun and even today British street patrolmen do not bear firearms.

Just after entering the Valley we entered Arizona. Utah bade us return and Arizona bade us welcome. As the sun broke through we realized we had not noticed that we had passed the 4000 miles of our trip as we had reached the valley. The land was surprise; I expected it to be sandy, so that galloping horses could kick up sand as they rode the valley bottom but the valley was filled much the same scrubby little desert plants as we had seen before except that here and there was some quite bright green and yellow and even green fields. The road was beautifully smooth and we were almost alone on it. I cannot imagine what it must be like in peak season.

We stopped in the township of Kayenta to look in a Radio Shack inside an Indian store and then to get lunch - a small, whole roasted chicken from the supermarket , which even so, was too big for us. We took the meat off the bones and fed it to the dogs roaming the parking lot, who approached a tour bus that stopped and everyone who ventured into MacDonald’s, looking hopeful. Mike was less fortunate – no espresso to be found anywhere.

We headed off again with nasty gray clouds in front of us and eventually to our left, the whole journey we watched lightning shooting from this storm to the ground. Occasionally, we would get a few drops of rain but mostly it just passed by beside us leaving us unscathed. By the time we got to Tuba City and our turn onto the 89S the sky was intermittently blue and the clouds a little higher. Everywhere along these roads until the part entrance there were Indian trading areas, sometimes spaces for a whole market (though few were selling on such a bad day) and also individuals selling from their vans at the roadside.

It is a long road up to the Grand Canyon National Park. We saw the Little Colorado River Canyon to our right and just after that, the skies became darker, and eventually huge stormy raindrops began hitting the car. We entered the park with huge hailstones crashing into the windshield and bouncing off the hood making little heaps by the roadside! Yet by the time we had traveled the 35 miles to the campsite we had sun and white clouds and we put up the tent in very pleasant conditions.

We went down to the rim to see our first glance of the canyon at what we thought was about 6 pm and was actually 5pm. Arizona is indeed on Mountain Time. Utah is on Mountain Time so we did not think we should change watches…but Arizona is on Standard Mountain Time (does not have summer daylight saving time) with the exception of Navajo land which does. So, somewhere as we climbed up into the Park and we left Indian land for park land the clocks shifted another hour, now three hours behind the east coast. So the sun is now setting around 6pm as it was in the east coast (in between sunset had moved to after 7pm) The Park Ranger I asked was as confused by it all as me.

We caught a glimpse of sunset on the Canyon and headed back to the Market Plaza to look around and then to the tent, with a trunk-load of wood for a hearty campfire we thought we were going to need – and we did!

This park has amazing visitor services. Quite obviously it is geared for many more tourists than are here right now. The Visitor Center is a huge complex that includes an area for the station and rails of a high speed rail service some time in the future. The Market Plaza ( there is another for the other camping area at Desert View, they have a gas station at their’s) has a large supermarket and camping needs store, gift shop,Post Office, BankOne bank, several restaurants and stops for the shuttle buses as much of the park is no longer open to private vehicles .. you ride the bus or hike, but a lot of the trails as well as the buses are handicapped accessible. And yes, they have espresso (Mike was so pleased).

We bought chicken to make a curry and some Tadcaster Oatmeal Stout from North Yorkshire at the supermarket. The prices were better than we expected, given we are captive consumers and went to the site to eat, enjoy the fire, me to type this and to try and stay warm till morning!

Mike had an interesting experience in the men’s room!

He was in there, just washing his hands when there was knock on the outer door. He had noticed a “foody” smell and thought no more about it. Every RV site in the place was filled and there quite a few of us in tents…the knock again. He opened it and a woman looked very surprised and suggested she was expecting to see someone other than Mike and shouted: ‘Jason! Jason! Let me have a taste of that salmon!” Out of the handicapped stall comes a guy with some foil in his hands and in it some blackened salmon. The two of them then filled the doorway eating the fish so Mike had a job to get past them….other peoples’ lives…I have so many questions and theories…

The storm we had been watching on the north rim of the canyon as the sun set eventually made its way over us at about 9:30pm. We had watched the lightning all evening, eventually the moon was obscured and the storm rolled in. Some of the strikes seemed pretty close. We watched from the car and after it passed by (an hour later) we went back to our still blazing fire, got warm and went to bed.

Well..plans can change…especially if they are as loose as ours.

We broke camp, had breakfast at the local diner, got a latte for the journey and uploaded yesterday’s blog entry and set off down south on 191. The idea was to travel from Moab until we felt like camping for the night, but by then being pretty close to the Grand Canyon area so we could try and get on the best National Park campsite there tomorrow.

This journey would start with Moab – Monticello (55 miles) then Monticello – Blanding (25 miles) then choosing to take in Four Corners Monument – perhaps- and then back to drive through Monument Valley which is Navajo land and has awesome scenery.

So we set off. We paused to take pictures of Wilson Arch beside the road and then we saw the sign for Newspaper Rock. We only learned about this yesterday evening when I read about it. We took the detour to Newspaper Rock which is a small area of cliff opposite a huge rock. On the cliff are many ancient pictographs carved in the stone. Really neat.

Back to the 1919 we went after our 35 miles or so detour.

We continued down to Monticello. This little town was named after the one in Virginia when an inhabitant of that Monticello came west in a wagon train. I guess this is what the old TV shows, The Virginians is about? Anyway, Monticello has quite a bit of recent construction, for tourists mainly: motels and food, Subway and even an espresso café with internet (did not stop.) The local historical society recently moved an old barn and converted it to be the new information center and we stopped. We thought that maybe not so many stop here and look in the info center and Pioneer Museum, as they had brochures left that I had not seen elsewhere: presumably used up over the summer season.

We got back in the car and I started reading them to Mike. We had traveled a few miles down 191 when we did a 180, went back to Monticello, picked up the – well it did not happen like that exactly…the leaflet said to take the 666…an interesting number…but there was no 666 in Monticello. So out came the laptop and GPS. All the local road numbers in this area (Utah- Colorado border) had been changed! The GPS got us on track and off we went: we were headed to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado.

Before I write about this place I should perhaps let you know we finished the day at 10: 30 pm in a motel in the rain in Blanding just 21 miles further south than where we were at lunchtime. But what a fun day we had had!

We traveled east into Colorado where the scenery changed dramatically from sandstone cliffs to cultivated farmlands. The Rockies loomed ahead once more. I saw the first pointer towards a United Methodist Church in Dove Creek, Co – the first UMC notice since leaving New York State. The sides of the road were lined with a slightly different kind of bulrushes (cattails) than I know.

We continued to follow a paper map and then found out it was not just the 666 that had changed name. The GPS rescued us again.

Mesa Verde is an impressive mesa covered in trees (hence the name) which was home to the Anasazi peoples for hundreds of years. The remains of their homes cover this mountain. We went there to see the pueblo homes built in large open faced caves. Previous dwellings are also on the site and even the final, unfinished building of their time there (they left and moved to Arizona) – a complex sun temple.

The whole park would have taken days to explore. Some of the dwellings cannot be accessed except by ranger led hikes or serious climbs.

We entered on a steep and winding road as we climbed the mesa. The short undergrowth had turned beautiful fall colors and the plants were larger versions of the ones in the desert...juniper tress that were taller than me for once, Mormon Tea plants that were not a sickly yellow but a vibrant green, yuccas that were not dried out and wan but thick and bushy.

As we went to the first lookout – the highest point of the park: Park Point Overlook, a short but steep climb, we saw lightning below us going from lower clouds to the plain below. Another dark cloud was heading our way and obviously it was raining hard beneath it, so we hurried back to the car.

The rain stayed away until we were on out way out of the park several hours later.

After the first overlook there is a 10 mile drive to the Visitor Center then about that again to start the tour we had chosen to do as we did not have time for one of the guided hikes of several hours.

We walked down a very steep bank to actually walk into the cave front of one of the wide caverns of houses named Spruce Tree House. In this small but deep space around 100 people made their homes between AD 1200 an 1276. The natural cave measures 216 feet at greatest width and 89 feet at greatest depth. The houses are built up to three stories high from cave floor to ceiling. The ceremonial buildings (kivas) were especially important and all the sites we visited had them and they showed a progression in complexity of the Anasazi architecture.

Most impressive is this: there was no access to this or any of the SEVERAL HUNRDED such caves on Mesa Verde. To get in and out the pueblo people would climb over the overhanging rocks and up on to the mesa top. For water, to hunt, to gather…using small toe and hand holds in the rock, some natural, some made by them. Pretty nutty.

Some of the earliest homes were pit houses from around 600 CE. We saw, but could not visit other such caves, some having more homes and greater complexity. Digital camera and batteries had their usual work-out. Each time we got in the car we were recharging the batteries with the inverter and when they were not being charged, the laptop had a turn. What with those wires and the GPS and hot ‘n’ heavy laptop on my knee the front of the car is a mass of wires and electronic equipment. Camping did not used to be this complicated!

We came back in the dark (again having to rely on the GPS as the Utah tourist maps were wrong) to re-plot our route.

In the rain, many people had left nearby campsites and lodging was hard to get. It seems, though, we were fortunate and found a very reasonable motel almost immediately. The Weather Channel guy was all excited about the desert getting rain today.

Our detour to Mesa Verde had been 160 miles plus quite a bit of rushing up and down hill-sides and much absorbing of new information.

It was a wonderful day and we took 160 pictures.

This was our last full day in Moab and we wanted to visit the northern part of Canyonlands National Park. On the way we went through the Utah State Park: Dead Horse Point (I’ll spare you the story about the name.) It was 70 degrees f when we were there but the sun was searing hot and the only clouds were in the distance near the Ana Mountains. The state park had a couple of wonderful vistas and a nature trail we walked which explained a lot about the plants of the region.

The ever-present Utah juniper trees turned out to be quite interesting. They have an almost ginny smell as you pass them and the little blue berries are in fact tiny cones with a single seed in side. The branches are green because they are made up of even tinier leaves overlapping each other to shade from the sun. The trunks look like twisted paper , twisting and turning to follow the sun and when the desert become too dry (average rainfall is 9 inches per year) the tree simply shuts down the water supply to a part of itself and lets that die to conserve moisture. Every so often on the walk there would be a single blasted tree, totally black, fried by the frequent lightning.

We moved on to our main destination: I was afraid that after Arches, which I had loved, that Canyonlands would be too similar and not enjoyable. In fact, Canyonlands, which is far larger, was quite different at least at this northern end (the southern part is accessed closer to the Grand Canyon than here.)

Where Arches is a fairly tightly packed and dense set of towers and balanced rocks and pinnacles, Canyonlands was more prairie than desert as we approached. The desert ecosystem of the Canyonlands area we were in (Island in the Sky – Mike did not take to the name…) is actually in places 1000 feet below where the tourists (“users”) are.

Up on the highest level...

These sweeping views of the two meandering rivers, deep in their channels, the mesas and the towers and cliffs and pinnacles were very impressive, especially with the huge drop and also the fact that the cliffs we were looking at were often 6 or more miles away across the eroded valley floor. Some of the scenery showed the activities of 20th century humans who had dug holes looking for the uranium the area is known for. The roads they made in the 50s and 60s continue to be very obvious; the desert is so slow to recover.

There was also, among the cactus plants, huge areas of the cyanobiotic soil we first saw at Arches. Here it was much further along in its development making around 2 inch high knobbly mounds with black speckles on the younger ones and a blackish crust on the more developed ones.

There were other great things in the park. We drove around and stopped at all the overlook sights but the first and last ones we took short hikes. The sun remained very hot though the car insists it did not get above 75 until we were leaving at 6ish.

The first stop we made was at the Mesa Arch. It was just a short walk to a wonderful arch which is on much Canyon lands literature. There was a 500 foot drop immediately on the other side of it. Pretty spectacular. Even better we chose, by chance, the best way to do the circular route: we came upon the arch suddenly after rounding a bend – the other way you see it getting closer – much less dramatic. We had the place all to ourselves, tourist traffic is almost over for the year I guess. As we were leaving another couple arrived and they took our picture and we their’s. As we returned to the parking lot 2 Texan couples were arriving: very quiet.

The last stop of the tour round the park was something I had not read about and it did not sound, at first, all that interesting: Upheaval Dome. It looked like a very large rounded mound of red rocks, but the sign at the start of the trail persuaded us to take the walk. The walk is short - a little over a quarter mile each way - but the end result is that you are 200 feet above the parking lot, and the walk takes you up and down a little before the final climb.

You end up climbing onto the rim of a large hole which scientists (the sign called them “investigators”) have argued about for years. The most likely 2 scenarios is that this was a meteorite crash site or the result off a salt slip in the earth’s crust – salt under pressure becomes plastic – almost fluid in its motion. In the first scenario a meteor, its remains long since eroded away, crashed into the land pushing up the rocks at the impact site into a rocky rim. Rocks eventually came back into the hole leaving this rocky bump in the middle of the crater. In the salt scenario, huge volumes of salt (some of it still locatable under the rocks) moved around and caused slippage, some rocks piling up into a rim and others building up in the center. Others have suggested thick molten lava created this strange place and other ideas have been discussed : no-one knows. However it happened, it is a neat place to visit. The bump in the center is of light greenish rocks and some have eroded into interesting shapes. My favorites were red and green and looked like long beehives.

We saw some lizards and some local chipmunks and ground squirrels and the glossiest, biggest ravens I have ever seen, hopping between the cars and posing on signs for the “users.” (I think he park service feels that by making the point we are all users we will be happier handing over the cash. I did not begrudge them one penny.)

By the time we were leaving the park it was getting close to sunset but we decided against waiting for the magic ten minutes of red and headed down the 279, another small, little publicized scenic route which twists between the most enormous red cliffs beside the Colorado River. We were looking for petroglyphs. In this case the drawings on the cliff wall are about 20 feet up and were made by the San Rafael Fremont Indians, a culture that thrived in the area between 600 and 1300 AD. A few of the carvings were made more recently by Ute Indians. We found them and photographed them in the gloom. Very neat- haven’t downloaded the images yet so we don’t know how they will look but in any case, they were neat to see.

Back to Moab for food in an internet restaurant to download yesterday’s blog entry but could not check the mail as I had forgotten my new and very peculiar password Roadrunner gave me. Now sitting under our 40 watt light…beside a roaring campfire and typing into the laptop. Mike is reclining in an armchair and waiting till its time to crack open the wine…tomorrow we move on.

Moab has been interesting. After three days our espresso coffee purveyors have reached 11…and there are some really good restaurants..not at all what I expected. This trip has had many surprises and if there is not a casino on the rim of rhe Grand Canyon or an adult bookstore I am going to be quite disappointed! Not that I will be entering either establishment, but I sort-of expect them now. (Of course if there is an internet espresso shop I will object less…)

End mileage today was 3606….tomorrow we will travel rather more miles.

We started the day with the odometer at 3210 miles.

After breakfast at the tent, we went into Moab, stopped by the café to upload two days of blog, looked around an awesome mineral shop ( a nest of dinosaur eggs and another of turtles.) and then we set off on our adventures.

We decided to head to Colorado (new state for me! Mike was there in June for a conference), first to Grand Junction and then the Colorado National Monument nearby. There were other ideas if the early part of the day did not go to plan and we had more time…

We decided to try a small road, rather than the main road via which we had first arrived in Moab. Route 128 turned out to be a scenic road but it was never mentioned to us in guide books or locally. There were signs once you were on it. Indeed when we stopped about halfway along at the Dewey historic bridge – a single, actually almost pedestrian, lane suspension bridge that was for decades the only way across the Colorado for Moab inhabitants to get to Grand Junction, they sign mentioned that 128 was considered one of the most scenic routes in America. We believe it - it was fabulous! Towering red cliffs, the somber-looking meandering Colorado river and the usual strangely eroded shapes in the rocks. Huge chunks of rock had fallen out of the cliff wall and stood beside the roadway.

After the bridge the scenery changed to become huge plains and in the middle of this flat, farming landscape there was Cisco. We think it Cisco but it could have been Cisco Landing only. We were welcomed to Cisco by a very beaten up and misspelled hand-painted board leaning outside a derelict, abandoned building. Most of the few buildings were in similar shapes but there were a few RVs and decent trucks and SUVs around and at least one inhabited home: sort of scary. (Coming home Mike wanted to come this way in the dark and I objected somewhat but said he was driving, he could choose…but we came the fast way, still not a light to be seen on either side, but a real, road at least!)

The Grand Junction part was to go shopping…first for a new airbed it did not stay inflated last night, well it was only leaking a bit but we are old dudes now) and secondly Mike has been considering getting one of those plastic cargo carriers for the top of the car. We did not want to get it before we came as the mileage is better without it, but we thought if we were to get it this would be the most convenient. Having something in which to throw camping stuff : the tent, airbed, sleeping bags, pillows …er… armchairs….would make camp break down and set up so much quicker than having to carefully roll and fold to get it all in. But to make it useful enough for the college run four times a year with Joanne, it had to be a full size one. Sears in Grand Junction had one at a better price than we had seen and with free installation. It took the guy ages to do it but eventually we set of in later afternoon for the monument, which was awesome as everything has been and then back to the campsite to eat dinner and make a campfire and me to do this and Mike to do crosswords and us both to drink wine and enjoy the cool, clear desert air.

Two interesting signs on the highway:
One a speed limit sign at the top the regular one (75) and below the one for dust storm driving (30) and instructions – do not stop, keep your distance, slow down. The other to take care because of… EAGLES ON THE ROAD! No….not one….though there was something big flying over the monument (where we saw lizards, rabbits, chipmunks, and deer).

The end of day odometer reading was 3476.

One week is completed, two more weeks to go. Today was the day for Arches National Park. The day was expected to be sunny but not over hot and so it turned out.

We had to choose between SEVEN espresso places for our morning coffee…seven! Moab is not what we expected. It is a mini Las vegas…a town of shopping and –yet again – casinos in the desert. Also a thriving alternative community that enjoys cycling plus driving ATVs in the neighboring three parks and sells anti-Bush bumperstickers (a fake resume for George W. on the awning of a local coffee shop has to be on the internet…I must look for it.) There are also two microbreweries and a couple of dozen restaurants, not including Wendy’s, MacDonald’s and Burger King.

We had to get Mike a hat and then we were off. Arches is just 6-7 minutes away and we were soon enjoying breathtaking scenery unlike any we have ever seen before.
Pillars, cliffs, arches, things that will be arches in time, things that were arches and have eroded further, petrified sand dunes, balancing rocks…and information about the living soil…

There are signs everywhere about staying on the designated tracks because the soil is being changed by—da-dah!! CYANOBACTERIA!! The very things I have talked about for years at Petrrified Sea Gardens in a fossilized form and here they are living and alive and doing stuff…. there was a great exhibit in the Visitor Center and now here they were, little patches of blackish crust: cyanobiotic soil We were very disgruntled to see footsteps on them… they take upto 250 years to regrow. In fact there were people climbing the rocks too…and this is off-season and there were not many people there, but still there were miscreants. Not pleased.

There is a road-trip round the park which they claim takes 4 and a quarter hours allowing ten minutes per viewing stop. We took over 7 hours, but we did stop longer than 10 minutes a few times: we took a walk in a canyon before the sun got too hot; we took two walks at the Windows area to see the north and south windows and the double arches and we went on a walk to the Landscape Arch.

At the Double Arches a boy of about 3, just less, and his dad came running towards as we sat looking at them. He looked up and started to laugh! That had been my reaction – just exuberance at this terrific sight – but adult and supposedly sensible I did not laugh – I should have.

The Landscape Arch, part way along a 7 mile hike that it was getting too late for us to accomplish, is a huge arch that in the 1990s shed a 180 TONS piece of rock. Some hikers – at that time you could still walk under it – were getting close and they heard poppings and groanings and one of them had the idea to put his camera to his face and caught the chunk of rock falling and making the arch even thinner and wider! Since then no-one can go under the arch, the hike by-passes it and goes onto more wonders we did not see. It was here we felt the huge cliffs of rock which were no longer in the sun’s glare giving off radiant heat. We saw deer and rabbits and lizards and a large magpie sized bird which was all blue, and a bird of prey overhead, maybe an eagle.

Oddest sight of the day? A bride, in full and fluffy white making her way up the steps and dusty paths to the North Window and then hiding on a ledge on the far side awaiting the rest of the bridal party who walked up in twos, arm-in-arm to meet her. The wedding party arrivied in a fleet of Hummers.

The eroded rock made all kinds of shapes. Where one of us saw chess men and teddy bears and a man’s laughing face and the (sic) Three Wise Men, the other one saw things that, depending on who you are, I might just tell you should you ask!

At the end of the day, there is a moment known to photographers of these parts, as the Magic Hour. It is really a magic 10 minutes if you are lucky. The red rocks are accentuated by the setting sun as it becomes redder itself.

Realizing it was about to happen Mike raced us to a favorite spot to photograph it and then rushed to another and we did the same. We caught the red rocks and the moon in a beautiful blue sky and then in an instant it was gone and all was a pinkish gray, but definitely gray…what a wonderful end to our day…except we then had a fine meal and local brew, which made it better…now, if only the airbed stays inflated all night….

We began the day at Afton, Wyoming in a motel which, unbeknownst to us (we arrived late at night) sat below a huge escarpment.

A friend of ours, who made this trip a decade ago with his Significant Other of the time and who are in part responsible for us making this trip, gave us his account of the trip to bring with us. In the motel that morning, reading their next day’s travel I imagined the two of them in the car I know well, hurtling past this little place where we had stopped, then just a field I am sure. They went past in the dark and the journey we set off on, though taking the same route (AAA designated!) was a different journey in the daytime.

Where they had to deal with cows on the road in the darkness we had views of rangelands, mountain passes and canyons.

The day started with breakfast at the diner next to the motel. It was 50 f – proof that the cold front was indeed moving eastwards. The trip odometer read 2697.

We soon approached Salt River Pass (7630 feet) where we were warned:” Open Range, Loose Stock” but the only cattle we saw all day was behind fences. The only green in the landscape in the early part of the day was where complex irrigation systems were in use. More proof of what some locals called a 5, others a 6 and even a 7 year drought as we moved through the states. We passed through a small piece of Idaho, entering 3 miles before Geneva Summit and entering Utah near Bear Lake Summit.

Even before Utah, ...

We came through some depressed farmland and then to Bear Lake itself. Bear Lake is a long lake that shows signs of being in a time of drought but it had the most extraordinary color – a deep mid teal. On one side there are mountains on the other (where the road was) a succession of small towns and beaches, many private but not all. It was a Friday morning and we barely saw a vehicle on the roads other than in the small townships. The private areas seemed to have encouraged building, presumably vacation homes. Beside the road, especially in Idaho we had seen many places for sale, both farms and houses, many of those near the lake at this a point were in bad shape, but on the hillside and, further south, beside the lake there was much evidence of new construction and some very attractive places. Approaching Utah, we were welcomed with a sign (as we had been to Idaho!) We got so taken with the Utah end of Bear Lake and a rest stop/ public beach area with perfect, springy bright green grass and carefully tended flower beds (no-oone was there) we totally forgot to turn off where the Triptik told us to and soon we were headed into nowhere…

The Triptiks have been invaluable. The free road trip palnners, the free maps, the free tour books and money off every night thus far (and actually beyond to the Moab campsite) have been well worth our AAA membership this year. The alternative would have been for me to spend the whole journey with the laptop keeping me (over)warm. We nearly fired up the computer but then worked out our location on the map and had to choose between going onwards on the new road (which would have had us miss Salt Lake City and rejoin our route around Provo) or take a second road back to the AAA route. We chose the latter as we knew we had to do dome shopping and did not know what other localities would have. The choice was great in one respect and not too good in another: the road took us through the Cache National Forest with great moun tain views and acres of aspen turned golden yellow and then thgough Ogden Canyon, which was just beautiful. In Ogden Canyon we saw real plaid shirt and big hat wearin’, horse-ridin’, gun-totin’men, so I guess they were cowboys ( I think this is PC…I myself would not want to be called that but I think they do think of themselves that way… we are most definitely not in the north east any more…) One thing we did not appreciate about this area was that all the road signs had bullet holes shot through them.

For the first time since we left I-90 the temperature passed 79f..

The bad side of the detour? The traffic around Salt Lake City was less than pleasant and the view we had as we drove by was of unrelenting drabness. From about 2:30 pm until 5pm we were stuck in this conurbation with Friday afternoon commuters, trucks and buses. We did see two signs at the side of the road, yards apart: one said Natural History Museum and the next Saratoga Springs (I had no idea there were two!)

We passed 3000 miles for the trip going up Soldier Summit (7477feet) then went through Carbonville which was utter desolation. The area has been strip-mined for coal. The city was surrounded by huge spoil heaps. It reminded me of the environmental disaster of strip mining worldwide, whether for African diamonds or other gemstones, Bolivian tin, British iron ore, Russian or American coal.

As we were driving under some heavy duty electrical wiring we started to hear a male voice…quietly as first but then a little louder and louder again…we looked at each other – it sounded like the radio but it was not on and anyway the sound seemed to be coming from Mike’s seat! . We eventually decided that our wind-up radio, on the floor behind Mike, was picking up current from the wires. When the wires came to an end, so did our ghostly voic

We pressed on, later than we had hoped, towards the national parks we were to visit next. The road was ridged through heavy traffic use and the wheels passing over it made deep bass notes below the car floor, like someone practicing on organ foot pedals ( well, it was better than disembodied voices!)

The scenery was desert scrubland but gradually huge walls of eroded rock came into view. The strata were totally horizontal and as the sun began to set the cliffs took on a fabulous red hue. Soon after dark we arrived in Moab. We had called ahead to a campsite there because most of the national park ones would not take bookings and we thought on a weekend space might be hard to come (turned out to be true.) The AAA recommended site was right downtown and boasted internet in the café and electricity at all sites. Best of all we would be in one place for three whole days!

We finished the day with odometer at about 3100

We decided against Tower Falls much as I love waterfalls this one was out of the way with the construction on the road, and we decided if we could find the glooping mud somewhere else we would also miss Mud Volcano and that area.

We went to the Norris glacial basin, back via the Fountain Paint Pots and passed the upper and lower basins. This took us several hours.

General observations other than the size of the place:

In the morning especially while the air was cool we could feel the warm air as we approached the hot springs and pools. The day dried out and improved as it went on. The smells varied from boiling pea soup to hard- boiled eggs.

There is geothermal activity everywhere…there are lots of named spots but the streams will occasionally have steam coming off them and by the road bubbling pools and steam vents.

The sounds are interesting! At Norris there was just a general noise – it was rushing steam and bubbling and spurting, hissing and spraying. With so many holes, geysers and pools it sounded like we were at a thruway rest stop. Some of the water is only tepid by the time it reaches the walkways but some is visibly boiling.

Yellowstone has many ways to kill you it seems! Visitors are warned not to walk near the geysers and pools – not only were several people scalded to death last year alone – the crust formed by the salts in the water are very thin – the acid in the pools can eat through boot soles! On top of this are the warnings about the danger of getting near bear and moose, elk and bison – posters remind you of visitors mauled – then there are the late night speeders damaging themselves as well as the large animals, and today the ice and snow on walkways messages were still posted from the previous 24 hours.

On the warm Yellowstone ground the snow had mostly disappeared but near the Continental Divide sign (one of – you cross it three times while exiting the park) there was snow as we climbed out of the caldera which is where the geysers and hot springs are.

I loved it all. The glooping, boiling mud of the paint pots were hard to photograph as the mud looks like plaster of paris for the most part mostly a dirty white with one area tinged pink by the same mineral/ fossil layer that makes so much of the soil here a deep red.

Physical geography as it was known in our schooldays was a favorite of us both, but especially me. My favorite subjects within it were firstly volcanic, then glacial then desert so this trip is perfect! I get some of each!
As we were leaving we saw a coyote in a field.

By that time, too, the temperature had crawled up to just below 50 degrees and we drove straight on into the Grand Tetons Park – spectacular scenery. We took a slight detour to get to the bottom of the mountains. We had intended stopping there a little while and making coffee but roadworks between the 2 parks slowed us down a bit.

We left the park and headed for Jackson. I saw Jackson recently on a Travel Channel show and thought there was no way I wanted to go there. But we needed to eat. Well, Jackson was nothing like the show! It was a yuppy town – Eddie Bauer and Coldwater Creek and the like. We ate – I had local brook trout – and got espresso as Mike decided we would press on, having really traveled no distance today.

We hit the most ridiculous roadworks in the world..okay..maybe not..as we left Jackson. We were driving along and there was some comment about the road having an uneven surface…well, suddenly there was bare earth beneath the wheels, the whole surface, all the way across with orange and white sticks to help us fnd the way through…like a slalom race. After a few hundred yards of this we had blacktop and of we went , only to be stopped again by more of the same but this time we had to wait to be led through! Long delay. We drove a little further. The communities were tiny but there were motels fairly frequently. We eventually decided to stop around 10 pm at Afton. The weather channel was congratulating an Afton Olympian for getting a silver medal, we presume it was the same one. Quite an achievement for such a small place. The motel was pleasant, we watched Letterman and went to bed.

(I am writing this in an internet café and do not have my notebook with me – I will add our mileage later in the day!)