#57 and #58- Jeezus, We're Almost Done!!

The next morning we hit the road early. We were going to visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and had an 80 mile drive to get there. The road goes to the North Rim, and once you are done with your park activities, you have to drive the 80 miles back out.

We pass through a bison herd

Our plan was to spend time on the rim and then get as close to the South Rim, or main entrance to the Grand Canyon, as we could. Then we would visit the other entrance the next day.

Our ride into the North Rim was really interesting. About 15-20 miles outside of Fredonia, AZ, we were greeted with a sign indicating that we were entering the Kaibab National Forest, but all around us we saw no trees, only desert.

#57

After another 10 miles, we started to increase our altitude and encounter pine forests. We continued our climb and the trees got bigger, and we enjoyed beautiful scenery all the way to Jacob Lake. Here we took a road south that would lead us into the North Rim about 30 miles up the road. Leaving Jacob Lake, which is little more than a general store, gas station, and campground, we started to encounter large groups of mule deer feeding by the roadside early in the morning.

A World Heritage Site

We slowed our speed to make sure we wouldn’t hit one of the animals, but the concentration of deer seemed to steadily increase.

You know what she's doing

About 10 miles from Jacob Lake we came up over a small rise to find a large buck muley standing in the left hand lane. Capt. Larry slowed the van, but the deer started to come into his lane, and seemed to be indecisive as to whether to proceed or turn back. As the buck came closer to the van, Capt. Larry swerved to the right just as the deer turned sideways and struck the vehicle. In the rear-view mirror, Capt. Larry could see that the deer was down in the middle of the road and was struggling to get up.

View from the North Rim

Nothing to do but continue on. We stopped at a pullout to check the van and were relieved to find absolutely no damage. Just a few deer hairs and that was it. Had we not swerved at the last minute, we are pretty sure that we would have hit the deer on the left, right, front bumper with a lot more damage possible.

Grand Canyon Lodge

We continued on our way until we came to the entrance of the Grand Canyon, a World Heritage Site.

We arrived at the ranger station at the park entrance only to find it closed. We were still struggling with the right time. We wound our way into the park as we climbed the Kaibab Plateau and made our way to the visitor's center and the Grand Canyon Lodge. We went into the lodge to find a cup of coffee, and were presented with overwhelming views of the North Rim. Capt. Larry ventured out to a couple of points for some picture taking, but Jane would have none of it. The vistas were just spectacular.

At Point Imperial

Returning to the visitor’s center, we collected the stamp and view some of the exhibits. While the North Rim provides some spectacular canyon scenery, views of the Colorado River are limited and better seen on the South Rim.

Point Imperial view

We decided to visit Point Imperial which wasn’t too far from the visitor’s center, and if we had time to drive all the way to the Cape Royal overlook. We met a young couple who had visited several national parks and were really interested in some of the stories we had about park experiences. We talked with them for quite a while. We left Imperial Point and headed back down, deciding to skip the 40 mile round trip to Cape Royal. Leaving the North Rim, we headed back to Jacob Lake and through the deer gauntlet which by midday sported far fewer animals. 

At Point Imperial

At Jacob Lake we stopped at the Kaibab Plateau visitor’s center and found a picnic table to have some lunch. We went into the center to view the exhibits, but didn’t really find much to see. Leaving Jacob Lake, we wound our way back down to the desert floor and headed east for the first accommodations in any little town that we could find.

More Point Imperial

But every little desert town that we thought might have a motel, had nothing. We went through the Navajo Indian Reservation at Chinle, AZ. While we didn’t find any accommodations, we did see a sign for a Quality Inn Motel in Tuba City, AZ, about 50 miles further south. This we thought would be where we would spend the night. It turned out that Tuba City had all kinds of lodging accommodations, but we stuck to the Quality Inn Motel and RV Park.

On the road to Tuba City

We checked in and decided to make use of the motel’s laundry facilities. The adjacent RV park had picnic facilities, so when the laundry was done, we put together a dinner of grilled chicken shish kabobs with vegetables and potato salad. It was delicious! We returned to the room and watched the news and were saddened by a story about the last WWII Navajo Codetalker had died that day. These Navajo Indians developed a code to communicate over the radio in the Pacific theatre that the Japanese were never able to break. Through their language and culture they made a major contribution to the war effort. Here is a link to a story about the last Codetalker: http://www.fayobserver.com/military/article_2818494e-43b2-55af-8974-d6fb428db90f.html

We left Tuba City early (but we still didn’t know what the time was) the next morning and drove to the South Rim entrance to the Grand Canyon N.P. Once again the ranger station at the park entrance was not open.

South Rim entrance

We drove to Desert View to catch a glimpse of the canyon. It was spectacular!

The river still cutting

Here we got a good view of the Colorado River still cutting away at the canyon’s bottom. The colors and formations were very beautiful from several different perspectives.

View at Desert View

We went to the Desert View visitor’s center only to find it closed.

Another Desert View view

Turns out the visitor's center didn’t open until 0800 and one of our clocks all said 0750. We waited 10 minutes in the parking lot until the center opened, then went in and collected the stamp and viewed the exhibits. Leaving Desert View, we headed for the park’s main visitor’s center while stopping at several overlooks for views of the canyon.

Desert View Tower

We arrived at the main visitor’s center and were surprised at how large the center and adjacent parking lots were. It was like going to Disney World! We parked in the Raven lot and walked to the center. Jane got our stamp while Capt. Larry perused the exhibits. It would have been possible to board shuttle buses to view more of the canyon, but the turnaround time seemed to be rather long and we felt that we had seen a good bit of the views between the two rims.

Overlook on way to visitor's center

Jane really wanted to ride the train, but we learned that in order to do that, we really needed to board in Williams, AZ or have someone pick us up there, so it really wasn’t an option.

Another wonderful canyon view

We left Grand Canyon N.P. and headed south. Capt. Larry found a road about 20 miles south of the park that would cut diagonally toward Flagstaff and save us time from going to Williams, catching I-40 there and then heading east to Flagstaff. Jane looked at the map and found that it went past Arizona’s highest point which suggested a mountainous road. We continued on to Williams and caught I-40 east to Flagstaff. After passing through Flagstaff, we continued journeying east until we reached Holbrook, AZ.

Here we exited I-40 and got on the historic Route 66 which would take us to our 58^th park, the Petrified Forest N.P. This park is the only one that Route 66 ran through, and we were later amazed at all of our friends that said they remembered visiting this park when they were young.

Not a Grand Canyon selfie!

Of course, in those days Route 66 was the one of the only ways to get to the southwest, so it’s logical that many visited the park. We entered the park and went straight to the visitor’s center.

A final Grand Canyon shot

In the parking lot we tried to get our bearings. Both the national park and the Painted Desert National Monument share facilities, and we weren’t sure where we had to go to get our stamp. It was very hot, so we finally decided to go into the Painted Desert visitor’s center, and sure enough, they had the park stamp.

We make #58

About 65 million years ago this area was part of an inland sea which deposited the fossilized remains of many animal and plant species.

Prehistoric Cajuns loved these!

The petrified trees were formed when the trees fell into the water and the cellulose was replaced by mostly quartz and amethyst minerals. When the sea receded, the sediment was gradually eroded exposing the petrified logs and many fossilized remains.

Stone wood

We left the visitor’s center and took a walk through the Garden of Giants to see the petrified logs. Then we found a sheltered picnic area and had some lunch.

In the Garden of Giants

Driving north along the park road, we basically had the Pai nted Desert to the east and the Petrified Forest N.P. to the west, even though the topography and geology basically looked the same on both sides. We stopped at a few of the features listed on the map before we came to I-40 exit from the park.

Now that's a Woody!

We made it to Gallup, NM before we found a motel and called it a night.

Formations in the Painted Desert

The next morning we left Gallup and started to head for home. We drove all day long, stopping at a roadside rest to have some lunch, and finally called it a day in Amarillo, TX.

The Painted Desert

Capt. Larry thought that we could make it home the following day, but after consulting the maps, decided that it would be two days before we slept in our bed again. We had a great night’s sleep and headed out of Amarillo early the next morning. We hit Dallas around noontime and decided that by the time we hit Shreveport, LA, it would be a day.

Painted Desert offers wonderful colors

Capt. Larry promised Jane that in lieu of going to Las Vegas on this trip, she would be able to hit the casinos in Shreveport and get her fix. We found a motel next to casino row around mid-afternoon and settled in. A nearby Chinese restaurant was calling Jane’s name so we had an interesting meal of Chinese seafood (the Chinese have no idea how to cook seafood, and it’s always a bad choice, even when it sounds great as it did in this instance!) and then headed for the casinos. We were there only a short time before Jane lost all of her gambling money and announced that “this place is a rip off, let’s go!” We had a short driving day the next morning, so we had a leisurely breakfast and then hit the road which took us home.

And that is how this adventure went.