The campsites at the Grand Canyon are fairly large. For the 2 of us, a pickup truck and a tent is all we really needed the space for, but there was plenty of room for more people and tents if we had needed it. They were a bit crammed together with other campsites, and though the folks next to ours didn't seem real friendly, we could still hear every word of their conversations, as they unpacked every camping doo-dad and gizmo ever created. I've never even used a sleeping pad, so maybe I'll look & see how comfy those are one of these days. Sure seemed like it took a long time to make camp, though.
It gets fairly cold in the desert at night. We were up in elevation, as well, so after spending much of the night shivering, after having to get up to answer the call a couple times during the night, I gave serious consideration to getting a new sleeping bag. The old, matted material bag I used didn't keep me nearly as warm as Maria was in the newfangled 0-degree mummybag she gets when we both camp out. The truck tells me it was 40F when I got out of bed in the morning.
We packed up our camp and made for the breakfast buffet (really roughing it at the Yavapai Lodge, I know). We spent a couple hours exploring the South Rim of the canyon, trying fruitlessly once again to grasp the size and scope of the terrain laid out before us.
Maria could care less how cold I was:
Still going with our "Plan B" from yesterday, skipping the 4-corners, we headed back South to Williams, and jumped on the 40East again. Arizona was much more forested through here and on into Flagstaff, where we stopped to resupply. Another place we need to stop longer and learn about when passing through next time.
Maria found what appeared to be a National Monument...not quite a park, but something neither of us had ever heard about, so we went ahead and stopped to check it out. Walnut Creek is a circular, steep-walled canyon, made up of many different obvious levels and types of rock that had been eroded away for eons, much like the Grand Canyon. This was obviously on a smaller scale, and the canyon walls on at least one level had been used by some Native Americans, who used them for shelter.
Rock walls had been cemented into place, forming walls under a natural overhang of rock. There were around 300 structures built into the rock walls on both sides of the canyon. These were a couple hundred feet below the top of the canyon walls. The hike down was quite easy and beautiful. Then the path proceeded around the inner curve of a horseshoe-shaped canyon. Many of the walls were merely recreations on this side, but it was interesting to try to imagine families living here in this canyon. They had everything they needed provided by the river and some of the surrounding land. You were allowed to go into most of the structures, and even when the walls were partially missing, it was noticeably cooler inside, and vented for smoke.
(It's steeper than it looks)
(The Ranger said we could walk in, just don't touch walls)
The only problem with the .9 mile hike was that the other half was back up the stairs to the top of the canyon. I think they said it was 270 stairs, but I'll just round that up to a thousand. We stopped to check on an older young lady visiting from Scotland was okay. She was sitting on a bench just before the stairs waiting on her travel companion and husband. As we walked past her at first, she was gazing at us longingly as though she was hoping we'd offer to carry her back up the steps. We weren't about to, but we did stay and talk with her for about 15 minutes and learn about great places to travel in Scotland. Of course she just HAD to tell Maria where her family is from in Scotland, so now we had to add that to our list of places to visit (before it just said "Scotland", now we have it narrowed down even further).
That's where we have to go back to...and it IS steeper than it looks!)
This is back at the top, seeing that our Scottish friend's party returned to her...zoomed in:
Zoomed Out:
After leaving there, we just kept plodding along to the East on the 40. At some point we dropped into the kind of terrain I had expected Arizona to be the whole time. Flat, dusty...desert. It didn't disappoint. The next item we saw on the "Things to see in 'that' general direction" guide was something I'd heard of a few times, and was glad to see it was so close. We weren't making very good mileage time, but hey, it was only Tuesday, and we'd expected to spend more time at the Grand Canyon. Since we didn't hike down to the bottom, we figured we had time to see Arizona's other big hole.
Meteor Crater is not too far off the main road at all. It is kinda pricey to get in, but once you're out there, you really don't want to turn back and say "nah, not worth the money". There is nothing else out there. They say it's about 4000' across, 2.5 miles if you hike around it, and pretty deep (you can google all the specs...go look it up!!). NASA trained the Apollo astronauts there, and there is thus much space stuff out there. A training pod, Astronaut memorial wall, etc. NASA has a trip planned for 2012 to get back to the moon (again, Google...I'm just typing from memory, here!), and intend to also train out here in preparation for that mission.
You can see the rock in this pic, then zoomed in a bit. This was debris displaced when the meteor hit:
Meteor parts are really dense iron? lead? Some other heavy metal? They had a piece that was a little bigger than a softball, one the size of a basketball, and the one you see me trying to lift. They weighed 48lbs, 175lbs and 1440lbs, respectively. I didn't move it at all (and oddly, I can see through walls, now...weird).
We took our requisite pics, and got going again. As much as Maria enjoyed my repetitive version of the Eagles "Take It Easy", we did not stop in Winslow, AZ, nor did we stand on a corner there. But that is something you can do on your way through to the meteor.
We turned off the 40 and into Holbrook, AZ a short while later. We saw mention of the petrified Forest National Park, and Painted Desert National Park somewhere around here, so we got off and drove through town on the Route 66 portion again. We are definitely doing the whole Route on bikes, next time. We passed the Wigwam Motel, and said we will come back for pictures on the way out. They had another great selection of Route 66 history still up and running, preserved well for anyone passing through to still enjoy. It turned out the road we were taking would not lead us back through town, so we wouldn't get to go back, unfortunately.
On the long road out through the plains, we stopped when I saw some Pronghorn. I was excited! I had some weird flash that we were in Africa or something. Smewhere in the darkest reaches of my memory that still housed viable information, and hadn't been purged by a chemical burn of some sort, I was able to access early school memories of reading about these animals here in the U.S. Spending most of my life in California, I had never had an opportunity to see one, and until that moment had completely forgotten that such a creature even existed!
Maria was enchanted with the petrified trees, and wanted some. We weren't allowed to take any out of the park, so we didn't. I asked the Ranger why there were so many places selling it outside the park, and was told that it isn't illegal to take or sell it outside the park, and the park only covers about 10% of the petrified forest. She explained how it became "petrified", we walked a quick tour in the waning sunlight, and started the drive through the park to the adjacent Painted Desert (2 parks in 1!!).
The park was due to close, so they said we only had an hour. By the time we got done, and at the North end of the park, back at the freeway, all the Rangers had left, and all was closed. We missed out on many of the views due to the sun going down. We just ran out of light. We did get to see a few areas of petroglyphs, including newspaper rock, and a prehistoric remains of a stone building. We were snapping pictures as fast as we could as the sun went away.
We stopped to see the old car that is a monument to Rout 66 here, too:
As we drove through the night, we stopped for gas in Navajo, AZ, on the Navajo Nation. All through that final section of Eastern AZ, there appears to be nothing at any exit at night. We didn't stop until after crossing into New Mexico, where we stopped to eat at the Olympic Kitchen restaurant in Gallup, NM. I guess we went with some pasta to stay awake long enough for the rest of the drive.
We were going to be too late to do much with my friend in Albuquerque, so we stopped at a motel near her place, and washed the 2 days of Arizona off of us before drifting off to sleep.
Only 2 states today, but we saw 4 National parks, including waking up at the Grand Canyon, and the Meteor Crater. Not to mention the Navajo Nation.
461 miles we covered, too.
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