Road Trip, Part Four: Eastward HO!

On Wednesday morning we got up fairly early and continued our trek eastward. We had the hang of the long drives, and the miles just flowed by as we listened to audiobooks and admired the desert. We took a very short break at 4 Corners so that Carson could stand it four states at once (I didn't tell him that a new survey places it a little ways away from the marker), but it was hot, touristy and crowded, so it was a very very short break. And we headed on, pulling into Mesa Verde at about 4 p.m. We found a lovely campsite in a meadow of tall grass, and headed into the park to see a little and find out the scoop on tours etc.

I had discovered at the Grand Canyon that Carson is afraid of heights, and I also learned on this trip that he wilts in the heat. So we looked carefully at our options for tours (you can only visit the cliff dwelling on a ranger-guided tour) and looked at the photos in the book at the visitor's center. The tours include ladders, steep stairs, and even a tunnel to crawl through. Carson decided that he could handle it, and they booked us two tours for Thursday, staggered so that we would be at each at the right time of day for shade. Then we headed back to the campsite, had dinner, and went to the campfire program - which turned out to be about the stars. It was gorgeous - all the thunderstorms had cleared, the sky was crystal clear, and the Milky Way really earned its name.

Thursday it was up early again, and the drive into the park to the end of the Mesa for our tour of Cliff Palace. I don't usually like being in tours, and big crowds, but the ruins are so incredible that it's worth it. And everywhere you look, when you look across the canyons at the walls on the other side, you can see more ruins. (I think the number of cliff ruins in the 800's, and the total number of sites is in the 4,000's, if I remember right.) The ruins are remarkably well preserved (and restored), and the cliffs are just stunning. Carson managed the ladders, the slippery stone steps, the tunnel crawl, and we learned a lot from the rangers about the history of the people who had lived there.

It was another thunderstormy day (typical for summer in that area), but we were again very lucky. After the tours Carson was out of gas, so we stopped at the store/restaurant to get him a burger. Just as we sat down we looked outside and noticed it was hailing, which soon turned into a true gully-washer. By the time he'd finished his last fry, we could head back out into the fresh washed air and that amazing high desert smell of sage & wet red earth. I took one breath and wanted to move back to Santa Fe on the spot.

We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring on our own, then headed back to camp. One of the best parts of the trip, we agreed later, was the hour we spent at camp, sitting in the shade reading books, before I made dinner and before the other campers all started to fill in around us. The next morning we had to pack up early and head out, so we savored our last evening at Mesa Verde.

Road Trip, Part Three: It's a Grand Old Canyon

On Tuesday, after a yummy breakfast of french toast in the garden, we headed up to the Grand Canyon. I was thinking, "If we're this close, we really ought to see it," but I wasn't sure how much Carson would get out of it. Well, he was blown away, loved it, took a ton of photos, and it was totally worth the day.

He also got to see what a really popular park is like in the middle of tourist season. Boy howdy! We got to the park entrance at 10 am (thinking we were on the early side - hah!) and there were 5 lanes/kiosks, each at least 4 cars deep. That should have tipped me off NOT to head to the visitor's center, but I did anyhow - we managed to park about a mile up the road from the actual parking lot, but of course, seeing how the walk back to the center had one of the most spectacular views on EARTH, I shouldn't complain! Carson oohed and aaahed, and we went to the lookout points, and it was wonderful despite the lack of elbow room.

After the visitor's center we trekked back to the car, and started winding our way out along the rim to the east, stopping at every lookout. The crowds dropped away almost immediately (whew!), and the views just stayed gorgeous. Near the end, we were at a lookout with a good view of the (far away and tiny) Colorado River, and we had the binoculars out, and I realized that we could just barely see rafters dropping through a rapid, and a few boats eddied out upstream. That was totally cool. There were thunderstorms crossing the canyon, and we saw an eagle, and the rain only fell when we were in the car between lookouts - it couldn't have been better!

Finally we got to where the road leaves the canyon, and headed east and then south again towards Flagstaff. But on the way we stopped at Wupatki, where Carson got his first taste of ancestral puebloan ruins. (They don't say "Anasazi" anymore. I got a kick out of listening to all the rangers on our trip trying to say "ancestral puebloan" as if it rolls off the tongue, which it doesn't. Try it.) Wupatki was beautiful - they had built it around a spine of rock, and you can see the giant slab of sandstone in the middle of the rooms. It's all a gorgeous deep red color, and the desert there was surprisingly green.

We grooved on Wupatki, admired the construction, the kivas, the ball court, and then, very tired, headed back to Tom & Helen's, and dinner, and bed.

Road Trip, Part Two: Detours & Cinder Cones

On the second morning of our trip, it was up and on the road early before the desert got too horrible. It was a gorgeous drive through the early morning. We had flipped a coin on which direction to go out of the park - we could go north, east, and south to Kingman, or south, east & north to Kingman. We opted for the former, which worked beautifully until we got to the intersection where we were to head south, and the road was blocked by a policeman. "Indefinitely - could be hours" he said. Sigh. So we turned north instead, and took the looooong way around by Hoover Dam.

Hoover Dam - boy is that a giant non-sequitur in the middle of a long desert drive! You're driving along, there's a small town, the traffic gets a little heavier, you can see Lake Mead in the distance... then suddenly it's all pylons & cement & giant construction machinery & homeland security & traffic & more cement & more pylons & weird art-deco sculptures & a giant half finished bridge and it's like you're on another planet. Ugh! We stopped in a parking lot long enough to hop out - lordy it was HOT - take a picture of Carson - and keep going.

After that the trip went more smoothly, and by mid-afternoon we were in Flagstaff. We decided to fit in Sunset Crater before heading to my friends' house where we were to stay. The weather had cooled, and there were rain showers, which made the colors of the lava & cinder cones really beautiful. At Sunset Crater we walked around - did the little path by the lava flow and grooved on the weird shapes of the lava and on the black black cinders next to the deep red cinders, piled high in smooth mounds.

It was interesting to read in the visitor center about how they used to allow folks to hike the cinder cone, until they realized how much impact the hikers were having. My parents visited there in the late '50s, and were able to leap down the cone in the knee-deep cinders. Carson and I could only admire from a distance, but I can sure understand why they had to change the rules. At the time they closed the trail it had gotten thigh-deep in places.

After the crater we headed to our friends' house, where there was hot dinner waiting, and horses & chickens for Carson to help feed, and a cozy bed for the night. Not to mention the pleasure of seeing dear friends again!

Road Trip, Part One: How to Get a Solitary Campsite

Because Carson is 10, and because Will & Satchel got to go to Holland when they were 10, I promised him we'd do something special this summer. Not being able to afford India, I suggested we set out and see Mesa Verde & points in between in the Southwest. So on last Saturday afternoon, we loaded up into the car and headed off. We spent the night at good friends' in Merced, to give us a head start. Sunday morning, we left Merced at 6 am and headed south. This was Carson's first real road trip, and our first day we were getting our 'road legs', as it were. As the week wore on we got better and better at not stopping, and just letting the miles flow by, but that morning we had to stop a few times as Carson got used to the routine.

Our destination the first night was the Mojave desert, but I hadn't told Carson that I was hoping to catch the only tour of the day at the Mitchell Caverns - the tour was at 1:30, and we pulled in at 1:00, driving up the steep road to the tiny state park perched on the side of the mountain. Whew! It was scorching hot, and by the time of the tour Carson was wilting, but we watered up and headed down the trail to the cool limestone caverns. I love cave tours, as long as I don't have to squeeze through any tight spots - I love the coolness & stillness in there.

By the time we were done with the tour, around 3, I wanted to find a spot to camp. We could have camped there at the state park, with an amazing view, but I was afraid we'd be blown off the hillside - the heat was made tolerable by a stiff breeze and there were no trees to slow it down. So we headed up the road into the Mojave National Preserve to check out the campsites. So here's a news flash for y'all: the Mojave Desert ISN'T POPULAR in SUMMER! On car passed us on the dirt road, and we saw a few motorhomes parked in the first (awful) campground, but for the rest we saw no-one. (Yes, folks, I DID have a very large jug of water with us in my cute little 4WD Toyota, so you can stop worrying!) We headed to the second campground, fearing it would be as bad as the first, but despite the fact that most of it had burned a few years ago, there were a handful of sites with shady trees, and we were able to snag the best one in the place.

Of course, that's because we were the ONLY people there. It was pretty cool - okay, hot, really - clean, well-kept campground, decent bathrooms, water, recycling bins, and NOBODY. We decided to sit in the shade for a while before paying for the night, to see if it was doable, and it was actually very pleasant except for some persistent flies. I didn't mind the flies so much, as they preferred Carson's company to mine. Actually, perhaps it was Carson's sandwich they liked better than mine. This photo is titled "Yuck! A fly landed just as I was taking a bite!!!!" And here's what a good mom I am: I 1) laughed my head off, 2) made him re-enact it for a photo and then finally 3) made him a new sandwich.

The campground was weirdly beautiful - the burned trees were starting to lose their bark, and showed white under. There were blooming desert plants, and we saw some juvenile hawks, and we had a view of bare, colored hills. About 7 that night our solitude was broken - another car drove in and camped somewhere out of our sight and hearing. It was terrible! So crowded! (Actually, it made Carson feel a bit more like we were in a legitimate campsite - he wasn't so sure about being the only ones there). We were exhausted - as much from the heat as from the drive, and both asleep before 9. Which was good, because I awoke at 6 and had breakfast, by 7 Carson had been chased out of the tent by the sun, and by 8 we were driving with the AC on. We headed on north out the top of the park, to turn east and then south go to Kingman AZ, and saw jackrabbits & deer crossing the road, and more gorgeous desert, with Joshua trees & yucca.

Mixing my metaphors

I can't decide whether summer is flying past us on wings of a dove, or whether school is approaching like a freight train (with puberty on board). It's only three weeks into summer, but it's already feeling too short. And we've packed in a lot in these weeks already...


Satchel is due back tonight from his trip to Europe - he went to London, Paris, Brussels, and Holland - finishing up his trip with a few days in Delft with our cousins. I'm looking forward to hearing his stories - we've gotten some brief emails, but not a lot of details yet.

Carson and Reed made their annual trip out to Denver to stay with their Grandpa Tom & Grandma Chris for a weekend. I think the highlight was getting up before dawn to go fishing - they didn't catch any fish, but did get soaking wet and had a great time! It was their second time flying alone out there, and they felt like seasoned travelers.

After they got back, we went up to Kyburz and visited Lake Tahoe and played by the Silver Fork of the American river. The water was pretty cold (the photo at right was requested by the kids, and is titled "How It Felt"), but the kids & dogs had a great time anyhow!