Sunday, June 20, 2021

After another restful Shabbat – davening, eating, resting, walking and talking – it was time to get our plans together for the coming week.  Frustration personified, we were having trouble with our AT&T phone, internet, and hotspot connections (didn’t know that there was a separate charge and plan for the hotspot and we ran out).  With no AT&T connection until Cortez, and our hotspot connection plan running out, we were not able to post.  After multiple communications with our representative who sold us the plan in Efrat, the problem was solved.  Thank you, Gedali of Faith Telecom.  He stuck with us and worked everything out. 

On the road again.  A beautiful trip through the mountains, and we arrived in Durango (city of multiple famous cowboy movies) in southwestern Colorado near the New Mexican border. Many of the towns we pass through are not exceptional, but the historic section of Durango is fun and interesting.  There were several quaint shops – quality shops, not simply stores with the traditional tourist items.  At a store called Karma Bill bought a Nepalese singing bowl (you’ve got to see it to believe it) and Sima bought a simple bracelet.  We picked up a few useful items in the coolest camping store.

Our next stop was the Aztec Ruins National Monument in Aztec, New Mexico, where we were able to see and walk through a 900-year-old ancestral Pueblo great house that had over 400 masonry rooms.  A short half mile trail led us through some of the rooms.  Here again: the story of a thriving culture who just got up and left.

Our travels through this part of the country have taught us about the history and civilization of the Native Americans who lived in the area – things that were really never taught in school.  Movies and TV have tended to focus on the Apache or Comanche, tribes known for their horsemanship or fighting, and not on the Pueblo Indians who were farmers and herdsmen and lived in villages with strong cultural and religious beliefs.  It is almost as if a deficit is being corrected. 

We hit the road again and traveled through the Navajo Nation Reservation, really huge and quite barren.  When we left the reservation, we drove to the nearest “campground” we could find.  Tonight, where we were able to post the next edition of the blog, we are spending the night at Walmart in Gallup, New Mexico, and we have incredible reception

Monday, June 21, 2021

We woke up where we went to bed, that’s always nice.  Walmart was not the quietest of places with traffic from the road and the odd train blowing its horn, but we were comfortable, security drove around periodically, and when we woke up there were many more RVs of all sizes parked around us, including a tractor trailer and a boat.  We did some more shopping and made a few phone calls arranging our Corona 19 tests for our return home.

One of Sima’s favorite national parks is the Petrified Forest, Arizona, specifically the Painted Desert part – so there we went.  We were at the park three years ago, and it was familiar.  Unlike last time, though, when we entered from the south entrance – the Petrified Forest end – this time we came in from the north – the Painted Desert side.  And as we came in early in the day, we were able to see a side of the Painted Desert that we did not see last time, in the mid-afternoon light.

It was a great visit.  Because the temperature was over 100 degrees F, the short walks of the park were perfect, and we gratefully filled our many water bottles at the park’s fountains.

After a visit to the Visitors Center and gift shop, we drove along the park road and stopped at some observation points of the Painted Desert, all with beautiful views.

We followed that by walking the Painted Desert Rim Trail, a one-mile round trip easy hike with stunning views of the Painted Desert below.  

It is hard to describe the sheer beauty of the Painted Desert.  An expanse as far as your eye can see – 93,500 acres, 120 miles long and 60 miles wide.  Colors ranging from pink to lavender to beige with some green and other colors thrown in.  Solitude that only the desert can give; a sense of wonder that comes with all of G-d’s magnificent creations. 

From the Painted Desert we drove south through the park, turned into the Blue Mesa Road which led to the one-mile Blue Mesa Trail: a path of vibrant blue, purple, and gray badlands, with colorful petrified wood just laying around.  We know about the Badlands of South Dakota, and we have seen and driven through them.  But Badlands in Arizona?  Well, Badlands, as we read, are areas of soft rock strata that is cut and eroded into many gullies and irregular shapes.  And they are here as well.

Continuing southward in the park, we stopped at Crystal Forest, a beautiful scattering of petrified logs, Newspaper Rock with its petroglyphs (rock carvings), and at the end of the day, reached the Giant Logs Trail: huge slabs, gorgeous colors, some seemingly cut by a saw (but they weren’t; the weight of the hills on top of the logs crush and break them).

The petrified trees as we see them are timeless.  What were once real trees are now stone, as the original plant materials are replaced by minerals such as iron, copper, manganese, and quartz. 

The park was not crowded and at times we were alone, either at observation points or on the trails.  There is a sense of limitless space here.  And quiet.  And peace.  

Tonight, we are camped out in the Crystal Forest Museum Gift Shop’s parking lot, just outside the park, where the sign says RV camping is free.  We are here with two other RVs – it is quiet, pretty, and as the owner confirmed, it is indeed, free.  The stars put on a magnificent show, filling the sky with a feeling of light, space, and incomprehensible distance, unhindered by city noise and street lamps.

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

“We Didn’t Start the Fire,” but we did keep running from it.  The morning started out peacefully; we left our very quiet campsite.  We headed west and then south to Snowflake (we liked the name) and then drove towards Holbrook, Arizona.  But we were turned back and directed to go to Show Low (another great name) because the road was closed due to forest fires.

We had intended to drive through the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and then perhaps through the Conconino National Forest (and do some dry camping), but it was not to be.  There were over twenty forest fires burning throughout Arizona, and over the last few days the national forests (certainly the trails and campsites) have gradually been closing down and evacuated.  Some of the fires are a result of lightning – people cannot remember when last there was a good rain – and others a result of human carelessness.  Some are still being investigated.

So we headed back to Holbrook and Interstate 40, the northern entrance to the Petrified Forest.  Basically, we spent a good part of the morning riding in one big circle — but we got back on I40 and headed west to avoid the fires.  We were told that if the wind changed, the interstate might be closed, and we would be stuck east of where we wanted to be — so we kept driving before that could happen. 

As long as we were driving and could not enter the national forests, we went all the way to Dead Horse Ranch State Park, Arizona, where we had reservations through Shabbat, arriving a day early.  They were able to give us a spot but no campfires are allowed and no trails that went outside the park were open due to the forest fires. 

Dead Horse Ranch State Park is absolutely one of our five top state parks: great campground, trails within the park, lagoons five minutes away, extremely well-kept.

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Though rain was a possibility, it didn’t happen.  We spent some time preparing the last post for publishing as we had excellent internet reception.

Once the post was published, we walked to the lagoon, and then decided to take a short excursion to Montezuma’s Castle National Monument.  Grateful that it was still open and not closed due to forest fires, it was a beautiful walk around the park, seeing the ruins of the Pueblo people who lived in the cliffs.  Some of the reasons they may have decided to live in the cliffs is that they protected them from heat and cold, but also from flash floods that were prone to that area.  In the rainy seasons, they kept a watchman high in the cliffs to warn the tribe when a flash flood would threaten – that is how quickly it can rush into the area without warning.

Thursday, June 24, 2021

We decided on a ride to Sedona, a very pretty city with mountains towering over it.  We were told that Sedona is a popular location for people leaving California, and it is a good choice: beautiful surroundings with a quality way of life.  We spent three hours walking around a shopping center built on an old Spanish motif.  A shop owner told us that the area was at the first stage of the three-stage fire threat warning, “ready”; the others are “set” and “go,” when you have only minutes to evacuate.

As the weather looked inclement, we returned to Cottonwood, five minutes from Dead Horse Ranch State Park and did laundry and Walmart food shopping.  By the time we finished and returned to our campsite the rain, thunder, and lighting began.  To affect the wildfires, it probably needed to rain harder than it did; indeed, the accompanying winds might have made things worse.

Friday, June 25, 2021

We are getting down to the last leg of our trip.  A short trip to Walmart, again, to buy a few things for Shabbat, dumping our tanks, and cooking.  When we woke this morning and took an early hike around the lagoon, you could smell a light odor of smoke in the air. 

But that was nothing compared to the smoke that engulfed the campground on Shabbat morning.  It was difficult to be outside, and although it did clear up some as the day went on, it was clear that the wildfires were still burning.

Our last stop of the trip: Las Vegas to prepare for our trip home: the Corona tests (here and at Ben-Gurion), preparing the RV for storage, packing, and getting ready for the flight home.