Fernanda & Karl - Road Trip, Day 13 -- Website by Now Interactive Solutions

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Thursday, August 30, 2007

Road Trip, Day 13

Monument Valley
(Click to view)

Moab, Utah to Grand Canyon

Off to a late start today. I tried to get all my internetting done before we left the Apache Motel, because I knew I wouldn't have wifi access for a while. However, it was very frustrating work -- the connection was slow, it was like being back in the days of dial-up. It took about a minute to update each caption to a photo, and just when you had a good rhythm going, the connection would drop out on you. So I had to give up on the captions, I only got half-way through Yellowstone. Hopefully you'll be able to figure out the pictures anyway...

This morning I just wanted to send a general email alerting people that I'm not sending post cards, I'm keeping a "blog", and a link to it. I was going to include a picture in the email, but decided that was too ambitious. Just getting email addresses off my web mail was already challenging enough, the connection wouldn't work in the room, so I had to go outside again, only now the sun is shining brightly down, making it hard to read the screen, and making me sweat rivers. It was such a torment I'm sure I forgot half the people I wanted to send the email to, so if you are among them, I'm sorry! And how did you get here anyway? And to those who DID get the email, I'm sorry for the terse, impersonal mass mailing.

So, that sort of done, we set off, filled up the car, and promptly ran into road construction that slowed us down. Fernanda drove most of the day. We decided to detour through Natural Bridges National Monument (what is the difference between a National Park and a National Monument, anyway?), and we stopped at some Indian ruins along the way to that, hiking up some trails to get to the look-out points. We had lunch inside Natural Bridges National Monument (Go "America the Beautiful" Park Pass!), and did the loop drive, stopping at all the look-out points, and hiking down to the last bridge. Bridges are essentially arches, only bigger. There are three big natural bridges in Natural Bridges National Monument. It was the first designated National Monument in Utah, gaining that distinction back in 1906 or something like that.

That done, we continue on towards the Grand Canyon. The route we were on goes down this gravel super switch-back road, down 1140 feet in 3 miles -- it was really impressive, to say nothing of a little scary. At the bottom of this road we are suddenly in big Western style desert. This is Monument Valley, and it only gets more impressive as you drive down, all these butte formations. Just when you think you've seen it all, they go and pull this on you. Monument Valley is in Navajo Country; the actual park area is neither a National Park, nor even a National Monument, but Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. There are these little shacks all along the highway, selling Navajo jewelry. Time was pressing on us, so we just drove by the Monument Valley Tribal Park -- you get a pretty good impression just driving by on the road.

Arizona is a new state for me. We also passed mile 3000 today. [Somehow, I lost 1000 miles here somehow; this day we actually passed 4000 miles. And all the subsequent mileage brags are off by 1000 -- we actually drove 9000 miles this whole trip.] And mileage was up to nearly 38. Somehow the 5 1/2 hour drive to the Grand Canyon was taking twice that much. Especially the last bit, where the Grand Canyon just didn't seem to arrive, we kept driving, and driving... And then when we finally did arrive, and it was already dark, and the ticket booths were closed, we had to drive yet another 25 miles within the park just to get to our lodge! It felt like it took forever, driving through the dark of the Grand Canyon Park, not even being able to see the canyon. (We did see a few fires burning though; apparently they've had some forest fires here.)

Fortunately for us we gained another hour, not because Arizona is in the Pacific Time Zone, but because it doesn't observe daylight savings time! Hooray! So we got here around 8:05 local time. We had a heck of a time finding the lodge and the parking lot and stuff, it is poorly marked for the arrivee who gets here after dark. But we finally got settled, got dinner at one of the two restaurants in the lodge, and are now safely tucked in our room, which is nice, has a toilet but no bath, but doesn't cost as much as the room in Yellowstone with neither cost. No wifi.

Tomorrow I plan to be overwhelmed by what I couldn't see tonight entering the park in the dark.

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Previous Entries

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06/19/21

Açores
08/29/18

Our New Bathroom Saga
11/17/16

Europe 2015
03/16/15

The Berkshires
10/18/14

Road Trip South
03/23/13

Greece!
07/26/12

Our Trip to Ireland
08/09/09

Google Map of our Trip
09/17/07