April 9 – Tombstone, AZ

On our drive across Arizona we made a quick stop at Tombstone. One of the most famous town of the old west, the town today – at least the old section of it – appears not too much different than it would have in the late 1800’s when the Earp brothers and Doc Holiday had a gunfight with the outlaw cowboys – the Shootout at the OK Corral.

Interestingly, Tombstone is only 30 miles from the Mexico border and we saw border patrol everywhere. They had a station where there where stopping all cars headed north. There was extensive imaging equipment set up that scanned every vehicle, drug dogs on the prowl and a hoard of agents asking all kinds of questions and searching all vehicles.

April 8 – Easter Sunday, Tucson, AZ – Prince of Tuscon RV Park

We pulled over for the night at a truck stop on the north side of Tucson before making our way down to visit Marty Alkin. Marty is a very good friend of Nancy’s family. He moved to Tucson about 10 years ago and we haven’t seen him in a number of years. We all attended church service in the morning and spent the afternoon relaxing and listening to his war stories. Marty is a decorated WWII veteran. He was on the beaches of Normandy on D-day and, unlike a lot of veterans, is more than willing to tell you about it. We thoroughly enjoyed our time with Marty. He is great with kids and, although he’s slowing a bit now that he’s 89, he hung out with us all afternoon and did dinner with us – Texas Roadhouse again – in the evening. The kids had time to hit the pool at the RV park in the evening and again the next morning before we pulled out to head east.

April 7 – Phoenix, AZ – Walmart Flagstaff, AZ

We stayed the night in the Walmart parking lot in Flagstaff. I also visited Best Buy and purchased a new head unit for the RV. I’ve been wanting to swap the old one out and it started giving me error messages creating the perfect excuse to upgrade. The following day we made our way down to Phoenix to visit our friends, Brian and Teri Kilgore. We enjoyed an afternoon at their house alternating between the air conditioned house and the 95 degree outside temperature. This is the first time on the trip where is really started getting hot – Nancy loved it! While there I installed the new stereo – we can finally play the iPod through the RV stereo!  Later in the evening we all headed to the airport to pick up Uncle Jim who decided to rejoin us. We all enjoyed dinner at Texas Roadhouse, one of our family favorites, before we set out for Tucson late in the evening.

April 6 – Grand Canyon, AZ – vacant lot in Kayenta, AZ

We drove west from Southeastern Colorado across northeastern Arizona headed toward the Grand Canyon. Although not too far from the beautiful scenery in southern Utah, this drive was as ugly as southern Utah was beautiful. Hard to believe. We stopped for the night in Kayenta, AZ parking in a vacant dirt lot in back of Burger King. Before I even had the RV parked we had 5 stray dogs circling looking for handouts. Before I knew it, the kids had the windows open and were throwing food out to them. We spent a restless night here. The wind was howling all night long. I took the dog out for a walk in the morning and literally got showered with sand – the wind was blowing so hard. After cleaning the sand out of my ears, we got back on the road happy to leave Kayenta and Burger King behind us.

Approaching the Grand Canyon from the east allowed us drive alongside 40 miles of the canyon before we actually got to Grand Canyon Village on the southeast rim. There were some great lookouts along the drive. At around 300 miles long, 18 miles wide at its widest point and over a mile deep one thing that pictures simply can’t capture is the scale of the canyon. Simply put – it’s massive. Also, most of the canyon that we saw drops literally straight down thousands of feet creating sheer cliffs along the rim of the canyon. Needless to say we didn’t let the kids get too far away from us on this stop. I was hoping we’d see the deer and elk near the village that we had seen when visiting several years back but they weren’t around. If you haven’t ever been to the Grand Canyon add it to your bucket list – it is definitely worth seeing.

We stuck to the rim trail where they installed railings - believe it or not there's very little railing to be found here.

Nancy and Zach peering over the edge - I wouldn't get that close...

April 5 – Mesa Verde, CO – Mesa Verde RV Park

Interesting factoid - Mesa Verde National Park is the only national park dedicated to preserving the works of man. The Anasazi Indians lived in this area and from 500 AD to 1200 AD. They farmed the mountaintop mesas that sit high above the valley floor and lived in the naturally occurring shallow caves in the cliffs below the mesas. Beginning in 1100 AD, they started building enclosed living areas in the cliffs. Due to their protected location, these dwellings are incredibly well preserved. We toured Spruce Tree House which is the best preserved of the dwellings in the park. It was home to approximately 100 people each housed in small rooms - roughly 5x7’ - where, it is guessed, that 2-4 people slept. It is hard to imagine people living here during the harsh winters where the average annual snowfall is 144 inches. The blackened ceilings of the caves are testament to the fires that, no doubt, burned 24 hours a day during the wintertime. It is thought that the Indians abandoned the dwellings around 1200 AD due to an extended drought in the region.

As with all national parks, the visitor center here is first rate and offers a bunch of information on the dwellings and the Anasazi people. If find this sort of thing incredibly fascinating and enjoyed it thoroughly. The kids didn’t enjoy this stop as much – they couldn’t understand why they weren’t allowed to go running through all the rooms in the 1000 year old house.

Spruce Tree House - the indians climbed up from their houses to work the fields above. We could see rudimentary stairs carved into sides of the canyons.

Grain grinding stations built into the plazas in front of the dwellings

Kivas built underneath the plazas in front of the dwellings - these were covered and ventilation provided means to build a fire. These were community meeting places.

April 3-4 – Moab, UT and Arches National Park – Moab, UT

We took the scenic route from Bryce to Arches – over 300 miles of incredible scenery climbing to an elevation of 10,000 feet where we felt like we were on top of the world looking down at an incredible vista below. We passed through Capitol Reef National Park on the drive and found countless places to pull off along the road and take pictures. It occurs to me that the State of Utah for reasons unknown doesn't choose to spend money on guardrails. We've passed over some unbelievable roads at meaningful elevations the past few days and I don't think I've seen a mile worth of guardrail. There was one stretch of road several miles long today with drops on either side of several thousand feet. I hit this stretch, slowed to about 30 miles/hr, grabbed the wheel with both hands and looked straight ahead. Meanwhile Nancy is in the passenger seat explaining to me how steep it is on both sides of the RV - NOT HELPFUL. I had to apologize for my response later...

We rolled into Moab, UT in the early evening with the white-knuckle driving experience safely behind us. This is cool town – obviously touristy but not in an obnoxious way. It has a nice quaint downtown area with a number of cool shops and restaurants. As we drove through town it struck me that it seemed like every other car on the street was a Jeep Wrangler – some of them really decked out. I knew this town was known for rock crawling but I didn’t expect to see this. Well it turns out that it was Jeep Safari week – this is one of Moab’s two big Jeep oriented events during the year. Needless to say the town was hopping. This also meant no camping spots. After looking at some of the designated camping spots on BLM land and finding them full we retreated back to town and took up residence for the night on a city street. The whole family caught a movie – the Hunger Games – at the small theater in Moab. The next morning, after talking to one of the locals, we made our way out to Potato Salad Hill. This is a well known rock crawling trail. We spent about 2 hours here watching all sorts of jeeps make their way up the hill – some of them taking routes that had them going almost vertical seemingly defying gravity. The kids, of course, where hoping to see them come crashing down the hill. Although there were some very close calls, we didn’t see any carnage.

Arches National Park was on the agenda for the afternoon. We drove about 20 miles into the park seeing sights like Balanced Rock and Delicate Arch. It’s interesting that these national parks in Southern Utah are all relatively close together but the rock formations in each one are really different from one and other largely due to the fact that they were created by different means. Suffice to say that you don’t see the same thing twice here and everything you see is definitely one of a kind.

On top of the world - view from almost 10,000' on Boulder Mountain

View of Capiol Reef National Park




Balanced Rock - it's ineresting that they let you walk right up next to this thing

 

Delicate Arch

Going vertical...

We loved watching the wheelers

April 2 – Bryce Canyon National Park, UT – Bryce Canyon National Park North Campground

The drive up to Bryce was only about 90 miles and we made good time despite the incredible scenery. This stretch of road from Zions to Bryce to Arches/Moab has got to be one of the most beautiful in the country. We’ve all seen pictures of the rock formations that these parks were established to protect and preserve and the formations are indeed amazing. More amazing in person than the best pictures you’ve seen. This amazing scenery isn’t limited to just the national parks – there were amazing sights around every bend in the road.

We pulled in to Bryce Canyon National Park about 8 in the evening. I scoped out the visitor’s center and, upon my return to the RV, noticed that we had a flat tire. We weren’t going much farther this evening so we pulled into the North Campground and got a spot for the night. Bryce is at about 8000’ of elevation and there was snow on the ground in the campground. The temperature dipped into the 30’s during the night and the furnace in the RV got a workout. Always up for a challenge, I briefly considered changing the tire myself. I then recalled that I purchased the Good Sam RV Emergency Road Service shortly before we left on our trip. Good move – a call to the folks at Good Sam at 8:00 am the next morning got us a service truck within 20 minutes. I consider this a minor miracle as Bryce is not only at 8000’ elevation but it’s also very remote.

We took a short hike out to the canyon and caught the rock formations in morning’s light. The spires left standing in this canyon seem so intricately carved. The exposed layers of rock are amazing and very different from Zion. I’ve got a fear of heights and I really liked the fact that the walls of the canyon weren’t cliffs. The erosion occurring within the canyon created a natural amphitheatre where the eroded material created a complex series of ridges leading into the middle of the canyon. Walking down the ridges yielded some great views of the rock formations.

Bryce Canyon

More Bryce Canyon

Another view of Bryce

On top of the world - view from almost 10,000' on Boulder Mountain

View of part of Capitol Reef National Park