June 3 - 5, 2024 - Lafe and Faith's Odyssey

Canyons and Their Denizens

In the morning, I got up and drove us to Aztec Ruins National Monument while Faith slumbered in the back. Unfortunately, we got there before the parking lot was even open, so we found a nearby pull off where I worked while Faith kept sleeping. Once the lot was open, we continued that arrangement until Faith awoke and we got ready for the day. We explored the ruins for a bit, took some pictures, got a postcard, then hit the road to our next stop: Mesa Verde National Park. We got there after a couple hours of driving through some beautiful northern New Mexico and southern Colorado scenery. We entered the park, stopped at the visitor center, and began driving towards the pueblo ruins, stopping for lunch at a scenic overlook of the nearby mountains. Mesa Verde lies right on the line between the mesas, buttes, and deserts of the four-corners area and the mountains of forests of Colorado, which provided a really cool contrast when looking south or north. There are a ton of pull offs in Mesa Verde for all the various pueblo ruins that are in the area. The coolest ruins were certainly those made inside huge overhangs in the canyon walls. Unfortunately, we were not able to hike down to see any up close, but we did get really cool views from the canyon rims. We called that good and left the park to another pueblo ruin at Hovenweep National Monument an hour-ish away towards Utah. As you drive to the monument, you pass through the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, the visitors center for which was unfortunately closed. Also closed was the visitor center for Hovenweep, which ended its hours a few minutes before we got there. I wasn’t going to let that stop me, so I went on a little hike around the area to see the pueblo ruins up close and personal (don’t worry, I was on the trail the whole time). While I was hiking, Faith opted to enjoy the evening breeze by taking a nap in the van. When I returned, I left Faith to her sleep and took my laptop over to the visitor center and plopped myself in the shade on a bench outside to make use of the free wifi. It was an ideal workplace: I had good connection, a cool breeze, shade, a lovely view, and fresh air. However, it was soon interrupted by an older gentleman who was going on about how bad his cellular connection was. He asked me how good my cell had been in the area (pretty decent), then went on to declare that he was heading up to Durango, CO to have a meeting with the Verizon folks there, who had told him that he and his wife needed to upgrade their phones as they were too old. I was expecting them to be a few years old, but he informed me they had an iPhone 4 and 6, which are now about 10 years old; in smartphone terms, that’s positively ancient. He then switched the conversation and asked me if I was registered to vote.

Me: “Yes, not here, though.”
Him: “Good! And you know what to do in November, right?”
Me: “Yes…? Vote?”
Him: “We gotta kill that orange guy!”
Me: “Well, I think I’d disagree with you there…”

I fully expected him to respond with a hrumph and march off or scream at me, but to my astonishment he sat down and started a very polite 90-minute conversation/debate about politics and related issues. Needless to say, I had to set my work aside to devote my full attention to the dialogue at hand. It was a very engaging conversation which I very much enjoyed and likely would have continued long after the sun had set had Faith not wandered over and gotten caught in the crossfire. This broke up the debate and shifted our talk to vanlife and traveling, which we talked about for a little while before we said goodbye to our new friend Hal and hit the road again. We continued driving into Bears Ear National Monument where we found a pull off and went to sleep with a view straight down into Monument Valley.

Once again, we slept peacefully in our van without interruption and awoke to a beautiful sunrise. We got up and started making our way towards the red buttes in the distance. On the way to Monument Valley we encountered and decided to stop at Mexican Hat rock, a hat-shaped formation with an excellent view of the surrounding area. We ascended as far as we reasonably could given our lack of climbing gear, snapped some pictures, then headed back down the road. We arrived in Monument Valley shortly thereafter and stopped at a mostly-empty visitor center before continuing to enjoy the vast, expansive scenery from the highway. A little while later, we saw a sign for Navajo National Monument, a place neither of us had ever heard of. So what did we do? We went straight for it of course, and we are glad we did. Navajo National Monument protects pueblo ruins and some area around them. These ruins were smaller than the ones we saw at Mesa Verde, but they were wayyy down in a canyon much larger than any we had seen previously. This canyon made the dwellings look puny and really threw the viewer off as it was difficult to get a sense of scale. Though awestruck, there wasn’t much else to do there, so we headed back to the main thoroughfare to get to Page, AZ, where we stopped for a bit so I could get some work done with the only cell service in about 100 miles in any direction. Faith took the opportunity to get some groceries and acquire some beads at the local arts and crafts store.

After an hour or two, we got some miles behind us and stopped at the Glen Canyon crossing to gawk at the already large and deep canyon that becomes the Grand Canyon just a few miles down stream. We continued on along the foot of the huge dark-red cliffs of Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, made our way up into Kaibab National Forest, then headed south to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Our destination for the night was the DeMotte campground about 15 miles from the canyon’s rim where we had our first reservations of the summer. We got there with some daylight to spare, so we filled up and set out our sun shower, which gained exactly zero degrees in temperature before we used it to take a very chilly shower. On the plus side, it was extremely refreshing and encouraged us snuggle up into our blankets for another night of rest.

The next morning we slept in just a tad before heading down to the Grand Canyon National Park’s northern half. It was no means empty when we got there, but we didn’t have any trouble finding a place to park in the shade before getting out and exploring. Our first adventure took us to Bright Angel Point from which one gets an absolutely spectacular view of the Grand Canyon’s majesty. We stayed there for a bit and let our eyes run over the layers, colors, and vast spaces before us until the sun reminded us that the heat of the day was coming quickly. I still needed to get some work done, so I stayed in the lodge the rest of the morning and early afternoon while Faith went hiking all around the area and part of the way down into the canyon. Although I wasn’t excited to miss out on hiking, my seat for the day was better than any office view.

Mid-afternoon arrived, and we were ready to get moving again. We drove north back through Kaibab National Forest and out into Grand Staircase country, a series of steps of different colors and kinds of rocks that run roughly east-west along a south-north staircase. As we came down from the plateau on which the forest sits, we could all the steps together stretching off into the horizon. We made our first stop in Kanab, just across the border in Utah, to get some ice cream, then backtracked a few steps to hit Pipe Springs National Monument. The monument is very small and protects, as you might guess, some freshwater springs, along with some historic Mormon homesteads/ranches from the 1800s. Here we encountered the first layer of the Grand Escalante: the chocolate layer, which unfortunately has nothing to do with chocolate. Since there wasn’t much to do at the monument, we headed north through the vermillion and white cliffs in and north of Kanab through what has been and probably will be one of my favorite drives in the country. The geography and geology are spectacular: small mountains, multi-colored canyons, and lightly-forested areas meet one’s eye at every turn. As night fell, we stopped just before the Red Canyon in the pink stair step to make food, explore a nearby dry stream bed, and hit the hay, marking the end of another jam-packed day.