Day 1 - On the road: Southlake, TX to Gallup, NM
It takes a full day of driving, twelve hours and covering 760 miles, just to get near to the New Mexico/Arizona state line. I think we drove through pretty much every weather condition I could think of. We left home around 8am and drove across the Texas panhandle through patchy fog. The landscape is green, flat and expansive with huge wind farms, ranches with nodding donkeys and small towns complete with sheriff jailhouses. By the time we reached Amarillo it was sunny and a pleasant 74F. We stopped for a quick lunch before setting out, crossing the New Mexico state line and the never-ending lowland of rocky soils, small rocky outcrops and little vegetation. A land of tumbleweeds, broken by the railroad that runs alongside the I-40. Much of this journey we had done last year when we drove to Santa Fe for a week of skiing over new year.
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| New Mexico from the I40 |
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| Walt & Skylar's Car Wash in Albuquerque |
Still heading west on the I-40, we crossed the Arizona state line and shortly after stopped off at the Petrified Forest National Park. This was our first taste of the many landscapes Arizona has to offer and it was stunning. The park sits in an area called the 'Painted Desert' and has a layer of rock containing petrified logs. The area was covered in dense forest 225 million years ago, when the trees fell some were washed into river beds where they were sporadically covered in volcanic ash. Silica from the ash dissolved in the groundwater which seeped into the logs and crystalised into quartz over time, forming the petrified logs. Erosion of surrounding rocks has led to the exposure of the logs, which literally stick out of the surrounding rock layers. The park also has many archaeological sites that suggest the area has been inhabited for over 8000 years, amongst these were petroglyphs thought to be between 650 and 2000 years old.
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| Petrified Forest National Park; petroglyphs bottom left. |
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| The Barringer Meteor Crater - created by a 45 meter wide meteor hitting the Colorado plateau at 26,00 miles per hour. |
Day 3 - Flagstaff
We had a relaxing morning pottering around Flagstaff and looking at the beautiful native American arts and crafts in the 'Museum of Northern Arizona'. In the afternoon we drove up in to the snow bowl in the San Francisco Peaks and took a short hike through the woods there.
Day 4 - The Grand Canyon
Well, what can I say, it was just magnificent! We left after breakfast for the 2-hour drive from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon National Park south rim and arrived in plenty of time for our helicopter ride - a first for me and the kids. We had a 30 minute flight that took us over the canyon from the south rim to the snow-capped peaks of the north rim and back at a point where the canyon is 18 miles wide, it was phenomenal!
We spent the rest of the day walking some of the south rim trails, spotting Elk and taking too many photos. We drove along Desert View Drive, taking in the sensational south rim viewpoints before leaving the park to drive north to Page.
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| The Grand Canyon - It is hard to take a photograph that does justice to the beauty and scale of it. |
Day 5 - Page: Horseshoe Bend and Lake Powell
Part of the Navajo tribal reservation, Page felt off the beaten track and a different world from the USA we have come to know. Set amongst impressive geology, Page is a small town at the foot of Lake Powell, a man-made reservoir formed by damming the Colorado river at Glen Canyon. We spent the morning walking to the majestic Horseshoe Bend in the Colorado river. The overlook has an unprotected 1000ft drop to the canyon floor which polarised people from those clinging nervously to the rocks 20 feet from the edge, to those who were happy to stand with their toes at the very edge or sit with their feet dangling over the side. Even Rob, who is normally in the latter camp, was cautious, it was a long way down.
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Horseshoe Bend
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Day 6 - Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park
Two hours driving from Page through the dramatic landscapes of Navajo country brought us to Monument Valley. This iconic scenery was a must for me on our trip, and it was spectacular. A 17-mile rough gravel road loops through the larger mesa and smaller buttes that constitute Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. There were stop-off view points along the way; some with stalls selling Navajo arts, crafts and jewellery, one offered the opportunity to sit on a horse to pose for a John Wayne style photograph - it had to be done! It may sound touristy, but the park wasn't very busy and the viewpoints were noticeable for how quiet and serene they were.
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| Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park |
Day 7 - Canyon de Chelly National Park & Window Rock
Canyon de Chelly is one of the most sacred places to the Navajo and it has been inhabited by them and their ancestors for 5000 years. The canyon hosts several ruins of ancient dwellings and also the sacred 229m tall 'Spider Rock', revered as the home of 'Spider Woman', one of the most important Navajo deities. We hiked the short trail form the White House Overlook down to the canyon floor and the White House Ruins, built by the Ancestral Puebloans around 1000 years ago.
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| Canyon de Chelly. Top left: Spider Rock. Right: The White House Ruins |
The trip through Navajo country wouldn't be complete without a short stop-off at Window Rock, the capital and seat of government of the Navajo Nation. The rock formation that gives the city it's name overlooks the Navajo Nation Council Chamber and a memorial to the Navajo Code Talkers. The Navajo language is so unique that it was used to create a secret code for allied communication in the Pacific battles of World War II. Navajo Code Talkers were placed on the front lines, fulfilling the important role of coding and deciphering strategic messages, which were never decoded by the Japanese.
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| Monument to the Navajo Code Talkers and Window Rock |
Day 8 - Driving home: Santa Rosa, NM to Southlake, TX.
We decided to take an alternative route home, heading south east through Lubbock instead of on the I-40 through Amarillo. The landscape was very flat and we once again travelled alongside a railway line for a huge distance. We passed through some quaint cowboy towns and many dire small towns, on what was an easy, low traffic, 8-hour journey home.
The total trip was 2450 miles, and we brought home my trusty minivan filthy inside and out, and with a 12-inch crack in the windscreen. The dirt on the car almost seemed to tell the story of our trip, it had acquired as many layers of different coloured dust as we had seen in all the rock formations.
