Chapter 69 – Northern Arizona
May 24, 2001
5/6/01 After a week among the Jumbo Rocks at Joshua Tree National Park, we left this morning, winding our way east across the desert on SR-62 until we reached the Colorado River (and the Arizona border) at Parker. From there, we followed Arizona SR 95 (easily confused with US-95, which roughly parallels SR-95 a few miles away in California) up the river to Lake Havasu City, where we stopped at Islander RV Resort, surrounded on three sides by the lake. We're one row back from the lakeshore, and have a limited but pleasant view out across the lake to the mountains beyond. All sites have instant telephone hookups, for an extra $3.00/day.
Parker Dam, 17 miles north of Parker and 23 miles south of Lake Havasu City, is the site of a large dam on the Colorado River, which forms the reservoir known as Lake Havasu. On May 7 (and perhaps the previous day as well), it was the hottest place in the U.S. at 106 degrees. We have clearly stayed in the southern deserts much too late in the season. The drive was a real test for our truck air conditioner, but it performed well, keeping us comfortable. We're very glad that I had replaced our balky old trailer air conditioner a few weeks ago. When we stopped, the new one worked well, but took a long time to get the trailer cooled down (it was well over 100 inside the trailer when we first turned on the air conditioner). In the evening, after the sunset, we ventured outside for a trip to Wal-Mart and Safeway to re-stock our supplies and get some film developed.
5/7 We stayed inside through the heat of the day. This will not be our choice of location to settle down permanently. We didn't turn off the air conditioner until we went to bed, near midnight – and had to turn it on again by 9 AM the next morning. A roadrunner just trotted through our campsite, and we've caught other glimpses of this funny-looking bird in the campground. Several Gambel's Quail are also wandering around nearby.
5/8 We'll scrap the plans to do some sightseeing in this area, and move on to somewhere cooler. Flagstaff, Arizona seemed promising, so we followed SR-65 another 20 miles north up the river, then joined the endless parade of big trucks headed east on Interstate 40. The highway climbed for almost the entire distance, sometimes almost imperceptibly, sometimes steeply. We started the day at 400 feet above sea level and ended 7000 feet higher and 30 degrees cooler. Flagstaff is also reporting near-record temperatures, but that means mid-70's. We're at Greer's Pine Shadows RV Park, on US-89 at the northeastern edge of Flagstaff. It has large full-hookup RV sites, set among tall pine trees, but almost no other facilities (not even bathrooms), which suits us just fine – at only $17/night. The office has a dedicated modem hookup at a convenient desk in a quiet corner. The back edge of the campground adjoins National Forest land, with an inviting trail heading toward Mt. Eldon, 9200 ft. high, which dominates the view to the west.
5/9 An Abert squirrel spent a few minutes in our campsite this morning. Long tufts of hair on the tips of the ears make these animals look quite different than other squirrels. This one has an overall grey coloration, except for a reddish back, white belly, white feet, and white trim around the edges of tail and legs. There are several color variants. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon has a variant which is mostly black – and which we saw only in a museum during our visit there three years ago.
The Northern Arizona Museum, in Flagstaff, is an attractive rambling fieldstone building built around a courtyard and surrounded by forest. The original portion was built in 1935, but additions, in a similar style, have been added to the back. The collection is focused locally – the history, geology, and art of the Colorado Plateau. At the moment, the largest portion of the display space presents the historical culture and artifacts of the several Indian groups who occupied the region and lays out the sequence of occupation from before the Christian Era to the present. Smaller areas are devoted to the art of the region, both historic and modern, and to interesting explanations of the unique geology of the area. Although not large, it's all well done and gave us several enjoyable hours.
Later, a drive up to Arizona Snowbowl, the local ski area in the San Francisco Peaks, gave us cooler temperatures and nice vistas out across the valley from viewpoints along the way.
5/10 Dave climbed Mt. Eldon this afternoon, walking directly from the back of the campground across National Forest land to the base of the mountain, which rises abruptly from a flat plain. The trail from the campground disintegrated into a web of old logging roads - leading nowhere. At the base of the mountain, I didn't locate the developed trail (which I later found to be a mile or so further south), and bushwhacked a spiral route up the east and then north side – a rugged but interesting route. Near the summit, following a ridge back to the south, I finally intersected the trail, and walked the last 0.3 mile in relative comfort. The summit is festooned with dozens of radio, television, and microwave communications antennas, and with a tall Forest Service lookout tower. I climbed the tower and was welcomed by the observer, who spends his daylight hours from early spring to late autumn watching for forest fires. He lives in a 5th wheel at the base of the mountain and walks to work, sometimes spending a few nights in the tower.
Two fires were in progress while I was there. A small fire close to the base of the mountain on the west side had just been brought under control and was in the final stages of being cleaned up – with lots of coordinating chatter on the radio. A large controlled burn was in progress about 40 miles to the northwest, and was visible as a large area of smoke on the horizon. We had smelled this fire as we drove along Interstate 40, two days ago.
The return trip down the mountain was much easier. I followed the developed trail most of the way down, leaving it as it began to level out near the bottom to head cross country back to the campground. It was roughly 6 miles round trip and 2200 feet vertical elevation gain, and it took me about 4 1/2 hours – taking twice as long to go up as to come down.
The mountain has several zones of climate and plant life. At the bottom is an almost pure stand of ponderosa pine. As I climbed the lower slopes, the ponderosa gradually gave way to a mixed forest of pinyon pine, alligator juniper, and Gambel's oak. Some of the alligator junipers are huge – 4' in diameter at the base and spreading widely, although only about 20' tall. Their bark indeed looks like an alligator's back – very distinctive. Above that was a narrow desert region of yucca, cactus, and mesquite, occupying a band of cliffs and rocky outcroppings with little soil. Above that was a mix of aspen (just beginning to leaf out), fir, and spruce. The north side of the mountain and the entire upper area was burned in 1977. Some of the burned area has grown back as oak or aspen thickets, and other areas show little recovery, with scattered very small pines. Some of the large trees killed by the fire are still standing, after 24 years.
5/11 Oak Creek Canyon is one of many deep canyons which cut down from the Mogollon Rim (the southern edge of the Colorado plateau) to the desert a mile below. State Route 89A follows the bottom of the canyon all the way down, giving spectacular views of the deeply carved canyon walls. It's a good road, although sharp switchback curves in the middle make it inadvisable for long RV's, who would probably have to swing out partially into the oncoming lane to negotiate the curves. Since SR 89A roughly parallels Interstate 17, a few miles away, there are few trucks and nearly all the traffic is relatively slow-moving tourists.
We drove SR 89A from Flagstaff to Sedona, about 30 miles, and then drove back the same way, enjoying different aspects of the canyon from the two directions. Near the southern end of the canyon, Slide Rock State Park provided a pleasant break in the drive, and also provided a chance to walk along Oak Creek. In the park, the creek has carved a narrow channel through soft red sandstone, one section of which forms a 70-foot-long waterslide, which was being loudly enjoyed by a group of teenagers while we were there. Other sections of the creek open out into natural swimming holes, and the rock ledges along the creek provide sunbathing and picnicking space for a large number of people.
The park also preserves the Pendley orchard and homestead dating back to about 1910. Mr. Pendley worked for several years to build an irrigation system which brought water from higher up the canyon to his orchards, through a series of flumes, ditches, and tunnels through the sandstone canyon walls. He generated electricity from a waterwheel powered by water flow in the irrigation ditch. One of the first apple trees planted in 1912 is still alive and healthy, an Arkansas Black. We wonder what the apples are like. The rest of the orchard consists of newer apple trees. It appears that the State may have plans to restore the early apple storage barn and cider mill.
Sedona, located in the wide and scenic bottom end of the canyon, is an attractive upscale tourist destination and retirement community. The entire town offers panoramic views of the canyon walls to the north and fascinating steep-walled mesas to the south. Sedona presently has a chamber music festival underway, but the content is rather one-dimensional: two visiting string quartets are each presenting several concerts.
Along the lower part of the canyon, summer has arrived. Tall showy pink penstemon was blooming along the roadside. But temperatures were uncomfortably high, and we found ourselves anxious to climb back up to the cool, comfortable plateau.
5/13 Walnut Canyon National Monument, 9 miles southeast of our campground, is the site of a Sinagua Indian community which was begun around 1060 AD and abandoned around 1260 AD. The most interesting dwellings are the cliff houses, originally made by enclosing caves in the layered rock of the canyon walls, and later extended with additional rooms out beyond the caves. The endless supply of layered sandstone in the area made construction easy, and made the walls of the buildings quite durable. Surface dwellings on the level ground above the canyon also existed, but only an archaeologist could love the decomposed remains. A one-mile trail leads down into the canyon and past a large number of the cliff dwellings, some of which visitors are allowed to walk into. A fun hike, but only basic rooms with a little soot on the walls, no bowls or pottery shards, no sign of human habitation but the crumbling walls and paths. They say that if you look closely, you can see fingerprints of the builders in the mortar between the layers. Our eyesight wasn't good enough.
The canyon itself is beautiful, several hundred feet deep, cut down through upper layers of limestone and lower layers of fascinatingly cross-bedded sandstone. A small Visitor's Center presents the history of the Sinagua people, who are believed to have moved here from the Flagstaff area to escape the erupting San Francisco Volcano. As with many such communities in the southwest, there is no solid evidence as to why the community was abandoned. As we walked the trail, a huge thunderstorm was gathering to the west over the San Francisco Peaks, and slowly moved toward us. Thunder rumbling through the canyon added spice as we imagined the lives of the several hundred people who lived in this community and who climbed up and down these cliffs daily.
We drove through rain to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, 13 miles north of our campground, encompassing a large area of extensive volcanic eruptions and lava flows which began in 1065 AD and lasted about 200 years. Lava decomposes slowly, and there are broad expanses of tortured black rock, which appear to have just flowed yesterday. Plant life grows in pockets where a bit of soil has accumulated and a bit of water is trapped by underlying rock close to the surface. The cinder cones and broad fields covered with deep cinders are porous and do not hold water, so few plants have been able to establish themselves.
As thunder rumbled and lightning flashed a few miles to the south, we walked through light rain along a very interesting loop trail which leads for about a mile through a major area of colorful cinders and lava flow. About 1/4 of this trail is smoothly paved for wheelchair access. Other, longer, trails explore other features of the area, including a trail to the summit of one of the smaller cinder cones. We didn't explore any of these, contenting ourselves with viewing the rest of the area from the truck. It's interesting to note that Arizona tourists don't seem to own raingear. As we walked comfortably, warm and dry under a layer of Goretex, the other visitors, mostly from Flagstaff, were heading for their cars, shivering in soaked-through denim. We did see the remains of one umbrella, ripped apart by a wind gust and stuffed in a trash receptacle.
A scenic paved back road continues from Sunset Crater through National Forest 20 miles north to Wupatki National Monument, which protects a broad area occupied about 800 years ago by an agricultural community, who built impressive multi-story stone pueblos on the plateau. We visited one of these pueblos, walking around and through the many rooms and admiring the stone-walled ball court and huge shallow circular "community room".
There is a campground near the visitor's center at Sunset Crater, which accommodates RV's up to 35 feet, but it is currently closed for rebuilding. Primitive camping is allowed along the gravel Forest Service roads, between Sunset Crater and Wupatki Monuments. We didn't investigate these roads and don't know if they are suitable for large RV's.
5/13 Meteor Crater is a privately owned site – a very young (about 50,000 years old) and well-preserved meteor crater 4000 feet in diameter and 570 feet deep. The private ownership results from an early mining claim by an engineer who believed that the meteorite which caused the crater must lie just underneath, and would be a huge and valuable source of nearly pure iron. He spent large amounts of money digging shafts and drilling in and around the crater and never found anything. Modern analysis shows that the meteorite disintegrated almost completely, some portions evaporating and some being dispersed many miles away as fine droplets (and a few larger chunks up to a foot or so in diameter). The energy release when the meteorite hit was greater than the early atomic bombs. The site is now owned jointly by the descendants of the mining engineer and by the huge ranch surrounding the property. The tourist business must be profitable – they have built a large, attractive, expensive visitor's center and museum to present information about this site and related topics.
In the evening, Dave went for a walk out the back of the campground into National Forest land. While taking a shortcut back to the campground, I stumbled across Eldon Pueblo, just a few hundred yards away. This is a Sinagua site, abandoned about 600 years ago. It is now being excavated and studied in a cooperative effort involving the National Forest Service, the Museum of Arizona, the Arizona Archaeological Society, and groups of students and volunteers. Paths and interpretive signs have been constructed, and an interesting brochure is available at the entrance.
5/14 Hooked up this morning and drove to Page, Arizona, 136 miles straight north on US-89. The early part of the drive was through rolling high desert, becoming drier and warmer as we gradually lost altitude. The last 50 miles were very scenic as we came into a region of canyons and mesas. Many of the cliffs are surrealistically multi-colored. This is the western edge of the region known as the Painted Desert, which extends about 70 miles to the east. At a pullout near the top of a high pass we looked down into a flat valley cut by the sharp edged narrow canyon of the Colorado River. As we climbed over a high mesa and began the final descent to Page, the vista becomes truly spectacular, with Lake Powell and the high cliffs of Glen Canyon spread out in front of us.
Along the way, we drove past a small but intense thunderstorm, centered a mile or so west of us. As we approached the storm, our CB radio began emitting a shrill whine, rising gradually in pitch as we neared the center of the storm. This scary sound is a result of very high electrical fields - radio waves emitted by electrical ions rushing upward from sharp objects nearby - and is the precursor of a nearby lightning strike. We kept moving fast away from the area and no lightning hit close to us
We're camped about 5 miles northwest of Page, in the Wahweap RV Park, a privately operated full-hookup campground in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. We're on a small mesa about 0.3 miles from the shore of Lake Powell and about 0.5 mile from the Utah border. Visible below is us are a hotel, a huge marina, and a wide expanse of lake interrupted by cliffs and isolated pinnacles of rock rising hundreds of feet vertically out of the water. This is the most accessible of the four road-accessible marinas, and is the most popular starting point for boat trips on Lake Powell. The lake meanders about 150 miles northeast through Utah. Numerous flooded side canyons add to the size, and give the Lake about 2000 miles of shoreline.
Glen Canyon Dam, started in 1957, dammed the Colorado River to form this huge lake. Except for the five marinas scattered along the length of the lake and the hotel facilities at Wahweap, there are no man-made structures on the entire shoreline, and almost no road access.
5/15 Exploring the canyons of Lake Powell with a houseboat has been on our list of potential activities for several years. Our primary reason for coming here was to gather information for possible future houseboat trips. We spent the afternoon at the houseboat rental dock at Wahweap. Aramark has a monopoly – they run all businesses in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, including boat rentals. So the options are limited. We could rent from Aramark, rent from a private individual who has a time-share boat moored in the marina, or rent from a company who operates on dry land five miles away and trailers the boats to the lake. We toured all the various houseboat models at the Aramark dock, and asked lots of questions. We're now a little less confused and somewhat better informed, and will have to think hard about what we really want to do.
5/16 We started today's tour by spending an hour at the Glen Canyon Dam Visitor's Center. The dam is like a lot of others we have seen lately, but the visitors center has a scale model of the lake and its canyons that was very interesting and the AV show had some scenic footage.
Lee's Ferry is a spot that is full of history. In hundreds of miles of river, this is one of the very few places where a road capable of handling wheeled vehicles could be built down to the Colorado River from both sides, allowing a vehicle ferry to operate. The ferry was an important link in the early settlement of the region, and operated until 1928, when the ferry broke away from its guide cable and was swept down the river, carrying three people and a model T Ford to their death. That was the last ferry trip. Shortly thereafter, the Navajo Bridge was completed across Marble Canyon, a few miles downstream.
Although Lee's Ferry is only 10 miles, as the crow files, from our trailer at Wahweap, it is 54 miles away by road. Going south, the road climbs almost 2000 feet up onto the plateau east of the river canyon at Page, goes far south before finding a route down the cliffs into the outer canyon, and then doubles back north, crossing the inner canyon (called Marble Canyon at this point) on the Navajo Bridge, still 600 feet above the Colorado River. A new bridge was completed in 1995, and the historic 1928 bridge is still in place and used only by pedestrians, allowing us to walk leisurely across the 1000-foot span, staring at the river far below.
In the middle of the bridge, I spoke to a young lady who was spending the day there, monitoring a directional radio receiver. She is one of several people in the region who are tracking California Condors, the largest (up to 10' wingspan) and rarest land bird on the continent. In 1987, only a few condors remained. All were trapped and placed in a captive breeding program. By 1996, the captive population had increased enough to allow a few birds to be released (carrying numbered wing tags and radio transmitters) in the nearby Vermilion Cliffs area. Currently, 25 birds are in this area. While we were there, one condor was resting through the heat of the day in a cliff niche directly below the bridge, only a couple of hundred feet from us, but unfortunately not within view.
Lee's Ferry is the ending point for 15-mile flatwater river raft trips down from the Glen Canyon Dam, and it is also the starting point for 270-mile boat trips through Grand Canyon to Lake Mead. We walked around enjoying the scenery and watching crews prepare several huge (40') motorized rubber rafts for the downriver trip. About 15 years ago, we started from here and did the 270-miles as a leisurely 21-day trip in small oar-powered plywood dories, rather than the faster, but noisy, rafts. We would like to do the trip again someday.
5/19 We watched a dramatic thunderstorm move across the cliffs to the north of us, the roiling black clouds and intense lightning bolts making the scenery even more spectacular than usual.
5/21 The last several days have been dedicated to relaxation and passive enjoyment of the great views from the campground and the pleasant weather. Starwatching has been good - the campground has no streetlights and the atmosphere is very clear.
Today dawned cool and sunny and we decided to see what Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is all about. This huge (1.7 million-acre) park was designated as a National Monument just within the past few years and is largely undeveloped. There is little readily-available information about the park.
It is unique in the National Park System because of its size and because is it the only National Monument operated by the Bureau of Land Management rather than by the National Park Service. It is also unique in that BLM will continue to allow, in some portions of the park, some of the traditional activities that are generally prohibited in lands administered by the National Park service – hunting, grazing, off-road vehicle use, firewood gathering. (We expect that we will still hear the echoes of bitter back-room political compromises bouncing around these canyons.)
Grand Staircase-Escalante adjoins and links together several other State and National parks: Bryce Canyon to the northwest, Kodachrome Basin and Anasazi Village State Parks on the North, Capitol Reef National Park to the northeast, and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area to the east and southeast. US highway 89 skirts along the south edge of the park, between Glen Canyon Dam and Kanab. State Route 12 skirts the north edge of the park. The area between these highways is mostly wilderness, accessed only by primitive, unpaved roads.
We stopped at the Paria Contact Station, on US-89 about 20 miles west of our campground, to gather the limited information available – a small park brochure and map, a couple of xerocopied pages about specific aspects of the park, and a chalkboard listing of road conditions on the primitive roads within the park. The maps showed us that it would be impossible to see all the road-accessible portions of the park in a one-day drive. We chose a loop which looked like we might be able to complete it in the time available (if the road conditions weren't too bad. And if we did get stopped by a washout or whatever, our camping gear is always in the back of the truck.)
We left US-89 10 miles east of Kanab on Johnson Canyon Road, which is perhaps the only paved road into the interior of the park. The first 15 miles or so are just outside the park boundary, which apparently runs along the cliff top just to the east, with the canyon bottom being a narrow strip of private ranch land, some of it irrigated. Johnson Canyon is impressive – defined by wind- and water-sculpted sandstone cliffs. After about 15 miles, the paved road ends, and we turned northeast on Skutumpah Road, which passes through some of the most varied and interesting terrain we've seen. To the North, we could see the high cliffs which define the south edge of Bryce Canyon National Park. Those of you who have been to Bryce may remember standing among the ancient bristlecone pines on 9,000-foot-high Yavampi Point, enjoying the expansive view out over the lower wilderness to the south. Today, we're in the middle of that view, looking up at Yavampi Point, which is about 9 miles away at the place where we are closest (but is visible from the road for many miles in both directions.)
We were lured on by the surprisingly good condition of the road – smooth enough so that we could often go 30 mph along a relatively level plateau. But after about 20 miles, the road deteriorated as it twisted its way down through one canyon after another. By then, we were two hours into the drive and felt committed to continue on around the loop. The road became very narrow where it clung to the edges of the canyons. In a few places, the surface was clay, still slightly damp and slippery from a rain two days ago. In the bottom of each of these canyons, the road forded a stream – some of them still flowing. The fords were all gentle and shallow, and we had no problem with them.
Much of this country is open range, and we had to be constantly alert for cattle standing in the road. Many of the cows had small calves nearby. The cows were placid, moving slowly and reluctantly aside just far enough to let us pass. The calves were skittish and inclined to run, and we were never sure which direction they would run. Midway along this road, we passed Deer Springs Ranch – a private facility operated under BLM license. In addition to serious ranching, it seems to be a dude ranch, offering backcountry tours and guest cabins, and selling sites for private cabins.
At one point, the road crossed a slot canyon that is 200 feet deep and, in some places, only a few feet wide. The bridge (the only bridge we crossed in the entire loop) was simply some boulders dropped into a narrow place where they jammed between the canyon walls to support an upper layer of smaller rocks and gravel. The canyon walls were so convoluted that we couldn't see the bottom.
Eventually, we came to a paved road and then after a few miles, to Kodachrome Basin State Park. It was getting late and we didn't stop to investigate the park, other than to notice the spectacular cliffs behind the park. The pavement was just a teaser – it's a short spur leading from SR-12 to the State Park. Along this road, we turned off onto a short dead-end dirt road leading to the base of Grosvener Arch - a chunky asymmetric arch that's interesting but won't win any beauty contests.
We soon turned off onto Cottonwood Canyon Road, yet another primitive dirt track. We're on the home stretch – with only another 35 miles between us and US-89.
Cottonwood Canyon is yet another, rather different facet of the varied terrain in this park. It's a huge geologic fault, extending almost perfectly straight north/south for 30 miles. We could see that the fault valley also continues further, south of US-89, but didn't have time to investigate. The canyon walls are very steep in places. In other places they are fantastically tortured and folded layers. Flowers were frequent all along the route – lupine, Prince's Plume, penstemon, larkspur, cliff rose, mariposa lily, and others. We got back to US-89 just as the sun was setting, wishing we'd had more time to stop and explore along the way.
Earlier in the day, we noticed another campground in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and stopped to investigate. Lone Rock campground offers primitive camping directly on the Lake Powell beach, off US-89 just a few miles west of Wahweap. The water level fluctuates widely through the year and this has created a very wide sloping beach - plenty of room for a large number of RV's to spread out. The surface is a coarse, reasonably firm sand which can be negotiated by fairly large RV's The view of the cliffs across the narrow bay is impressive. There is also an area up the hill a bit from the beach, with an even better view and a firm level gravel surface, which would be better for large RV's and for people who are more interested in a view than in beach activities.
5/22 Hitched up and headed east on SR-98. We'll be driving across the huge Navajo Nation all day, and most of tomorrow too. It's high rolling desert. The skyline is often dominated by sharply defined mesas, rising far above the surrounding land. We occasionally dip through canyons and brief regions of eroded "badlands". The Navajo people like to spread out and live in isolation. All through the day, we often saw a single house, or occasionally a cluster of a few houses, far back from the highway in the middle of the desert. Occasional dirt tracks led, we presume, to other homes too far from the highway to be seen. I kept remembering scenes from Tony Hillerman novels as we drove through the country in which most of his stories were set.
First stop is Navajo National Monument, which preserves several large Anasazi pueblos built in caves along a canyon wall. None are readily accessible. The closest involves a strenuous several-hour hike and can be visited only as part of a ranger-led tour. Dave walked two interesting 1-mile trails from the Visitor's Center. One leads to an overlook on the opposite side of the canyon from the nearest cliff dwelling. The cave is huge – an arch-shaped opening 480 feet high and 380 feet wide. The dwellings within it are dwarfed by the immense opening, but originally covered the entire available floor area, housing around 150 people. The people who lived here are believed to be the ancestors of the present-day Hopi Indians. They abandoned these caves and moved further south in the early 1300's, apparently because of a falling water table and depleted plant and animal resources from over-use.
Continuing east, we stopped for the night at Gouldings RV Park, two miles from the entrance to Monument Valley, a Navajo Tribal Park. The campground is in a narrow pass, hemmed in on both sides by high rounded sandstone cliffs – quite attractive. It's an island of private property within the Navajo Nation, purchased by the Goulding family in 1924.
After setting up the trailer, we drove into Monument Valley and took the 17-mile drive down into the valley, through and around the "monuments". These are weirdly sculptured sandstone, rising abruptly from the valley floor, ranging in size from isolated needle-like spires to huge structures large enough to be called mesas. The evening light, in the hour before sundown, was perfect for viewing and photographing the rocks, enhancing the natural reddish hues of the sandstone. The road is dirt – rough, poorly maintained, and very dusty. It's negotiable by any automobile, but RV's over 27 feet are prohibited. Guided tours are available in small open vehicles (a bunch of seats mounted on a small flatbed truck), and these vehicles take a somewhat longer route, visiting areas that are not open to private vehicles.
Although the monuments are wonderful, the rest of the park made us feel like we were visiting a 3d world country (in a sense, we are). The entrance road is lined with shabby plywood shanties in which Navajos are selling "hand-made" jewelry (mostly hand-assembled from machine-made components that were probably manufactured in China) and other tourist merchandise. There are frequent signs warning us not to step off the road. There are no hiking trails and no interpretive signs. At several points along the road, there were more Indians hawking their jewelry. We skipped the Visitor's Center, wanting to get onto the loop drive before they closed the gates at 6:30 p.m.
5/24 Continuing east, we followed US-163 through Mexican Hat, turned south on US-191, then east again on US 160 through Teec Nos Pos, continuing a few miles to the Four Corners – an otherwise undistinguished spot of desert where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico all come together at a point. As we drove into this area, we were a bit startled to see high snow-capped peaks in the north - the San Juan Mountains, which are 70 miles away as the crow flies. We're still in the Navajo Nation, so of course we were charged an admission fee to drive a few hundred yards off the highway to stand on the actual corner. And of course the place was encircled by the ubiquitous plywood shanties with more Indians selling what appeared to be exactly the same jewelry and pots we've seen several times before. (With a few exceptions – occasionally we ran across a true artist and craftsman (or woman), selling beautiful and original items.)
Backtracking to Teec Nos Pos, we then continued east on US-64 past Shiprock. Shiprock is the jagged basalt core of an ancient volcano, rising 1700 feet above the generally flat desert and visible for a great many miles from all directions. It's 15 miles south of the highway, accessible by a primitive road. The view from the highway was spectacular and we didn't try to drive to the rock with the trailer.
The town of Shiprock is on US-64 where it crosses the San Juan River. The river is flowing vigorously, almost out of its banks, and the entire river valley is green. After days of desert, it's very refreshing to see big trees, green grass, and many acres of irrigated farmland. The highway roughly parallels the river all the way to Farmington, which is located where the Animas River joins the San Juan.
We'll be staying at Farmington, New Mexico for a few days, waiting for mail to arrive and waiting out the busy Memorial Day weekend. We're at Mom and Pop RV Park in the eastern outskirts of Farmington. We're in an industrial area, and there must be oil fields not too far away – several of the businesses around us supply oil field drilling equipment, supplies, and services. The RV Park is clean and neat, and has a friendly and helpful owner and a modem plug. It's inexpensive, but has little else to recommend it.
After Memorial Day, we'll probably drift north into Colorado, choosing our locations depending on the weather forecast, so as to try to stay where daytime temperatures are in the 70's.