Home Again

This is the concluding blog for this trip. A trip which has been spectacular for the scenery, but also enjoyable for the new friends we have made and the old friends we have visited and still remember. We have driven 5800 miles in the van, and towed the trailer for 2800 of those miles. As well as our lovely week with friends in Florida, we have explored parts of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and California. The highlights are all mentioned in previous blogs.
Well, it's Friday and we have now arrived home, had a shower, sleep and got ourselves turned around.
The journey home was largely uneventful, though long. The most impressive thing was the view from the plane as we flew across Utah. The sun was low and cast stark shadows of all the mountains. This made the ground relief stand out dramatically. Red cliffs and canyons were amazing. We could see the long line of National Reef and what looked like Zion Canyon.
The long distances between terminals and train stations, the poor directions and signposting, the cattle market of Kings Cross (no seats), no where to buy a meal and sit was appalling after the relative peace and comfort of American air terminals will keep us as fully paid up members of the Grumpy Old Club for months.
We are about to leave to collect our caravan and spend the holiday weekend in Yorkshire.
We are planning our next trip to the States, probably in September, but don't yet have a clear idea of our itinerary, which is quite exciting really. We have a blog address, but it is still almost empty: http://roadblog61.blogspot.com

In Banning

Although we have reached our final destination for this trip we have not left the country yet, so although for the last few days we have been cleaning the trailer and truck, we have also been finding a bit of time for looking around the place. Yesterday we took an evening tour round the San Bernadino Mountains, to a place called Idyllwild and watched the sunset, We climbed to over 6000 feet on tortuous mountain roads, with breathtaking views. It made for a lovely evening.
A piece of good news, California State Parks provide a Disability Pass, so we thougth we would try and get one, so armed with Sally's Blue Badge we went to a local State Park. After a lot of discussion between a very friendly Ranger, her immediate boss (who said no) and her top boss (who said yes), Sally and I have been able to get a 50% discount pass for California State Parks. This will mean a very considerable saving when we return in the Fall, as S.P. campgrounds cost anything up to $45 p.n. normally!

Au Revoir à Nouveau

We have travelled quickly from Oak Creek Canyon to our final destination. Travelling through Arizona was spectacular, especially the drop from Prescott to Congress, which was similar to the Mokee Dugway, but at least the road was paved. We drove on through Quartzite (ate there, but the poor woman could not cook a steak) and then dropped into California and found a lovely County Park on the banks of the Colorado, in Blythe (Mayflower County Park). After an overnight stay we got permission to wash the trailer, ashing it with the muddy waters of the Colorado. We then set out on the last leg to get to the KOA in Banning. We will stay here for a week and then put the trailer into storage here.
The gas prices went from $3.69 to $4.29 when we changed state and the weather has been abysmal, storm on Monday Tuesday and Wednesday (very windy, some rain, but temperature below 60 all the time.
No More pictures I am afraid as I knocked the camera off the table and it seems to have stopped working - permanently.

Oak Creek canyon

After leaving the Painted Desert we travelled West on the I 40 (ex route 66) to Winslow (made famous by the Eagles song) and camped at the Homoluvi Ruins State Park (they do have some strange names). This was a very basic, no facility, windy, open and expensive campground, which we do not recommend.
From Winslow we travelled about 30 miles to Meteor Crater, one of the wonderful natural features that I have wanted to visit for many years. 50,000 years ago a meteor 150 feet across crashed into Arizona making a crater nearly a mile wide and 350 feet deep. We climbed to the rim and looked down on a very impressive sight. We also had the chance to find out more about meteors and meteorites. It was a fascinating morning.
We drove on through the desert to Flagstaff. We were impressed by the number of volcanic cones that could be seen, straight ahead was the bulk of the San Francisco Mountains, near Flagstaff. There we turned south towards Sedona. Following the advice of our friends Dorothy and John we took the 89 South. This runs quite normally until it hits Oak Creek Canyon. The road goes into it from the top, north end, as a nice flat normal road, then via a switchback it drops 800ft over 1000yards (as the crow files) into a narrow canyon, no more that 200yards wide, with 800ft walls. The amazing thing is that the canyon is full of ponderosa pine trees, it is a forest in the middle of a desert. It has a lovely winding stream which becomes a river and alongside the river, it the middle of the forest is a lovely campground. As soon as we arrived we found all sorts of new birds flying around the place. We have seen Acorn Woodpeckers, Bullocks Orioles, Redstart, Robins, Stellar Jay, Cow Birds, to name a few. I have even managed to get some good photos of many of these birds. We even hung out our Hummingbird feeder and lo and behold within minutes we had hummingbirds feeding. Needless to say we have stayed here for four days, instead of our original two and had a lovely time, we have also met a few really nice people as well. Today, Saturday, we took a short trip down the canyon, only to be surprised by the scale and beauty of the rock walls on either side, as well as the large number of people out for the day (This place is one of the few places in Arizona that you can picnic in the trees and swim in a river). We are now preparing to make the last leg of our journey, from here to Banning in California, which we think will take us three days.

The Painted Desert

On Sunday we left the Canyon De Chelly and drove south to visit The Painted Desert and The Petrified Forest National Park. The only way to get to the nearby campground was to enter the North end of the park, drive through the park , along the scnic route and out the South end of the Park, where there is a free campground. So we stopped and saw some of the attractions there. We were amazed at the rock forms and colours of The Painted Desert, mostly soft strata of many diferent colours, white, bluish, red, pink and purple could be seen. We were surprised to learn that much of the white/grey layer was bentonite, which is what they make cat litter from.
We camped in the somewhat exposed free campground, and were surprised to find that the next door trailer was owned by a very nice English couple, who had also bought their own trailer and truck and were doing the same thing as us. Except they tour for six months at a time and having explored the West Coast are now moving towards the East Coast. So we had a fair old chin wag in the evening. They actually come from York, just down the road from us!

The weather had taken a turn for the worse and it was very windy (gusts up to 57m.ph.), which was not very nice. However, after another coffee time with our English neighbours, we set out to look at the Petrified Forest bit of the National Park. It was amazing to see lots of tree trunks that had been growing 225 million years ago just lying round on the ground. The trees having grown, fallen down, been buried in mud, which has turned to rock, come back to the surface and been laid bare in our time. We also saw some more bizarre rock formations.


After travelling through the park we moved further west to Winslow and camped at the Homoluvi Ruins State Park, a very open, but pleasant, if pricy, campground.

Canyon De Chelly

Because the valley itself is sacred you can only go with Indian Guides, however there are couple of Rim Drives, which take you on a tour of a number of overlooks. It is about a 40 mile drive, but you can look down over the cliffs into the valleys and see the cliff dwellings as well as the nice flat valley floor up to 1000ft below. The most dramatic of the overlooks is at Spider rock, which is an 800ft spire, which stands alone on the valley floor. Quite an amazing sight.

The Road to Canyon De Chelly

The problem with seeing all these wonderful sights is that words fail you, so descriptions on the blog are a) difficult but unworthy of the visual experience, so the blog appears a little thin on description.
However on Saturday we bade farewell to Monument Valley and took the shortish journey to Canyon De Chelly (pronounce d'shay) across some more amazing countryside, through desert and past mountains. We actually passed 5 stumps of volcanic plugs, where the lava/basalt which filled the centre of a volcano had been left when the surrounding rock (probably ash) had been eroded away. These plugs rise up to 250 feet above the rest of the area and are quite impressive. The largest we passed was Church Rock, which does look like a church. We drove down through some narrow passages through the rocks and round the edge of sand dunes, finally descending into a valley which was at the entrance to Canyon De Chelly National Park. There is a campground here which is free, no hook ups, but then you can't expect everything. We stayed here a couple of nights so that we could visit the Canyon De Chelly.