Rick & Carol's Journey (DL)

Be sure to click on the photos for larger views.

This installment covers Thursday (September 20) through Wednesday (September 26).

On Thursday morning our hosts served a pancake and sausage breakfast at their RV. About 11:30, we car-pooled downtown to join a 4-wheel drive tour of Antelope Canyon. After several miles through soft brown sand, we arrived at this slot canyon. Although we have seen photographs of this type of canyon before, this is the first one we have visited. The water has eroded the Navajo sandstone so that the canyon is open to the air, but undulates down to the canyon floor. (Due to low light, it was hard to get good photos – the ones below do not really do justice to the canyon.) The canyon is subject to flash floods, and no tours are held on days that there is rain in the area.





Friday was another fairly short driving day. En route, we stopped at a couple of roadside shops where we bought some Navajo souvenirs. We also stopped at Desert Tower at the east end of the Grand Canyon where we took a lot of photos of the decorations inside the tower. The tower was built by the railroad as a tourist attraction and was designed to blend as much as possible into the natural environment. We had lunch in the RV after arriving at the campground. In the evening our group boarded a bus for a sunset tour at the south rim.







On Saturday morning we took a bus tour along the east rim of the canyon. We stopped at a couple of overlooks and at an ancestral Puebloan archaeological site. We visited the Desert Tower again and had a group photo taken on the steps of the gift shop. It began raining on our return trip and continued off-and-on (with some pea-size hail in the evening) all afternoon and most of the night. In the late afternoon we saw a film about the Grand Canyon at an IMAX theater. We then had a nice Italian dinner at the Spaghetti Western restaurant. Much of their décor consisted of Italian movie posters for the Magnificent Seven and several of the Clint Eastwood westerns.

Sunday was a free day until dinner time. With threatening showers in the morning, we stayed in the RV until just afternoon. Since it’s finally getting cooler, we also swapped out some summer clothes in the RV for winter clothing in our storage areas. Since most of the south rim is closed to private vehicles, in the afternoon Carol and I rode the park’s shuttle buses to tour much of the south rim, including stops at several overlooks and a short hike along the rim trail between a couple of the overlooks. There were a lot of different views of the canyon, with glimpses of the Colorado River. We also saw the superstructure for an old copper / uranium mine which is now a Superfund site. This evening we had a good steak buffet dinner with our group at the Thunderbird Lodge. Back at the RV, I watched TV and began reading “Death in the Canyon,” a book about the various people who have died in the Grand Canyon, mostly by being stupid (walking backwards off the edge while taking photos) or unprepared for the activity they undertake (hiking in 120 degree weather with little or no water).






Monday was a short driving day, about 100 miles, from Grand Canyon to Flagstaff, Arizona. In the afternoon we ran shopped and ran errands. In the evening we had another nice group dinner at Horseman’s Lodge. Since this is season premiere week on television, and since the campground has cable TV, we spent much of the evening watching new shows.

Tuesday was an all-day bus tour. This morning we visited Oak Creek Canyon to see a deep V-shaped canyon. Next we toured Sedona, where we took photos of the red hills, shopped for gifts, and ate lunch. Then we got back on the bus to visit two parts of Montezuma Castle National Monument – the main area with cliff dwellings and nearby Montezuma Well, a natural spring that was surrounded by a small pueblo settlement.







Wednesday was a free day. We took the CRV and visited Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, where there was a volcano between 1040 and 1100. After a picnic lunch, we toured the Wupatki National Monument, the site of another ancestral Puebloan site. In addition to the normal cliff dwellings, this site had a large community center and a Mexican-style ball court. This evening was dinner in the RV and more of season premiere week.