We made it back to California! On Friday, after a long 12-hour drive from Monument Valley, to Bakersfield, we stayed at the Orange Grove RV Park on Friday. On Saturday we drove the lovely road (166) through Maricopa to the coast.
We are now in the last three days of our long adventure near San Luis Obispo to see some friends, and enjoy the Central Coast before driving up 101 and finally getting home.
After twenty years, we returned to Monument Valley (MV) for a visit. What made our time extra special was the opportunity to share it with our oldest son Chris who is embarking on his own adventures throughout the southwest. Glorious!
Chris just started his own vacation of almost four weeks, to explore the southwest and take photographs of the red rock canyons. We are nearly finished with our trip, and it worked out that we could meet at MV.
We had all day together on Thursday from breakfast through dinner and we enjoyed taking a couple of drives in the canyons. In the morning, Ted drove through the main part of Monument Valley, as Chris and Sue took some pictures. Here’s a pic that Chris took of all three of us on the famous John Ford Point where Mr. Ford directed some John Wayne movies filmed in Monument Valley.
In the afternoon, Chris drove with Sue to the Valley of the Gods, about 30 minutes away. During that time, Ted walked to a mesa rim trail, sat in the wind, and played his guitar for an hour. These times were special for both Sue and Ted in their unique ways. Here’s Sue’s panoramic pic of Monument Valley.
On Sunday we drove to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. If you have only seen the South Rim, then add the North Rim to your bucket list of things to do if you love visiting National Parks. The North Rim is 8,000′ elevation, is in a forest rather than a high desert, and attracts only one-tenth the number of people due to its remoteness.
While the south rim opens up to the canyon’s vastness, the north rim certainly invites one closer into it’s depth and majesty. We stayed in the National Park campground and hiked the rim trail to Bright Angel Point (seen above) near the lodge which closed earlier in the month. Along the way, however, are other lookouts of the smaller side canyons (seen below).
On Monday we drove north-east to Page, AZ. After a night of wonderfully loud and rainy thunderstorms, we were among the very first to enter the rain-fresh-clean Lower Antelope slot canon first thing in the morning with a Navajo photographer-guide.
We were the only two in his group, and enjoyed most of our two-hour time in the lower canyon in peace and serenity! (If you ever come here, use “Ken’s Tours” to walk into the lower canyon which is right in their backyard.)
Antelope is a slot canyon, is full of small chambers, and the path between them usually fits only one person at a time. Click here to see our pictures page for Antelope Canyon!
We walked right down into the lower canyon from the top of the desert, and took a few ladders down into deeper levels of it, and two hours later, we retraced our steps.
At sunset, we traveled to the famous Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River, only a few miles away. It was beautiful!
We migrated from Zion National Park up to Bryce Canyon National Park on Saturday, and enjoyed taking the National Park shuttle to the great viewpoints at Bryce. If Zion is a national park where you have to look up at huge cliffs, Bryce is a place where you stand on top and look down on water-and-wind-carved hoodoo amphitheaters.
We took the our sons to Bryce Canyon National Park twenty years ago, and Sue had some fun replicating our original picture in a park that has upgraded their railings, trails, and awesome bicycle paths.
It was awesome to see the sheer cliffs at Inspiration Point. Here’s a photo of Sue holding on tight to the sign only three feet from the drop-off.
We are staying at Ruby’s RV Park, right at the entrance to the national park. For the first time on our trip, we have great cable TV reception and have enjoyed watching a baseball playoff game – game 6 of the Cubs and Dodgers battle. Given the fact that Ted was born in Chicago, he certainly has a well-earned liking for Chicago. ; )
It’s no secret that we are big fans of our national parks, and coming close behind our most favorite park, Yosemite, is Zion National Park in Utah. So, it was like coming home to visit Zion again and we are so grateful for the opportunity to spend five days in this wonder-filled part of the world.
A highlight of our time at Zion was our hike through ‘The Narrows,’ which is a ten mile hike in the Virgin River.
For millions of years, the Virgin River has been cutting a gorge through the red rock of Zion, going deep through some cracks without widening out. The results is a an impressive canyon that is as narrow as twenty feet wide and hundreds of feet tall between hard rock walls. Water marks, high above our heads, show where the canyon floor used to be, before it was swept away out to the desert.
We began the hike at 8 am and had many parts of the canyon all to ourselves throughout the hike which was truly magical. The water and canyon are fairly cold this time of year, so we rented dry boots and dry pants, along with an ever-so-necessary sturdy walking stick. It begins with one mile of paved trail and is followed by four-miles of hiking in the river, on polished cobblestones, through an awesome display of nature. The goal is to get to the “wall street” where the river is only 20′ wide with no shore and golden rock walls, where you cannot see the top.
The colors, the wind, the changing light, the energy, majesty, and life in the river — the water sometimes coming up near our waists — and the camaraderie among those traversing the trail was extraordinary and something that we will never forget. This is a highly recommended experience to one and all!
Click here to view additional photos of our hike through The Narrows.
