Today we woke up at USA RV Park in Gallup, NM. We’re headed out today after I do a saxophone lesson. The time difference works out well with the east coast. The students can have a late morning summer lesson and I can work earlier in the morning. The connection was good this morning with only a few hiccups.
We have some oatmeal for breakfast outside in the sunshine and then, while I’m teaching later on in the camper I see Pammie go zipping by the dining room window on the trail next to the campground. As soon as I’m done we load up the bikes, go over and dump the tanks and then head out.
Pammie picked a route to the north rim of the Grand Canyon for us. I expected mostly highway travel as hwe have been doing for the past couple of days. We head out and take a rough road off Route 66 following a semi who doesn’t give a damn about the rough road. I’m a little more cautious about rattling the rig to bits. We take a left and we’re off on a two lane road with cattle guards every couple of miles. Pam tells me that most of the trip today is going to be on secondary roads. Yeeehaaa! This is gonna be fun.
In a little while we hookup with route 264. It’s a four lane highway but it’s not loaded with trucks. We come to a semi large village – maybe St. Michaels? – I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to signs because googletta was guiding me.
When we started to get out of town it started getting hilly and we started to see some white rocks and cliffs. We pulled over on one of the first big viewpoints to “rest”. I took a picture or two. A dude buzzed by on a motorcycle heading towards Gallup. The further we went, the more spectacular the scenery got. Huge vistas with giant mesas off in the distance.
Roadside rest outside of St. Michael..I think 
the horizon 
another view 
and another
We started winding through the Hopi reservation. The rock formations were mostly white with huge boulders and large cliffs. We climbed a large canyon and right on top, at the very edge in some cases, were Hopi homes. We stopped again to take in the steep canyon views and huge, flat, far-off vistas. The scenery was getting mind boggling. I could see why people would live here but what the hell would you do?
The road narrows and gets bumpy. I’m talking NY City bumpy. This shit is relentless. But the scenery makes up for it. Everywhere you look, a stunning vista. We drive through evergreens too where once we were driving through what seemed to be the most arid and lifeless desert. I know, there are scrubby bushes and life all over the place, but just the changes in vegetation in the past hour or so of driving have been startling.
We pass through Keans Canyon. The road winds down and down and then you cross the bridge and see the river waaaaay down in the canyon. We didn’t stop here but there were a few folks on the bridge. It looked like the state park side on the canyon was closed because of the dirty Covid. I was thinking that all of this would be way more crowded if things were normal. All the small Native American villages have signs saying closed to the public. Wear masks. Keep our people safe.
We’re getting tight on gas, we’ve got plenty. There are signs for Tuba City which is about 60 miles away but the hills are putting the old V10 through the paces for sure! We’ll be fine, no need to worry. Sit back and enjoy the bone rattling ride to Tuba City. When we finally see it off in the distance, we’re both relieved. As we come off the mesa into the town we see crops here and there with trees and other vegetation. The town looks like any other out here. Gas stations on all four corners. The usual stores, etc. We gas up and then I go across the street to try and find some decent stogies. I’ve been having a swisher sweet or two here and there and I’m missing a good old 5” robusto with a madero wrapper, if’n you know what I mean!
We’re looking for a place to stop and eat. I pull over down the road from Tuba City(! – not a damn tuba in sight! I pictured Native Americans living in coiled white sousaphones and bright, brass, and silver tubas. What a let down!) in a turnout by the side of the road. While we’re fixing some food and then eating we notice a stand down the side road we turned off on. Pammie digs out the binoculars and sees it’s a dinosaur track viewing area!
After lunch we drop the bikes and ride over. A Navaho gent (I asked) says the site is free to view but he can give us a tour too. Donations enthusiastically accepted of course. We take the tour. He has a little bottle of water and he highlights every track so they stand out. It’s pretty amazing how many tracks are at this site. The dude knows his jurassic park too. With every track he shows us, he refers to the movie. He shows us petrified vegetation, droppings, the whole gamut. A skeleton. It’s mind boggling like everything around here. Everywhere you look there are rock outcroppings that are thousands of years old!
Lunch before dinosaurs 
drop the bikes and… 
checkout ancient history 
our host used a bottle of spring water tio highlight the tracks and we all wore masks 
We pay the gent and Pammie buys a necklace from his sister. He points out his home back up the side road and it looks like a llittle oasis in a sea of dry, hot rock. He says they grow a lot of crops beck there and there’s a spring to water the crops and provide drinking water. The water bottle he used to highlight the tracks contained water from the spring. We both noticed his hand was in a a bandage and his arm looked pretty mangled. Neither of us aged what happened but we wished we had when we both talked about it later!
After lunch we hammered to the campsite Pammie picked out for us. She found one on FreeCampsites.net near the north rim of the Grand Canyon. 264 eventually hooked up with 89 outside of Tuba City. We headed north with a huge rock formation on our right and then we we eventually took a left on alt 89 and started to go up over big plateau onto the top where there were a bunch of open meadows. Eventually we came to fire road 22. A mile or so of washboard dirt road later we turned off into a nice, level campsite. Pam Langley’s Tour Service does it again!
On the way to the Grand Canyon 
Lotsa red 
endless vistas 
Hike up the road past our campsite 
A little color 
Someone drove up here 
Sunset on fire road 22 
Fire road 22
After getting setup we took a bike ride on the main road. Up over the closest hill and then down the other side. It looked liked we could have gone over and down many more hills but we went back. We cooked up some dinner and then took a hike up the smaller road past our campsite. We followed it to a really nice, secluded site that we probably would have driven to in the Eurovan but the new rig might have had a problem or two with the road. Even further in on the same road there was a very steep trail up to a lookout over some of the hills below. We could have hiked quite a bit more but we decided to call it a night.
