High desert Southwest, Part 2

Our first visit to the Grand Canyon, back in May 2015, was to the North Rim and even though it was late May we ran into snow and fog that obscured the canyon. This year we braved the far more popular South Rim, and boy was it popular.

Looking east from the Desert Watchtower

That's the Bright Angel Trail, which descends all the way to the bottom to the Phantom Ranch on the river. The wind was so strong that we decided to stay away. The problem is, if you're not going down the canyon, you're stuck on the boardwalk along the canyon with the throngs of other tourists.

Caroline and I decided to jog 2 miles along the Rim Trail. This time she held strong but the elevation kicked my butt.

All along the trail were gift shops. In fact, it was almost as though the canyon backdrop were a green screen and we were strolling in an outdoor shopping mall. That book in the top left was written by the same author as Misty of Chincoteague. We brought our own copy and read it to Tessie on the trip.

Leaving the GC we decided to visit 2 parks near Flagstaff, Wupatki and Sunset Crater. As we got close to Wupatki, we received emergency notification of a rapidly spreading forest fire in the area. 

Then we saw the smoke and learned that the highway was closed. Turning around would have meant a 2-hour detour or we could off-road it for 45 min through the bush, where Google Maps claimed roads existed. We remembered Google Maps's lapse in Portugal, but armed with a 4WD SUV we took the chance.

The first 15 minutes were sketchy and there might have been tears shed and thoughts of blowing a tire and being stranded in the desert, but eventually we found a perfectly good dirt road through the wasteland. Google Maps, we shouldn't have doubted you.

This is Montezuma Well, a natural lake, inhabited by the puebloans - see the cliff dwelling? There are no fish because of high arsenic levels

but the water could be diverted for irrigation. 

We arrived at Montezuma Castle just as a tour bus unloaded. Sorry to disappoint you folks, but the "Castle" is just another decaying cliff dwelling (and it has nothing to do with Aztecs!)

Tuzigoot National Monument - more pueblos

Tessie's booklet from Walnut Canyon - at the bottom right the "Bruh" reader is thinking "Is that native?"

Just a garter snake

A couple of years ago we visited a bouldering gym in Idaho and had a blast. We visited another one in Flagstaff that was full of buff Northern Arizona college guys, but this time Caroline and Erin were too embarrassed to go inside.

Nightswimming

We saw so many freight trains in Flagstaff, heading east with goods from the port of Long Beach, CA

We're here at the Petrified Forest, whose logs were deposited about 215 million years ago at the beginning of the Triassic period

The Colorado Plateau is unique for its vast sedimentary rock sequences that uplifted horizontally intact without deformation. In the East the rocks are usually upturned to some degree.

The park lies in what is called the "Painted Desert" but that is a marketing misnomer. It is a vast gray desert peppered with so many amazingly fossilized logs. Petrified wood is not uncommon around the world, but such a massive concentration of it is unique.

Hubbell Trading Post was established for trade with the Navajo people

and it is still in operation. We traded electronic data bits for a small handmade rug.

Thanks to Lowell NHP I can recognize a loom

Caroline's writing about how a traded rug feels

Canyon de Chelly is in the Navajo Nation and requires a guide to hike into. We stayed on the top.

El Morro NM contains a spring that attracted travelers who also carved notes on Inscription Rock

"A 5 del Mes de Junyo deste ano De 1709 Paso por aquy para Suni Ramon Garzia Jurado"

“On the 5th of the month of June, of this year of 1709, passed be here on the way to Zuni, Ramon Garcia Jurado”

El Malpais NM is one of those volcanic wasteland sites, along with Craters of the Moon NM, Lava Beds NM, Lassen Volcanic NP, and Hawaii Volcanoes NP.

The bat cave!

This lava tube is a quarter mile long and usually one can explore it, but all the caves were closed due a bat census

That afternoon the wind was so fierce that we saw 2 trucks on the side of the road that had been blown over

Adios Albuquerque

High desert Southwest Part 1

 This year to escape the smarchiness of Massachusetts "spring", we traveled to...I don't know how to describe it. We toured the Four Corners region but never passed through the Four Corners. We went to the Grand Canyon, but since it was considered a low point of the trip, it doesn't deserve a topline title. We visited CONMUTAZ. We were in the US physiographic province of the Colorado Plateau, but spent only and day and a half in the state of Colorado. But universally everywhere we went, we were above 6,000 feet in elevation in a parched landscape where living off the land looked very difficult. So that's it - the high desert Southwest.

The flight from Denver

to Durango, CO

The red line is our path overlaid on the Four Corners. We put 1759 miles on our 4WD vehicle, which came in handy for 2 dirt road adventures, one planned and one unplanned

First of the many ancestral Puebloan NPS sites was Aztec Ruins. The girls had forgotten how to use a mano and metate to grind corn 

Aztec Ruins had an enormous reconstructed kiva, or ceremonial subterranean dwelling. We didn't know it at the time, but this reconstruction was more interesting than any of the many, many, ruined kivas that we encountered at sites later in the trip

Someone in Farmington, NM spent a lot of time on this full-size Tow Mater

The entrance to our lodging at Kokopelli's Cave, owned by a geologist who tunneled into the sandstone to create a comfortable B&B

Strewn throughout the cave were rocks with notes and family signatures and a few treasure hunts

Visiting Chaco Culture NHP/WHS requires traversing dirt roads in the Navajo Nation and was one reason to rent a 4WD vehicle. The final 13 miles of washboard road were so bad that we thought our vehicle would shake itself apart.

From 850-1150, Chaco was the biggest development of the Four Corners area and spiritual center for thousands of ancestral Puebloans. It was abandoned in the 1200s, probably due to drought as the small springs that drained off the mesas disappeared.

Now onto the most famous Puebloan park,

Mesa Verde National Park. MVNP rivals Zion in terms of canyon beauty but this early in the season was almost empty.

We visited here back in 2015 with Grandma Joan and without Heather

Easter morning run from the Far View Lodge. I felt OK for being 8,000 feet above my usual running altitude, but Caroline struggled

Caroline wanted to do some "real hiking" on the trip and the Petroglyph Trail provided it

Petroglyphs were carved for cultural purposes and often were the site of sacred ceremonies. I can't help thinking that some on this panel were made by teenagers goofing off

Like these ones

Spruce House, the most complex cliff dwelling in the park

We bought a 2 lb container of mixed greens to satisfy Caroline's healthy eating and she polished it off on day 2 of the trip

Ever heard of Hovenweep? Didn't think so. It has ruins of the ancestral Puebloans

and signs written in the Navajo language

Natural Bridges National Monument lived up to its billing as having 3 large "bridges" over the White Canyon River. To me they look like arches, but according the NPS, "both are formed with water and time, but with different processes. Running water carves natural bridges, while seeping moisture and frost shape arches." I guess the point is that arches don't span anything whereas bridges span rivers.

Pro tip: to keep your 9 year-old happy and energized during a long day on the road, nothing beats sugar cereal. They're grrreat!

Monument Valley Tribal Park is within the Navajo Nation and on the UT-AZ border. NPS sites within the Nation are administered by the NPS, but areas such as Monument Valley and Antelope Canyon are controlled by the Navajo.

We stayed in one of these rimside cabins. This was the only electric vehicle that we saw on our entire trip.

Sunrise on day 1

 Hiking excursions in the park require Navajo guides. We signed up for a walking tour from a guide who grew up in the valley and taught us about local plants and ways of life of current valley residents

The trail ride was spectacular with the highlight being the girls getting to canter

Most of the monuments in the valley are buttes. Again from the NPS "Mesas are isolated, broad flat-topped mountains with at least one steep side. Buttes are smaller flat topped mountains or hills with steep slopes on all sides. They are typically topped by a hard cap rock that is resistant to erosion and protects the softer lower layers beneath. Pillars and spires are slender isolated columns of rock, that form as the erosional remnant of a butte". So, water erosion converts mesas to buttes and then spires whereas frost and ice sculpt arches and hoodoos. Wait 'til we get to Alaska, and then we can talk about cirques, nunataks, arêtes, horns, moraines, eskers, drumlins, and paternoster lakes.

3 buttes