Travels of Geo Nova: Arizona

Wedding and Beyond

We depart Torrey Utah and make our way to Las Vegas the place that will serve as our spring board to reach New York where we will attend my niece’s, Amy’s and Justin’s, wedding. The rest of our caravan is headed to Bryce Canyon NP and then to Zion NP while we are away. The plan is for us to double back when the caravan finishes so we don’t miss those spectacular parks. The trip to Vegas took two days the first was very scenic and the second was mostly no so nice.

Fortunately the RV Park in Vegas and our flights were perfect. The wedding was loads of fun, a great party. The best part was visiting with family including both Zach and Abe, a rarity for all four of us to be together in the same place at the same time. After 2 nights it’s back to Vegas so we can catch up with our Caravan at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

This is why we sold the boat! As I have said many times you can’t visit the Grand Canyon in a 48-foot sailboat! All joking aside the place is spectacular and very different from the South Rim in several ways, first there are far fewer people, secondly the rim has many side canyons that lead to the canyon proper and it is much higher than the South Rim. In two days we were able to squeeze in most all of the sights and a few short hikes as well. On the way to the Grand Canyon we stopped at Pipe Springs National Monument that in the day served as a Mormon Fort and Ranch. Their abusive land use practices, over grazing changed the landscape forever and lead to the demise of the local Native American People namely the Paiutes.

On to Page Arizona, a town I had very little prior knowledge of but judging by the number of tourist I was the only one that hadn’t heard of Page. The number of foreign tourist is about equal to the number of US tourists. Page came into existence when the Glen Canyon dam was built, before that there was nothing around for many miles. The story of the construction and operation of the Dam was fascinating. The dam was started in 1957 and finished in 1963. The town started as a trailer park for all the workers and has grown since. The Dam was built to control the waters of the Colorado River so that water will always be available for all of the western states and Mexico. The coastline of Lake Powell, named after John Wesley Powell is as long as the entire west coast of the US. Beside the dam and Lake Powell there are several other geological wonders. We had a tour of Upper Antelope Canyon, which is on Navajo land so our guides were Navajo. This is a very narrow canyon that has been cut by water and wind over the years. Last night we went to a colorful local establishment. Hoss is the owner and very much a character. His father was one of the first 100 people to go down the Colorado River. The family had a river rafting business until the father decided to sell it without telling anyone in the family. Hoss now uses the warehouse space as a ruff museum of sorts. He had an artist paint the walls from old pictures of rafting trips. He has a collection of old pictures and boats. After looking at everything we went out side for dinner. We had a singer entertain us while we ordered. It’s a simple menu, several different kinds of Navajo tacos. This is a first for us. It is a puffy round bread, almost like the fair fried dough but not crispy or greasy, with the taco fixings on top. While we eat an elder Navajo Gentleman takes the stage and talks about the Navajo culture. At the end of his talk he asked if there were any birthdays. Well there were 2 from the caravan, David and John’s. He proceeded to sing happy birthday in Navajo to them. He stayed on stage and introduced Navajo dancers and explained the dances before they were preformed. They do not do any of their traditional dances in public so they dance other tribe’s dances. The dance that everyone loved was when a young lady came on stage with a younger sibling that was only about 3. She was so serious and did a great dance.