Hello Everyone! Greetings from Arizona, where I have been since the weekend. So far, Arizona has had its challenges and after a fairly smooth 6 weeks in New Mexico it’s caught me a little off-guard. Arizona is also one of the states in which I have spent a lot of time in the past, probably a year of my life collectively if not more, so I wasn’t expecting to have any problems here whatsoever. Gas is up at around $4.59/gallon on average, meaning it costs over $100 to fill my tank which is hard when you’re on a budget and need to fill up every 2-3 days. I can’t let it stop me, but it’s painful. I don’t see states dropping their fuel taxes to help mitigate it either, once again turning towards and pointing at the federal government. It’s been very windy since I’ve been here which the locals tell me is common for this time of year. I guess I haven’t spent much time here in the spring before and have visited mainly in summer, fall and winter. When I say “wind”, I’m talking about sustained 30-40 mile per hour winds with gusts up to 60. When it’s at your back, it certainly pushes you right along, but when it’s coming from any other direction it makes driving a real chore. Hiking in it is also less than pleasant, as really is any outdoor activity. Beyond the wind, I haven’t had a phone signal since I got to the state except for a few hours in Holbrook. There is a signal, but not one I can get on either my Sprint or AT&T phones. It’s their state and if they are happy with their coverage then so be it, but it’s frustrating as I haven’t encountered this elsewhere to this degree. This also means that I need to use WiFi and depending on where I am, it’s very particular about what I can access – and I’m talking about mainstream things like Twitter, Netflix and AT&T Prepaid, not anything remotely scandalous. I’ve found campgrounds to be prohibitively expensive and even the state parks are at a price point where I will have to be very selective as to which ones I pay to see (their annual pass of $75 is also pretty high in my comparative mind). I can tell just from the week that I’ve been here that vanlife is far more prevalent here than anywhere I’ve been thus far and communities are pushing back, making where I stay more of an issue than it has been. All of that being said, I’ve seen some beautiful places in the 5 days that I’ve been here and I hope to find more of a rhythm in the next week or so. Despite the amount of time I have spent in Arizona, there is still a lot I want to see, and I hope the logistics of my time here aren’t as overwhelming as they have been so far.
When I left you last week, I was headed north from Gallup to check out the Bisti Wilderness. Unfortunately, I had tried and failed to get a map of the area and the digital ones available online were less than adequate. When I got there, I took to the high ground to be able to navigate better, but really I should have just headed straight into the canyons. I think the warnings I read about getting lost were quite exaggerated and I spent half of my time unnecessarily high above what I went to see. When I finally dropped into the canyon, it was a beautiful place, full of hoodoos and petrified wood. Hoodoos occur when sandstone or other softer rock is covered with a layer of harder rock. The hard cap layer works like a hat and the sandstone layer erodes from the outside in instead of from the top down. Petrified wood comes about when old trees are subjected to extreme heat and pressure in very specific conditions and harden to a stone-like texture. Both the hoodoos and the petrified wood out there were really cool, but it was fiercely windy out and tough to concentrate on much besides staying upright. It was a cool area, though, and one I would definitely return to on a quieter day with a better understanding of the landscape. I left in the late afternoon and got into Farmington with enough time to shower, dress and head out to see the incredible Ballet Folklorica de Mexico at the Civic Center. I even ended up with a free ticket as the lady in the ticket office said someone had left a few to be given away. It seemed as though the performance told the story of Mexican history, from the Aztecs through to modern times. The music and dancing were wonderful, but the costumes really stole the show in my opinion. After the first hour or so, the many children who were in the audience around me started to get pretty fidgety and I wish there had been an intermission in this two hour show for them to get up and move around a little. The girl sitting two seats down from me was literally bouncing in her seat as high as she could get and her parents just let her bounce. Despite all of that, it was a very enjoyable evening and a sharp contrast from my day in the windy wilderness.
Thursday I headed off to Aztec Ruins National Monument in the morning, which was located in the cute little town of Aztec about 30 minutes up the road. Aztec was a Great House of the Ancestral Puebloans built in the 1300s in the Chaco style. It had enclosed passageways inside the ruins which were open to explore and fascinating to see. The centerpiece of Aztec Ruins was a reconstructed Grand Kiva which was a project of the lead archaeologist who excavated the site. Most reconstructed kivas are interesting and give you some idea of their purpose (as the center of Puebloan community and religious life – think of a church in early America), but they are rough and unfinished. This was a beautiful, massive kiva with plastered and painted walls (as the originals would have been in their time) and felt very peaceful and well-done. I asked the ranger if the Puebloan people who visited ever shared their thoughts on this kiva as their communities are still centered around kivas today. She told that she hadn’t heard anything so I guess it wasn’t too egregious of an example. I thought it was wonderful. I also thought it was interesting that the Animas River, a pretty big river by southwestern U.S. standards, flowed right next to the old Pueblo. Of course building your town near water has always been essential, but my questions came with why this site was abandoned. A massive regional drought is always cited as the main cause of this out-migration, but I would find it hard to believe that this river ran dry even in the driest of years. I enjoyed discussing this and several other questions with the ranger there as they are always happy to engage in discussions beyond where the bathroom is.
I returned to Farmington in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day at the library which was big, clean and beautiful but sadly had no internet. I still got plenty of work done, though, and set myself up well for the next day. That evening I went for a nice steak dinner at the Texas Roadhouse. I usually avoid chain restaurants, but my dad and his girlfriend had given me a gift certificate for Texas Roadhouse and I was happy to use it. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised by my meal and left very satisfied.
I spent all day on Friday trying to catch up on as much work as I could. I had hundreds of photos backlogged for editing and publishing and spent most of the day doing just that. I got a lot done, and worked until my brain really couldn’t accomplish much more. I did walk out feeling much closer to caught-up than when I walked in. I took a nap to clear my head and then spent the late-afternoon trying to make some plans for my time in Arizona. As the sun started its descent, I headed downtown to celebrate my last night in New Mexico. It was truly an amazing 6 weeks and a time I won’t soon forget. The Three Rivers Restaurant takes up almost a whole city block in the downtown area and has a lot to offer. On the corner is a brewery and restaurant in a historic setting which was quite lovely. Next to that is a pizza joint, then a distillery and lounge and finally a saloon with a back patio. They’re all quite different and they’re all pretty great in their own right. I started on the patio until the sun set, then went to the restaurant where I had a wonderful conversation with the couple next to me at the bar. I wanted to get a pizza, but they had closed pretty early for a Saturday night, so I wound out my night at the distillery. It was a good night to end my time in New Mexico.
Saturday I wanted to get up and get out of town and be on my way to Arizona, but I kept hitting snags and didn’t get out until the afternoon. A poorly signed turnoff in Shiprock sent me 20 minutes down the road in the wrong direction, sadly a mistake I have made in the past as well, but at least I figured it out before I got too far. It was windy and hot out and it wasn’t a great drive, but I did make it into Arizona and headed south towards Canyon de Chelly National Monument in the middle of the Navajo reservation. I’ve spent some time in Canyon de Chelly in the past, but not for many years and I really wanted to get out and take some photos of Spider Rock, an 800’ spire in the middle of the canyon. I got out there with plenty of time to take a few deep breaths and enjoy the view and then stopped off at a few more viewpoints as the sun headed towards the horizon. I got back to the Cottonwood Campground near the entrance before dark and got a nice campsite away from the crowds. I had a nice dinner and called it an early night. It was a day that had involved more headaches than I would have liked, but I had made it into my next state and slept very soundly.
I got up early on Sunday, made breakfast and then headed up the north side of the canyon. There are several sets of Ancestral Puebloan ruins in the park and some nice viewpoints to see them from. I had my binoculars and my longest lens to try and get some shots of them with which I had moderate success. It was a nice morning, though, and I enjoyed the drive. I stopped into the Visitors Center when I got back to borrow their internet as my signal was a bit hit-or-miss on the reservation (or so I thought at the time)and I needed to check on some opening days and times. It seemed like it would be best to spend another night there, where I had a nice campground, and get moving early on Monday when more would be open. With that decision made, I headed back to camp, took a long nap and spent my afternoon reading and planning. It was quite restful and probably really needed as well. The clouds came in in the afternoon and it cooled off a bit, but it was a nice quiet afternoon in camp.
I was up and off very early on Monday and made my way down and around to Window Rock, the capital city of the Navajo Nation. I went straight to Window Rock itself, a beautiful sandstone arch above their main government buildings. There was a great monument to the Navajo code talkers (who used their unwritten language to communicate with one another, a simple code but one which was virtually unbreakable), and two more general war memorials as well. As I had no phone signal, I stopped in to ask directions to the Navajo Nation Museum at the office of the Tribal President. The lady there was very helpful and got me on my way. The museum started with a look at some of the Navajo creation story and mythology, told through absolutely magnificent mini sculptures. The next section dealt with the Long Walk and the Navajo internment at the Bosque Redondo, which you may remember I visited and discussed several weeks ago. They had one of the three original copies of the Treaty of 1868 which was wonderfully preserved and displayed in its entirety. The world had thought this copy to be lost, but it had been cared for by the family of the man who had helped draft it for 150 years and was presented to the Navajo people very recently (I think in 2019). There was some beautiful Navajo art on display in the next room and the museum finished with incredible black and white photos from Kenji Kawano who has been photographing the Navajo Code Talkers as they aged since the 1970s.
The museum was great and when I finished my time there I headed back up the road to Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site in Ganado. This trading post has been open in that location since 1878 and has been a respected place in the community where the Indians who have traded there have felt they received honest and fair treatment. I met a wonderful older lady in the visitor center who was working on a Navajo rug, one of the most sought-after items from the desert southwest. She said she has been working on it for nearly 3 months but that it is almost done. It takes a long time to weave by hand, a skill she learned from her mother, but she told me neither of her daughters was interested in learning to weave at all. The trading post itself was as small as I remember it to be, smaller than many others in the area. It may be historically accurate, but there isn’t much to see there. I wandered around the property for a while and then headed off towards Hopi land. The Hopi have occupied three mesas in the central part of what is now Arizona for almost a thousand years. They are a very traditional group and carry on much as they would have for hundreds of years. I have been to the Hopi Reservation several times before, having toured Walpi and old Oraibi, the oldest continuously occupied town in what’s now the United States. I’ve also been to the Hopi Cultural museum before, but it was there that I was hoping to visit on this journey. Sadly it was closed (and apparently has been since February), and the wind was ferocious on the mesa tops so I headed on down the highway.
I finally made it to Winslow in the afternoon and the wind calmed down a bit as the day wore on. Winslow was mentioned in the song Take It Easy by The Eagles, and they have built up quite a tourism industry around this one little line. You’ve heard me say before that you have to use what you have, and this is a big part of what they have and they are using it as best they can. To be fair, I saw at least 200 people stop by to take their photo “Standing On The Corner In Winslow, Arizona” while I was there and it was a Monday in April. I too took a photo and then headed off to the visitor center which was housed in one of the main warehouses of John Hubbell (of the Hubbell Trading Post). This was where his wagons came to meet the trains, sending Indian blankets, moccasins, jewelry and trinkets east and picking up flour, bullets, shovels, axes and other staples to trade them for. It was a cool old building and the lady there was very kind to show me around. As I was leaving, I said thank you, to which she replied with an obviously well-practiced line and a grin “take it easy”. Winslow’s real claim to fame though is the beautiful La Posada Hotel, one of Fred Harvey’s gems on the rails which was closed in the 1950s, but purchased, remodeled and reopened in the 90s. It’s one of the most historic and celebrated hotels in the state. While it was all booked up, I did head in for a wonderful dinner at the Turquoise Room restaurant. I had a delicious braised bison short rib with rutabaga and vegetables and a lemon tart for dessert. It was pricey but good and I enjoyed being in this historic venue.
I was up early on Tuesday and spent a little bit of time wandering around downtown before shooting off up the road to Petrified Forest National Park. It was quite crowded, something I’ve definitely not been used to, but I found some nice places to experience the park in solitude. I had hoped to backpack off into the wilderness, but the wind was definitely prohibitive. I have been through the park before, but never with enough time to properly see it and I was definitely glad I stopped. I started at the Painted Desert Inn, which wasn’t built by Fred Harvey, but he had acquired it at some point and made it a part of his empire. I enjoyed the blue mounds of the park, which I assume comes from manganese and are quite unique. It was obviously the petrified trees, though, which are the centerpiece of the park. I have seen plenty of petrified logs in my life, but these were massive and spectacular and really worth stopping to spend some time with. The Long Logs Trail near the south entrance was particularly good and there were very few people on it in contrast to the rest of the park. I had a great day out there and then made my way on to Holbrook for a while before heading on to Snowflake for the night.
Yesterday I noticed that at some point my tailpipe had broken. It’s old and rusty, and the roads of America finally took their toll, but I wasn’t thrilled to see it. Thankfully it was something I could repair myself which I spent an hour doing this morning. It’s whole again and well-secured and will hopefully hang on for a few more years. I made my way down to Show Low this morning, a town named after a card game where whoever drew the low card got to stay. The main road through town is Deuce of Clubs Blvd. I haven’t had much of a chance to look around, but it seems like a nice enough place. I’m at the library now, trying to finish up this post, and then I will head out and see what I can find.
Tomorrow I will definitely be moving on and heading south, hopefully stopping in to see the Apache Cultural Museum and Fort Apache, I have spent very little time with the Apache and I’m fascinated to learn more about their history and culture. Then I’m headed south through the White Mountains and into southern Arizona. There are a lot of places I want to visit down south, having really only been in Tombstone and Tucson before. I haven’t made a ton of plans for my time in Arizona yet, something which hasn’t been helped by no phone signal and limited internet, so right now I am taking it a day at a time. I have absolutely no idea where I will be at this time next week, but I sure hope you’ll come back and find out what I’ve been up to. I’ll look forward to seeing you right back here, same time next week. Have a wonderful week out there and thank you, as always, for reading. And until next week, take it easy…
-Mike