Road Trip 2022: Hotel Cats and Dinosaurs

 

Ernest Hogan has posted his account of our road trip through eight Western states on Mondo Ernesto, and that has prodded me into linking my blog with his and telling my own version of the tale. Road-tripping is America’s favorite pastime, especially post-COVID, but it’s an odd landscape we’re all driving though these days, with high gas prices and wildfires throwing obstacles in our paths. We solved half that problem by picking up my brother Michael’s hybrid Prius in Flagstaff (it gets 50 mpg), but we quickly discovered that our plan to take AZ 89a north to hook up with the 160, which would then take us to the 191, was not gonna fly. Monster fires on either side of 89a forced ADOT to close that highway to everything but emergency vehicles. In honor of that semi-apocalypse, it seems only fitting that I post a photo of the ponderosa outside Michael’s house in Flagstaff, which survived a fire about 20 years ago.

 

Michael had been expressing wonder for weeks that gas prices in Phoenix were so much higher than he had seen them anywhere else (except for California). The Shell station on the corner near our house had the price of unleaded at $5.99 per gallon at one point, but it had settled down to $5.69 by the time Ernie and I started our trip (as of this writing it’s at $4.59, and I’m harboring fond hopes that it will drop below $4 by the end of the summer). Our spirits were high, but we could tell there were some political tensions brewing over the world in general and the U.S. in particular, what with the hearing about Jan 6 being held in D.C., the war in Ukraine, and the Supreme Court getting ready to hand down a decision that looks like it might change the usual course of elections in the midterms. I was happy to be taking a step back from all that, though I couldn’t escape the wildfires up north. We decided to drive east on I-40, then take 191 north all the way up through AZ and Utah. It turned out to be a wonderful (if somewhat confusing) route. We needed to consult our Arizona Road Atlas when 191 fragmented near the northern border of AZ, seeming to go left when we needed to go right. We sorted it out and headed for Blanding, Utah, where we thought we would get the best Navajo Tacos in the world for late lunch/early supper.

 

Alas, we were thwarted in that ambition. Twin Rocks Café was closed for the day, due to staffing issues. The lady there recommended the Cottonwood Steak House, where this Jackalope resides. 

 

Our ambition was to get to Grand Junction, Colorado, by 9:00 p.m., and we made it just about on the nose. Michael had already checked into the room – our intrepid driver was on board, and we were ready to take the road by storm, lattes and fast-food chicken sandwiches in hand. It was odd to have so much sunlight left in the sky at 9:00 p.m., but it turned out to be handy on this trip. We often did so much shopping, driving, and sight-seeing, we needed that extra light as we motored into each stop at the end of our day.

 

On the morning of our second day, we met a hotel cat. We snagged some Einstein Bros Bagels and coffee, and drove north to Dinosaur, Colorado, named after Dinosaur National Monument, which is technically in both Colorado and Utah. The part that people visit is in Utah. 

Considering how hot it is this summer in so many parts of the world, this ice-cream-eating dino must be a popular guy.

 

The formations out of which the dino bones have been excavated were sand bars that formed after a mega-flood, sweeping up the poor, giant creatures and burying them in a mass, prehistoric grave. I’m assuming that eventually the bones in the topmost section began to stick out when the sandstone around them eroded away, and people recognized what they were seeing. 

It was the jackpot, because several intact skeletons were in there. The visitor’s center features some bronze reproductions of some of the dinosaurs that were removed.

 

There’s a hike not far from the old dig site (which has its own museum), and of course we had to trek that way, snapping pictures as we went. 

Michael had his ideas about what we should photograph (he’s a director, not a cinematographer), and once we were done with the dig site, we also had to find the petroglyphs and hike up to them, as well. They were worth the effort. 

We captured ancient spirits in our infernal phones.

 

When we drove to nearby Vernal, there were plenty of things in town that also needed to be documented.

We stayed at the Dinosaur Inn (this was de rigueur) and ate supper at what the clerk assured us was the best Mexican restaurant in town, Raza Mexican. It was kind of a huge meal, and we should have probably split a plate, but it was good.

 

We would be off to Idaho and the City of Rocks the next day. Things were just getting started . . .

 

I admire the hanging baskets you can see on city streets in Northern Utah and in Idaho. We could never get away with those shenanigans in Arizona.

 

There’s a lot more to this trip. Follow if you dare.

Last Day Blues: Pandemic Road Trip Part 16

"If you want to know where to get good coffee in any town," Michael advised, "ask a cop."

Not that we went looking for one. It's just that we were looking for morning coffee, and we saw a police officer. Michael asked, and the fellow told him "Look for Wanderlust Cowgirl Coffee" (another drive-through style place). "My son Troy works there. Tell him Micah sent you."

For a good fifteen minutes I thought Micah was named after the mineral. Then I recalled the name is in the bible.

Troy was wearing his mask and social distancing like a good guy -- he only took it off so I could take his photo. And he is a most excellent barista, so stop in if you're passing through.

What's funny is that my Mom had already had a 16-oz caramel hazelnut decaf latte at Sevier Valley Coffee, and two hours later she wanted another one. So we found Wanderlust Cowgirl Coffee in Panguitch and got her another one. After all, that little lady needed all the calories she could get. Come to think of it, I may have had a second one, myself.

My email notes were the most phoned-in of the entire trip:

I-70

Paria Beach, Lees Ferry 

In my defense, Utah is so crowded with wonders, you're not going to feel compelled to point your eyes at a phone. For instance, as we headed south on HWY 89, we passed Big Rock Candy Mountain.

It has its own convenience store, too.

Yet somehow, I ended up taking more pictures of small town stuff than of geological wonders in Utah. Like nifty buildings.

And this one over here.

And that one over there.

Oh look, there's another one.

Looka the nice porch.

And the gorgeous public building, upon which considerable moolah and care were lavished.

But wait, there were also these wacky vehicles.

All in the same yard.

In Hatch we saw a couple of hitchhikers.

Our plan was to drive through Kanab and into Arizona. From there 89 becomes 89a and veers around the southern border of Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, mostly because a gigantic erosion feature called Grand Canyon makes it impossible to go straight south. Michael wanted to show us one of his favorite fishing spots, Paria Beach at Lees Ferry, in Marble Canyon.

Rivers are cool, especially for the sediments they erode and deposit, but the features I find most interesting are washes. They epitomize the desert. "Water has been here, but not right now, and not for you, sucker. Until the moment you're not looking, and then you're gonna drown."

I especially love the rocks you can find in washes.

By the time we left Lees Ferry, the day was waning. I was already pretty sure we wouldn't make it back to Flagstaff in time to turn around and leave for Phoenix, but at least we were able to get the rental car back and not get charged for an extra day. We went to the market with Michael and got steaks, and family cooked up a wonderful supper. Ernie and I ended up back at Michael's workshop for the night. Full circle.

For the record, you can see an amazing number of stars in the night sky over Michael's workshop. You can see through our galaxy and into the next one. I stood there and reflected on two weeks of road trip wonder. I started to scheme about the next one. Part of it would have to pass through New Mexico, so Mom could see her radio telescopes at the VLA again.

That's never going to happen. 

The night of the 13th wasn't a good one for Mom. By the next day she was herself again, and she was so ambitious when we got home to Phoenix, she cleaned out a couple of drawers. But she started to decline steeply after that. The day after Thanksgiving, she couldn't even speak. That's the case about every other day now.

She did the two things she was still hanging on to do. Honestly, I think she would go on another trip if she could. Her will is still strong. It's her body that's giving out. I respect her decision.

Tomorrow, the Aftermath. Spoiler alert: there's an amazing amount of laundry.

Would You Like Fries With That Hike?

Working at the Heard Museum Book Store allows me to find more nifty books than I would normally see were I simply to wander into a National Park book store (something I do more often than you might think), so I was already familiar with a couple of other Roger Naylor titles: Death Valley: Hottest Place On Earth and Arizona: Kicks On Route 66. These inexpensive and lavishly photographed books are full of lore and suggestions of interesting places to visit, so when Boots & Burgers: An Arizona Handbook For Hungry Hikers came over the transom, I bought it so fast my receipt is singed around the edges.

Boots & Burgers combined my two favorite things in the world, hiking and eating at diners after hiking – what a natural! So I went through the book with a fine-tooth comb and started marking hikes I want to do, along with their accompanying diner suggestions. I knew I would review this book, so I was prepared to say all sorts of nice things about the fact that most of the hikes listed in the book are new to me, so I have lots of lovely exploration to do. Likewise, I had never eaten at most of these diners, and I love burgers. A match made in heaven. The directions to the trail heads are clear, the exertion level is accurate, and the diner reviews make my mouth water. Good stuff! Get down here and by this book right now!

But this is a book about adventure and exploration. Is one review enough? I think Boots & Burgers requires special treatment. I haven't done my job as a reviewer unless I go on at least some of these hikes, eat at some of these diners, and then tell you how they were. I am prepared to make this sacrifice. Because I'm just that kinda guy.

So – the first hike that tempted me was the Red Mountain trail, just north of Flagstaff on HWY 180, the same road that will take you to the Grand Canyon if you don't want to take HWY 89. There's nothing wrong with HWY 89 of course – after all, it takes you past Wupatki and Sunset Crater. But HWY 180 may be the road less traveled, unless you're really into skiing at Snow Bowl, or you can't resist the observatory or the museums – or . . .

Okay, maybe it's NOT the road less traveled. But on the Thursday we went looking for Red Mountain, there weren't a lot of people sharing the highway with us. The book warned us to watch for the mile marker after the Red Mountain sign, and this proved to be completely accurate. We turned left onto a forest road, drove past the sign warning us not to park in undesignated parking areas – you need to go to the end, where it loops, and THEN you can improvise a parking spot. Just try not to block the road. Not that anyone showed up while we were there – probably because everyone else knew that if you want to see the magnificent formations inside that partially-collapsed cinder cone, you need to show up in the morning, when light will ignite the full glory of those fantastical shapes.

The trail leads through a forest of junipers, ponderosas, and scented scrub – you see glimpses of the rock formations looming over it all, further down the trail. This is when you're saying to yourself, Dang! I wish we had gotten here before noon! Because those volcanic-tuff hoodoos are in shadow in the afternoon. They are mere shadows of themselves.

What's cool is that eventually you reach the cone, and you have to climb a short ladder to get up among the hoodoos. Somehow it all reminds me of scenes from The Lord of the Rings, when the company of friends travel into lands long abandoned to find half-ruined statues of ancient heroes. The formations are fantastical even in the half-light, and you will be busy snapping pictures of them. By the way – please don't be a jerk and climb on them.

On the way back down, I tested Roger's claim that Ponderosas smell like vanilla – and it's true. Put your nose right up next to them and breathe deep. The scent is amazing. And it only took me 56 years to find that out.

We had already located Mama Burgers on the way down – it's right on the elbow part of the bend that becomes HWY 180. It's a little place, and many of the employees are teenagers. I was tempted to try one of the shakes – I hear they're amazing, so I'll do that come summer – but I stuck to a burger and fries. My husband did the same, but he picked the Mamaburger, while I had the one with bacon and avocado.

They were EXCELLENT.

So five stars for the Red Mountain hike and the Mama Burger joint. Now – time to pick the next hike . . .

It's Not the Lake, It's the Great Geology

I have to confess that I'm not a water sports fan, and I'm pretty sure that Lake Pleasant is a great place to get a sunburn. That said, I've noticed that a lot of locals really enjoy the lake and its recreational opportunities, so I'm not trying to knock it -- I simply don't know enough about that aspect of it to write a review about it. Instead, I'd like to talk about the geology and a wonderful trail we hiked.





The Hieroglyphic Mountains (and its neighbors) are a testament to the varied volcanic activity that shaped most of Arizona over the last 1.7 billion years, though most of the landscape you see on the Pipeline Trail near Lake Pleasant has its origins in the Tertiary and Quaternary periods. We saw everything from vesicular basalt to rhyolitic tuff, and the colors were fabulous. Check out the USGS pdf map of the area -- it will give you a more detailed breakdown of the rock types you'll find in the area.




The trail is not a loop, and it's 2.2 miles each way, but it's moderate in difficulty, without a lot of climbing. The views are gorgeous, especially if you're fond of desert flora and fauna, and there are even wild donkeys in the area (we saw several of them, and heard their "EE-Aw"s echoing up and down the canyon). This is a hike for the cool season, late Oct to late March, and you need to take water -- and your camera!



After hiking both ways on the trail, we drove to Wickenburg and had supper at Anita's Cocina, ignoring the fast food joints along HWY 60. It was a wonderful day.

Gila: the Life and Death of an American River

It's easy to get the wrong impression about rivers in Arizona, even if you've lived here for many years. As a desert dweller, you cross so many dry river beds on the highway that you think every river in Arizona, except for the Colorado, is dry most of the time. Sometimes it takes a geography class to teach you that the story of Arizona rivers is more complicated. That's where I first heard of the Gila River. So when I found this book, my curiosity was piqued.

One thing you can't doubt, no matter where you live, is that water is highly political. This will become increasingly obvious to everyone as the 21^st Century progresses, and groundwater disappears. This process is well documented in Gila, The Life and Death of an American River, by Gregory McNamee. You may choose to see it as the diatribe of a conservationist about the destruction of one desert river, but the proof of his arguments can be found in the ruins and canals of ancient tribes in Arizona. Like us, these people suffered from too much success. They irrigated fields with river water, which led to the concentration of mineral salts in their soil, until they had to abandon those fields.

The story of a river is also the story of the people, plants, and animals that live alongside it – and this book does an admirable job of telling it, from the formation of the Gila River, to its discovery by various tribes and immigrants, to its mismanagement and destruction by modern men, and finally to the current signs of hope for its recovery. In these pages you'll find out why the slaughter of beavers may have been one of the two most damaging things ever done to Arizona rivers (the other thing being the construction of large dams, behind which tons of sediment are currently piling).

It may seem that the story of one desert river is irrelevant to anyone but the people who live alongside it, but reading this book may change your opinion about that. All over the world, people are beginning to realize that the way we manage our water resources must change, drastically. Reading this book will inform you in that argument, and possibly give you some ideas about what can and should be done. At 232 pages, it's a well-paced and punchy read, and makes my yearly list of top ten recommended books.  We've got it at the Heard Museum Book Store, so come in and see us.  You will be dazzled.

Artifacts Wacky and Sublime

If there is one thing I despise, it's the trend of ticky-tacky housing developments in most of the formerly wild, empty places in Arizona between cities. This is one of the things going through my mind as Ernie and I drive up Cave Creek road from Phoenix toward the city of Cave Creek. I love the empty, pristine deserts that still reign throughout most of the Basin and Range Province; it is in this God-forsaken desolation that, perversely, I feel closest to God. How could I do otherwise in this perfect silence, broken only by the cries of cactus wrens, quails, and mourning doves? Though I like to visit the pines from time to time, they can't compete with my Uncle Saguaro and Aunt Cholla.

Yet, as we motor north-east from Phoenix, I get a kick out of the older shops and buildings we can see from the road. Many of them are from an earlier era, and it's like traveling in a time machine. Like many people who no longer remember the Bad Stuff, I have fond memories of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. But in my defense, this is partly because of the wackiness of those times, and the interesting artifacts they've left behind.

The town of Cave Creek is one of those artifacts. It was founded by people who truly love the desert, and because many of them used to be real estate moguls, they're extremely canny about preserving what they love. One of their greatest accomplishments is the Cave Creek Regional Park, a lovely preserve that was destined to be another ticky-tacky development until the citizens of Cave Creek intervened. Now it has a nifty visitor's center and several beautiful trails where you can hike or go horseback riding while enjoying gorgeous views. We took a trail that looped around Vulture Mountain and back again, a hike of about an hour-an-a-half. Here is the dust of the trail on my shoe.

From there we headed into Cave Creek to visit some of our favorite haunts.  First, Buffalo Bill's, a shop built on a hillside.  The merchandise (pots and garden items) is displayed on terraces out back, giving the place a magical quality.

Next we ate at El Encanto, which has the best mole sauce in the known galaxy.

And finally, we shopped at The Town Dump, where several arcane and delightful items were purchased.

So my friends, you can keep New York, San Francisco, and Paris.  We've got Cave Creek and Vulture Mountain.  You just can't top that.

Abbott And Costello Meet The Mogollon Monster

In a perfect world, Ernie and I would be traveling around Arizona at will, staying in cheap motels, ogling weird and wacky roadside attractions, and hiking mysterious realms. This may occur after we retire, but for the time being we have to be satisfied with day trips.

On Mondo Ernesto, Ernie wrote about a couple of those day trips: ROAD DAZED, DEEP IN THE HEART OF ARIZONA and UP CAVE CREEK WITHOUT A PADDLE. His illustrations probably do our adventures more justice than my photographs, but here they are anyway.

Behold HWY 260. It runs East-West (and in some places North-South) between Camp Verde and Payson. It does so at the edge of the Mogollon Rim, which might give you the idea that it skirts a distinct scarp for a good part of the way. But there is very little of the Mogollon Rim that is actually a recognizable rim. HWY 260 winds among hills, buttes, mountains, and valleys in the Transition Zone, and often the only indication that you've climbed onto the rim is a change in climate from high desert to scrubby juniper forest. As we got closer to Strawberry, the trees became ponderosas, and we saw snow on the ground.

When you look at the road cuts, you can see that much of the area along HWY 260 was shaped by volcanic explosions that laid down layers of ash. I resisted getting out to lay hands on the stuff as long as I could, but finally succumbed. Along about this time, Ernie spotted footprints that he felt might belong to the Mogollon Monster. Take a close look – this is the only photograph that definitively proves that the Mogollon Monster wears high heels.

I had some half-baked plans about exploring fossil Creek, but the road was closed, so we headed over to Tonto Natural Bridge. I was still recovering from a bug that put me in the hospital a couple of weeks before, so we tried crawling along the creek that flows under the travertine bridge. We were doing fine until we got to a part where we had to get into the water if we wanted to continue. Ernie wisely advised that we turn around, but I thought we'd only have to go in up to our knees to get where we wanted to be. A few moments later, I was up to my waist. Ernie said he wouldn't follow, his wallet might get wet. That's when I remembered my wallet, which had to be emptied of a few ounces of water once I climbed out again.

Drying out after falling into a creek takes an amazingly long time. By the time Ernie and I had driven HWY 260 into Payson and settled at the slightly mis-signed El Sierra Mexican Restaurant, I was still damp around the edges. But the food quickly made me forget my discomfort, and fortified us for the diagonal trip home on HWY 87 to Phoenix, through dazzling displays of wildflowers. Were would we go next? When we saw the sign that said HAZARDOUS MATERIALS MUST EXIT, did that mean us? Fasten your seat belt for the next installment – monsters lurk beyond that rim, and some of them are wearing spiked heels . . .