Grand Canyon, finally!

Our driving was delayed by about 3 hours this morning (Monday 31 March) as we took Robin to another medical clinic about his eyes - they are no worse, but only slightly better.  He's never had bloodshot eyes like he has.  So, now he is on a sulphur-based eye-drop, and we'll keep our fingers crossed it works.  It was about $80 for the 1st visit in San Diego plus $12 for the eye-drops; today was $112 for the visit but only $5 for the eye-drops!  Fingers crossed (again) that we can get these costs back with our travel insurance.  Apart from the money, the other thing of note re today's visit was the length of time it took to get the script filled.  In NZ, I go into a chemist and am told it'll be a 5-10 minute wait - here, we had to wait a good hour!!!

So, finally, we left Kingman, having seen Walmart Pharmacy more than we'd like to have!  We continued our drive along the historic route 66, passing the odd, old ramshackle diner or store, including Hackberry General Store, and passing through some quaint, some one-horse, some larger towns.  Seligman was interesting, especially if you like Cars.  It is the town that inspired Radiator Springs - or that is feeding off of Cars.  They have certainly embraced Cars and associated memorabilia - there were real cars, replicas of the ones from the movie, parked up all along the main street.

Whilst we were waiting at the medical clinic, we talked to a local gentleman, who told us that the best pies in Northern Arizona were sold at the Pine Country Restaurant in Williams, which was on our itinerary.  So, after filling up the car (which, by the way, is a Ford Escape, which has plenty of room for us and all our luggage) with gas, we filled up our tummies with pie - Eric had Banana Cream, Robin had Blueberry Cream, Karl had Banana Chocolate Cream and I had Dutch Apple Pie.  Mmm.  Tasted reasonable good, but maybe not quite what we were expecting.

We stopped briefly in Valle outside the Planes of Fame Aircraft Museum (www.planesoffame.org) so Eric could have a quick look at the aircraft outside - a Lockheed C-121A Constellation, a Convair 240, an F-11F  Tiger.

The next stop was the National Geographic Visitor Centre, to see the 34 minute movie "Grand Canyon The Hidden Secrets" in IMAX, on a 7-storey screen.  The Colorado River averages 300 foot in width and 100 foot in depth.  They believe it took 3 to 6 million years for the 277 mile twisting canyon to form, and the oldest rocks are estimated to be 400 million years old.   Until 1950, fewer than 150 people had seen the inner gorge.  Today, 10,000 a year visit it (rafting etc) - we got to view it via this movie.  Wow, even just seeing it in a movie, it was spectacular.

So, after a quick visit to the Verkamp Visitor Centre so the boys could pick up their Junior Ranger booklets, we finally got to see the Grand Canyon for the first time!  From just the small time we spent looking at it (there was a cold wind!), it was amazing.  The red hues in the canyon walls, the depth of it, .. wow!  Eager to explore further, but had to check in to Maswick Lodge then go past some elk (as you do up here, it seems), and get dinner (reasonably priced - we ate at the Maswick Canteen and chatted to a group of Boy Scouts from La Jolla, San Diego, who are about to head out on a 4-day tramp down into the Canyon).

Now bed.  Our accommodations on this holiday consist of one room with 2 beds - Eric & I in one bed, the boys in the other.  Eric refuses to share with the boys, but I believe on some nights, it would be the easiest option, when they wriggle and giggle and touch each other ("He touched me."  "He touched my pillow."  "He's taking up too much space."  "He was on that side of the bed last night."), and carry on.  They really do go on and on.  Oh well, small price to pay for being on this big adventure.

En route to Grand Canyon National Park

Today, Sunday 30 March, we left Joshua Tree and the National Park behind.  We drove into a sand storm - probably pretty mild by locals' standards, but we thought it was kind of cool.  Once we were in amongst the sand (with the air on re-circ) we could no longer see the hills/mountains on each side of the valley.

 Again, we headed off the interstate, and instead took... wait for it ...

There were some well-maintained stretches of the route, and some not-so-well-maintained stretches.  There were looooong straight stretches, and curvy, windy stretches (we took those bits reasonably slowly, as we didn't want to run the risk of upset stomachs in the back seat).  There were areas of desert (the Mojave) with a house and/or RV set amidst nothing (most of the houses in the desert areas have fences around them, I guess to keep out wild animals, but there are, of course, no gardens, just cacti and stones and sand), and there were mountains.  There were rest stops and cafes with nothing around them for miles.

 We got to see our first really long, double-decker freight train (we've already seen the California coast Amtrak double-decker train).

 And, I think we have found our perfect house to buy, right on Route 66, close to the train line, perfect.  No lawns for me to mow, no edges for Eric to do, just, well, nothing.

Eventually, we made it to Oatman, founded in 1906 and sitting at 2700 feet above sea level.  Gold was found and the boom lasted for 30 years, producing over 1.8 million ounces of gold.  Burros (donkeys) were used to cart gold ore in the mines, and water and supplies outside the mines.  When the mines closed, and people left the area, the burros were released into the wild.  Now, although still wild, they come into Oatman and wander the along the main street (lined with old shops and wooden boardwalks) and get fed by tourists (we paid $1/bag for alfalfa cubes - had to get 2 bags, of course, 1 for each boy) so much so that they do not eat as the day goes on.  It was all very quaint, but very touristy.

After Oatman, we continued along Route 66 and ended up in Kingman, where we are staying for the night.  Our 2.5hr trip again took us all day.  But, it was full of changing scenery and what we consider typical Americana, such as rows of huge signs along the freeway as we approach large towns.

Tomorrow, Grand Canyon!

Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Tree National Park - words to describe it?  Surreal, probably, is the first one that comes to mind.  Varied.  Unique.  Seemingly barren, yet teeming with life.  Vast.  Expansive.  Thirst-creating (we went through about 3l of water each today - Karl asked why his wees was white this evening!).

JTNP comprises 794,000 acres, covers two deserts (Mojave in the north and Colorado in the South) and a transition zone between the two, was used by American Indians, cattle ranchers, miners, and now, by rock climbers and nature enthusiasts.

We were in the Park for 7.5hrs today, and another 30 mins at the Oasis Visitor Centre in TwentyNine Palms on our way out.  We saw wildlife (a number of lizards, rather large ants (including red ants), butterflies, birds, a ground squirrel, even a Sonoran Gopher snake!).  We saw a huge variety of cacti and trees and shrubs, including, but not limited to, the Joshua Tree, the California Fan Palm, creosote bush (its roots can go down 60ft in search of water, and it drops its small wax-coated leaves as drought conditions linger, then grows new ones once it rains again), a number of cholla cacti (pronounced choy-ya, and whose barbs can cause considerable pain when trying to remove them), chia, occotilla (the tall spindly plant with red flowers in yesterday's blog), beavertail pricklypear, juniper, Mojave yucca, ...  We saw a multitude of rock formations, some huge, some small, and people rock-climbing.  We walked to Barker Dam, which was used by miners, then by cattle ranchers.  JTNP used to get 10 inches a rainfall a year - now, it gets 2-3 inches.

The boys worked on becoming Junior Rangers, with a book of activities to complete.  When they handed it in at the end of our day, the Park Ranger, Sarah (who had taken her daughter to NZ a number of years ago) didn't just say "Well done, here is your badge" - she went through each page of work with them, getting them to talk about what they had seen and heard and adding more to it and encouraging them to keep on looking and learning as they go.  She was great.

They both had to write a desert poem acrostic - Sarah was very impressed with them.  Here they are.

Karl:
Dehydrating heat
Evolving wildlife
Sun blazing down
Every boulders shadow
Rocks rolling
Trees hiding under boulders

Robin:
Driving in the desert heat
Everybody's hot
Sun burning
Every boulder has thousands of stories
Rocks hot
Trees small and big

We finished up our day with a visit to Crossroads Cafe - I had a 3-bean chili and corn bread; Eric had a chicken quesadilla with black beans; the boys had an English muffin hamburger.  We all had dessert - apple pie, chocolate brownie, cheesecake.  Mmm - a great way to finish a full-on day.

Forgot to say, last night, both Eric & I felt the earth move - at separate times, and with moving doors.  We are quite close to the San Andreas fault line, after all!

Enjoy the selection of photos from our visit to Joshua Tree National Park.

En route to Joshua Tree National Park

Friday 28 March we left San Diego to head east to Joshua Tree National Park (JTNP).  What can be a 2.5hr drive to JTNP took us 8hrs!  But, we got off the freeway and saw some interesting sights.

In Santa Ysabel, Eric & I got out to stretch our legs and take a photo of the general store dating from 1870 and, having passed a black beanie lying on the road on our walk, Eric retrieved it on the way back to the car.  He's happy - it's a US Border Patrol beanie!  We continued on to Julian, a town that was nothing until 1870 when gold was found near it.  About 2,000 miners extracted more than $15 million in gold ore.  Julian was a nice place, with lots of historic buildings along the main street, including the Julian Hotel built in 1887 and the Julian Drug Store and Miner's Diner which still has an old-fashioned soda fountain.  Robin chose to have a chocolate ice-cream in a cone (a lot of the ice-cream ended up on the outside of his mouth, rather than inside it!).  Eric, Karl and I had ice-cream floats - a glass with the syrup at the bottom, ice-cream scooped into it, and with soda water poured over it all and then mixed around.  Karl chose vanilla; Eric had sarsparilla (made from sassafrass roots and a winter mint); and I had root beer (very similar in taste to the sarsparilla).  Eric and I both were reminded of the dentist when we had our two floats, they were that sort of flavour.  We also watched a lady preparing baked apples - cored apples rolled in brown sugar, butter placed in the hollowed core then wrapped up in sweet pastry and finished with pastry cut-outs to resemble an apple with leaves.  Why?  There are lots of apple orchards around Julian, so apple pies and apple cider are a specialty of the area.

 We drove through the lower part of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.  Borrego is the Spanish word for sheep, and there are apparently rare desert bighorn sheep in remote areas of the park, whilst Anza was the man who found a route through the area in 1774.  The landscape was stark and barren, with cacti and not a lot else, and yet, every so often, there would be a group of RVs clustered together with nothing around them but the desert.

We reached Salton City, which had been planned to be the next Palm Springs but it never eventuated. Roads are laid out but there are very few houses - blocks are totally empty.  Driving along the roads is like sitting in a roller-coaster - smooth bumps all along.  It reminded us of Christchurch.  The city is on the edge of the Salton Sea, which is one of the biggest salt-water lakes in the world, and appeared accidentally in 1905 when canals taking water from the Colorado River breached their banks during a severe winter.  It is 72m below sea level and there is no natural outlet.  We got to see white pelicans and other birds there.

From there, we drove through the Coachella Valley, past date trees (Indio is the "Date Capital of the World" and even has a Date Festival), past Palm Springs (we didn't go in) and through a large area of wind turbines and solar panels, to Joshua Tree.

We settled in to our motel, had some dinner, then raced into JTNP in time to see the sunset at Keys View.  Keys View is 1,581m above sea level, and looks down over the San Andreas fault line and across to the San Bernadino mountains - when there is no smog, there are great views, even over the Salton Sea and down to Mexico.  The sunset was lovely, with the colours changing from reds to oranges to yellows as it set.  We have seen our first Joshua trees, named by Mormon travellers who were reminded of Joshua with his arms outstretched.   The tree is actually a member of the Agave family, and its tough fibrous leaves were used by local Indians for baskets and sandals, and the flower buds and seeds were healthy additions to their diet.  The trees do not have growth rings like many other trees do, but there is one tree that is 40 feet tall and is estimated to be over 100yrs old.

More exploring to come!