In the Old Testament, the nation of Israel wandered in the desert for forty years before entering the Promised Land. Beth and I feel like we are already there and our desert journey has lasted only 15 days. During this time, we have been in three deserts, the Chihuahan, the Sonoran, and the Mojave, with temperatures ranging from a low of 42 overnight in Big Bend to a high of 107 in Death Valley. It has been quite the desert experience.
It’s Monday afternoon, May 20th, as I write this. Beth and I are sitting in what shade we can find at our campsite in Death Valley, where today it was relatively “cool,” with the high only reaching 100 degrees. Beth’s sitting in the screened in porch of our tent where she is at least spared from the swarm of flies encircling and landing on me. Flies were one of the plagues God inflicted on the Egyptians prior the Israel’s exodus. Ironic. It’s still 99 right now. More on Death Valley to come in our next post, as we won’t have enough space to cover both it and Petrified Forest in this one.
In our last post, we were preparing to leave Saguaro for Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. We had sprung for a KOA campground in Holbrook, Arizona for $35 a night, and we were quite excited as the campground had running water and showers. We were welcomed warmly by the campground staff. I should have suspected something was up when I checked in and the front desk clerk said, “Oh, you’re in a TENT site.” She politely gave me directions to our site and off we went.
To our delight, our site was only about 25 yards from the restrooms, and it also included both electricity and water on site. Well worth the whopping $35 a night we paid. We began the now quite familiar set-up routine, but quickly ran into a problem. Or, should I say, a problem ran in to us. WIND. Blowing at least 20 miles and hour, with gusts much higher, the wind created less than ideal conditions for setting up a nylon tent. We had 4 hands and 4 feet between the two of us, but we would have needed a baseball team to make set up possible.
As is our custom, we first attempted to lay the 10 x 15 tarp down on the ground on which we place our tent. It responded to the wind like a sail on Christopher Columbus’ Nina or Pinta, billowing out and up in an instant. With great difficulty, we were finally able to get the four corners of the tarp secured with some large rocks and get the tarp relatively flat and stable. Then the fun really began.
Our tent is 10 x14. I retrieved it from its bag and carried it to the tarp, where Beth was waiting to assist with the set up. It became quite clear that we were going to need TWO baseball teams to set up the tent. If only we had a GoPro camera, or someone filming us. The Three Stooges couldn’t have looked more helpless and we could have made a million dollars on the video rights.
At one point, in a desperate effort to secure the tent to the ground, Beth laid herself on it with arms and legs fully extended. Fortunately, she was not picked up and blown away. Let’s just say that after a good half hour, we finally had the tent in place, only to realize we had set it up with the wind hitting the broadest part of it with its full force, causing the tent to double over. If we had been in it we would have been trapped, flailing through nylon and mesh screens for our escape.
Not having learned our lesson, we proceeded to take the tent completely down and turn it 90 degrees so the wind would be striking the smallest surface, which was a mesh window, hoping that this would solve the problem. 30 minutes later, we found out it didn’t. I guess it would be safe to say my frustration level was ratcheting up at this point.
In an act of mercy, I offered Beth the option of staying in a hotel for the next two nights. She accepted the offer. 30 minutes later, we were resting comfortably in the Travel Lodge by Wyndham in Holbrook, just five minutes from the KOA. It was worth the $70 a night, no doubt. Not only did it have running water and flush toilets, but it was air conditioned, it offered a complimentary breakfast, showers in our room, and an on-site laundry center for the mountain of dirty clothes. I thought to myself, “I could get use to this.”
I realize that much of our blog is taken up with the logistical end of our travels, but they are certainly a big part of the story, so thanks for putting up with my ramblings. Suffice it to say that whoever said getting there is half the fun, never undertook a 3 month tent camping trip with two of the first 3 weeks wandering in the desert.
Let’s turn to the funner part of the last couple of days. It was a quick and easy 25 minute drive from the Taj Mahal, I mean Travel Lodge, to Petrified Forest. We arrived shortly after 8 am and began our day at the Painted Desert Visitor’s Center where we stamped our passport book, obtained the necessary park maps, and extracted as much information as we could from Bill the Ranger before heading out to explore.
Petrified Forest is awesome and it is extremely easy to see. There is a 28 mile road that begins at the Painted Desert Visitor Center and goes the whole way through the park to the Rainbow Museum Visitor Center at the opposite end. Along the way we stopped at most every significant site the park has to offer, and there are many. There are a number of overlooks at which we pulled off the road and enjoyed the stunning scenery in every direction.
The early part of the tour included the Painted Desert portion of the park, with its multi-colored mountains and vistas. We hiked several different trails that started at the frequent pull-offs and were left with our jaws dropping on numerous occasions as we viewed this unique landscape.
Words can’t do it justice. It was just beautiful, which is quite ironic since it is the desert. At one stop, Newspaper Rock, we could view hundreds of petroglyphs created by the Native American on huge rocks on the desert floor. Petroglyphs are drawings on the rocks that were used by the Native Americans to tell a story. The ones I saw seemed to indicate some people were running from some dinosaurs, but I think my imagination was playing tricks on me.
Beth and I hiked a trail near the “Tepees” portion of the park, named for the rock formations resembling tepees found there. We walked about 2 miles into the surrounding canyon and had some great views of the mountains rising from the canyon floor. The striped colors of the mountains are so surreal. Someday when I learn how to add pictures to our posts, I can show you what I am writing about.
In one of the last sections of the first half of our tour was the Blue Mesa Trail, a trail descending several hundred feet through a stretch of mountains that looked blue and purple, creating a very beautiful scene. Beth took a lot of pictures and it will be hard to decide which one to enlarge to frame.
After Blue Mesa, we entered the petrified forest section of the park. We explored the Crystal Forest, which included hundreds of petrified trees whose insides had the appearance of crystals of many colors. Petrified wood is amazing, and the multi-colored logs seemed unbelievable. While there were information signs explaining the process resulting in petrified wood, I didn’t quite understand it. What I did understand is that the wood feels as hard as concrete but still looks like a tree or log. Very interesting.
We traveled on and reached the Rainbow Museum Visitor Center, 28 miles and 8 hours from where we started our day. There are two trails to explore from this center, the Giant Logs and Long Logs trails. We spent about 45 minutes walking through the giant petrified logs from which the first trail gets its name. Large pieces of logs were everywhere. The crowning jewel is called Old Faithful, a downed tree about 35 feet long, and with a base at least 10 feet tall. It was massive and really neat to see. We walked only a short portion of the Long Logs trail.
With eight hours in the park we saw it from one end to the other, spending more time in this park than any of the others we had seen to date. The fact that an air conditioned room, a cool shower and a soft bed awaited us back in Holbrook had nothing to do with cutting this last hike short.
Our adventures in Death Valley are up next. Stay cool since we can’t.