David and Enid's Travels

It is raining in the desert.  We left Phoenix this morning, where it rained off and on all night, and drove through drizzling rain most of the way here, with occasional heavy downpours.  It is cloudy out now, and looks like it will rain again soon.  We will be here for the next three days before heading to New Mexico, so should see some sun soon.

David and Enid in front of saguaro cactus in Thunderbird Park

It is our 39^th wedding anniversary today. This morning we watched some video from this past fall that I’d edited, but we hadn’t yet viewed. Then we watched a slideshow from last November, our arrival and travel up the east coast of Australia, including a lot of beautiful pictures of fish and coral which we shot on the Great Barrier Reef.

After that we went for a hike in Thunderbird Conservation Park which is just a few kilometres to the west of us. We didn’t have a map which showed where the parking was, so we just drove in the right general direction, and got lost a couple of times in residential areas with no exit to the park before we found it. We hiked for about an hour, then ate our lunch, and then continued on the H3 loop hike that took us all around the north end of the park. It climbed up over a couple of large hills with good viewpoints overlooking Phoenix. This morning there was a lot of NO_x haze so a layer of brown gas covered the city to the south.

Last year we had our picture taken on our anniversary in front of a palm tree on the ocean beach in Australia. This year it was in front of a saguaro cactus in the Sonoran Desert.

Navaho rug, Heard museum, Phoenix, Arizona

It was slightly cloudy today, but warm enough with temperatures in the mid 20’s C.  We went to the Heard Museum this morning, a museum with both contemporary and historical Native American art.  Much of the art work was very nice.  I especially enjoyed the Hopi dolls, and the Navaho rugs.
After lunch and a bit more time in the museum we left and drove to the downtown area, where we stopped to look at St. Mary’s Basilica, the oldest Catholic church in Phoenix.  It has a very large number of stained glass windows.  We also walked around Heritage Square, a small park with some small museums and restaurants in historical Victorian era buildings.  It contains the only remaining structures from the original town of Phoenix.

Petroglyphs, Deer Valley Rock Art Center

We spent the morning looking at the petroglyphs here.  There are over 1500 different carvings scratched into the black basalt boulders that make up the Hedgpeth Hills petroglyph site.  The tour begins with a small museum that explains the origin of the rock carvings, over a time period of the last three thousand years.

It was a very nice day, with warm temperatures in the low 20’s C.

Not much news to report today.  We spent most of the day shopping.  The weather here is pretty cool for Phoenix at this time of year.  It was only about 12 C today.

Meteor Crater, Arizona

It froze overnight in Holbrook, but it didn’t get as cold as the weather forecast.  We drove under sunny skies to Meteor Crater, which is about 30 km west of Winslow, and stopped there to visit the museum and view the crater.  It is well done for a private museum, equivalent to most national historic sites.  After viewing the museum and watching a film, we went for a guided walk of about 45 minutes part way around the crater rim.  It was pretty cold, though not as windy as yesterday, so Enid and I once more wore our toques and gloves.

We spent about two hours there, then drove on to Flagstaff, where there was a lot of snow, close to a foot in the ditches.  By now it was cloudy, but it did warm up as we dropped down into Phoenix, so by the time we got here it was about 16 C.

We checked in to the Desert Sands RV park, and were surprised to find it doesn’t have a laundry.  We asked our neighbours where the closest Laundromat was, and since it was about as far as going to Mavis and Grant’s, we decided to visit them instead.  We phoned and they were home, so we went over, did the wash, and had supper together.  Both Enid and I were very tired tonight, so we went to bed early.

Enid at painted desert, Petrified Forest National Park

There was a wicked storm last night, sometime around midnight.  It rained a bit and there was some thunder, but mostly it was just a lot of wind.  When we awoke this morning the sky was still partly overcast, but clearing.  It was quite chilly, but not too windy, so we drove to Petrified Forest National Park, and spent the day there.  It was pretty cold, and we wore our toques and gloves (and Enid her long underwear), but the trip to the park was well worth it.

We started at the north end of the park and drove through the painted desert.  We stopped at the historic site, the Painted Desert Inn, which was rebuilt in the 1930’s by the Civilian Conservation Core.  Now it is a museum with a lot of the original furnishings and paintings on the walls.

We ate our lunch in the Tahoe looking out over the painted desert.  Then we continued on to Puerco Pueblo, an archaeological site where there are the ruins of a settlement from several hundred years ago.  There were a large number of petroglyphs here, as well as more at a site not too far away called Newspaper Rock.  At this latter site there is a solar calendar, where a crack in the rock lets through a shaft of light which exactly aligns with an image of the sun on the day of the summer solstice.

Petrified trees at Jasper Forest, Petrified Forest National Park

The southern part of the park is littered with thousands of  pieces of beautifully coloured petrified wood.  Not just small pieces, there are many complete trees, as big as those that make up the modern coastal rainforest in British Columbia.  We first saw the logs at Blue Mesa, then saw even more on the ground at Jasper Forest.  At Crystal Forest we walked for over a mile around a loop trail through the petrified trees.  There were an incredible number of logs, but the wind made it extremely cold, especially on the way back.  It was so strong that it was hard to walk both with and against the wind.

Enid on trail at Crystal Forest, Petrified Forest National Park

Finally we stopped at the Rainbow Forest Museum where the largest of the logs is located.  By now we were cold, and pretty well saturated with views of the trees, so we didn’t stay long before driving back to Holbrook.  It’s a good thing that it was so pretty in the national park, as the weather certainly didn’t make the day!

Glen Canyon Dam

It was nice when we left Zion National Park early this morning.  We drove up the steep and sharp switchbacks to the Mt. Carmel tunnel, and waited about five minutes for our turn to go through.  It is easy to see why you need a pass allowing only one way traffic.  The tunnel is probably (just) wide enough for two vehicles, but not high enough on the edges for a trailer.  You pay $15 for a tunnel pass, they close the tunnel to only allow traffic in one direction, and then you drive right down the middle.

The view of the rock is stunning as you drive through it on the way east out of the park.  After leaving the park the terrain opens up into broad, high plateaus for the most part.  As you get farther east the rock gets even more red, almost a red-brown, or sienna shade.

The road goes up and down through several deep canyons, and over some high plateaus.  By 11 o’clock we were at the Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona.  We stopped briefly to walk down to a viewpoint of the dam which is basically at the start of the Grand Canyon.

We bought gas in Page, and it is a good thing we did.  The wind had picked up all morning, but as we were travelling to the east the south westerly wind was more or less striking us on the side.  However as we now changed direction and headed south to Flagstaff, the wind was head on, and it was very strong.  According to the weather news tonight the gusts were up to 80 km/h.  I can believe that they were that strong, as tumbleweeds were flying straight down the highway.  A plastic bag flew up in front of us, stuck to the front of the hood, and flapped loudly until we stopped for gas in Flagstaff, and it fell off.  The trailer swayed a lot in the wind.

When we left Flagstaff we once more were headed east, so the wind was not as big a problem, but gusts still tossed the trailer around.  When we got here to our RV park in Holbrook we found that a piece of the metal skirting on the base of the trailer had blown loose and was falling down.  I was able to put it back in place, and put some more screws in so I hope it will stay put.

The weather forecast for the next few days isn’t great.  It is going to be cool, and probably wet, so we may not get a very good visit to the petrified forest.

Kolob Terrace Road

Today is our last in Zion, so we travelled to the west side of the park and drove north on the Kolob Terrace Road.  This road climbs to the highest point in Zion National Park, the Lava Point observation area.  As it climbs it travels through a large variety of different terrain, and winds in and out of the park through ranchland, so we got a good view of the area.  This side is a high plateau, rather than the canyon which we are in here in the main part of the park.  You can see out over the entire park, but you are looking down on the canyons, rather than up at them.

Hoodoo City

We stopped at the start of the Hop Valley Trail, where there are some very interesting hoodoos.  I’d found it on the Internet last night, and it was called “Hoodoo City” in one trail guide.  We climbed all around the sandstone and took a lot of pictures.  On the way back I stopped to photograph some Stellar’s Jays.  Enid was behind me, and discovered some ice in a little creek that we crossed.  When I was done photographing I looked around, and couldn’t see her, so thought that she had gone back to the Tahoe.  I walked back and she wasn’t there.  I called, but she didn’t answer.  So I walked back, and found her waiting for me.  She’d sat down to wait quietly while I was photographing, and I couldn’t see her.

After eating lunch there we drove on and stopped a lot to take pictures of the magnificent rocky scenery.  There is so much red and white sandstone here that you get a different beautiful view around every corner.  It is hard to stop photographing!  We drove to Lava Point, which is a few miles down a rough gravel road.  After that we continued on an even worse road that headed towards the West Rim trailhead.  After a while on this road we decided it was pointless, as it was very rough and heading downwards, so we felt we likely wouldn’t get much of a view.

We drove as far as the Kolob Reservoir.  Around this area there are quite a few summer homes.  None of them were too large and spectacular that we saw, but most of them would have a nice view out over the park.  A couple of them were under construction.  On the way back we met an oversized semi coming up around the corner.  He stopped as he turned and was way over the sharp bend.  We had to go out over the edge of the road to get around him.  The road is paved, but very narrow, and it reminded us a lot of the roads we drove on through the Snowy Mountains in Australia last year, with similar sharp turns and steep drop-off over the unprotected edge.

The end of the Northgate Peaks trail

Our final stop of the day was at the Wildcat Canyon trailhead, where we decided to hike in on the Northgate Peaks trail.  Fortunately this trail was pretty flat.  It passes through a large open stand of Ponderosa Pines.  After almost 4 kilometres of walking we got to the end which looks out over the park towards the area of the “Subway” canyon.  After that we drove back to Springdale where we got fuel, and a few groceries, and so are all ready to leave early tomorrow morning.

Bridge Mountain, looking north from the Watchman Trail loop

It was quite a bit cooler last night, the coldest it’s been since we got to Utah.  This morning we walked to the human history museum, about a kilometre north of the campground.  Along the way we saw a group of mule deer.  At the museum we saw a number of displays about the history of this area.  We also watched a 20 minute video about the park.  There are supposed to be some petroglyphs on a rock that is not far from the museum.  We walked all around the rock and saw nothing, so perhaps we had the wrong rock, as there are definite pictures of them on the Internet.

There is an art exhibit on at the museum.  Throughout September and October they have a “plein air” exhibition of artists who paint in the park.  We have stopped and looked at several of the artists that were painting at different locations in the park.

After lunch we hiked the Watchman Trail.  It starts right here in the campground, and goes about 3 kilometres up to a point with a good view to the north and south.  The trail switchbacks quite sharply and drops off steeply on the sides.  We decided we’d take it a bit easier today.