2018 Fall Travels

Synopsis of Trip

This has been a great trip, one of our best in recent history.

Had a great visit to parts of Oklahoma, every small town in Oklahoma has a Sonic and a Family Dollar. May not have much of anything else though. We were in really small towns.

Blue Angels, Gulf Shores, great scenery, up close with Buffalo, camped in the middle of a Prairie Dog Town, saw Pelicans in the middle of Oklahoma, finally made it to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, discovered the Vermillon Cliffs and saw lots of snow driving the Million Dollar Highway in Durango.

The most interesting problem was all our unopened chip bags exploded due to the altitude changes. Never had that happen before.

We are now in Phoenix settling in to our winter location. You won't be hearing from us again, unless we go on a day trip, until April/May when we start wandering again.

Hope you all  have a good winter as we enjoy the warmer and dryer Phoenix,

Exciting Night

We had an exciting night last night. Around 6:30-7 an ambulance and police car came down the highway, lights on, running silent. Quite a while later we heard a helicopter come in and land. Looked out our front window and the helicopter landed in the parking lot of the Inn. This was a small parking lot and everyone had to move their cars and some RVs to allow the helicopter to land. A long time later the helicopter took off. About 15 minutes later we heard another helicopter come in and 30-45 minutes later take off.

Went to breakfast this AM and found out people hit something(no one knew what) on the road from the North Rim. It was dark and we had been warned about driving this road at night. Besides deer you had to worry about black buffalo's and steer. We did find out the one helicopter came from Page(20 miles by air) and one from Flagstaff(50-75 by air). This all that is known.

We are very isolated where we are. Closest town is 40 miles away, only Verizon(minimal) in Jacob Lake, no other carrier. There is no cell service from Jacob Lake to the North Rim(50 miles). These people were lucky someone must have seen the accident, driven either to Jacob Lake or the North Rim to call the EMT. The EMT had to drive an hour to Jacob Lake and then to the accident. Then back to Jacob Lake to the helicopter. Then the entire trip had to repeated for the second victim. Hope they weren’t seriously injured.

North Rim

Today was suppose to be rainy and we woke up to bright sunshine. Off we went toward the North Rim. Our normal routine is to go to the furthest point first. Today we headed off the Cape Royal, per Mike from the visitor center. Wild 20-25 miles, probably the average speed was 20 mph, curve after curve but so worth it.

The North Rim is 1000’ higher than the South Rim so there are totally different views and weather. The interesting info is the water for the South Rim comes from the North Rim via a pipe and all by gravity. This sounds great but the North Rim is into major water conservation. We don’t understand any of this.

After we visited Cape Royal we went on the Port Imperial, all part of the same road system, well off the beaten path. Traffic was very light so we were happy.

There are probably duplicate pictures in this set. Hard to keep track of when loading.

That is the Colorado, 8000' below us

Then on to Bright Angel Lodge, this is the tourist stopping location. We couldn’t even find a parking place!! We have no idea where all these people came from. The North Rim is quite a distance from anything and there are very limited facilities. But they showed up. We decided to come back tomorrow.

Along the road, near the Kaibad trail, there were many, many cars. Everyone is out hiking today, The weather is great in the 40-50s. Sunshine. Kaibad is the major trail in the Grand Canyon. It is the trail that goes from the North Rim to the South Rim and takes 2-3 days to complete. There is a shuttle that runs the hikers between the 2 rims. I don;t think all these people were going rim-to-rim, just out for a day hike.

Next Day

We drove to the North Rim today in the early morning. Parking was much better and we found a spot easily. The only problem was it was cloudy and the clouds were blowing around in the Canyon. We were actually above the clouds, neat………….There is rim trail that we took near the lodge but the clouds were a bit of a problem. Felt like we were Angels looking down on the clouds.

Tomorrow all the campgrounds are closing so we need to move on. We plan to do an overnight or 2 in Page then head toward Flagstaff and Phoenix. All dependent on the weather.

We come away from this trip with more items added to our bucket list than  when we started. Coming back to Page and then several parks in the area is high on the list.

We will be going back to Page from here and hope for good weather as we have several short trips around Page we want to take.

Vermillon Cliffs

The weather cleared up around 3:30 so we decided to go for a “short” drive to a scenic overlook down the road. This turned into a 3 hour drive. We discovered the Vermillon Cliffs and all I can say is WOW. This is a massive valley that we assume the glaciers carved and left the cliffs on the sides. We rounded a curve coming out of the mountains and down below us were the Cliffs. As usual, the pictures do not do these justice. This is a newish National Monument created in 2000. Primarily wilderness and not developed. Looking at some pictures on Google the rock formations are phenomenal the only disappointment is the formations are only really for backpackers, there is no development at all. Think of the rock formations as Antelope Canyon on steroids.

If you ever want to see the Vermillon Cliffs I would advise driving from West to East. The Cliffs present themselves much better going in this direction.

We ended up driving all the ways to Lees Ferry where we were at river level for the Colorado and the Pariah Rapids. Then came the worry about driving back in the dark. We “lucked” out and were able to follow a truck carrying rebar up the mountain. As we creeped up the mountain we knew if a deer, buffalo or steer showed up we were safe. The problem with the buffalo and steer are they are black and you can’t see them in the dark. We made it home safely and hope to get to the North Rim tomorrow and Sunday.

Our first view of the Vermillon Cliffs

The Valley was massive

Colorado River

At river level

These huge bolders were strewn around, we assume glaciers

Our last view

Drive to Jacobs Lake

Today we drove from Page to Jacob’s Lake, gateway to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The weather was beautiful when we started out, forecast was good. Slowly everything deteriorated to cloudy and misting.

From our drive:

 

This house is so out of place in the west!!

We met 3 police cars driving down the width of the road(must have been the entire police force) chasing all of us to the shoulder. Then "this" came down the road. Whoever is biggest wins, he won.

We pulled into the campground and set up, found a very level site, best we have had in years. A big site and plenty big enough for us.

We took a drive hoping the weather would clear but it became worse so we gave up. Tomorrow is another day.

We saw a visitor center and went in there. Had a great presentation. Learned a lot from the speaker and can’t wait to get down the road. He gave us all sorts of inside tips of locations for pictures and best views. Very detail. Down to go to the fourth tree and turn right, walk 50’ and turn left. I just hope the weather clears.

He did warn us to not come back the 45 miles in the dark. The road is all open range and deer, buffalo and cattle like using the road for a path. If you need to come back in the dark try to get behind a tour bus, let the bus lead the way. Having dealt with open range in daylight we would prefer not to deal with open range in the dark.

Traveling to Page AZ

With the snow in the mountains and sleet in Durango, CO it is time to leave and head to a warmer area. We headed toward Page, AZ. Not sure if we would make it in one day as the roads have been pretty bad. Planned a "boondock" overnight at a Trading Post or Mexican Hat if needed.

Packed up and started heading west but first we had to climb a 8500’+ pass. That should be no problem but what we didn’t know was that we had a 6-8 mile 6% uphill climb to negotiate first. We discovered this was straight uphill, no flat spots. Sometimes we were down to 20 mph. The MH performed well, nothing overheated, none of the gauges even moved. We were very happy with that.

What we didn’t expect, and we had checked the weather, was snow and sleet from 7000’ up. Never covered the roadway but had us driving carefully.

We were planning stop in Mexican Hat for the night. Tom is learning how to be the navigator. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Today was a bad day. I had anticipated Mexican Hat was about 140-160 miles. When he entered it in Miss Piggy(our GPS) he came up with over 200+ miles. With the road conditions being what they are that was a little too much. I had him check on Google Maps and he came up with even more miles. We decided to continue on to Page and skip Mexican Hat, put that back on the bucket list. To this day I don’t know what he put in to get these miles and neither does he. Oh well, that is life.

Today was a confusing day. We went through 3 or 4 time zones as we drove down the road. We started in Mountain Daylight, went through the Navajo Reservation and they are on Mountain Time. However, the Hopi Reservation is in the  middle of the Navajo Reservation and they are on Mountain Standard Time. Now we are in Arizona and on Mountain Standard Time. Poor phones were even confused.
 
The roads were fair so we continued on and made our planned stop in Page at the Elks Lodge. Beautiful view, bit hazy today hope to get a good picture soon. We plan to be here for several days, we would prefer not to move to a new location on a weekend so will probably wait it out here. Lots to do around Page.

Page is absolutely beautiful. The town sits up on a mesa and the views are phenomenal. The Elks Lodge where we stayed is close to the highest point, I took some pictures but as usual nature is more beautiful in real life.

View from the Elks Lodge

Pictures around Page:

Durango and Beyond

We have now migrated to Durango, CO. We haven't been here in 20-30 years and it sure has grown up. Our first day here was a bummer, rain, fog etc. Went for a drive but the temps started dropping to the freezing point to we turned around, We didn't want to be caught in any snow which was falling at the higher altitudes. Tomorrow is another day.

We are in a beautiful campground, relatively new at a casino about 15 miles from Durango. Haven't been in one this nice for quite a while but then we tend to go into the lower priced campgrounds. We belong to several clubs/organizations that allow us to keep our campground costs in check. The best is the US Government, but unless we want to camp without hookups they are far and few between right now. Oklahoma had many Federal campgrounds with electricity(preferred) but not so many in New Mexico and Colorado.

We woke up this morning to 34 degrees, brr. We planned to take the Million Dollar Highway to Readway, CO and possible further if we felt like it. As we drove down the road toward Durango we knew our plans were going to change. The Mountains had snow the night before and were beautiful.

As we drove up into the mountains the snow was magnificent. Beautiful. Then we saw the sign, some pass ahead of us was still closed and being plowed. We did make it to Silverton, the end of the line for the train ride. Silverton was interesting, the main road was paved, every other road in town was dirt(or mud). Most places were closed, end of season. We saw our first wildlife: a fox on the road!

There is a trade off when traveling in the fall between crowds and places not being open. We prefer places not being open. Sometimes we are disappointed, most of the time not. 

Pictures from the Million Dollar Highway:

 

Starting back to Durango we encountered sleet. Took that as our signal to get out of the mountains. Next stop Page, AZ.

We are seeing an end to our wanderings in a few weeks so we need to be a bit more careful as to our plans. North Rim of the Grand Canyon has not had snow yet so that is still the end goal. Durango area should be the last of our serious concerns about snow and we are here for one more day.

After Durango, we travel toward Page via Mexican Hat and Monument Valley. No plans to stop this year. A night or 2 in Page to pick up mail, packages, laundry, and food shopping. Then on to the North Rim, Flagstaff and then into Phoenix.

After that into Phoenix with the first stop is getting our solar fixed. Somehow we lost power to one bank of panels(installed in February) and we don't have the tools or correct caulk to repair it ourselves so a quick stop at the repair shop to have it fixed.