We spent 2 weeks in the desert southwest, back in 2010, and as our flight was landing in Baltimore on the return trip, I glanced out the window and was shocked at all the GREEN.
About the only “green” we saw was along Oak Creek, which approaches Sedona, AZ from the north. We stopped at a visitors’ center somewhere near there, and it made the point that it’s about the only riparian ecosystem in the state - at most 1% of the state. Well, you’ll likely see irrigated lawns etc. - a sign of wasteful use of a scarce resource!!
I guess I’m old fashioned. I can understand what “fifty miles west of Phoenix” means, or “three hours from Sault Ste. Marie” means, but I never thought there was anything that could pinpoint your location to within ten feet.
The day started at Railroad Pass Hotel with a few drops of rain and a wind which periodically threatened to rip the suede off a desert boot. My Spotify’s first song was the James Reyne/James Blundell cover of The Dingoes “Way Out West”
Driving was, lets say uneven. I have thunked out the driver assist mode on the Rogue. Can be a bit bossy IMHO. It even plays a pleasant chord when it thinks you are driving inside it’s parameters. But with the cross-wind buffeting the car one way, plus my 50 year old RHS driving instincts tending the other way, plus trying to avoid the worst of a pockmarked road surface made for a four-way tug o’ war. Probably added 5mpg to the trip.
I think if somebody at Nissan does scrutinise the performance statistics I will be severely marked down in my assessment.
Speaking of fuel, 87Oct is USD 3.9999/US gal at Flagstaff which is USD 4.09 in real gallons, or USD 1.056/litre or AUD 1.53/litre. About We are paying a bit under $2. Thought the differential would be more though “big city” prices might be significantly cheaper.
The country does get markedly greener. The bare and imposing volcanic outcrops around Boulder City do soften and gather vegetation up as the I-40 E takes you to Tusayan. The hills get bigger but there’s a covering of vegetation. For the most part the journey was without signs of human life, or animal life for that matter. In all the over miles travelled since LA I haven’t seen a single head of cattle, sheep, goats, horses or deer from the roadway. Did see a squirrel at Boulder.
There are some eerie similarities in the growth manner of the plant habits once you pass Kingman to the vista across the Hay plains of western NSW … except that there isn’t a backdrop of hills around Hay. By the time you get to Tusayan there are pine forests.
I had a comms issue in LA and my only option to fix was a round trip from Tusayan to Flagstaff. And even after a new modum it’s still not fixed. Hopefully a phone tech can de-gremlin it tomorrow.
All up a bit over 400 miles for the day, which is solid going.
There’s plenty of scope for mental agility and arithmetic. Kate my GPS is configured in metric. Now I could merkinise her but then I wouldn’t be sure I could understood her instructions. Give the girl due credit though. If I’d been unassisted in Flagstaff I’d have tied myself into a Gordian knot.
We stay here tomorrow and see the Grand Canyon by helicopter and Hummer.
He’s past this, by now, but one advantage of I-15 was that we got to stop at Valley of Fire State Park, a bit northeast of Vegas (we flew into and out of Vegas on our trip in 2010). Stunning rock formations. Though we were there in July, where iw as 115F (45C) which wasn’t fun. When a breeze cropped up, I decided we now knew what food in a convection oven feels like.
It’s cheaper than when we were out west a year ago. Close to 6 dollars a gallon in places. It’s about 3.79 around here, give or take a bit. If you’re someplace with a few choices, Gas Buddy (app) can help you find the best prices.
21:00 Pacific, though I thought it was Mountain. Still sounding.famously.worm
Obligatory West Wing quotation:
Sorkin knows his onions. As did whomever he was quoting. Bucket list stuff before they invented buckets.
After failing my attempt #3 to fix my comms problem I threw my hands in the air and went out to the airfield and Papillon for their helicopter tour of South Rim, followed by Buck Wild’s hummer tour.
To be irredeemably snitty, you do spend about as long flying to and back as you do within the canyon itself. But when you have something which is simply that awesome to show you can forgive them. You don’t really fly into the canyon so much as one second you are 150m above the perimeter, the next you are most of a mile above the base.
You do wonder the reaction of the first group of wagon driving settlers who were heading for their dream of California and then blundered upon this obstruction to their westward progress. Likely wasn’t found in the Gospels.
Barely fathomably massive. Width, length, depth. Depth, and width. Mucks ups your own perception of space. Totally rodgered the perspective of my camera’s auto focus.
Where did all that dirt go, I ask.
To make the delta of a river which now doesn’t reach the sea, I’m told.
To me it’s not so much the scale, which is Brogdinalian, but the timeframe … because without those eons you don’t get the scale. The upper strata @270million BP and predates the Age of Dinosaurs, so no fossil hunting here. The lower strata @ 1.6 billion BP predating the breakup of Pangea.
What created it? DUDE is the pneumonic for the construction of the Grand Canyon. Deposition. Uplift. Down Cutting. Erosion. Though to be technically correct I think the 2nd D is a furphy.
According to our pilot, numbers flying took a real hammering after COVID and are still down 70%. And of the passengers only about 10% are USAers. There were Italians, Swiss and French amongst the 8 passengers plus self and zero locals.
The Hummer trip above the rim was of equal standard without the wizz-bang technical stuff. I think it would be better in adjunct to combine with a trip down at the base. I had originally planned to go rafting but that didn’t fit into Plan C. Disappointing. Still on the bucket list.
The only problem with Buck Wild segment was that half the small group were a family of 5 from NTC. The 5yo and the 7yo, from the back seat, attempted to talk over the undampened racket of the Hummer, without drawing breath, for 3 hours. You can never find an AK47 when it’s needed.
Tomorrow is on to Kayenta (I buggered up Tusayan in last post) with a sunset tour of Monument Valley.
Thank you for the link.
Oregon trail and that so I recall the migration was way more north than I am.
On other Mexican related views I see Bud Lite has lost it’s crown to a Mexican beer (from the same stable) over a perceived slight to their drinkers sexuality?? Is that a measure over how deep patriotism runs in that demographic?
I just checked your route and noticed that you’re planning to go near to but ultimately skipping Colorado. I don’t know how set in stone your path is but it might be worth poking up and over to see Mesa Verde and/or Telluride, if you feel like you need to see some green before you go crazy. It’s going to be a whole lot of dry, red and yellow Martian landscapes through most of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
Apparently it’s still snowing in Telluride–talked to a buddy yesterday down there who is seriously over it. Also, the highway from Durango to Ouray (the “million dollar highway”) is something else.
The trip from Tusayan to Kayenta is only a couple of hours through the Grand Canyon National Park and onto 160 E Should have been smooth sailing.
A note to the unwary, wifi coverage out here isn’t good. Heading down the 160 with a bit over 30 miles to go Kate tells me to turn right onto a sealed minor road. Dubious but naif enough to go along with it. The surface becomes unsealed and jinks regularly. Becomes huge wide dirt roads with big signs about mining equipment. Vehicle guidance systems reckon it’s too rough and slippery for them to function. After about 10miles I am resigned to a technical stuff-up but I have no coverage. So I need to navigate my way back to 160 by dead reckoning.
Turns out that 1000 Main Road is the address of my hotel and the (now closed) Peabody Energy Company’s Kayenta Coal mine site office.
Plenty of time after the slightly delayed arrival for a bit of a veg out before the next event, even with the change of time zone. I’m booked on a 5pm sunset tour of Monument Valley, which Kate gets me to without a problem. The valley is as monumental as the promotions. The tour is a recap of every picture postcard of the valley from East and West Mitten to Forest Gump point … except that it’s hot, glare factor is high and a nasty little wind kicking up a very fine loam dust storm. Hint for any followers. Try winter and morning tours by preference. Was very curious that, despite getting just 7inches of precipitation, all the dwelling in and around the park lack guttering and water tanks. Would have thought that was obligatory.
But then on the way back with the sun setting about 8:30pm I can’t get coverage from The View hotel. So I head back to town and did at least two laps of Diversion Dam Road before blundering into the 163 and the safety of my hotel.
Have looked at @Sage_Rat 's suggestion and will try to complete the diversion after Four Corners to include more of Colorado, specifically Telluride, Durango then on to Albuquerque.
One of our regrets, on our own big driving trip (some decades ago!!) was that we did not have time to see the Grand Canyon. By the time we got near it, we were “sceneried out” as my husband says, after over 3 weeks on the road. We drove right past the exit for it on I-40.
Took us 20 years to correct that omission; we went to the GC finally in December of 2005. It did not disappoint.
I take it you are figuring out that you will have extensive gaps in cell coverage in the western US. Download maps when you can. Try the Butcher and Baker in Telluride, if you’re hungry.
Oh yes indeed. In 2010, before we owned smartphones (which I gather can use GPS signals at least some of the time), there were times where my phone could not get enough of a signal to give directions via its built-in app.
There are places even on the East Coast where this can be a problem - we had crossed from Canada into New Hampshire, and the next part of our route had us going westward through Vermont on a road that largely paralleled the border - and we had no cell signal for a good chunk of that. This was in 2019. The area was mountainous, and somewhat sparsely populated.
And as I’ve complained before, sometimes the cell phone’s directions simply do not make sense.
Well that certainly was a day of contrasts. From desert to snow and back
The buttes, monoliths and mesas, even just loose boulders we have seen aplenty so far are a fascination because where I grew up, there aren’t any. One of the local’s sucker bets is to challenge visitors that they can’t throw a rock across the Murray River. Now the Murray is a moderate stream of water most times and shouldn’t represent much of a challenge, but the visitor always loses because they can’t find a rock or stone to throw.
First stop for the day was the scheduled Four Corners monument where a circle of 24 vendor stalls for selling authentic trinkets surrounds the surveyed intersecting border points of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. I doubt most of the SDMB would be surprised at the proportion of merkins who chose to have their photo taken with their butt cheeks spread across four states.
Given it was only 8am on a Monday, there wasn’t much activity so I repointed my GPS and headed into Colorado on US160 then US145 towards Delores, CO as per @Sage_Rat‘s suggestion.
Steadily gaining height, vegetation and available water as we travelled, by the time we got to Cortez the locals were baling alfalfa hay. Of course, in Australia we make the distinction that the trendsetters eat alfalfa sprouts, but we feed lucerne hay to horses and cattle.
Continuing beside the Delores River which seemed to be running pretty well we would our way up until the snow on the peaks around Mount Wilson came into view.
Got to the chalet town of Telluride about 11:00am. Very pretty. Thought a stop there for a coffee and lunch might be a good idea. Yeah … Nah. Kangaroo hopped the length of the main drag and returned on a side street taking about half an hour, but a parking spot wasn’t available for love, money or charity. So headed back down before stopping at Rico. Ordered a light snack and got a large lunch. The bagel was good, the latte was bloody awful.
From Rico next to Durango back on US160. On leaving Durango Kate told me to stay on the US550 for 3 hours and 20 minutes. And in about that time arrived at Albuquerque for another lesson in US freeway driving. Generally, I have found the road etiquette learning process to have been a gentle one and my fellow motorists have been without exception tolerant. Of course, in the regions I have trafficked there is so much space available there isn’t point in road rage.
With only the occasional instruction from Kate as support, frankly I was bricking it back in the city. The natives of Alburquerque apply much more speed and intent in afternoon peak, but we got through town and out to the eastside without being honked so all ends well. Even managed to make several left turns in Alburquerque, making me more spatially aware than Bugs Bunny
Tomorrow is another reasonably long haul to Abilene, where hopefully I can get my comms issues fixed.
I am occasionally reading this thread, but I must admit the 3 word thing is very distracting and unhelpful. It would be much more useful to add the actual location.
Nitpick: Dolores, river of sorrows. It was Bluegrass Festival in Telluride this weekend, so you probably got fallout from that. 12,000 people in a 2000 resident town. I should have warned you but thought you were a few days out…
Any particular spots that you’re planning to spend a bit more time, @penultima_thule, or do you pretty much need to keep moving, no matter what, to make your return flight?