Tag Archives: Arizona

Mondays are for Memories – Critters 2

April 12, 2021 steph Leave a comment

Last week when I did a post about the critters that we’d spotted while we were in Florida, I realized I had done another blog post using the same title. I checked back to see just what that post was about, and it turned out that it was written just about the same time of year, but all the way across the country in Arizona. So, since it’s about time I did one of those “Mondays are for Memories” posts, here you go!

April 19, 2010 – Prescott Pines Conference Center, Prescott, AZ

Critters

Being parked in the forest (more or less) has brought lots of opportunities to observe the local critters. 🙂
We’ve seen a lovely selection of birds –

Western Bluebird

Acorn Woodpecker (love his eyes!)

Redbacked Junco

White-breasted Nuthatch
And even though this wasn’t in our backyard (it was at one of those little lakes we visited over the weekend)-

A Blue Heron in a tree!
But we also enjoyed the occasional mule deer wandering around –

And even though we see squirrels just about everywhere, we really had never seen any that looked like this –

Catch those ears! Turns out this is a Abert Squirrel. You wanted to know, right?
Just today I spotted this little guy –

A Greater Short Horned Lizard.
And trust me, if he hadn’t moved, I wouldn’t have spotted him! He stayed pretty still and without hardly moving snagged an ant that walked just a little too close. Ah, nature in action!
We certainly have enjoyed our backyard this month!

Thanks for coming along for this little memory!

Pictures of the Adventure, RV Life, The Adventure

Catching up – Second installment

February 11, 2017 steph 1 Comment

We still had a couple of National Parks to check out before we made that final dash to Waco –
Canyon DeChelly
This was another one of those ‘lesser known’ parks in the Four Corners area of the country, but we’re glad we stopped!

Here’s the opening blurb from the website –
For nearly 5,000 years, people have lived in these canyons – longer than anyone has lived uninterrupted anywhere on the Colorado Plateau. In the place called Tseyi, their homes and images tell us their stories. Today, Navajo families make their homes, raise livestock, and farm the lands in these canyons. The National Park Service and Navajo Nation actively work together to manage park resources.
Because we were stopping here on our way to our next campground, we opted to do the driving tour rather than a more extensive tour of the valleys. Once again we were treated to beautiful views and lots of pueblo ruins.

Here’s a bit of a zoom-in at the base of the canyon wall –

Pretty impressive views all around!

It was a great stop and we’re glad we put it into our itinerary!
(More pictures of the Canyon deChelly HERE) 🙂
Next up – The Petrified Forest and The Painted Desert.
WOW!!

The petrified wood was so interesting –

and very beautiful!

The drive through the painted desert

was spectacular, and the combination of the painted desert and the petrified forest

was pretty amazing.

Lots more pictures of this area can be found HERE. (Funny story about first world problems with the picture taking on this trip. Theoretically it was daylight savings time and I made sure my phone and big-girl camera were set to the same time so when I combined the pictures they would all be in order. HOWEVER, since Arizona does not do daylight savings time, every time we drove into AZ, my phone would change – but of course my camera would not. And then, if we were also in Navajo land, where they do do daylight savings time….well, let’s just say, getting these pictures in order was quite a task. Every park we went into in that Four Corners area had three clocks – Arizona time, whatever state we were in time, and Navajo time. Crazy!)

After the Petrified Forest, we put the pedal to the metal, and pointed the RV to Waco!
Back to Gary’s Journal –
[Following the Petrified Forest] we reconnected the truck and drove to the NM Welcome Center and stayed the night.

Left NM Rest Area @ 6:30. Stopped @ Denny’s for breakfast, drove East I40 to Rt 84. Stopped at Walmart in Lubbock, TX.
Left Walmart and drove East on Rte 84.

Arrived Waco 2:30PM

And that finally wraps up our very long drive from California to Waco long, long ago…..

Thank you for your patience – and for coming along!

Pictures of the Adventure, RV Life, The Adventure

Now where were we?

November 18, 2016 steph Leave a comment

Right – just leaving the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and heading to Page, AZ for our next National Park visit.

And what a beautiful drive it was!! Most of it was a very scenic drive along the Vermillion Cliffs, –

across the Colorado River

up a couple of ‘hills’

and then down into Page, AZ.

Page is a fairly new city, having been founded and then developed only during the building of the Glen Canyon Dam.

And of course, the dam created Lake Powell, which is a huge recreation (boating, camping, hiking, etc.) area.

Now we didn’t take in ALL there was to do the area, but we gave it our best (scratching the surface style) shot!
There was the Dam Tour –

which was made all the more interesting by our tour guide, who was a Page ‘native’ and had lots of stories from ‘back in the day’. Like when he and his buddies would cut school and explore the inner tunnels of the dam, before security shut that down. (He was also a retired policeman, so that added a bit of interest too!)
We took in one fairly long hike to find some “slot canyons”.

It was not only a beautiful drive to GET to the hike –

(more of those beautiful Vermillion Cliffs)
but since the hike was through a “wash’, there wasn’t much of an elevation change to deal with (our nemesis!).

Although the slot canyons at the end of our Wire Pass hike were probably not as impressive as perhaps the more well known Antelope Canyon (Wire Pass – Free. Antelope – almost $100 for the two of us), we certainly were impressed!

We absolutely love the sculpture of these rock walls

A wonderful reminder of the creative beauty of our God! (And the power of moving water!!!)

We checked out a bit of lake shore camping,

(maybe next time!)
enjoyed another short hike

and just generally enjoyed the beauty of the day.

As the sun was beginning to sink and hoping to catch the sunset, we checked out another highly recommended (and short) hike – Horseshoe Bend.

We were not alone in our thought process!

(I confess – this picture really cracks me up!! And – they are ALL too close to the edge!!!)
I guess I’ve seen more beautiful sunsets –

but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen more people hoping it wouldÂ be (more beautiful)!

So that about wraps up our time at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. There was so much to see and do here (not to mention that it might have been nice just to sit on the beach and stare at that lake) that it might warrant a trip back! But for now – it was pack ‘er up and move on down the road. Â Still to come – Four Corners, Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, and the Petrified Forest.

Next time, okay?

As always, thanks for stopping by. And thanks for your patience as I work on getting this ol’ blog up-to-date between lovin’ on these cutie pies!

I’m sure you can understand my distractions!

Oh – and if you’d like to see some additional photos from our time in and around Page, Arizona, you can check them out HERE!

On the Road, Pictures of the Adventure, The Adventure

The North Rim

November 2, 2016 steph Leave a comment

Back in late April of 2010, Gary and I did what we affectionately called the Grand Rock Tour. We took two weeks and visited the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Arches, Capital Reef, and any number of lesser known National Monuments, Navajo sites and other POI’s along the way. But since it was, after all, late April, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was not open yet for the season. So as we made the trek to Waco from California, it was one of our very first stops. Now you might think that seeing the North Rim is just like looking into the Grand Canyon from the “other side” but it really is quite different. Well, we thought it was, anyway!

The South Rim is certainly the more developed area, while the North Rim is definitely the “road less traveled”. We were there during the last month of the season, and some hospitality areas were closing the next weekend. We were thrilled with the beautiful yellow Ash that lined the roads as we made our way to the canyon, not at all disappointed with the lack of crowds and traffic!

Our day started cloudy and gray, and we were worried about how the ‘viewing’ would be, but all was well! We took in a couple of hikes, followed all the roads we could and were just.plain.amazed at the beauty and majesty that was before us! Here is just a sampling of those amazing views –

(Just for the record, we did hike to “Angels Window” – that big hole in the rock!) Can you see the Colorado River peeking through the window?

It really was a spectacular day and to remind us that the season was just about over, what started out as a late afternoon shower

ended up as this –

One last picture – not so much of the canyon but of the view from the other side of the plateau –

Ahhhh…..
So you know I took a bazillion pictures and I did my best to whittle them down to a manageable number, and then only shared a couple in this post. But if you’d like to see more of the beautiful ‘less traveled’ North Rim, you can check them out HERE!

And if you’d like a little refresher of that Grand Rock Tour of 2010 – here is a link to one of the first posts in that series. Feel free to check it (and others in the same time frame) out!

On the Road, Pictures of the Adventure, RV Life, The Adventure

Getting there

November 1, 2016 steph Leave a comment

If you’ve visited here before, you know I take an inordinate amount of “Road Ahead” pictures. I take them when we’re driving in the truck, and I especially take them when we’re in Lizzie (our RV). And heaven forbid we are on NEW (to us) road – man, is that shutter clicking!
Our drive from central California to northern Arizona was no exception. Oh, my – how those “Windshield Shots” added up!

Sometimes just pointing the camera out the window worked pretty well, too!

But my favorites are usually just the Road Ahead.

You know I could go on and on (and on and on), but for now, I think it’s time to move on to just what we were aiming for as we drove from California to Arizona. (But if you’d LIKE to see more “Road ahead” pictures, you can check them out HERE! 🙂
So next up will be the Grand Canyon – North Rim!

See ya tomorrow! (I hope!)