Sunday 23 August 2015

Days 12 and 13: Sedona and home


     On to our final two night stop, at Sedona. South of Flagstaff the road descends into a deep and heavily wooded gorge. For the first time on our trip we are in well-watered, green country, with early summer lupins and fresh leaved trees. The town itself is a prosperous little tourist town, full of shops selling crystals and native American nicknacks.
      We explored several areas here on foot, including the West Fork Creek and the area of big red bluffs to the south, where we met a lovely lady who had retired and was living in a Winnebago on permanent tour of the national parks, with her cute little dog as her only companion.
      We also managed a trip on the Verde Canyon Railroad, an old mining track that made someone a fortune at the time, and was bought up by a local native American entrepreneur, after it fell into disuse. Arriving in a tropical downpour, which soon cleared up, we were shown to our luxury car, with armchairs and a running buffet, and a sound track of every pop song ever made that mentions trains (and boats and planes). Our down-home stetsoned guide explained the natural and man-made history rolling past, from thousand year old native houses to the day the How the West Was Won film crew blew up the water tower, as we traversed the world’s bendiest train line.
      So to the final leg, out of the pines and into the Arizona desert with its organ-pipe cacti, then through the vast, ugly sprawl of Phoenix. We spent a little time in the Desert Botanical Gardens, very pleasantly laid out and stuffed with exotic dry climate plant species, before heading to the airport.
All in all, a rich and fascinating tour, with every type of weather known to man, and natural wonders that have to be seen to be fully comprehended. But I hope these words and pictures capture a little of the magic.

Days 10 and 11: Grand Canyon


   

  So, moving on again towards the final sections of our trip, we approached the Grand Canyon, via an interesting old trading post by a rickety suspension bridge at Cameron. Our first sight of the Canyon was at Navajo Point, where is found the Desert View Watchtower, a quirky building that dates to the period in the 1930s that the national park was opening up to visitors.
      From here you can look into the depths of the canyon itself, which is so vast that our brains can’t really comprehend it. But you just spend a lot of time staring into this amazing abyss, transfixed.
      The Colorado river can be glimpsed a mile straight down below the rim: and rising above are layer after layer of sediment. The canyon is 277 miles long and up to 18 miles wide.
      We continued along the south rim’s scenic drive, stopping off many times at the various viewpoints, for about thirty miles to the main village, then south a little to Tusayan, where we stayed for a couple of nights. This is a typical national park fringe town of motels, steak houses and the like. There is a quirky IMAX presentation, which includes great fly throughs of the bottom of the canyon, but with highly dubious ‘historical recreations’.
      No — the canyon itself is the thing, and we took several long walks along the rim, watching a chilly, brilliant sunset and along the bluffs further west during the day. Theodore Roosevelt, a great advocate for its preservation, said: ‘The Grand Canyon fills me with awe. It is beyond comparison absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world. Let this great wonder of nature remain as it is now. Do nothing to mar its grandeur, sublimeity and loveliness.’ The national park service do a great job in preserving it, while allowing easy, unobtrusive access, and long may this continue.

Day 9: Lake Powell



      Glen Canyon Dam is an engineering triumph of the 1950s, which flooded the Colorado river valley and some of its tributaries, forming a hugely popular water recreation area, and one of the south-western USA’s most important water and energy sources. However the recent three year long drought means that the lake is a hundred feet below its optimal level, leading to rationing for farmers and other users.
      The lake has great numbers of houseboats. This being America, they really look the size of floating houses which, like the Winnebago motor homes, allow for travelling in some style. With nearly 2000 miles of shoreline, there is plenty of space for these ungainly vessels to pootle around, although the surrounding countryside has a rather desolate, desiccated look.
We stayed one night in Page, a fairly prosperous looking town built to service the dam construction and now a tourist centre. We found a little Mexican redneck cafe that was cheerful and friendly, but probably not a good place to get into a political discussion.

Days 7 and 8: Monument Valley


     

Leaving Moab bright and early next morning, we drove through young pine forests mostly on back roads, taking in the Natural Bridges national monument, and continued across a flat plateau, before suddenly finding ourselves on the edge of a precipice. The road descends rapidly through a series of hairpin bends so vertiginous that my companions threatened to get out and walk, leaving me to drive the car on the gravelly, sloppy surface. But our trusty Ford Fusion got us to the bottom — and there, hovering on the horizon, was our next destination: Monument Valley.
      Through Mexican Hat (above) and you are into the lands of the Navajo Nation, a self governing state-sized area that we would drive through for the next few hundred miles. Monument Valley itself is a red desert with the familiar buttes of John Ford movies. We had to split to stay in separate hotels, but each has spectacular views across this famous landscape.
      Everything in the valley is run and staffed by the native American community. The hotels and rooms are comfortable and well designed, but we were warned off the food: what we saw looked uninteresting, so we ended up picnicking in our room on what we could glean from the general store.
      On our first evening we sat on a cliff overlooking the Mitten buttes as the shadows lengthened and the sunset polished up the sandstone until it was glowing bright and deepest red. Next morning we woke early to watch the sunrise behind the monuments. No wonder the film makers love this place.
      With my knee playing up, Ian and Kathleen managed a long walk around the buttes while I took it easy on the first afternoon, and we had a leisurely drive around the (inevitable) scenic drive the next day, stopping off at many good viewpoints — although we resisted the temptation to hire a horse to be photographed in Lone Ranger style at John Wayne rock.

Days 5 and 6: Canyonlands and Arches national parks


     Next day, we took off and, in improving weather, continued on the scenic highway to its end, with the great wall of the San Rafael Reef on our left, until we met Interstate 70. The sediments here are distorted into a great wave (or anticline). This was a major barrier to early settlers trekking west, but a narrow river-cut gap was used as a mule trail and now the interstate plunges through it in sweeping curves, dropping rapidly from the plateau to the plain to the east. A turn out at this point provides a dramatic view.

      A quick lunch stop in Green River, a fading former mining town sidelined by the interstate, and we continue on to Moab, a much more pleasant prospect. This is a stopping off point for two national parks and our next resting place, courtesy of Comfort Suites. It’s another tourist oriented town, with a lively centre, and tree lined streets and squares, although the main road, one of the few north south routes in this region, is very busy. We were caught out by a massive tropical downpour soon after we arrived, with lightning, thunder and hail, but braved the weather for a wander, eventually ending up at Twisted Sisters Cafe, where we had one of the best meals on the whole trip - a very friendly little place and much better than the Desert Bistro, which we tried on the second night. As with many American restaurants that aspire to be at the top end (i.e. expensive), this one tries too hard, with too much going on on the plate.
     
      The following morning, we went out to Grand View Point, where you can see the vast inaccessible wilderness of Canyonlands National Park. The Colorado and Green Rivers have carved out their deep valleys, leaving a narrow mesa 1400 feet above, which they call the Island in the Sky. It lived up to its name on this visit, as the valleys filled with cloud and sometimes the depths around us could only be glimpsed. Ian stayed back as Kathleen and I took the 2 mile walk to the end, along open stone ledges, with plunging cliffs to the side. The cloud suddenly dispersed and the vistas appeared.
     Next, it was time for a quick tour of Arches National Park, much more accessible and therefore highly visited, with a scenic drive that tours the more spectacular geology. Here, there are literally dozens of natural arches, water and wind carved, as well as stacks with almost human form, and oddly balanced rocks. We walked to some of them along easy trails, including the routes they call Park Avenue and the Devils Garden trail. (They like biblical references — well, this is still Utah! Others include Fiery Furnace, Tower of Babel, and the Garden of Eden.)