September 24: Grand Canyon to Monument Valley

Left the BLM site on Monday morning heading for the east gate of the National Park.  Too many stunning views along the way.

Desert view watchtower - amazing construction

Very close to the edge for someone that is not crazy about heights - 5,000ft down

Zoom in and read - this is the bottom of the earth crust

The river producing good farm land

Got to where I was planning to stay the night – some Forest Road near the east entrance to the park.  However, a dirt road that was so bad, there was no way I was going to put the Whale through it to get where you could camp.  Luckily the MO is to stop at the start of the road, get the bicycle off and go exploring – mainly to see that I would not go down a road where there was no turning around spot… that had happened to us before on our 2008 trip.

Decided to keep going North East towards Lee’s Ferry.  It is at the end of Glen Canyon upriver and the start of the Grand Canyon and was the first only place to cross the river back in the day.  Beautiful spot.  Most of the rafting trips through the Grand Canyon start from here.  Once you commit, you are in for 14 days – there is no getting out and the river moves at 4mph.  I would think the rapids are fun, but there must be long stretches of very very hot nothing.  Also, the policy of pack in pack out is taken to the extreme – and that means all human waste also gets to the end point…. Which does not sound like a good situation if you are going through a rapid.

From the campsite

Lots of balancing rocks.  You could see erosion in action - over the course of a few million years...

Rafters setting off for 2 weeks

See the brown Paria river and the Colorado do not mix easily

Entrance to Lee's Ferry

Navajo bridge - first major crossing of the Colorado river

A California Condor - looks like a turkey vulture, but with white wings and definitely not as large as a genuine Condor

Vermilion cliffs

In any case, after Lee’s Ferry it was on to Page, AZ on Lake Powell.  I had booked 2 nights in an RV park in town to recharge and clean everything. 

Page campground

Lake Powell

Glen Canyon dam

The town was created as a work camp for building the Glen Canyon dam – which forms Lake Powell.  In the summer, the place buzzes as there are 1000’s of house boats to rent and it must be fun to spend a week or 2 on the lake – something like Lake Kariba – without the animals…  The winters however cannot be fun.  High desert, cold, wind… What it has going for it is stunning scenery and the Horse Shoe bend in the Colorado river.

Horseshoe bend

Friday night I spent at a ‘free’ campsite on the beach at Lone Rock.  I had actually seen pictures of it, and figured out just in time that it was 10 miles away.  Was great – and lots of people hanging out there.  Best part was that I arrived there on a ‘free’ day – apparently Arizona has these odd days where all National Parks, etc. are free, and Friday was one of them – else it would have been about $45.

Magical lighting

After a 2 + hr paddle around the rock

See the Whale in the distance

Lake Powell Octupus

Deep fine sand to get to the campsite

For the first time since I had left Boston, I actually took out the Paddleski and paddled around the rock – it was further than it looked, but happy to report that neither the ski or the paddler sank.  We made it back in one piece after not being in the water for more than a year.  The view of the rock from directly below is awesome.  Unfortunately I could not get any photos from the ski, as stability was a bit of an issue…

From Page I headed to Monument Valley – another one of the must-stops along the way. Had 2 nights of dry camping and then 3 nights in an RV park to receive some Amazon packages.  The dry camping site was definitely different.  Belongs to a young guy whose Mother had set everything up, but died about a year ago.  He has a women living there to look after the place.  She lives in a tent and her boyfriend is in jail.  Sad setup, but I was less than a mile from the park entrance.

View from the dry campsite

The host site

A serious off-grid camping setup...

View from the rim of Monument Valley

My guard dog - Snoopy

Navajo huts

After my walk around the 'Mitten' in the distance.  My first non-alhocolic beer

Living the life

Sunset

The traffic jam in the valley and the left mitten I walked around

Vistas once again where awesome.  However, the ‘tours’ through the park – one for $150+ pp were totally overpriced, and there were so many cars going through the route that it looked like one big traffic jam.  I opted for the 3.6 mile hike around the Western Butte – was a great Sunday morning walk, but I am feeling it now.  For the last mile back uphill to the visitors center I had visions of a cold beer pulling me along.  Got to the visitors center only to find that they only sell non-alcoholic beers…. Nou ja – there has to be a first time.

The first week back in the Whale

Early morning departure out of Boston had me land in Phoenix by 9am – it was already 85F (which was a bad sign).  Got to the storage facility and all was fine - I was expecting a heap of molten metal - what with record temperatures in AZ the whole summer.  By the time I had the batteries connected and everything squared away, it was 11:30am and 105F, but the Whale started first time – really amazing machine. 

As one does when it is this hot, I drove the Whale about 200yards to the bar next door to re-hydrated.  Bonus was that I could watch some world cup rugby, US Open tennis and BundesLiga soccer. Turns out the RV park where I wanted to stay for the night was full, so I put the Whale back in storage, and took the bicycle to a nearby hotel to stay for the night.

What Saturday taught me was that  I was not going to survive in the Phoenix area for any amount of time, so headed out to Prescott which is about 100 miles north west of Phoenix and 5000ft higher – and 20F cooler on average.  Great campsite in the granite glens around Prescott.

 

The first night in the Whale was great – slept like a log and was woken by the screech of the cicadas – and there are many of them.  Apparently there had been lots of rain and the insects where everywhere.  Weird part was that there were not that many birds… not sure why.

Fun part was that the cycle path to the Fry’s grocery store went down a nature trail – about 3 miles of it.  Was beautiful except that I made the mistake of cycling back just before sundown.  It was as if I was cycling through a rainstorm of bugs.  Took me at least 15 minutes to get all the bugs off me once I got back to the Whale.

A snake along the cycle path.

 

Big news was that on Monday morning ‘I got the call’.  BNY was going through another round of ‘lets make the family smaller’ and I was on the list.  Was not unexpected, but it was a bit earlier than I would have liked.  Any case, what it did was mess up my whole travel plan that I had just worked on on Sunday…  I could now travel on any day – not just weekends, but... I was also going to be on a slightly stricter budget.

The more unexpected change was that I would not be talking to people during the work week at the office, and suddenly I was talking to a lot less people.  All this meant was I was going to have to stick with my ‘talk to at least 1 person per day’ policy.

It also gave me time to get the Whale in for an oil change.  Luckily there was a RV dealership down the road who did a mediocre to bad job – but expensive – of doing the oil change for the engine and generator.  Will have to learn how to do it myself….

Cycled into Prescott to go visit Whiskey Row - a street of 18?? century bars.

Note the swing doors.  The host had a bowie knife and a gun (lets hope it was fake)

On Friday I packed up and headed to Meteor Crater east of Flagstaff.  Went from 5000ft to 7000ft with some serious uphills to Flagstaff.  Meteor Crater is in the Navajo tribal lands with a great informative visitors center that is on the rim of the crater.  The joke there is ‘Amazing how the meteor just missed the visitors center’.

 

The crater - amazing.  Did not quite wipe out the dinosaurs, but did cause a lot of havoc

Going up the escarpment to Flagstaff

Local pulling a 5th wheel (caravan) with the slide-out still out and a ATV behind that... only in Arizona

From there on to Winslow, Arizona.  Sad little town and if it was not for the Eagles and ‘Standing on the corner’, it would be much worse.

Slept at the Twin Arrows Casino next to I40 that night – large number of RVs were sleeping over.  Seems some of them were there for more than an overnight as well, but I suppose it is free, and all the casino facilities are there to use.

Older lady with 2 dogs - looks like she is there for the season

The Whale at the Casino

 Saturday was a quick stop in Flagstaff for provisions and then along Rt180 to the Grand Canyon.  Beautiful road through pines in the high country.  Bought myself the best bargain in America – the ‘America the Beautiful’ pass.  Lets you into all National Parks in the States for 1 year.

The Canyon – well, just AWESOME.  It is crazy.  If you have not been here, you need to come see for yourself.  Just simply amazing.  I did the rim walk of about 2.5 miles in the middle of the day – at 7000ft it is at least below 90F but I definitely felt the altitude effect. I have a 1000 photos, but here are a few

Lots of Elk all over the South rim

The lodge

Hydrating with a view

There is the river

Had to re-hydrate after all that.

Headed out of the park to Tusayan to find a boondocking site for the night.  Boondocking == going off grid normally on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land.  Ended up on Long Jim Loop just on the outskirts of the town - about 6 miles from the canyon.  Dirt road with quite a number of mainly car campers staying overnight.

The bicycle path from town to the rim was actually along the Arizona Trail - an 800 mile trail from Mexico to the Utah border through Arizona - which means it dips through the canyon.  To be honest, I prefer doing the trail in the Whale... hats off to Jack.

 

Met 2 couples - both 70+, one couple in a small caravan and they come here every year for at least 2 weeks from Virginia to walk the forest roads.  The other couple had a 34ft Mercedes sprinter van and travel around because the wife was scared to stay at home with hubby that was retiring...

 And so ended week 1