We departed Holbrook and drove about 60 miles to Meteor Crater. Normally I drive when the Barbarian Invader is attached to Charlotte but Peggy was a really good sport and elected to drive today. It is rugged sitting in the right seat and actually getting to see all the stuff as we went by and today was a good day for me to be cruelly excluded from driving duty. I’ll get over it.
We covered the distance in less than an hour and were able to find our park for the next two nights, register and set up the Invader before noon. We love the short hauls with the trailer. We finished all the stuff we needed to do like having some porter before deciding to take an aimless spin around the ‘hood. We started by going west on I-40.
After about thirty miles we pulled off at Walnut Canyon National Park. We knew nothing about this park and until we pulled off I-40, we were ignorant about its existence. The park charges $8 a head but we had our federal access pass and got in free again. There is a nice visitor center with a gift shop and some exhibits. The back door of the visitor center leads out to the edge of very steep-walled canyons where some folks named the Sinagua (Spanish for “without water”) lived in caves and cracks underneath some of the layers of rock. I guess if the crack was wide enough and deep enough, the former residents would build mud and stone walls to keep out the weather and critters and neighbors.
The cliffs where the Sinagua selected for their homes are either very steep or outright bluffs so going down to the canyon bottom for water contributed to efficient use. Getting up the cliffs without water jugs looks to be pretty nasty so sending the kids down for water must have kept them busy all day. These folks were tough; the canyon is at about 6,000′ elevation and getting around in the bit of the park we saw left me gasping, at least on the uphill sections.
We fiddled around in the park for about an hour before departing and driving a bit further west on I-40 until we turned north on US-89 toward Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. There are actually a whole bunch of volcanic vents and cinder cones in the monument left over from a giant fracture in the earth that spewed tons of lava and cinders extending for about 20 miles or more.
The road through the monument takes motorists on a serpentine route between the cones, through lava flows and tremendous sections of bumpy land covered by cinders. The vegetation, where there is any, was open for business and the clumping plants were festooned with purple, red, white and pink flowers. This is a pretty spectacular place and, just when we thought we had seen it all, the road passed over a ridge and an amazingly colorful vista of iridescent cliffs maybe 25 miles away on Navajo lands appeared. The colors, even from a distance, are vivid and I can see why the Native Americans in this area enjoyed peyote. The cliffs must be fantastic on psychedelic drugs.
The Sunset Crater loop road exits the monument property and, for a bit, wanders through stunning scenery showing all the fun this area must have been when eruptions were in full tilt in the early 1600s. The loop road then enters Wupatki National Monument, another place we were ignorant of until today. The road leads past Wukaki, Wupatki, Lomaki, Citadel and Nalakiku pueblos (actually, former pueblos since they are all ruins) in addition to a bunch of unnamed evidence of former civilizations in this area. The view to the west is the snow-capped 12,633’ elevation peak of Mount Humphries and the views to the north and east are the constantly-changing hues of the Navajo lands. This loop is a great drive. It took us about four hours to go 60 miles because the scenery was so great.
We then drove back to our camp near Meteor Crater because it was getting dark and we both prefer to keep our veering limited to daylight hours. On the way home, the clouds and sun put on a spectacular sunset demonstration that I photographed liberally although the camera, despite being a Nikon, just can’t quite reproduce the amazing subtle colors the eye can see. I guess you just have to go see for yourself.