Author: Judy Moss

Today we had a short drive from Barstow, California to Bakersfield, California. We are staying at Orange Grove RV Park. We haven’t been here before. There are orange trees at every site. You are allowed to pick them when they are ripe. They have a nice pool, bathrooms, and showers. Starting October 24, they will start serving free donuts with their free coffee (or tea).

Can’t believe it’s October already. We started our adventures June 1, four months ago.

Today we will go to Flagstaff. Errands to be run. Dave did the laundry, this morning (bless him, he’s wonderful!).

Tomorrow we head to San Jose to: visit friends, visit relatives, and go to Stanford for my quarterly check-up. We wil get there Thursday, spending Tuesday night in Barstow, and Wednesday night in Bakersfield.

Today we went back to Wupatki National Monument to see the remaining pueblos: Nalakihu, Citadel, and Lomaki with the nearby Box Canyon dwellings.  It is so hard to fathom how these and cliff dwellings were built.  The Citadel is huge, 200-300 feet tall.  They haven’t excavated it yet.  It was unbelievably windy at the top because of an approaching storm.

Today we went to Sunset Crater Volcano and Wupatki National Monuments.  We started in Sunset Crater and took the 34 mile loop road through the two parks.

Sunset Crater Volcano has a lot of volcanic rocks and cinder rock that is like rocky sand which plants have adapted to.  The volcano looks very pretty, but because of people causing damage, no one is able to hike up to it.  There are Ponderosa Pine, Quaking Aspen, Pinyon Pine, and Juniper trees.

Wupatki National Monument has pueblos that you can hike up to.  We went to Wukoki Pueblo first and Wapatki Pueblo, today.

Today we went to Walnut Canyon National Monument outside of Flagstaff, Arizona.  On our way, we drove through smoke from a fire.  On the way back we saw where the fire was.

Cliff dwellers lived at the park from approximately  500 – 1250 AD.  There was no water there so they collected rain water during the rainy seasons and stored it in pottery jugs.  It is believed that the population varied from a low of 40 to a high of  400.  People grew crops and hunted small prey.  Archaeologists believe that the women built the rooms.  People left because of years of drought.

Today Dave did some chores and uploaded our pictures.

We ate lunch at The Grand Canyon Brewery.  It was very nice.  Dave couldn’t decide between two beers so the server brought him free samples.  She brought me a free sample of their chili.  We ended up ordering 1/2 pound Angus Beef cheeseburgers with their huge beer battered onion rings.

 

 

 

Today we went to the South Rim of the Canyon.  Even though it is the end of September, there were thousands of people in the park.  They run trams in the park.  We took the red tram which makes 9 stops on the way to the Hermits Rest.

It is absolutely beautiful out.  Clear and not very hazy.

We left Camp Verde and drove to Williams, Arizona.  We are staying at the Grand Canyon Hotel and RV Park.  It is run by Xanterra.  There is a train to the Canyon, a cowboy gunfight, a pool and hot tub at the hotel as well as restaurants.

After we got setup, we drove back to Flagstaff.  We went to Planet Chrysler, Dodge Ram.  We got an oil change and had the fuel filters changed.  I can’t believe that we have 15,000 miles on the new truck.  When we left Las Vegas on June 1st, we had 600 miles on the truck.  Our trip has been 14,400 so far.

 

Today we went to Cottonwood, Arizona and had lunch with Rick Rosenzweig and Jason Federbush.  We thought that we hadn’t met Jason before but he reminded us that he met us in 1982 when we lived in Gilroy, California.  He visited with his mother, Marcia.  We met at Dave’s parents house.  We had a very nice visit.