Back To The Lone Star State

I hope you don’t mind, I have put the whole trip together before releasing it to the blog. It seems to be more cohesive this way, hence why I’m so tardy with its delivery.

9/9 After a summer spent welcoming our new granddaughter into this world and enjoying family in the wilds of Watsonville, CA we departed for Texas with a few stops along the road which I will now regale you with. Our trip here was 2,412 miles of meandering and of course our return trip will be more of the same but a bit shorter, only 2,245 miles.

We pushed through the Mohave desert where we stopped overnight and then through the city of sin, Las Vegas until we hit Hurricane, UT. Our thinking was, how can you name a town Hurricane when they could never possibly have one, this far from the coast. Well some Mormon farmer had his wagon blown off the side of a hill by a strong wind while overlooking the valley below where he had settled, hence the name.  Anyway, the motorhome was not blown over, we just parked it in the valley and used this place to kick off our exploration of Zion and Bryce Canyon.

Zion, Looking for Peace

9/12 I know this has taken me while to put this together, but there are so many photos and I want to pick the ones that came out giving the best impression of what we saw. We started our tour of Zion by taking a bus tour into the canyon (no private vehicles allowed). This tour included a 20 minute film with a discussion of the founding of the park and some geological facts. I highly recommend viewing this.

The first impressive formation was the Court of the Patriarchs as seen below.




Court of the Patriarchs - Zion National Park



There are many bus stops through the canyon and you can get on or off as many times as you like. The longest wait seems to be about 9 minutes between buses. Each of the stops feature a hiking trail off to somewhere. Sure wish we had the capability to do some of those hikes. We settled for taking some snaps from the nearby vista points.

The end of the bus trail is at the Temple of Sinawava where the Virgin River comes out of the canyon and of course there is a hiking trail up along the river. We just took this picture looking up the canyon along the trail. What you cannot see is that the Virgin River is flowing along to our left.



We then drove around to Kolob Canyon which is a 50 mile drive out and around onto the I15 where the views were just as spectacular. This part of the trip was done in our truck, no buses in this part of the park.

 I will include a photo that we took on our way through Zion on our way to Bryce Canyon a couple of days later, but it was in Zion so here is Checker Board Mesa.

Checkerboard Mesa - Zion National Park

A Golf Day

9/13 I took some time to play golf at Sky Mountain Golf Course in Hurricane. Although the course was challenging, the views sure played havoc with my concentration.



Sky Mountain Golf Course - Hurricane, UT



Bryce Canyon

9/14 We are up bright and early eager to start our next leg to explore Bryce Canyon. Our route will again take us through Zion National Park and through the one mile tunnel that was cut through the mountain during the depression as part of the WPA. Past Checkerboard Mesa and on into Bryce Canyon.

Here there is much more of the red rocks prevalent and it sure shows up in the photos.

Again as in Zion, there is a shuttle bus, however it is not compulsory so we bypassed and took the truck on our own tour. We started with Sunrise Point where they had a good sized lodge. Normally we try and visit these lodges, but opted to bypass and just enjoy the views.



Sunrise Point - Bryce National Park



We had to walk up a bit of a hill an all of a sudden this appeared through the trees, it was breathtaking. We did wander around and took many more photos, but knew we had more ground to cover and off we went with our next stop at Bryce Point.



Bryce Point

This was even more breathtaking and I really can’t tell you how many photos we took here, but it was quite a few. As many as we took there just isn’t enough to do the view justice. Again we could have stood there for hours just soaking it in. We stopped at almost every view point there was along the roadway and I’m not going to overwhelm you with a photo from each, however I will give you a few more that we really enjoyed, like the natural bridge.



Natural Bridge - Bryce National Park

The last photo I’ll leave you with from Bryce is Rainbow Point which is the end of the road at an elevation of 9,115 ft.

 

Rainbow Point - Bryce National Park

Back on the Road

9/15 Our intention was to stop at Jacob Lake and go down and view the Grand Canyon from the north rim but with recent heavy rains and possibility of snow in the higher elevations, we decided to backtrack and go back through Las Vegas and down through Kingman where we would pickup I40 and head for Albuquerque our next destination. Along the way, we spotted signs for the Grand Canyon Skywalk, so you can guess where we next stopped. 

Grand Canyon Skywalk

9/16 I will tell you that the Grand Canyon Skywalk is very expensive and I’ve read many comments that it is not worth the price but that said “it’s a once in a lifetime type of thing.” Once you have been there you would not want to go back. After getting off highway 93 at Dolan Springs, there is another 50 miles to drive to the Canyon of which 9 miles are unpaved. If you do plan on going there it might be paved, they were working on it. Anyway you have to take a bus to the two view points and a ranch (no private vehicles) and you have to pay for the bus. If you want to go out on the walk, you have to pay for that also and if you buy the full package, it includes lunch as well as a drive down into the canyon (we went as far as the lunch). You can’t carry anything out on the skywalk (no cameras, phones, etc.) so of course if you want a photo you have to buy one of theirs.

Hangin' out over the Grand Canyon

This one only cost us a mere $30. Notice the booties we had to wear. And yes, that is the Colorado River behind us. You can see that there is an opaque border but the center is clear glass.

Grand Canyon West Skywalk

It is an interesting structure and after watching a special on TV on the construction, I was staggered by the cost and amazed that they were able to get the materials out to the location over that dirt road.

Colorado River Grand Canyon West

This is located on a side canyon but it is still quite stunning. Yes, It was worth the stop and no, we will probably bypass the next time through.

Painted Desert / Petrified Desert

9/17 We got an early start the on our way so when we stopped at Root 66 RV Park which is touted as the closest park to the Petrified Forrest, we decided it was worth a return trip to this wonderful park for some more pictures. We had stopped here back in 2001 and had really enjoyed it. Our last go through was with the RV, so we knew it could be done as an easy drive.

Painted Desert - Petrified National Forrest Arizona

I guess after Bryce Canyon it seems a little subdued, but we still think it to be beautiful. This is the top half of the park while the lower half contain the Petrified Forrest, it too has some beauty.

And of course we can’t leave out a chunk of wood, can we?

This would wreck a chain saw for sure!

9/18 And we are on the way into Albuquerque for a few days with our good friends Bill & Pat and of course some golf. We are chuggin’ along and

Who said Granny don't drive?

Our arrival in Albuquerque was more for visiting friends than sightseeing but we did get to do a bit of that . Our first surprise was in our choice of campgrounds. We stayed at the Enchanted Trails RV park and Trading Post. Have you ever heard of it? Well it was featured on a TV show about unusual RV’s in that they had a section of the park where they had several restored RV’s that they rent out for you to stay in like renting a cabin. We did not realize it until we pulled into the park and drove past the section and I remarked “that looks awfully familiar.”

9/21 We had to take a trip up to Santa Fe and how can you go from Albuquerque without taking the Turquoise Trail (Hwy 14) with a stop in Madrid to see the latest in jewelry etc. Our friends who returned to Albuquerque to settle had never gone this route to Santa Fe and really enjoyed it.

And yes, a cup of coffee is always welcome along the trail.

9/22 -25 we continued on our way through Clovis, NM into the panhandle of Texas and headed towards Bandera where we connected with Alan. Our plans were to play some golf and visit with old friends Charlie & Loretta, as well as Ken & Willie that had settled over by Lake Medina.

Al and I took some time and drove out to see the lake. The powers that be had taken advantage of the drought to do some repair work on the dam and had drained the lake in 2011. Well the work was completed but the drought continued and as you can see by the picture I took of Al standing in front of the lake…..

Directly behind Al is the boat ramp down into the lake and the road you see off in the distance is completely under water? I guess it will be a few years (they hope) before the lake returns.

9/28  After some wonderful golf and dinners with our friends we (Al included) headed off to Johnson City to visit with some more friends, Dave and Nan. Here, we did not stop at a campground, we just pulled into their Ranch and parked near their house for a couple of days. We thought it would be nice to bring them a nice little bit of rain since they had been suffering from the drought also. I sure hope they appreciated it.

Sure was nice to sit atop a hill and look out and enjoy the view with the old goats. Oops, sorry, Dave I wasn’t talkin’ about you. They do have a herd of goats that are guarded by a donkey?

 

Who keeps those coyotes and other pesky critters away.

Pat was fascinated by the enormous live oak trees, of which there were several and they were majestic to say the least.

10/1 We said goodbye to the goats and a thank you to Dave and Nan. Alan headed off to visit his son and would return to his home near us in the Pharr and we turned south to return to our home park in Edcouch. It was a long summer and we had a wonderful time but here is the best of the best.

Our Granddaughter Anouk is 4 months old, we have been gone a month and miss her terribly already.

So that is our travel blog and we hope that you have enjoyed it.

Pat & Tom