Day 11 - Buh Bye Canyon. Hello... Kayenta?

All -

Moving from days to dates.

I pulled up stakes from the Grand Canyon today. In three days I saw three different weather patterns. When I arrived, it was sunny, calm, and cool. Yesterday was cloudy, calm, and cool. Today was sunny, churning, and cold. I walked the Rim Trail to the Hermit Trail and determined the Rim walk was not so wimpy. There were a few minor uphill grades and with the moderate wind in the morning I felt like I could be pushed down into the abyss at anytime.

The wind continued to pick up throughout the day and you could see the shadows of the clouds race past over the peaks and troughs of the canyon. By midday I was not going near any ledge without a railing.

I cleared the East Gate around 1PM and started racing northeast to Navajo Monument Park. Not before a few more stops to peer over the canyon edge just a few more times. The views were so spectacular that you really just wanted to stopped and absorb, weather aside, but I snapped a few pictures and pushed on.

The wind was howling and clouds continued to whip past overhead. As I left the Canyon it looked like low fog was rolling in the distance. However, as I got further up the road I realized that this was not fog but red dust swirling in the air. I've never been in a dust storm before.

Past Cameron, dirt was constantly being swept across the road like snow drifts. In addition, the landscape went from earthy red and tan to ghostly gray and white. I thought I was passing through a chemical processing area as there were so many mounds of 'sand' piled up around the road but then I noticed that the fences went up and over these things. It was not piles but rather mounds of white earth. With the wind screaming in all around, the scene made for a remote planet landscape.

So I continued to watch the land morph as I went on to Tuba City inside the Navajo reservation (which is a huge and barren piece of land, by the way). Trailers, rusted out cars, and signs for dinosaur tracks speckled the rode side. Tuba City's population looked like the extra Navajos from a John Wayne movie with a few skid row winos thrown in. I was the oddity.

Outside of Tuba City I saw my first tumbleweed in action. I've never really seen tumbleweed move before and in the wind they had to be rolling around 30 miles per hour. Tumbleweed would shoot across the highway and splinter off a bumper or roll playfully along side a car for a while and then swing off into the desert. Fortunately, the wind was now a tailwind so the ride was fairly smooth. The red dust also seemed to settle down before I got to the Navajo National Monument.

At Navajo National Monument, the wind continued to accelerate. According to my dashboard, it was 39 degrees outside. As I pulled up, two rangers were struggling to tie down the exterior doors which has been torn from their hinges. I half expected to see Margaret Hamilton fly by on a bicycle.

The Navajo Monument was ok. After the Grand Canyon, the canyon was nice but not magnificent. The cliff dwellings are considered sacred ground so the closest you get is standing on a ledge on the opposite cliff. In the wind. And the cold. You really can't see much and in a photo it looks like a sixth grade diorama.

Tonight I stay in Kayenta. I pulled up on the town around dusk. You could see the outline of the tall towers of Monument Valley (or so I think) eerily in the distance. The Best Western I am staying at is excellent even if I do hear the wind rattling around outside.

I noticed both in Tuba City and here a number of scraggly stray dogs running/hobbling around in the reservation. Also, the trailers out number the houses by at least 20 to one within the reservation. Different world.

It is supposed to snow here tonight. After cooperating from San Francisco to the Grand Canyon, the weather is going to make the trip interesting from here on out. I was going to try and do Monument Valley, Four Corners, Mesa Verde, and get to Durango tomorrow but we'll have to see how that plays out. I figure I'll either end up in Durango or somewhere outside of Mesa Verde (Mancos). I'm going to restock up on supplies so I don't end up like the Donner party. Maybe I can chase down one of those stray dogs.

Hank