On our own again

Bringing order out of the luggage chaos, having a last breakfast with the remainder of our Road Scholar group in the comfortable lobby of the College Inn, running a load of laundry, communicating via email with the friends we are planning to meet in Arizona, plotting our course to Flagstaff ... that was the order of the morning.  By 11:00 we had set out to reverse yesterday's travel, comfortably familiar:  ascending the Colorado Plateau at Hurricane; pausing again at LeFevre Overlook with its all-encompassing view of the Grand Staircase; leaving out the side trips to Kanab and the Grand Canyon North Rim and not stopping as we traversed Marble Canyon and the Navajo Bridge for the third time.

It was at the intersection of US89A and US89 that we entered new territory of stark and inexpressible beauty.  The Vermillion Cliffs gave way to the Echo Cliffs, which were noticably tilted down on their east side.  After a while it seemed odd that the road wasn't slanted, too.  Tilting my head was an option I had to resist!

Further south past Cameron (the turn off the the Grand Canyon South Rim), the terrain changed to mounded Chinle (low rock formations that look like mashed potatoes).  Then, basalt cropped up, seemingly emerging from (and randomly scattered across) the rather flat ground.

As the basalt became more plentiful, I noticed on our Four Corners/Southwest USA map a national monument north of Flagstaff -- Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument.  Tal seemed game to take a look.  At the entrance I even managed to find in our over-stuffed travel folder his park/monument pass. Whew!  After touring the visitor center (where staff members wore black arm bands or had a black stripe across their badges for the Glen Canyon rangers killed earlier in the week) we drove about nine miles into the park getting a good look at the Sunset Crater (photo above left), the lava flows, fissures in the valley below the cinder cone, a long view of the Painted Desert in the late afternoon sun and colorful fall wildflowers. 



The Painted Desert in the late afternoon from the Painted Desert Vista
in the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument



Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa)
These are the plumed seeds, not the flowers
 -- which are rose-shaped and white and bloom earlier in the year.

We couldn't have asked for a more interesting place for brief exploration before entering the fray of late afternoon I-40 traffic around Flagstaff to find our hotel for the night.

A single stop

When Tal and I travel by automobile, the point for most part is getting to our destination. We don't meander much, even skipping lunch or eating crackers, nuts, fruit as we move along, the passenger playing flight attendant to the driver. Given the distances with which we're faced in order to join our Road Scholar group in St George UT, we have to stay focused. Fortunately, with the ever-changing terrain, as I mentioned previously, focus isn't particularly hard. But, our destination ever in mind, passing by interesting spots can be.

We left I-40 and 75MPH, four-laned comfort this morning at Gallup NM to ascend the Colorado Plateau and travel through Native American lands along twisting, climbing, switch-backed two lane roads. The contrast one day to the next was dramatic to say the very least -- in both road and terrain. Mesas, buttes, washes, unfamiliar wildflowers, stunted trees in some places, magnificent Ponderosa pines in others. The beauty of Saturday, foreign as it was to east-coasters, was transformed into something other worldly. Tal and I kept trying to find words -- tortured, harsh, brutal, fascinating, mesmerizing, stark.

After reaching AZ Route 89A, passing along the Echo Cliffs on our right, with the San Francisco Peaks far distant on our left and the Vermillion Cliffs ahead of us, we entered Marble Canyon, through which the Colorado River passes on its way to the grandest canyon of all.

Without warning we came upon a bridge, two bridges actually, side-by-side. In the blink of an eye, we missed the parking area on the south side, exclaimed at the bridge on our right as we crossed the other one and managed to turn into the parking area on the north side. What a treat. We had "found" Navajo Bridge!

The bridge we crossed, constructed in 1995, is on the left. The original Navajo Bridge, built between 1927 and 1929, is now a pedestrian walkway, linking the vendors on one side of the river with the interpretive center and restrooms on the other. In the far background are the Vermillion Cliffs.

Our head-long momentum toward St George was stopped by about half an hour, a stop well worth the time. And, the only one over the course of our four westward days on the road.