Giant Toys Plus!

This will be the last post (but not the least) about our 7 1/2 month journey around the United States this year.  What a fun time it was!  It is not hard to be on the road for 7 1/2 months, surprisingly.  The motorhome becomes home, and every day brings new explorations.  Everything but the scenery becomes comfortingly routine.

Our next stop after Monument Valley was Williams, Arizona, just a half hour west of Flagstaff and 45 minutes south of the Grand Canyon.  Williams is a small town with western flavor, decent restaurants, and cute shops.  The train to the Grand Canyon leaves from Williams each day, although we did not take the ride.  Instead, we chose to check out the Big Toy Playground!! 

And what is the Big Toy Playground?  It is a place where you can operate heavy equipment for 1 1/2 to 5 hours (depending on how much you are willing to pay.)  In 5 hours, people have time to drive a couple of vehicles.  Lee and I chose the 1 1/2 hour option, and were exhausted from concentrating so hard when our time was up, so it was plenty.

I operated the back hoe with a front loader, and learned to handle both.  How cool is that!!

I drove an obstacle course, moved dirt from one pile to another, dug a hole, pushed a pile of giant tires, and picked up basketballs off of cones and dropped them into a trash can!  It was amazing how precise these machines can be.  It was tiring because there were so many controls, and each does something different.  It was all very confusing but got easier with practice.

Are we having fun yet?  Yes!

Lee operated the excavator.  He stacked up tires, dug a big hole, and moved basketballs from cones to a trash can.

Lee looks like a natural at this.  He was so excited!  Is this his new career?

We were so close to the Grand Canyon, we couldn't  pass up a visit.  We had been to the Grand Canyon a year and a half before, but it was as impressive as ever.

The next stop was Las Vegas for two days.  Lee wanted to see what he could find out about the iPhone 6+, and hold one in his hand so he could see how the larger size felt.  There was a line at the Apple store of course, so Lee got no information here.

We had time to wander through a few of the casinos.  The photos below are of the Beach Club, a magical place.

We finally entered California near Barstow, south of Tehachapi Pass.  The Pass was incredibly dry.  The last time we drove through here it was green and snowing.  Signs of the drought are definitive.

Lee wanted to see the ocean again, so we headed straight for Morro Bay.

We visited friends near Monterey farther up the coast, and had a chance to see the "Tentacles" exhibit on Cephalopods at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  This charming cuttlefish was 12-15 inches long.  Thank you, Kathy, for this photo.  I hope you don't mind my using it! 

 

Finally, after 7 1/2 months away, we arrived in Sebastopol!  My sister had a gift waiting for me.  While we were gone, she painted the small windmill in our front yard.  When we left, it was unpainted and rusty.  When we returned, voila!  A thing of beauty!!  I didn't even realize it was the same windmill at first.  What a lovely way to be greeted!!  Thank you, Corinne and Marion!

We have been home now for two weeks, and are still struggling to catch up.  It is nice to be back, and I plan to stay for awhile.  Lee, however, would just as soon keep going.  He is ready to head for Oregon and Seattle, although I am sure the temperatures are starting to turn cold to the north.

Thank you, all, for following my blog, and for your engaging comments and words of encouragement.  I hope we gave you ideas for your bucket lists and future travels!

Much love,

Eileen, Lee, Beanie and Barney

South to Monument Valley

As you may recall, the remnants of Hurricane Norbert dumped lots of water on Arizona and southern Utah.  Lee and I were in Moab at the time, which did receive some rain but it wasn't bad.  After Moab, we had planned to visit Capitol Reef National Park and then take I-15 from St. George to Las Vegas.  However, a part of I-15 was washed away by a flash flood, and it was announced that reconstruction of the road would result in a detour for big rigs like ours, going 250 miles out of the way, for up to a few weeks.  So we changed our plans, and decided to go farther south to Monument Valley, and then across through Flagstaff and north to Las Vegas.

Between Moab and Monument Valley there were interesting rock formations long before we arrived in the Valley.

 

Our first view of Monument Valley, even from a distance, was exciting.  Several vehicles had pulled off to the side of the road for the "photo-opp".

 

Our campground was across the main road from the entrance to Monument Valley.  I enjoyed our site.  We were surrounded on three sides by red canyon walls, being situated in a narrow gap.

 

Here is the view from the campground looking towards Monument Valley. Awesome!

Monument Valley itself is an adventure.  It is not a national park, it is a Navajo Tribal Park.  The entrance fee is $20 per vehicle, and the self-guided tour is a dirt road, recommended for 4-wheel drive vehicles only.  Although there were many regular cars on the road, I was happy to be in our Jeep Liberty.  Lee did use the 4-wheel drive to get back up the hill at the end of the tour, and it made a difference.

I mentioned the self-guided tour, a loop, is a dirt road.  It was quite dusty, and I had to take a photo of a white vehicle that had parked in front of us to show how dusty it truly was (not to dissuade anyone from making the trip - just know you will need a car wash afterwards!):

By the way, visitors can sign up for a guided tour, which visits more areas in the park.  I was so happy to not be on one of the tours, though.  People had scarves wrapped around their faces because of the open-air vehicles and the amount of dust, not to mention the fact that the trucks traveled in groups.  Woe to the people not in the first truck!   It looked terribly uncomfortable.

Monument Valley is probably best known for its use as a backdrop in Western movies when Westerns were popular.  Stagecoach, with John Ford and John Wayne, was filmed here with the permission of the Navajo tribe in 1939.  Everyone will recognize the iconic "mittens", one with a right thumb and one with a left.  Visitors get an excellent view of the mittens from the Visitor Center.

There were a few other formations visible from the Visitor Center, just to the left of the mittens.

By the way, the Visitor Center has a restaurant that serves simple Navajo food.  I had mutton stew, and the Indian fried bread was delicious (although not necessarily healthy - we had it for dessert).  The gift shop had some of the best prices on jewelry and pottery that we saw in all of the Southwest.

As we drove along, we saw other formations - an elephant and a camel (more or less).  I liked the two students being taught by a Catholic Sister.  Her folded hands and habit, in profile, are very apparent.

More awesome views on the loop tour:

I loved this formation, called, appropriately, the Totems.

Here is the view upon returning from the loop tour:

Looking back at the formations around which the tour loops:

Being in the park at sunset was definitely worthwhile.  We watched the colors and shadows change for almost an hour, as did many other visitors:

It was especially fascinating to watch the shadow of the closer mitten encroaching upon the other:

I have no idea how often this happens during the year, but I think we were very fortunate to see the shadow of the one mitten centered on the rock formation of the second mitten.  How lucky is that??  Beautiful!

Thank you, Lee, once again for your great photographs.

I have one more post to go, of the final leg of the trip and wrap-up.

Canyonlands National Park

Just a few miles beyond Arches National Park is the turn-off for Canyonlands National Park.  Canyonlands is beautiful in its own way, but is a bit of an odd duck with multiple personalities.

There are three main parts to the park.  The first, Island in the Sky, is the most accessible and is a high mesa.  To the southeast is The Needles.  The entrance is 1 1/2 hours south of Moab with a paved road to a visitor center.  But from there on out, a four-wheel drive vehicle, off-road vehicle, or hiking is required.  Finally there is The Maze, to the southwest.  It is the most primitive and least accessible of the three sections.  Why The Maze?  Because, as you might guess, people get lost there.  85% of this park is back country, inaccessible by car. 

The first formations one sees upon entry into the park are the Monitor and the Merrimack, because they resemble the ironclad battleships by those names, best known in connection to the Civil War. 

The following views are from the Island in the Sky, as one drives through the park on the main road, stopping at various viewpoints.  We were there on a very hazy day, so conditions for photography were not optimal, but you get the idea.

The final viewpoint for the Island in the Sky looks out over the area where the Colorado and Green Rivers converge.  The Green River (2) created The Island in the Sky by flowing down the west side; the Colorado River (1) flows down the east side.  Are you beginning to see why this park is called Canyonlands?

The photo below isn't great because of the great distance from the viewpoint.  But this is as close as one can get to The Needles from The Island in the Sky.

Returning back along the main road, there is a turn-off to an anomaly upon which scientists do not agree.  It is a large round hole in the ground.  It could have been made by a meteor, or perhaps by ancient sea salt that was forced up, then dissolved by rain, leaving a hole into which rocks collapsed.  It is very different from the surrounding landscape. 

Not too far from here is another viewpoint from which visitors can get a decent view of the sinewy Green River.

Canyonlands has a couple of arches of its own.  The arch below is the most accessible, and is of a smaller scale than those at Arches NP, of a more friendly and human scale.  It looks over the canyon carved by the Colorado River.

More canyons in Canyonlands!  These canyons are not as deep as the Grand Canyon, which is a few hundred miles to the south, but are certainly impressive in their own way.

Beautiful!

In our travels throughout the national parks, we heard so many different languages.  It was gratifying to know that people from other countries appreciate the beauty of our parks as much as we do.  It seemed to me that the ratio of English-speaking people was about equal to the number of people speaking languages I did not understand.  We also saw a few RV's shipped over from Europe.  They look very different from those manufactured in America.  The RV below, Lee says, is also an off-road vehicle.  I thought it was very odd.

Next, Monument Valley!