Road Trip October 2-8/10

These pictures above are from Canyon de Chelly (de shay) . I am having trouble moving pictures around in the blog so these are staying put rather than going into the section describing this beautiful canyon.

I love RV-ing! We can drive ourselves and cook our own meals. Okay, he is the chauffeur and I am the cook. It works! And we get our own bed to sleep in at the end of the day. No bed bugs.

Oct.2/10 The first night we were in Bluffton Indiana at a KOA where we were welcomed so warmly despite the cold and rainy

weather. What a nice change from the horribly cold experience we had at the border at Port Huron.

Oct. 2/10 We were pretty excited about using our NEXUS cards for the first time and thought we would sail through. After all we are supposed to be “trusted travellers.” (NOT!) But the booth guard wasn’t happy with our answer about when we would be coming home and said we needed “an education.” It was awful. This is a YESSIR situation. Somehow we got out of there without being shot or even worse; body searched. I am trying to put it behind me.

Oct. 3,4/10 Now in Stanton Missouri KOA things are looking up. The sun was out for our drive today. Ontario travellers are on either side of us; the only ones we have seen so far even on the freeway. Both couples are going to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque New Mexico and they don't even know each other. They have huge RV's and are significantly older than us.

Adventurers!

Oct. 4,5/10

Now near El Rino Oklahoma, KOA Cherokee Restaurant and Gift Shop: a

huge advertiser on the billboards for this place along with live buffalo and buffalo burgers. Bad combo as far as I’m concerned! The RV park

was very small and more like a parking lot but all the amenities were appreciated and by early evening the small lot was full.

The landscape kept changing today from rolling hills to prairie to barren scrub with grazing cattle and the odd oil rig and then the buttes and plateaus, just

beginning. We went through the Texas panhandle and into New Mexico. Tucumcari is a very poor looking town but the KOA i

s quite nice. As with many places we have seen along Route 66 things are run down or abandoned. Route 66 is beside I-40, the Interstate we have been on since Oklahoma City. This historic highway is in various stages of disrepair but signs of the old

days still remain. Even an old Vacuum Cleaner Museum attempts to draw tourists in. Not!! We have seen some crazy signs; “Hitchikers may be

escaping prisoners.” I guess that can betaken 2 ways.

We've been through so many States I can hardly keep track!

It's about Route 66! Some towns along I-40 revert to it as their main street. It has become a bit of a project to learn about it. Check out http://www.national66.com/66hstry.html or similar websites. It was the first semi transcontinental highway in the U.S. and I sometimes feel like I am on some historical journey myself reminiscent of how early travellers of R66 must have felt. The abandoned motels, cafes and even vehicles in some spots conjure up images from movies and stories of the famed "Mother Road".

Oct.5/6, 2010

We left Tucumcari New Mexico this morning in the dark? We were surprised how long it

took to get light but we are not quite in

tune with the time zones yet so maybe that is the problem. Anyway, New Mexico along I-40/Route

66 is quite beautiful. We began to see buttes, mesas and plateaus. What on earth is the difference? Here is my very basic understanding based on rudimentary research online. A butte is a tall hill with a tabletop and the top is narrower than the height. A plateau is a table top which has a top wider than the height and a mesa is in between. Despite reports of really bad weather in Phoenix and most of Arizona we had benign weather and no wind until the last 100 miles or so. It was a great relief to reach Holbrook AZ and even though the landscape is foreign and the ground gravelly it felt so good to be staying still! And we are going to be here for 3 days. Yeehaw!

Oct. 6/7/8,2010

Holbrook KOA. I like this campground. It feels like home already! There is a restaurant; no a drive in restaurant with no cars; an outdoor grill called Cowboy Cookout and you can get great breakfast and dinners. We haven’t had the dinner but it looks popular. Breakfast is good.

Painted Desert and Petrified Forest

We toured the

Petrified Forest National Monument about 20 miles from here. It is not really a monument but miles of geological formations including viewing areas of the mysterious Painted Desert. Mysterious because even after visiting I am not sure where it starts or ends.

When driving down I-40 you would never believe that only a few miles off the road are canyons of colour, mounds of colour, petrified wood and spectacular scenery. It is like stepping into Ayla’s world...yes from Clan of the Cave Bear. This area makes me think of Jean Auel’s descriptions of the ancient landscape in her books.

The walls of the plateaus,mesas and earth are so colourful; the views so vast, that it is hard to stop looking at it. This was a 28 mile drive with outlooks and points of interest along the way. Ancient ruins and petroglyphs can be seen. In one area, called Blue Mesa the formations look like elephant skin with blue, purple and pale colouring. We were able to take a hike down and walk in this canyon? It is hard to know how to describe these areas. The Blue Mesa formations are called Tee-pees and that is what they look like. As we progressed we saw logs, yes logs in this weird landscape and of course we knew they were petrified wood...turned to stone actually. But it was hard to believe it. Had to keep touching them to be sure. In places it looked like the spoils of a logging camp. These logs are actually being uncovered by erosion. They have been buried for millions of years. Along with fossils. The movement of tectonic plates, volcanic action and erosion have combined their efforts over millions of years to reveal amazing geological formations, petrified wood and of course fossils. This is a paliontologist’s dream and a tourist’s pleasure.

Canyon de Chelly (de-shay) (See pictures at top of this entry)

It was a long drive from Holbrook through Navajo country to this incredible Canyon. The scenery reminded me of a prairie with mesas and plateaus poking out of it. The vegetation is yellow and green and scrubby. I know some of it is bunch grass, some junipers, some types of cactus and who knows what else. (Actually road views through New Mexico and most of what we have seen of Arizona so far has been like this.) In the Canyon de Chelly area Navajo homes sporadically dot the landscape and hosres and cattle have free range. Even in the town of Chinle we saw some horses grazing right by the road side not fenced.

Then when you least expect it you see miles of red rock and colourful cliffs and the canyon which is actually a series of canyons. It is mostly reddish. The flat parts of the rock reminded me of Killbear only it is even more red here. We were able to do a hike down at White House Ruins and get to the canyon bottom. This is the only hike into Canyon de Chelly that the public can go on without a Navajo guide or permission. You can take guided jeep, horse or truck tours with native guides but we didn’t take that option. I think next time I would take a tour. There are petroglyphs and ancient ruins that cannot be easily seen or appreciated without a guide.

The hike was precarious at times with the feeling that the path was not wide enough and the drop too far! But it was gorgeous. Once at the bottom you could see an Anasazi ruin, called the white house because white plaster material was revealed by erosion. Most of the house was gone but you could see 2 stories and petroglyphs on the walls. The Navajo call the Anasazi the Ancient Ones...predecessors to Navajo occupation of this canyon. Farming is still an occupation of Navajo in the valley though it looks primitive. The Navajo seem to have a complicated culture which is a mixture of tradition and efforts to embrace change. I really know very little about them but would like to learn. Their jewellry, weavings and carvings are beautiful. We saw some rugs at a trading post that were $1900 for a small one!!

The vertical walls of this canyon are amazing. Water erosion has made this canyon but it is hard to comprehend with flat faced walls like this! I would imagine other forces must have been at work to make these hard and sharp edges. Some people have said that Canyon de Chelly is more spectacular than the Grand Canyon. It was certainly one of the most scenic places I have ever visited.