The Icy Road Home

We stopped for a photo of a snow covered cactus because it seemed to be such a contrast.  We were surprised to see a tiny little bird "dancing" around on the cactus and rocks.  (Can you see him?)  We couldn't decide if he was jumping for joy or had freezing feet!

This being a part of the old Route 66, we were not surprised to find this old, old gas station.  It of course has turned into a tourist trap - which was closed because of the weather.  Be it still gave us the gift of a few photos:

Bonnie and Clyde drove one of these, yes?                                      Might be, because this is a cop car!

A bit farther down the road and I had to turn around for this beautiful picture.

The sun had warmed things up just enough to cause a bit of melting 

which instantly froze into icicles.

Take a few steps to the left and this was our last shot of the day.

We Are Drawn Farther Into The Mountains

Okay.  Now this one reminds me of the frosting on cinnamon rolls!  Now I'm hungry for those forbidden carbs and sugar-loaded, warm creamy frosting!  This is worse than crossing the river!

http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/09/dont-cross-river.html

This is the elevation where the vegetation transitions into trees instead of low-growing cactus and tumbleweed bushes.  It certainly looks like Christmas dreams to me.  We are so completely blessed by the Lord's hand in our lives.  No wonder Christians have an inner peace in the midst of outward turmoil, a peace that surpasses understanding to non-Christians.

Christian or not, I can't get those cinnamon rolls out of my mind, (not that I'm gonna actually eat cinnamon rolls...), so we turn around and head for home.

Thank Goodness For Trains!

Route 66 is icy and there are no other vehicles around in case of trouble.  Can you imagine 18-wheelers loaded with fuel oil - dozens of them - trying to manage roadways in the wintertime?  Isn't it MUCH safer to have a train do it?  Not to mention more reliable!  And folks, it's cold!!  People need their fuel oil and coal delivered to power plants just to stay warm.

There are so many power lines that get between us and good photos.  Granpa and I fuss about them all the time!  But it was less than a hundred years ago that rural areas even dreamed of having electricity available to their homes.  (And Texas Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson's political foundation was his success at getting electricity to rural areas.  Unfortunately, people voted for him for the rest of his life for that one accomplishment and turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the rest of his "accomplishments."  Let that be a lesson to us.)  But back to being snowed in.  Thank the Lord for railroads and power lines - even if they mess up our photos.

Kingman is beholden to the railroads for making them such a success.  Here are a couple of links to a couple of our older posts that mention that:

http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/10/notes-from-museums.html

http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/09/mining-in-mohave-desert.html

Route 66 runs parallel to the railroad tracks.  We saw a half dozen or more trains coming and going as we continued on our snow quest.

Snow Accumulation in Kingman, Arizona

Apparently, for the first time in decades, it has snowed here in Kingman and there is about a 4" accumulation!  So, of course, Granpa and I had to go take some pictures!  Woohoo!!

Our first thought was to go to the nearest mountains, the Hualapai's.

Hmmm.  Not as much accumulation as we expected - 

but we get a good view of the valley that Kingman is in.  

Aw, bummer.  The cops have a blockade up ahead.  No one is allowed up the mountain unless they have snow chains.  

No worries!  We notice that there seems to be more snow to the west and north anyway - so we head there!

U-turn!

Down the mountain, right on Andy Devine / Route 66 and tis to the north we head!  Love it, love it, love it!

The farther north on 66 we go, the deeper the snow!

And there's MORE!  See ya' tomorrow!!

Bryce Canyon With a Different Camera

Tunnel into Bryce

Window in Bryce

Rudolph

And we're outta here!

So.  Which camera takes the better photos?  This is important, 'cause Granpa's gotta buy another one.

Monument Valley and the Navajo Nation

We have probably all seen these monument mountains in films, magazines, and other media, but did you know that they are not in the good ol' USA?

They are on Navajo land!  This land was set aside in 1868 as the Navajo Reservation with additional land being added in 1884 and 1933.  No one knows when the first Navajo settlement was established here - but it was long before the white man came I assure you!

Before the Navajo, though, the Anasazi (also known as Ancestral Puebloan's) established more than 100 known sites here, and ruins date back to before 1300 A.D.  They abandoned this area and other sites such as Mesa Verde in the 1300's.

The Navajo regarded this place, Tse' Bii' Ndzisgaii, as a huge hogan (traditional Navajo home).  They considered Gray Whiskers and Sentinel pinnacles as the door posts, and the two "Mittens" buttes (those on the left of the photo above) as the hands of their god.

In the mid-1920's a couple of folks set up a trading post (which is still there and selling to tourists!) They hung in there through the Depression that followed the stock market crash of 1929 and two major droughts that drove out a lot of settlers, but they were seriously hurting for money.  A traveler happened to mention that Hollywood was looking for a location in which to shoot a Western.  Harry Goulding and his wife Mike (not a typo) hired a photographer and put together a photo album of Monument Valley.  In 1938, they moseyed on over to Los Angeles, plopped down in that movie studio and said they'd stay there until someone could see them.  And the rest, as they as, is history.  (Talking about creating your own customer base!!)

Director John Ford began filming Stagecoach starring a young galoot by the name of John Wayne in 1939 - in Monument Valley.  Over the next 25 years Ford made seven more films here.  It's been said that these "five square miles have defined what decades of moviegoers think of when they imagine the American West."  But it's not just Westerns that have been filmed here:  Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise, Back to the Future III, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Forrest Gump  have also been filmed in Monument Valley. Oh! and let's not forget the newest one, The Lone Ranger.

In 1958, the Navajo Tribal Council established the five square mile Monument Valley tribal park and opened it to tourists.  Almost half a million folks from all over the world come here every year. (Again with the customer base!)  Monument Valley itself actually covers 91,000 acres in Utah and Arizona.

These are the traditional homes of the Navajo.  The large one on the left is for the man, the one on the right is for the family.  I wonder if the small one on the far right is for ... the dog??

How would you like to have that scenery for your backyard?!

Now, use your imagination a bit here.  This is known as Camel Butte.  I don't know who named this fella, but if it was the Navajo you might wonder how they knew what a camel was.  Well, check out our previous post:  http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/08/camels-in-cavalry.html 

Even with the tourism that the Navajo encourage, about half of them live below the poverty level. Thirty-two percent don't even have complete plumbing in their homes.  You know, sometimes folks realize that they don't need all of what the majority of us consider necessities.  There are more important things in life - like freedom to live a simple life.  As of 2009, the Navajo ran about 80,000 head of cattle, 35,000 horses, and managed almost 200,000 sheep and goats.  No chance of them starving to death.  They have grown crops since the beginning of their existence here, and this seemingly barren valley is on top of an aquifer which allows them to grow those crops.

Most of today's Navajo live in modern housing (though we saw many of those homes had a hogan built nearby.)  Those hogans actually maintain a temperature 25% warmer/cooler than the outside temperature.  We could learn a lesson from that if we were still building our own homes instead of hiring it done.  Almost all of them own their own cars and over half have a high school education or better.  Even more interesting to me is that 83% of them still speak their native language.  THAT is cool!  (Ever heard of the World War II Wind Talkers?)

And here's Granpa, listening to the wind!

Leaving Bryce Canyon

There is always more to see than I could ever share in words and pictures.  Spotting this one deer turned into several surprises!

1 + 1 = TWO!

+1 = THREE !!

That deer in the middle looks very strange to us.  I name him Rudolph.

+1 = FOUR !!

and yet another = FIVE!

I could keep doing this for awhile.  Eventually there were twenty or so deer that wandered up.  How do I show you the deer in context with the scenery?  Impossible.  The deer would just look like little dots.  That's why I say YOU have to come see these sights for yourselves!  Keep your eyes open all the time!  Have your brain set to detect even the slightest movement or anomaly within your field of vision.  Let the force be with you! Scan continually from left to right and up and down!  The person on the left is in charge of that side of the road; the person on the right, the right side.  Driver?  You watch for critters coming at you from both sides of the road.  Never, ever slam on the brakes for a photo op.  Always know what's behind you before trying to stop.  Safety first and always.  But aren't they gorgeous!

There are antlers everywhere!  But this is undoubtedly the "big boy."

And our weekend isn't over yet!

Bryce Canyon National Park, Southern Utah

I spotted this guy somewhere between Paria and Bryce Canyon.  He is really beautiful, don't you think?

This is our first indication of what we will be seeing in the Canyon.

There is a dusting of snow that I wish was a bit heavier - but at least there's snow!  

We first discovered Bryce by accident on a family vacation years ago.  You see, there was this friendly dispute between Granpa and I in Rocky Mountain National Park.  Year after year Granpa would take us to Colorado and the Rockies.  It became pretty obvious that drastic measures would be required to break out of those Rockies!

We tent camp.  In the beginning it was a cost saving thing, but then it became MY preference!  With all the camping gear and all of the family and the law requiring a seat belt for everyone, we had to take two vehicles.  So, I told Granpa that I loved him to the moon and back, but I was gonna turn right out of the Park and head to parts unknown.  If he wanted to, he could follow.  If he didn't want to leave the Rockies, his truck was loaded with the camping gear and, well, I'd see him back in Texas.

Bless his pea-pickin' heart, he turned right.

Every vacation since then has been one of discovery -- and we've never been disappointed at the choices made that day!

Since then we have been back to Bryce a couple of times, but we've never been there in the wintertime when there was snow.  Knowing the canyon, we think it will look like frosting on a tiered cake!

This just gets better and better - hoodoos, spires, windows, tunnels - all of which you can hike into, and it's a fascinating maze of slot-like canyons, views and vistas.  I think it is incredible how the landscape can change so dramatically and so quickly!

There are tunnels through these red rocks that you must go through to even get to the entrance of Bryce.  Once in the Park, the best way to view it is to put blinders on, drive all the way to the end of the Park road to Rainbow Point, and begin there to get out at all of the pull-outs and named turnouts on the way back.

Rainbow Point is over 9,000 feet in elevation and today the window is howling.

It must be cold for Granpa to put his hood up.  We lasted about two minutes up there in the frigid wind before high-tailing it back to the van.  Every point we stopped at had that wind on this day!
The views were worth it though.

This is the overall view of Bryce.  Off to the left is Zion National Park. We had to pass it to get here. Zion is all granite and smooth, shear walls into a fabulous, rock-solid box canyon.  If you ever read Western novels or watch Western movies and wondered what a box canyon looks like, go to Zion.

These are "windows" in the rock.  There are many more here to see.  

The tunnels were man-made; this is just nature at its best.

It was a blindingly bright, sun-shiny day, but as I've already said, c-o-l-d!

These formations are called hoodoos.

If you have children this is truly a magical place.

And we have a family tradition of taking shadow pictures.  I'm cold!  Let's go the hotel!