Apr 4

Written by: chris
4/4/2016 

Great American Road Trips: The National Parks of Arizona

I am inviting you to come with me on a Great American Road Trip.  And this one is pretty special. I was inspired to plan this trip by the “Visit the USA” website where you will find details on all those great American Road Trips that you always dreamt you would take one day. I am starting on the Pacific Coast, in San Francisco, and driving 5,000 kilometers through the US Southwest, through California, Arizona and New Mexico.  Every great road trip needs a theme, a thread that provides purpose to the trip. My objective on this trip is to visit the iconic National Parks of America’s Southwest in what is a very special year for the National Park Service of the United States.

Because this is the U.S. National Park Service 2016 Centennial year: one hundred years of preserving, protecting and opening up some of the greatest natural and historical spaces on the continent. Starting in the Nineteenth Century, the scenic natural wonders of the West, such as the towering mountains and majestic trees of Yosemite and the immense vistas of the Grand Canyon, inspired individual Americans to call for their preservation, asking their government to create something called “national parks.” In 1916, the work of caring for these places was moved to a new agency created by Congress for that specific purpose. The National Park Service was given the responsibility to not only conserve and protect parks, but also to leave them “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

Today there are over 400 national parks and monuments which include not only places of scenic grandeur, but also places that commemorate history too. The National Parks have been described as “America’s Best Idea”. This trip will make that claim come alive in the region where the idea was first realized: America’s West. This Travel Blog covers the Arizona leg of the road trip – you can follow my trip through California and New Mexico in separate blogs linked on this page.

The route from Death Valley California to the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona is a little surreal… It takes me on desert roads through Death Valley Junction, a metropolis of two people and an Opera House, into Nevada to the wonderfully named bit of gambling glitz in the desert dust called Pahrump, where I spend the night. At dawn I head south, over a mountain pass and there, suddenly spread out before me, is an apparent desert mirage of another metropolis. Only this one is real: it’s Las Vegas! Intoxicated as I am with the world’s natural wonders, I pass it’s more earthy wonders by without a pause…only to pass another manmade wonder: the Hoover Dam. On eastwards towards a more lasting wonder: the Grand Canyon. I’m starting eastwards along Desert View Drive, past wandering elk, at the Desert View Watchtower.

The scale of the Grand Canyon can be overpowering. It is one of the planet’s most powerful and inspiring landscapes. Numbers don’t do it justice, but here they are anyway: 277 river miles long, 18 miles wide, a mile deep and 1.5 billion years of earth history. Starting my commune with the Canyon at the Watch tower enables me to mix a little of the human history with the geologic history which somehow makes the cocktail easier to assimilate. The Watchtower, perched on the edge of the Canyon, is a symbol of this year’s National Park Service’s centenary and here I met with Jesse Johnson, a Zuni Indian craftsman, who explained the symbolism of the silver and turquoise jewellery he fashions in his Zuni Pueblo. 

It turns out that this is also the perfect place to gaze past the frescos on the wall, through the rough openings of the Watchtower and out into the immensity of the canyon.

This is just the first of many viewpoints that I spent time at heading west from the Watchtower along Desert View Drive. Navajo Point, Lipan Point, Moran Point, Grandview Point…all add a different and equally marvelous dimension to the Grand Canyon vistas. Hiking the Rim Trail along the edge of the abyss also brings different panoramas with each twist and turn.

Along the way, I took in Tusayan Museum and Ruin, which places the First Nations presence in the context of the Grand Canyon. It’s a tiny museum with just a handful of exhibits, but well worth the time to understand that when John Wesley Powell first rafted down the Colorado in the mid-nineteenth century, his were definitely not the first human eyes to set upon this extraordinary sight. There is a partially excavated Indian village alongside the museum, which helps bring a sense of reality to the museum exhibits.

To really get to grips with the Grand Canyon, I am following the advice of my Park Ranger interviewee, Emily at Verkamp’s Visitor Center. “You have to get off the Rim and actually into the depths of the Canyon to truly feel its immensity”, she told me. So I have taken a full day hike away from the mass of humanity at South Rim Village on the most famous of all the Grand Canyon hikes: the Bright Angel Trail.

This is an intense but rewarding experience. The Trail is ten miles long, but snakes down over 3,000 feet…and then back up 3,000 feet of course. It’s like launching yourself off the side of a tall building. The Rim rapidly disappears from view and I am cloaked in the early morning shadows. The drops are enormous. Two great sandstone buttresses are solved by short tunnels. I have to make way for a mule train making its way up the trail. The trail switchbacks past two Rest Houses and casual hikers are left far behind – only focused hikers carry on towards a distant plateau above the Colorado River at the base of the canyon. Immense cliffs of Kaibab Limestone are followed by equally impressive Coconino sandstone cliffs, separated by endless switchbacks and millions of years of geological time,

At last, the green oasis of Indian Garden approaches. Heaven! After hours of dry and increasingly hot trail, here is a spring, a stream and actual trees…plus a drinking water source.  After a late picnic lunch with my feet paddling in the running water, I realize that I have to start the return trip if I am to make the Rim before sundown. I make it…with five minutes to spare and a head full of memories. This is what the Grand Canyon experience is truly all about!

One of the great treats of American road tripping are the diversions along the way. Travelling across Arizona, I diverted to Meteor Crater, the world’s most perfectly preserved meteor impact crater, nearly a mile across and 550 feet deep. On a whole different scale, I found myself “standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona” on celebrated Route 66, straight out of The Eagles song. And I spent last night I a concrete tipi at a classic Route 66 hostelry called the Wigwam Motel, time-warped in the 1950’s.  Only on a classic American road trip…

I have come to a National Park that combines two exquisite attractions: the hauntingly beautiful landscapes of the Painted Desert and the amazing fossilized record of ancient trees.  Here in Petrified Forest National Park it is possible to step back 225 million years and see, touch and marvel at tree logs that have been perfectly preserved.  To guide me around the wonders of this park I have met with Richard Ullman, Lead Park Ranger, at Petrified Forest Visitor Center. Richard, undaunted by the 50 mph winds whipping up a desert sandstorm, enthusiastically points me in the direction of the park’s highlights, which include ancient petroglyphs left by the first inhabitants of these desert lands.

The 28 mile park road leads me first to the Painted Desert Inn, an adobe National Historic Landmark, then on through the howling sandstorm to Kachina Point and Pintado Point for views through the swirling sand to the gaunt Painted Desert landscapes. On past a remnant of old Route 66, to Puerco Pueblo, the remains of a settlement dating to around 1300 AD and proving that Ancestral Puebloans liked a room with a view. Nearby Newspaper Rock has more than 650 petroglyphs carved into the desert stone, the oldest dating back over 2,000 years.

As so often, this park saved the best till last. The last section of the drive takes me to Blue Mesa loop and trail where the first of the petrified logs are seen. Together with Crystal Forest, Long Logs Trail and Giant Logs Trail, the desert becomes filled with these amazing relics of the Permian period when the first of the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Sections of colourful, agatized log are everywhere, scattered randomly on the desert floor. Their surface still looks like rough bark, but it is hard as steel and protects the interior structure which has been faithfully replaced, cell by cell, with quartz of every hue. Some of the logs are enormous – up to 180 feet long and “Old Faithful” is 10 feet across at its base.

As I entered Arizona, there were snow patches beside the road. Now I am leaving Arizona in a desert sandstorm for the last component of my Great American Road Trip on Interstate 40, paralleling Old Route 66. Come with me on the next part of my trip as I drive ever eastwards to New Mexico’s little known National Parks and Monuments, which include graffiti, lava tubes, gypsum dunes and unimaginably huge caverns.

 

Accommodations

I would recommend the accommodations I experienced on this trip:

Grand Canyon Squire Inn, 74 Highway 64, Tusayan, AZ 86023 Phone: 928-638-2681  

The Wigwam Motel 811 W Hopi Dr, Holbrook, AZ 86025 Tel: 928-524-3048

Thanks

Many helpful hands facilitated my journey, especially the dedicated team of the National Park Service: Emily in Grand Canyon and Richard in Petrified Forest both graciously provided interviews for the Travel Show. You can listen to them as podcasts here: www.chrisrobinsontravelshow.ca/RadioShows/ChrisInterviews.aspx

 

I would also like to thank Tony at Arizona Tourism as well as Sana, Patrice and Marissa in the Canadian Office of Brand USA.  To find out more about road trips all over the US, seek out the www.VisitTheUSA.com website, go the Explore tab and click on Road Trips for a whole range of suggested road trips, from the Oregon Trail to the Blues Highway to Route 66.  

Here I am ready for my road trip with my rental car and, very importantly, the right luggage - thanks to the advice from Bentley luggage store. They suggested this light weight Swiss Gear 28” case, which seems to hold all I need for 2 weeks intensive travel, plus the handy Parkland duffel bag.

www.shopbentley.com/en/swiss-gear-21-5-dom-hardside-luggage-1009061002.html

www.shopbentley.com/en/shop-parkland/parkland-view-duffle-black.html

 

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