From Moab we headed south to Arizona on our
way to the Grand Canyon. At the state line is the amazing scenery of Monument
Valley made famous by old western films. Large buttes of rock several hundred
metres high rise out of the desert plain which has been eroded away around
them. See the photos to get the idea.
Quite a large area of NE Arizona and bits
of surrounding states make up the Navajo nation. The largest of the Native
American reservations. They are almost states (or even separate countries) in
themselves with their own laws and of course casinos. We stopped off here to
see some of the ancient cliff dwellings common here.
From here it was several hours drive across
desolate northern Arizona to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Not much to be
seen here but there were a few strange sights. Large rocket shaped silos, long
distance electrified rail lines to nowhere, UFO shaped clouds and a
suspiciously high number of empty school buses for the middle of nowhere.
Turning up to the rim of the Grand Canyon
at sunset made for an excellent first view. It is impressively big and you do
feel rather small. We spent the night at the south rim village and spent the
next day doing a short hike down into the canyon and exploring other vantage
points. While the weather wasn’t great and it did rain/snow at times it was
still a good day. We also managed to spot a furry eared squirrel which made
Dusk’s Day.
Williams was the furthest south we went on
this trip. It is a fairly small but nice town on the old route 66. The main
reason for stopping here a night was that it was on the way from the Canyon to
Vegas and had cheaper accommodation than the Canyon. However our accommodation
turned out to be worth the stop alone. It was a really quirky little hotel with
wonky floors and different themed rooms (Blue, Asian, Paris, Nautical, Giraffe
etc) We got to wander round beforehand and choose which room we wanted out of
the ones available. We chose the Asian room – because it was sunny.
The Hoover dam sits on the Arizona/Nevada
border and made a good stop on our way to Las Vegas. You had to pay for parking
on the Nevada side so we drove back to Arizona where it was free. One random
hoover dam fact; Arizona didn’t approve it till several years after it was
finished.
Instead of heading straight to our hotel in
Vegas we decided to drive down the length of the strip - by the time we’d got
to the end I’d decided I was over Vegas and ready to leave. The casino
buildings were impressive but the huge number of people and brashness of
everything got to me. Not really being that into gambling we really only came
to see the lights, unfortunately without realising it we came on the night
earth hour was on and spent a bit of time wandering around thinking the lights
were actually pretty lame until they got turned back on again. We did try to
gamble but after playing pokies and blackjack for about 15 min we got bored.
The next morning we were up early for the
long drive to Mammoth. We were cruising till we got to the bottom of Death
Valley and the car engine light came on. An old timer at the gas station
reckoned he’d seen it a lot and was because the engine computer couldn’t handle
being below sea level and would be fine when we went up again. Being less than
100 m below sea level and figuring the atmospheric pressure wouldn’t be that
different to sea level we were a bit sceptical at this explanation. It didn’t
go off when we were up above sea level again and with a few hundred kilometres
and a couple of mountain ranges between us and Mammoth we again found ourselves
in the middle of nowhere with a dodgy car. There wasn’t much we could do but
carry on and hope.
Our fuel gauge had been playing up for a
few days beforehand and after stopping for gas the light went out only to come
back on again when our fuel gauge played up again. After another fuel stop and
similar happenings we suspected the engine light was linked to the dodgy fuel
gauge. With the car otherwise running fine we decided to not worry about it and
just carry on. This was all later confirmed when we had the car serviced back
in Vancouver.
We had a great day of skiing at Mammoth.
The snow was reasonable and we had nice warm sunny spring weather and some
amazing views. The only downer being that it was to be the last day of the
season for us. We also had some incredibly bad Japanese food in Mammoth – never
trust Mexicans to cook Japanese.
The next stop was San Francisco. It was
good to catch up with Fi and Hugh again. We needed to pick up some of our stuff
left there in the summer and sort out a few things, although we did manage to
squeeze in a Katchafire concert though. It was also here that we first noticed the
car had developed a shudder when stopped but still running, no shudder when
moving but still a bit worrying.
We took off up the coast with plans to make
our way leisurely seeing the sights on the way up to Vancouver but between poor
weather, a dodgy car and blocked roads it wasn’t that leisurely. The first day
we got a long way up the coast only to find that the main highway had been
buried in a landslide and with no nearby alternatives we had to double back
about 4 hours just to head north again. The weather closed in meaning side
trips to see Crater Lake national park and Mt St Helens were pointless and with
the car still doing all manner of strange things we were glad just to
eventually roll into Vancouver.
Vancouver was mainly about selling the car.
We also had a few other things to do like ship our ski gear home and close our
bank account but selling the car was the most important and with only a week
before flying out a bit stressful. To cut a long story short a guy from
Vancouver Island got a cheap deal but it was still a better price than if we
had had to do a last minute sale to a dealer and yes we did tell him about the
issues the car had. In fact, closing our bank account was more difficult (apparently
we needed to go to the same branch we opened our account at to close it, which wasn’t
really an option as that branch is on Vancouver Island) so almost a month and a
few faxes later it still isn’t closed. At the end of the week though we did
have a couple of days spare for some sightseeing – something we hadn’t managed
on our 3 previous visits to the city.
