Poor geology museum! My plan for today was to show up on their doorstep at opening time and camp there literally all morning, reading every single display, touching every sample rock, and bothering the staff with questions until I understand how this vast and gorgeous rockscape works. … More Laura’s Journal: Being a normal, nerdy Grand Canyon tourist
It turns out going to bed at 9pm does not come naturally to me, even when I was up a 6am and have hiked 17 miles in the last two days. I’m sure I was just starting to drift off For Real when the alarm went off at 4am, but I got up anyway. We had a disgusting breakfast of freeze-dried biscuits and gravy (my least favorite of the pouch meals, but you don’t start this hike on an empty stomach, and even if I wanted to pay for another $30 breakfast, early service doesn’t start until 5am. That’s what I get for thinking 6:30 as “late” service is funny). … More Laura’s Journal: Hiking out of the Grand Canyon
Standing on the edge of the Colorado River 4,700 feet below the rim of the Grand Canyon is not the awesome experience you’d expect it to be – at least, not for the reasons you’d think. All sense of scale is lost. The depth is unfathomable because it is literally extraordinary. … More Laura’s Journal: Bottom of the Grand Canyon
The great thing about playing it loose with your travel plans is that you have all the flexibility in the world to adjust your schedule to spend more or less time at places that interest you more or less than you expected. The downside is when you find out that doing the really cool things in those places required you to make a reservation. Six months ago. … More Laura’s Journal: Grand Canyon – Going Down
There are cliff dwellings, and then there are entire canyons full of cliff dwellings. Walnut Canyon is stunningly beautiful as a natural phenomenon. It’s very easy to see why people would want to live here, but less easy to imagine fighting the challenges of the cliffs in order to construct a home. Before descending the very gracious stairs to do the walking tour, even tourists are warned: … More Laura’s Journal: Walnut Canyon National Monument
If Tuzigoot was today’s equivalent of last week’s visit to Wupatki, Montezuma castle parallels last week’s visit to the cliff dwellings at Tonto NM. In this case, we couldn’t enter the buildings, only admire them from the footpath below, but they are very admirable. … More Laura’s Journal: Montezuma Castle National Monument
Wednesday, April 28, 2021TUZIGOOT NATIONAL MONUMENT Tuzigoot (an anglicization of the Apache word for “crooked water” given to this Sinaguan site by a member of the excavation crew in the early 1900s) is a hilltop pueblo that bears many similarities to the pueblo at Wupatki. Whereas Wupatki was mainly a non-residential trading hub, Tuzigoot was … More Laura’s Journal: Tuzigoot National Monument
Yes, there are organ pipe cacti and they are very cool, and there are lots of saguaro and you know how I feel about those, but this park also has amazing geology, with volcanic mountains jutting up all over and about with crazy enthusiasm and color. You are all lucky I promised not to overload the blog with pictures of rocks, because that is my very strong impulse right now. I’ll try to keep them mostly contained to Instagram. The drive to get down here was quite long, so that are a bit into our exploring time, but we still got to spend more time here than in any of the other parks so far, and we made good use of it. … More Laura’s Journal: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
A few petroglyphs to admire: A few cactuses to admire: Laura among the cactuses: Transcription: Saturday, April 24, 2021 SAGUARO NATIONAL PARK I already waxed rhapsodic about saguaro, so let’s talk about getting lost in the desert at night! (Spoiler alert: “lost” is an overstatement.) We meant to spend the whole day in Saguaro NP. … More Laura’s Journal: Hiking in the Dark at Saguaro National Park
We drove so far south to reach this site that we could have tossed a frisbee into Mexico. The mission at Tumacácori NHP was established long before that border existed. Even before 1700, Spanish missionaries roamed the Sonoran desert looking to establish Christianity and the Spanish way of life among the indigenous people. The building as it appears today wasn’t built until the early 1800s and was abandoned at the end of the US Mexican War, barely years 50 after construction started. … More Laura’s Journal: Tumacácori National Historic Park
Thither & Yon 