• Boulder, Utah to Moab, Utah

    While eating breakfast at our beautiful dispersed campsite, a cowboy with a truck arrived and delivered a new batch of cattle. Within two minutes, the cows were off to graze and the cowboy drove off with his loyal dog.

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    It was difficult to depart from this serene site and we had to take a picture of our morning view.

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    The drive on Hwy 12 and 24 is spectacular and we stopped several times to try and capture the beautiful rock formations.

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    We stopped at the Fruita visitor centre and watched a 20 minute video on the geological development and history of the people who have lived in this area. Fruita was a Mormon settlement at the junction of two rivers and is an oasis where fruit trees can thrive. The settlement is now a national park and visitors are encouraged to pick fruit in the orchards that are still maintained by the park. On the day we were there, Ginger Gold apples were ready to pick. Any apples you eat while in the orchard are free and any you want to take with you at $1/pound.

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    We also bought delicious pies, cinnamon bun and ice cream at the Gifford house. The Giffords were the last residents of Fruita.

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    A scenic drive takes you to a number of interesting geologic formations.

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    We continued on our way to Moab and drove through a mix of plains and attractive scenery.

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    We made it to Moab and had a wonderful steak/prime rib dinner at Suzie’s Branding Iron. One of Suzie’s specialities is fried bread with honey. Yum!

    Our home for the night is at the Moab KOA.

  • Bryce Canyon, Utah to Boulder, Utah

    This morning, prior to any breakfast, we headed off to Bryce Canyon’s Sunrise point to capture the morning rays.

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    There were already lots of other people busy enjoying the morning, some on a horseback trail ride.

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    We, however, were starving and decided to splurge by having breakfast at the Bryce Canyon Lodge. The Lodge was established in the 1920s. We enjoyed the buffet so much that we forgot to take any pictures!

    Our next major destination is Arches National Park so we headed off in that direction. There is so much to see along this route that we decided to take an extra day for this drive.

    We stopped at the BLM Office/Visitor Centre to enquire about dispersed camping permits and locations. These are free, unserviced and largely unmarked campsites throughout the southwest. Some are on rough roads and not easily accessible in vehicles such as our van, especially in monsoon season. We were determined nonetheless. After the fourth attempt we found a perfect spot at a trailhead near a creek. We did venture out on the trail, but were stopped by some cows and a horse. All three of us retreated to the van and wrote the last two blog entries. We are in the middle of nowhere, but have great cellular internet.

  • Lake Powell, Arizona to Bryce Canyon, Utah

    When we got up this morning the weather was cloudy and rainy again which meant no chance to see Antelope Canyon. We did some house cleaning and started on our way to Bryce Canyon.

    Our first stop was the Grand Staircase – Escalante. There we hiked the Toadstool trail through a canyon to a fascinating colourful plateau. Despite the cloudy weather, the colors of the rock formations were vibrant. We had a really good time there with lots to photograph and very few people to get into our pictures.

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    Pepsi enjoyed the hike and was very cooperative during picture taking time and sat quietly until the click of the camera.

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    On the way we saw a big sign for a German bakery and restaurant in the next town. Since we hadn’t had lunch yet, we thought this is our opportunity. We were not disappointed. The bratwurst with sauerkraut and pickle were great and the German cake even better. We decided to buy some more cake and some nice crusty bread for the next couple of days.

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    Just outside of Bryce Canyon we stopped at Dixie National Forest Red Canyon and saw some beautiful red rocks and had to stop for some pictures.

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    Finally, we arrived at Bryce Canyon National Park. We were lucky to find a nice camping site directly in the park and then headed off to the viewpoints to see the sights. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a parking spot for our van, so we headed back to the campground, parked it, and then took the free shuttle back to the Bryce viewpoint. We were so lucky. The cloudy skies cleared and the threat of a thunderstorm also disappeared. Just beautiful late afternoon sunshine to capture the splendour before us.

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    We hiked the Rim trail to Inspiration point and then wanted to take the shuttle back to our campground. Oops. There was no more shuttle. We had missed the fact that Utah is in Mountain time and Arizona is in Pacific time, although we were actually further west than we had been in Arizona. We had no choice but to walk the 3 kms back to the campground.

  • Lake Powell, Arizona

    Today we recharged all our batteries – vacuum cleaner, cameras, toothbrush, shaver and our own batteries. The van did not move a single inch.

    We walked down to the beach, saw a hare, talked to some super nice people, read, slept, learned about programming in Python, researched our route for the remaining two and half weeks and had a great pasta dinner on this rainy day.

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    It was a good thing we didn’t book the Antelope Canyon tour with all the rain. The forecast for tomorrow doesn’t look promising either.

    We did catch up on our blog entries and posted five of them today (read them all!) despite the Internet being horribly slow here. The front desk told us the antenna had been hit by lightning the previous day, so perhaps they are still working on it.

    No map today.

  • Sedona, Arizona to Lake Powell, Arizona

    We decided to leave overrun Sedona and make it to Page, Arizona where the famous Antelope Canyon is located.

    The drive took is through stunning scenery and we made several stops to do landscape photography and to look at some stands with Navajo pottery and jewelry.

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    We found outstanding pottery and woven rugs at the Cameron Gallery, but these pieces of art at several thousand dollars apiece, where definitely not impulse buys.

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    On our next stop we were fascinated by the red and grey mountains with spots of green vegetation.

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    The last stop before Page had us overlooking a tremendous plain with canyon and a mountain range in the background. The grey clouds made for dramatic scenery. Navajo jewelry stands are everywhere.

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    We tried to book a photography tour of Antelope canyon, but unfortunately they were all booked out. One tour company had space the following week and another told us we had to book 6 months to a year in advance.  We had an option to book an Antelope Canyon sightseeing tour at 5:30PM the next day, but weren’t sure about the weather forecast and decided against it.

    The visitor centre was our next stop, but it had closed at 4:30PM so we opted for a stone baked pizza at a small Italian restaurant across the street.

    Our next task was to find a site for the night and we found a great camping spot on Lake Powell. Lake Powell was formed in the 1960s when the Glen Canyon Dam was built.

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  • Prescott, Arizona to Sedona, Arizona

    Early in the morning we left our campsite and began our trek towards Jerome. Jerome was a copper mining town until 1953 when it became a ghost town. Hippies moved in and revitialized the town into an artist colony. The Jerome Historical Society began buying old properties and renovating them, giving visitors a feel for what the town had looked like in its heyday in the late 19th and beginning 20th century. The mine museum helped us get a deeper understanding of the history of the mining and day-to-day lives of its inhibitants, including the seedier parts.

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    We saw many nice shops and restaurants and had lunch at the Hilltop Deli where we sat on their dog friendly patio.

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    Our next stop was the Tuzigoot National Monument. This is the remains of a Sinagua village built on a hilltop. Villages such as this one were populated for hundreds of years and were abandoned in the late 1300s.

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    Sedona is a very busy and popular tourist destination, located in an absolutely stunning landscape. Our first stop was at a “visitor information center” where we were offered a $360 2-night RV camping and Jeep rental package for a mere $20. What was the catch you ask? This visitor information center was run by a timeshare company and wanted us to sit in on a 90 minute “no high pressure sales talk”. We politely declined, at which point the salesman’s demeanour changed dramatically, and slightly put off, visited an offical Arizona visitor center where we had the pleasure of getting a lot of information from a great agent.

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    Our next task was to find a home for the night and we found a great spot at the Cave Springs Campgound. Secure in the knowledge we had a place to stay, we drove back to Sedona to try and catch some sunset pictures. The clouds were not terribly cooperative. A bit disappointed we scouted out some potential locations for tomorrow morning but found many of them to be inaccessible with our van or overrun with people.

    Tired and hungry we stopped for a BBQ dinner and then headed back to our campsite.

  • Prescott, Arizona

    We woke up at 7AM to the sounds of our next door neighbour packing his things and leaving. Martin went to talk to the Park Ranger about the incident and the Ranger said that the site ticketing machine had no record of his 2PM booking and only confirmed ours.

    It was a beautiful sunny day and we drove to the boat launch and unpacked our kayak to go for a paddle. What a fabulous way to begin the day – paddling on a lake surrounded by ganite boulders that looked almost like art.

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    In the afternoon we drove back to Prescott to enjoy the vibrant city and its colourful artist’s market in the park front of the court building. We saw lots of jewelery, photography, wood carvings, and, unfortunately, dogs which Pepsi needed to greet in her usual aggressive way. The business district of Prescott itself had lots of attractive stores, restaurants and saloons, reminding the tourists of Prescott’s mining past. We especially liked the Palace Restaurant and Saloon with its slogan “Pleasing Arizona’s toughest customers since 1877”.

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    In the evening we hiked back to the granite boulders for an sunset photoshoot.

  • Tucson, Arizona to Prescott, Arizona

    The day started with a very early breakfast and then a trip to Freedom RV, a Roadtrek dealer in Arizona, to have the generator looked at again. We’d had some issues with it stalling and the air conditioner showing an E2 error code. They took a look at it and adjusted the governor on the generator and said it should be fine now.

    We drove north on I-10 to Phoenix. The drive wasn’t all that exciting and it was VERY hot – 43C. We stopped at an Appleby restaurant that had free Wifi so that Martin could look after some business and we enjoyed a very nice hamburger.

    We continued on Hwy-60 to Wickenburg, a town with a history of cowboys, miners looking for gold, and a railway. The town has statues of historical figures and their professions, along with a short audio segment describing their lives in Wickenburg. The town has a number of trades represented today – a hat maker and a saddle maker.

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    Wickenburg was also very hot and we were happy to head into the lush cool mountains for our next stop. It was a beautiful drive to Prescott. We drove through this very attractive city to a fabulous campground on Watson Lake just outside of town.

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    We tried to have an early night but were awakened by an unexpected visitor in the middle of the night. We saw a flashlight and looked out the window and there was an SUV parked right next to us on our site. When Martin asked whether everything was OK, the response was that he had booked our site at 2PM in the afternoon and was surprised to find the site occupied.

  • Silver City, New Mexico to Tucson, Arizona

    We decided to briefly explore Silver City this morning. We found the Palace Hotel which was a modest building, extremely high curbs which we were told was because of monsoon rain flooding, a number of little artist stores, and a unique coffee shop where we got to know a couple of people.

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    Needless to say we stayed longer than we had anticipated.

    We still managed to make it to Tucson in time and see the quite a bit of the countryside along the way. There were a number of valleys along the way with sandstorm warnings. We were not hit by these storms but still saw some flying sand in the distance.

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    Another interesting landscape feature was the huge boulders in the Texas Canyon area along the highway.

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    In Tucson we stopped at the Pima Air and Space Museum and had a great private tour by Steve Austin. Steve is an aircraft maintenance engineer and volunteer at the museum and is full of information about the different airplanes. He has even worked on many of the aircraft on display.

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    Martin was quite into his element and spent quite a bit of time photographing the Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” test aircraft on display.

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    Another highlight was the SR-71 Blackbird, a spy plane that flew so fast it wasn’t possible to shoot it down.

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    Ruth enjoyed seeing one aircraft that participated in the Berlin Airlift after the second world war.

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    There were a number of other curious and historical aircraft on display, including a re-creation of the Wright brothers plane.

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    We ended our tour at the museum in the space hanger and got there just before it closed, but still managed to make it to the moon and back.

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    We are staying at the Tucson/Lazydays KOA Campground where we have a great spot near the pool with our own patio and fruit trees.

  • Gila Cliff Dwellings, New Mexico to Silver City, New Mexico

    What a treat the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument was!

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    The Mogollon people inhabited this area and the caves temporarily between 1270 to 1300. Some artifacts, such as old corn cobs and cave paintings remain. A nearby visitor centre houses some pottery, arrow heads, tools and jewelry. A video at the visitor centre gives a good introduction to the people who lived in this area.

    Since our schedule isn’t fixed and our final route isn’t planned, we have the option to adapt to suggestions from local people. In today’s case we took the advice of a Park Ranger and visited the town of Pinos Altos. The town was built up in 1860 during a gold rush and Ranger’s tip was to go for steak dinner at the Buckhorn Saloon. The establishment has been used as a saloon since its inception in 1860. We arrived at 2PM but no steaks were available until dinner service started at 5PM.

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    We were so intrigued, we waited until 5PM sharp and then had a fabulous dinner.

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    It was amazing to see how this almost ghost town came to life in the evening through this restaurant attracting visitors from near and far.

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    We made it to Silver City, found a very nice city campground with a great pet walk and an even better laundry room where we washed all our dirty clothes.