Sandblasted!

Friday, April 8, 2011

MONUMENT VALLEY, UT – A gust of wind that rocked our trailer this morning woke me up, somewhere around 6:30, and Val was already up. Howard, the camp owner, had told us last night that there would be strong winds today, so we wanted to get down from the heights in good time. We actually did it in record time; we were on the road by 7:30, our earliest departure yet!

I’m not sure what exactly we gained by this tactic. Through the entire day the wind has bellowed around us along every mile of highway, raising great clouds of dust that, at times, obliterated the most distant mountains completely, and made ghosts of the closer ones.

Val said he’s never seen the truck work harder than it did today, hauling our great heavy sail of a trailer against the blasts that swept unhindered across the wide plains. We headed north on Highway 191, past lots of small Navajo settlements. Next to the low buildings we often saw a hexagonal structure called a hogan, where family gatherings or spiritual ceremonies take place.

The plain we traveled across was desolate-looking, with only low sagebrush and tumbleweed dotting the dry, red soil. In the distance we started to see some of the wonderful rock formations that have been the backdrop of many movie westerns. Some rocks shot vertically from the plain as if they had been dropped there from outer space, while others were attached to larger mountain ranges that had been sculpted by time and wind into grooves and fingers of stone.

There seems to be a great fascination with naming the stone formations around here; in Sedona there was the coffeepot, sugarloaf, Snoopy, and others, and here in Monument Valley we see the mittens (formations that appear to have a mound with a thumb pointing up, one left and one right), bear and rabbit, and the king’s throne. Maybe the names helped people peg things a bit better than, say “meet you at the large rounded rock with the two-and-a-half columns next to it”.

Highway 191 came to a T intersection with 160, where we turned west. We turned north again at Kayenta, and a few miles later, crossed into the state of Utah. It was tantalizing to see glimpses, through the haze of dust, of huge monoliths of stone that would have made fantastic photos on a clear day.

Goulding’s Lodge, where we are now camped, is the name of the collection of buildings in a channel between two walls of sandstone. Harry Goulding and his wife Leone came to Monument Valley in the 1920s and built their home at this spot. Eight years later, they set up a trading post where Navajo natives could exchange pottery, jewelry, baskets and blankets for food and supplies.

Poverty and hardship related to the Great Depression prompted the Gouldings to find a way to help the community, and in 1938 they traveled to Hollywood to drum up interest in the beautiful and rugged setting of their home for a film location. They succeeded when they met with John Ford, who came here to make the film “Stagecoach” with John Wayne. He made nine more MV movie classics, and since then crews have shot hundreds of movies, commercials and TV shows here.

Tonight we went to see “The Searchers” with John Wayne, at the small theatre that is part of the Goulding’s complex. Tomorrow night they’re showing “Stagecoach”. The shows are included in our camping fee. It was fun to see the familiar story with a background that took on a whole new significance in relation to where we are!

Guests of the Navajo Nation

Thursday, April 7, 2011

CHINLE, AZ – When we stopped in at the local grocery store of this small town for a barbequed chicken for supper, we felt very conspicuous. Nearly everyone but us had jet black hair and brown skin! And I was wearing my bright yellow jacket, too. We did not blend.

We entered Navajo country today on our way to see the Canyon de Chelly (which the locals pronounce “d’shay”), located near the northeastern corner of Arizona. There was only one campground listed in our Woodall’s directory and it didn’t take reservations. But the park ranger I spoke to this morning said finding a spot shouldn’t be a problem. And if the camp was full, there was also a private campground in the park we could try. So we weren’t too worried.

Lots of puffy clouds filled the sky as we headed east from Holbrook, and in the distance we could see some of the clouds dissolving into showers. It was windy, too, and cool – about 60 degrees was as warm as it got all day.

We turned north onto State Highway 191, which took us through wide, flat prairies scattered with low sagebrush, tumbleweed and stubby evergreens. Our first stop was at the Hubble Trading Post, which has existed as a commercial enterprise ever since 1870! It is part of John Hubbell’s homestead, and he encouraged the native people to sell their wares in his trading post. Even today there are beautifully woven blankets and hand-crafted jewelry for sale.

The floorboards creaked as we went inside, and wooden counters displayed chocolate bars, potato chips, and other modern-day supplies. The second and third rooms looked more like museum rooms, with old rifles, woven baskets hanging from the ceiling, and pictures of proud Navajo women and chiefs on the walls.

On we went toward Chinle, where the canyon is located. The town has a depressed look that is reminiscent of many Aboriginal communities we have driven through in Canada and Alaska; lots of old trailers, dusty pickup trucks, stray dogs and, in this case, stray horses that were grazing right next to the road.

The road into the park looked newly paved, as well as the one leading into the Cottonwood Campground. Val made several brave attempts to fit into the sites; however, it became clear that our rig was just too big to manoeuver into place, so we had to opt for Plan B, the private campground deeper into the park.

No one was at the office trailer when we arrived, but a friendly sign told us to find a spot on our own. We knew there would be no hookups here (or at the Cottonwood sites), so we were prepared for a night of dry camping. We eventually found a site we could get into and that has an easy exit route, so we set up and unhitched the truck.

We had passed several lookout points on our way in, to which we returned now that we weren’t dragging our rig behind us. After miles of flat prairie terrain, the land simply falls away into a deep canyon with a small river at the bottom – about 700 feet down. The sides of the canyon are red rock, scooped out in places by the wind and cut into crevices in other places. Each vista was different from the next and they were all breathtaking.

The other thing that took our breath away was the wind! It ripped at our clothing, grabbed the truck doors when we opened them, and whistled in the twisted juniper trees by the lookout paths. In the town, great brown gusts swept the streets and filled the air with fine sand.

We had an interesting chat with Andrew Henry, a Navajo artist who was selling handmade necklaces, earrings and bracelets from the back of his van at one lookout point. He told us he is funding his kids’ education by doing this. He lives at the bottom of the canyon as his grandparents did before him. His hope is that his children will return when their schooling is done to help keep the community alive.

Painted, petrified and pummeled!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Painted, petrified and pummeled!

HOLBROOK, AZ – Clouds and a forecast of possible rain greeted us this morning, along with a breeze and cooler temperature. I dug out my rain jacket from the depths of the closet, where it has sat unused for weeks, just in case.

Our destination today was the Petrified Forest National Park, about 25 miles from town, but we stopped first to see the Holbrook museum and collect some local literature. In exchange for a donation toward the museum, we were each allowed to select a small piece of petrified wood to take home.

How does a piece of wood turn to stone? That was the question we hoped to have answered at the park. We entered from the south end and stopped at the Rainbow Forest Museum, where the ranger invited us to watch a short film.

Before the continents had drifted apart, we learned, the land that is now Arizona was very close to, and similar in appearance to the rainforest of the Panama region – lush vegetation with towering trees and high humidity. The continents drifted, and in the Triassic period, about 225 million years ago, the forest toppled on what had become a flood plain. The logs became mired in volcanic ash, mud and heavy silt, and silica-laden water infiltrated the cells of the wood, encasing them with minerals. The silica crystallized into quartz, preserving the logs forever. Depending on what was in the minerals, the logs took on a variety of colours.

The petrified trees were a big curiosity in the early 1900s, and unfortunately visitors took a lot of fine specimens away as souvenirs. (They must have been fairly small ones, because the logs are extremely heavy!)

To preserve this especially rich collection, the region was declared a national monument in 1906. A large tract of the painted desert was added to it in 1932, and in 1962 the area was made into a national park.

We walked around the looped path behind the Rainbow Forest Museum to see some of the petrified logs, randomly strewn on the hillsides, sometimes in a column as if the tree had just fallen. Colours of purple, orange, yellow and red outlined the ancient rings in amazing patterns, and even though they were made of stone, you could still see the roughness of the original bark, and twisted knotholes.

Clouds had gathered in the huge sky overhead and a stiff breeze had started to blow, but we braved the wind, for a while anyway, while we ate our picnic lunch at the tables provided nearby. Then we headed through the park with its rolling hills and mesas. These were striped in grey, purple, rusty red and white, living up to the name they were given by early Spanish explorers, who called the area “el desierto pintado”.

Newspaper Rock, about half-way through the park, was a collection of huge stones that had tumbled down a cliffside, where pre-historic natives had pounded petroglyphs of people, animals and designs onto the dark, flat surfaces. The film we had seen showed one spiral sun design that was a calendar; a beam of sunlight would come between a cleft of rocks and hit the centre of the sun at the exact time when crop-planting should begin.

We looked at the ruins of an ancient pueblo village, with more petroglyphs (including one that looked just like the stork bringing a baby!), and stopped at several lookout points with breathtaking views of striped cliffs and hills, the immense flat yellow-grassed prairie beyond, and blue mountains on the horizon, all crowned with heavy grey clouds that spilled a few raindrops on us before we headed home. I hardly needed the jacket, but at least I had it handy.

Dozens of tumbleweed balls hopped and rolled across the highway as we drove back to camp, and the air was brown with dust as the wind gusted across the flat plain and pummeled the sides of the truck. It was fun to see trucks and cars smash the dry balls into twigs as they passed.

Deep impressions

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

HOLBROOK, AZ – We are now in Navajo County toward the eastern border of Arizona at a KOA near this small town of some 4,000 souls. We are watching the weather very closely as we work out our route; by coming here before heading for the Grand Canyon, we are seeing the sights in this corner of the state (of which there are many), but we are also allowing the passage of time that will bring warmer temperatures near the Canyon.

It will be much more comfortable for us if we can avoid night temperatures below freezing. Even here in Holbrook, it went to 29 degrees last night, but tonight it should only dip to 42, so we won’t have to worry about frozen pipes. It hit a pleasant 76 degrees today — but back in Phoenix and Tucson now, it’s in the low 90s. What a difference altitude makes!

Our main objective today was to move from the Sedona area to this corner of Arizona, and we stuck to Interstates 17 and 40 to do this. The smaller highways are much more scenic, but from exploring them without the trailer in tow, we realized it would be too harrowing to attempt them with the full rig!

Just before lunchtime, we passed some signs advertising the Meteor Crater, with the call letters of a radio station to find out more information. I had seen the crater marked on the map, so we tuned in and heard the spiel about it and decided it might be worth a visit. It was on a six-mile road off the main highway, across a vast, flat plain of dry yellow grass dotted with low scrub bushes.

Off to the west we could see the magnificent snow-capped San Francisco Mountain in the distance, and a huge blue sky brushed with wisps of white cloud. The road was well-paved but narrow, with no shoulders, and I could sense Val’s angst about pulling our big trailer into an area without knowing if he could turn around, let alone get out with it.

We could see the rise in the land which was the rim of the crater, and as we got closer it was clear there would be plenty of room to park and turn around, thanks to the generous parking lot with the pull-through section for RVs and trucks. We parked and ate our lunch before heading to the ticket office to see the crater.

Lots of meteorites break through earth’s atmosphere and fall to earth, but most of the time they disintegrate into very small pieces and make very little impact. However, 50,000 years ago a huge one, about 150 feet across and weighing several hundred thousand pounds streaked down from the heavens and smashed into this flat plain in what is now Arizona, with an impact equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT.

The crater left by that impact is nearly a mile across, and deep enough to swallow the Washington Monument. And what we could see today is pretty well what it has looked like since the flame and dust cleared away on the day of impact. We walked along the rim in a stiff wind that nearly ripped our Tilley hats off despite the chin straps! Way down at the bottom, they have set up a cut-out figure of an astronaut that stands six feet tall. We could barely see it just looking down, but a strategically-placed telescope brought it into view.

Why an astronaut? Well, it was the perfect place for the moon-bound space travelers to train for their explorations, so the Apollo crew came here do to just that.

There was a very informative museum next to the crater that helped explain how meteorites are formed, and where some of the biggest ones have landed. The meteor crater in Sudbury is the second largest in the world, according to this display, measuring some 200 kilometers across!

It was a very worthwhile detour. Our map indicates a whole lot more which we look forward to seeing from our new vantage point.

Happy trails

Monday, April 4, 2011

CORNVILLE, AZ — The freshness in this morning’s air was ideal for today’s activity: a visit to some of the walking trails around Sedona. There are dozens from which to choose, nicely catalogued in a free handout with distances, level of difficulty and how high each climb is, plus a map to show where the trailheads are.

The tourist information person highlighted a couple of trails for us that would provide some beautiful scenery without too much exertion. With the brisk morning air and a perfectly clear sky, we had everything we needed! Plus our backpack with water bottles, and our hats, sunscreen, and cameras, of course.

A pathway of red sand and rocks led us up toward the rock formations behind the town, with plenty of evergreen trees along the way to shade us from the sun. Lots of butterflies danced among the shrubbery – mostly small ones with black wings striped with tan or orange. But we did see two large yellow swallow-tail butterflies, which are the official Arizona state butterfly. They were magnificent.

Tiny wildflowers, like miniature purple stars, peeked out from the grasses at the edge of the trail, as well as some taller yellow broom snakeweed and desert marigolds. Spiky agave plants and a few prickly-pear cacti reminded us that we were on a desert trail, despite the greenery everywhere.

Aside from the few times we passed other hikers, we had the trail to ourselves, and every now and then we stopped and stood quietly to hear the wind swish through the evergreens, or watch a turkey vulture make circles overhead.

Always, behind the vegetation and rocks, stood huge red rock formations, striped by successive eons of geological periods and carved by wind and water into amazing shapes. Great chunks of rock by the trail gave testament to the changing nature of these monoliths – but we wondered if human beings ever actually saw the pieces break away and fall. Not on our watch, we noted gratefully.

When we finished our first hike, we took the truck up the airport road to a viewpoint above the town, where we ate our bag lunch and admired the view. The whole town of Sedona was spread out below us like a map, with the red rocks like castle walls around it.

Before we took our second trail, we stopped in a shopping area to look at some twirling garden ornaments we’d seen in Santa Fe and here at a couple of places. They’re beautifully constructed with slender metal scoops like spokes on a wheel that turn gently in the breeze, and when they’re doubled up to turn in opposing directions, the effect is like a flower slowly opening. After checking the price tags on them, we realized that, unfortunately, they would never decorate our back yard — not at $2,000 a pop.

Our second trail was less of a climb than the first, which worked out well with the day having warmed up a bit more by this time. Again, we enjoyed the wonderful views and natural surroundings for an hour or so. A person could go on one trail a day and not run out of new ones to visit for weeks.

It was time to head back and pick up a few groceries on the way. After a short rest, we cleaned up and headed back into Sedona with Scott and Mary Jane, our new Ontario friends at our campground. We returned to the airport viewing area to watch the sun set over the town in glorious shades of yellow, orange, red, purple and pink.

Then it was off to a nice local restaurant for a lovely dinner, with lots of animated conversation, and a drive back to camp under a black velvet sky studded with brilliant stars, and a sliver of smiling moon. Mother Nature went all out for us today.

High living

Sunday, April 3, 2011

CORNVILLE, AZ – It’s always interesting to attend a church service far from home; there are enough familiar aspects to provide comfort, but also variations which can be very touching. Today at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Sedona, when it came time for the Lord’s Prayer, everyone in the congregation held hands in a long chain, from pew to pew. It was a lovely surprise.

After lunch back at the trailer, we decided to visit the Tuzigoot National Monument, to the south and west of Sedona. The monument is a ruin of an ancient stronghold, constructed by a native tribe in about 1000 AD on top of a 120-foot high cone-shaped hill in the middle of a huge valley. They scouted out the real estate pretty well; the view in all directions was fantastic!

The ruins were discovered in the 1930s when they were mostly just a pile of rocks on the hillside. Careful removal of the surface earth revealed walled-off rooms on two levels made from thousands of limestone and sandstone rocks that were cemented into place. Down the hillside, the archeologists found shards of pottery and implements that helped establish an idea of the people who built Tuzigoot.

The people (later named Sinagua, from “sin” meaning without, and “agua” meaning water) grew crops, hauled plenteous water from the river nearby, made clay pots, ground corn and flourished for some 400 years. There were about 50 communities in the Verde Valley, but after that length of time, they all mysteriously disappeared. No one knows what became of them. It’s hard to believe that a community of that size and longevity left no trace or legacy in subsequent generations.

When we left Tuzigoot, we decided to have a better look at Jerome, the ghost town up on the mountainside above the valley. We only saw part of it on the day of our train ride. Sunday wasn’t the best day to do this, we discovered; everyone and their dog was up there and we couldn’t find a single parking space to allow us to get out and walk around! However, we did get to see some of the old buildings, and were rewarded with a spectacular view from the lookout point at 5000 feet elevation before we turned around and headed back to the valley.

Continuing with our ancient society theme, we set off for Montezuma Castle National Monument, about 20 miles to the south and west of Tuzigoot. By contrast to the sandstone red of the rocks we’d seen in such abundance in Sedona, the rocks in this region were limestone, and almost pure white.

A curving walkway brought us in to the site, which was an enormous white cliff towering some 200 feet above us. Just under the upper rim of the cliff, there was a large sheltered recess, and below it the Sinagua tribe had constructed a stone, multi-storied dwelling, adding on to the natural caves and hollows that were already there. Accessible only by ladders, this city in the rock was cool during the heat of the day, warm at night, and virtually impregnable to attack.

The site got the name Montezuma because explorers who discovered it mistakenly thought it had been built by Aztecs. Just as with Tuzigoot, the Sinagua people disappeared after several hundred years without a trace.

It was humbling to look at this complex structure and think about the people who gathered hundreds of rocks and laboriously hauled them, one by one, up homemade ladders to a dizzying height, fitting squared-off walls into the natural curves of the rock with mud mortar and bare hands. People who are referred to as “primitive” in current times!

The five-per-centers

Saturday, April 2, 2011

CORNVILLE, AZ – There’s an elite group of people among all those who come to Sedona and gaze, slack-jawed, at the amazing vistas all around the town, and we joined it today. Thousands pass through and shop at the galleries and boutiques, eat on restaurant patios and verandahs, or lounge in spas and jacuzzis.

But only five per cent of that total actually go off the beaten track to witness first hand the natural wonders of Red Rock Country. Thanks to a frustrated land seller in the early fifties, who branched out by taking visitors around some of the rock formations by jeep, since they didn’t seem interested in purchasing properties, the Pink Jeep Tours business was launched for the benefit of those adventurers.

Our tour began at nine o’clock this morning, a perfect time of day before the sun was too hot. Seven of us climbed into a vivid pink jeep driven by Bill, who just happened to be celebrating his fiftieth birthday. Another couple, Wayne and Carol, were celebrating their wedding anniversary. By the end of our off-road jaunt, we were all celebrating the fact we were still alive and in one piece!

The three-hour package we opted for was called the Scenic Rim and Broken Arrow combo. It included a visit to the heights of the red rocks looking down over Sedona, followed by an off-road romp over bone-jangling rocks and dips to an area that had been the backdrop for a 1950s movie called Broken Arrow, starring Jimmy Stewart and Jeff Chandler.

Bill the driver explained some of the geology and botany of the area. We learned that the rock faces with a southern exposure tended to be bare of vegetation, compared to cooler, north-facing ones which retained more moisture, and so had lots of pine trees on them.

I also learned the difference between a mesa and a butte. The mesa is a hill with a flat top, and a butte occurs when erosion wears away the “shoulders” of a mesa for so long that it becomes like a narrow column. If it really becomes thin, they call it a spike.

Bill put our pink jeep through its paces big-time. He did not spare the horsepower over the rocky dirt road of the first portion of our trip, so we were jostling and lurching a lot in the back, grabbing what pillars or handles we could to stay vertical as he swung around the bends in the road. It became very clear why he advised us to keep our seatbelts fastened at all times!

If we thought that was rough, we had no words for the second portion of the trip, which involved boulders and ditches as opposed to gravel and potholes earlier! We scaled huge rocks at a 60-degree angle, and he would stop in the midst of the rise to tell a joke while we wondered if we were going to topple off altogether. He steered the jeep straight toward a rock wall and turned around to chat with us, lurching to one side just before we hit the wall. We could tell he was having a good time, and we got into the spirit of it too.

All the while, we were seeing the most spectacular views of rocks, desert plants, a brilliant blue sky and the distant valleys and mountains beyond. We got out several times to snap pictures and just gaze on the scenes before us in total awe.

A couple of guys were out on the rocks riding mountain bikes, with their dog loping along behind them. We watched them ride up to the top of some huge rounded rocks and turn back to come pelting down. Later on, we watched, aghast, as they rode along narrow grooves of an almost vertical rock face across from us. I had to look away, finally, because I didn’t want to see them plummet to their deaths thousands of feet below.

Our Pink Jeep tour is an off-road adventure that will remain in our memories for a long, long time.