Saturday, May 7, 2016

We had rain all night and into the morning today, as predicted, so we waited for it to clear, so we could stock up on groceries before we leave tomorrow.  The temps have dropped also, and it was about 61 today.  Sweatshirt weather, which we love!  We decided to say good-bye to our friends at the Canyon King Pizzeria and dining place, and then take Stu and Linda's recommendation to eat at Big John's BBQ.  We had a great meal there!  We had baby back ribs that the meat fell off the bone.  It was a diner, and not the place like Canyon King where we have fun with the staff.  It was a good way to end our stay here, and we'll move to Exit 108, Dancing Eagles Campground and Casino in NM tomorrow.  We have guests coming for Happy Hour!  We're so excited.

 Departing from Canyon King Pizzeria and Diner.  Sean is the cool kid that we have fun with and Gary, the owner is on the far right.  He's a hippy throw back from the '70's.  We really do enjoy this place.

 I snagged a picture from the truck as we turned the corner of the Texas BBQ place.

 This is their sign out on the street front.  It was very good and we would eat there again.  Thanks, Linda and Stu! 

Friday, May 6, 2016

We don't have a lot to write about today, except that we are still hunkered down in Page, AZ.  The winds are variable, with some pretty good gusts now and again.  We are still glad we stayed back, and will move on Sunday as scheduled.  This is a slow moving system that is going through, so we may catch up to it along our travels.  To help pass our time today, we watched the eaglets in Washington D. C. on the webcam.  Our daughter, Karla, who lives in McLean, VA sent us the website, so I'll post it here, if you are interested.  http://dceaglecam.eagles.org/
We do want to wish all mothers out there a Happy Mother's Day on Sunday. 

Thursday, May 5, 2016

This was to be our moving day, but we extended our stay until Sunday.  We went caching this morning and only found 3, and the rest were so far off coords, or poorly maintained or missing, so we called it a day.  We got back to our motor home and the winds picked up, and continue to gust.  We have gusts up to 37 mph and going to get worse by tonight.  If it continues into tomorrow, I probably won't post anything.  No news is good news!  We expected this, and it will put us in the back of the system that is coming through.  I suppose I can clean house! 

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Today was a more low-key day with a couple of earthcaches that we have to get, but it meant that we had to hike the Horseshoe Bend Trail again.  It is mostly fine sand and very difficult to walk in, and the temps were heating up, but we did it anyway.  There wasn't an earthcache here two years ago, when we were here last.  It is located just south of Page, so we didn't have far to go, but on the way back, Jim noticed a low tire on the truck.  We stopped to check it out, and sure enough, we had a screw in the tire and it was a slow release of air.  We found a repair shop and he fixed us up right away.  What a nice guy, too!  He also gave us directions to a neat place to hike and see, so we'll check it out.  It doesn't appear to be the easiest to get to, but with 4WD, we should be fine.  The weather will dictate what we do tomorrow, and the winds are to pick up by noon.  We then went to the Glen Canyon Dam and do an earthcache there, for the same reason.  They have just been posted, since we were here in 2014.  The area around the Glen Canyon Dam is so much prettier than Hoover Dam.

 This is the famous Horseshoe Bend.  It is as magnificent as it looks!

 This sign signifying that, the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area lies ahead.  The surroundings are so beautiful with the sandstone rock formations.  We were told that the water level is a foot higher than last year, which is a positive thing.  They expect it to raise about 35 feet this year, due to the snow melt in the north country.   That is very encouraging.

 This is a view of Lake Powell at the Glen Canyon Dam.  We took a large boat ride to the Rainbow Natural Bridge National Monument two years ago, and I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Page.  It was seven hours long and was like Monument Valley by water!

 I dug into our archives for this photo.  We didn't do Antelope Canyon this time, but we did it two years ago, and it is just an awesome thing to do.  It is a slot canyon, native led tour into the canyon, and the sunshine into the canyon reflects many colors in the sandstone.  Breath-taking!

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

The first thing we did this morning, was check the weather for Thursday.  We are hearing that strong winds are moving into the area, and you don't want to be on the road in eastern AZ, and NM if the winds are bad.  Thursday and Friday are to be windy and the rain and winds continue on Saturday.  We were able to get a different spot in this campground, so we'll stay until Sunday.  We would rather be behind the storms instead of in front of them!  We don't mind spending more time in Page, as we really like it here.  We traveled quite a distance today by truck on 89A that took us to Lee's Ferry and Vermilion Cliffs, and again we met some very nice people.  We did this same trip on 89A with Jim's two sisters in 1996 when we toured southern Utah and northern AZ with Ginny and Barb.  It brought back some fun times and pleasant memories.  It is a beautiful area, and today we took the time to learn the history it offered.  The Colorado River flows through a portion of it.  We visited The Lonely Dell Ranch, which was home to several operators of the Lee's Ferry, which was operated on the Colorado to serve the people.  It was an oar driven ferry built in 1868 and ran from 1870 to 1890 by the people at Lonely Dell Ranch.  After that it was run by other operators until 1929.  The Navajo Bridge was built in 1929 and this later took the place of the ferry.  When a stronger bridge was needed for automobile travel, a second bridge was built in 1994.  The CCC had built a visitor center and look out areas between 1938 and 1941.  It still stands today.  The other interesting place we visited today were the Vermilion Cliffs, and this is the area where they are working to restore the population of the condor.  The locals told us that they see them often, but we didn't see any today.  In 1982 there were 22 condors in the southwest, where they predominately preside. Through extensive work to keep the condor from extinction, that number has risen to 400 in 2014.  They have a wing span of 9 1/2 feet and can fly 50 miles per hour, and can cover 150 to 200 miles in a day.  We had a full day, and went to the Canyon King for a pizza and a beer.  They remembered us from our last trip two years ago.  We had fun with Sean, the bartender, who even remember what I drank the last time!  Gary, the owner, showed us his project for his addition to his living quarters upstairs.  He told us that his mother is in a home not far from the restaurant and she has Alzheimer's, so it's very difficult for him.  With our extended stay, we have no rush to do anything, but we will find things to do.  If not, we can resort to geo-caching.  

 This shows the two bridges over the Colorado.  The one on the right is the old Navajo Bridge, for mostly foot traffic or lighter weight vessels.  The one on the left was constructed for automobile traffic.

 Balancing rock, or we call them mushroom rocks.

 Looking down the lane at Lonely Dell Ranch.

 Sign of Vermilion Cliffs with them in the background.

Canyon King Restaurant and paddle boat.  Before the dam was built, the Canyon King was a prominent fixture on the Colorado River.  Once the dam was built,it was dry docked and turned into a restaurant in Page.

Monday, May 2, 2016

The weather was nice today, so it was a good travel day.  We did like our campground this time, even if it was low on amenities, and wasn't a 10/10/10.  It was very quiet and peaceful with the mountains all around us, and it gave us ready access to the things we wanted to do there.  We were ready to move on, and will be spending a few days in Page, AZ.  We had been here two years ago, but we left with a few things to do yet.  The reason was, the road heaved just south of Page, so it would have been a long drive around the detour to get to the Vermilion Cliffs and Lee's Ferry.  We will check those two areas out this time.  We will also visit our favorite restaurant and watering hole, while we are here.  I'll post more about that, after we have visited it.  We drove through a lot of diverse landscapes today, and Jim told me to take it all in, as he wasn't coming back here again!  We had some pretty good mountain ascents and descents to get to our destination, but it was all so beautiful. We love this area.   Our weather looks gorgeous for the few days we will be here, as it is sunny and a bit cooler than we've had.  We will be here until Thursday.....anyway, that is our 'current plan'!  For some reason, my photos don't want to load today, so I'll try later.   Bingo!  Four hours later, I have photos! 

 We saw the Arizona welcome sign three times today!  Yes, we came into Arizona three times, and yes, it was planned and no, we weren't lost!

 This shows some of the mountain driving we had today.  That's a fifth wheel ahead of us, and it looks tiny in comparison to the mountains. 

 This picture reminded me of Horseshoe Bend....another one, only this one is wet.  The Virgin River was flowing through and around this area, and it was chocolate brown. 

 Welcome to Utah!  We saw this sign twice!  It was a very scenic drive today.

 We are getting close to Page with the rock formations with 'caps' on them.

Sunday, May 1, 2016 

Happy May Day to everyone!  I remember as a kid, that we made May Baskets and filled them with wildflowers, such as Violets, Dutchmen's Britches, and wild Geraniums and would hang them on the door knob of the elderly.  We lived in the country, so by the time we got to the last ones, the flowers were pretty droopy!  This was our last day in this area, so we went geo-caching and we had a great find!  We did an area where RVer's dry camp on a mesa overlooking huge washes, with the mountains in the background.  The one cache is called, 'Better than Wal-mart'.  For you non-RVer's, people sometimes stay in Wal-mart parking lot, for free if they are just passing through.  This definitely beats Wal-mart!  We did a series of caches placed here by one guy and it happened to be a snake series.  That is a bit daunting to begin with, so we kept our eyes peeled and ears tuned in for that familiar sound.  We didn't see any snakes, but we did find a Desert Tortoise.  Jim saw him first, and he was just out eating the plants in the desert.  We had just had some rain yesterday, and that usually brings them out.  This was much bigger than the one we had previously seen in Joshua Tree NP.  We are so lucky to have found another one, as they are quite rare.  The ground here was full of small stones and very hard and dry, so I can't imagine him digging himself into the ground, but his hind legs are very strong.  There was a reason why we couldn't move today, and we're happy for it.

 This is just a portion of the RV parking area on the mesa.  We saw all kinds of RV's here from very old '70's models to the 45 feet long diesel pushers.  It shows that they all love the beauty of the land.

 The Desert Tortoise was busy eating the plants that were along our caching route.  He was huge! I reported previously, that they are endangered, but we recently found out that they are threatened.  Nonetheless, it is rare to see them in the wild. 

We thought of our hiking buddies, Glen G., Viv and Arlene when we had to walk out on this little stretch that drops off on both sides into a deep canyon/wash area.  Of course, we were after a cache!