I know this has gotten ridiculous, but I’m following through to the end. How did this trip take so many blog posts? Maybe because there were just so many different stops?! In any case this is the last post, and it’s a good one, I think!

And so it begins…to Aspen

Bear Necessities

Leaving Aspen…Good Riddance

Moving Along

No Such Thing as a Dead Horse

Feeling at home in Arches National Park

Entering the Fiery Furnace

A Night Off the Ground

The only Good forest is a Petrified forest

What the Heck is a Hoodoo?

And Yet Another Car Insurance Claim

We left off heading away from Zion National Park. Now onto the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We had been to the South Rim in May, but when I started planning this trip I saw that we could swing by the North Rim.

Let me remind you, this trip was born out of the idea that since our National Parks pass from the year before, purchased in the beginning of August, didn’t actually expire until the end of August the following year…why not hit up as many parks as possible again? So that is where we were for this trip: every National Park was “free” to enter, since it had already been paid for the year before. Best $80 ever spent. (Though seniors get a lifetime pass for $10, that’s even better. I do hear that’s going up to $80 soon, but I hope still for life then?)

Anyway, for those who don’t know: the south rim is the side closer to Phoenix so it receives far more visitors per year. The north rim is about 5-6 hours drive (the canyon takes awhile to drive around!) and is only open a few months a year due to the weather, and is much less busy. Of course, the campground was still full and there were people, but not the tour buses and hoards you get on the south rim.

Our plan was to hike down into the canyon a bit, and then turn around. You can hike across to the south rim, you can hike to the Colorado River, but you can’t do any of those things in a day hike, even a day hike they recommend against. (Unless you are running and probably insane.)

It was a nice drive to the North Rim. (I’m being inconsistent with my capitalizing, but I guess “North Rim” should be capitalized.) It took around 3 hours and was uneventful.

The North Rim is up over 8000 feet elevation, like at Bryce, so the temps would be pleasant and cooler.

We passed by some areas that had obviously been affected by fire.

We got to the village at the North Rim and found the campground easily. We set up our tent and then walked around to see the canyon.

As you can see it’s quite beautiful. We just wandered around the rim and looked at the lodge and read some of the placards around with the history. We talked with a ranger and planned to get up very early to start our hike the next morning on the North Kaibab Trail—she suggested getting up before sunrise and seeing it rise on the trail, so we decided why not.

I got up early and walked to the bathroom to get my contacts in and wash up. As I was walking back I felt like I couldn’t see with my headlamp as well as I’d like, and then I fell—I rolled my ankle off the edge of the road and fell down. I got up and I could feel my foot was wet but I grabbed my toiletries bag and stumbled back to the camp. Louie was starting to make coffee and I went up to him, crying and freaking out. We looked at my foot and I’d cut my big toe pretty badly and my ankle/foot was already really swollen. It was dark, before 6 am I believe, and we were in the middle of nowhere, and everybody around us was sleeping. He helped me get my foot cleaned up and some ice on my ankle and lying down again, and I told him that I thought he should go do the hike, that if I felt I needed something either he’d be back or I could get a ranger more easily in daylight if I needed. Originally we’d planned to pack up the tent before hiking, but we decided he’d just hike for a few hours and come back and we’d do it.

So that bummed me out. I learned later that evidently my headlamp could be ankled down better and maybe the battery was getting low, and that I should have had better shoes…but anyway, there was no way I could get my foot in boots.

Louie came back a few hours later and said the hike was really nice, though sunrise wasn’t that great from it actually. He’d probably gone much further than we would have together! Anyway, my foot was hurting and swollen, but I didn’t think I needed medical attention, so we just wrapped it up and taped it, (we had an ace bandage and first aid stuff with us, just so you know, though later I bought some more gauze for it) and we packed up and headed out.

We were now heading home. We’d decided to make a trip to Las Vegas, New Mexico to visit an old friend of Louie’s, but we had one more stop before that: Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam and Antelope Canyon.

While planning this trip, once I got to the North Rim, there were so many more things to do! But we were already at the end of the time, and I also knew that longer than 3 weeks was ridiculous for us to be gone so I just picked one more thing. We didn’t go to the Four Corners, we didn’t go to Monument Valley, but Louie had mentioned wanting to see Antelope Canyon, so I made that work pretty well. And this would be our last stop that wasn’t just trying to get home (with visiting friends), so we wanted to make the most of it.

The drive from the North Rim to Page, Arizona was amazing. I had recollections of having ridden the same route as a kid, actually, but only faint. We drove by the Vermillion Cliffs and the views were just incredible.

That picture definitely doesn’t do it justice.

If there was a theme to this trip, or even to the year, it was the Colorado River. So many of the thing we saw were there because of the Colorado River, plus we crossed it many times! Look at it on a map and you’ll see how our trip followed it quite a bit. It wasn’t part of my planning, but it was part of why these places are how they are, so in a way, it WAS part of my planning.

We stopped at the Navajo Bridge over Marble Canyon (which is where the Grand Canyon starts) and took some pictures. It was really hot and I couldn’t walk very well, but we did our best.

We kept going and then we got to Page, Arizona. The history of Page is somewhat interesting, because the town exists purely to have built the Glen Canyon Dam, which is quite controversial, or that is, was at the time. The Dam created Lake Powell, which is just an unreal place. It’s a bright blue lake in the middle of all these reds.

We were staying the night at Wahweap Campground, right next to the Lake. Our first assigned campsite already had somebody on it, so they moved us to another, actually nicer site (I guess there was a miscommunication with the other couple over how many nights they were staying.) The funny thing about this area was that we seemed to be the only Americans—it was like we were at the Mediterranean Sea or something! So many Europeans and then us. We set up our tent and walked over to the Lake—I couldn’t do very much because of my darn foot—I was worried about getting sand in it and worried about getting it wet, and there was all this water and people swimming and I was pretty annoyed and mad at myself, honestly. I’m trying to remember if Louie ended up going for a swim. I’d have to check with him!

Anyway, we showered after a bit (yay pay showers) and then did our usual, make dinner, relax, and even though it was quite hot, we built our last campfire for the trip.

There wasn’t much privacy in this campground but the views were great!

The next morning we got up (packed up) and headed to Antelope Canyon. We had time before our reservation so we first stopped at Horseshoe Bend. My ankle was still fairly swollen and I wanted to conserve my walking so Louie went out to see it for himself.

Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon on Navajo land. I’d made a reservation for a tour, but I don’t know how necessary it was. Getting into the area was a big traffic jam with some road rage (not just on our end ) and getting on the tour was a little unorganized, BUT we ended up going earlier than we’d thought, and then we just waited in the hot sun for a long time. I’ll say the tour company we used wasn’t great, but once we were in the canyon we didn’t care anymore. It was amazing!

You get the idea. It’s crazy—the light is so that every picture is unique. It’s just a narrow canyon that you walk through very slowly and everybody is just snapping pictures galore. The whole experience is a bit surreal and you feel like a ridiculous horrible American Tourist, (even though there are loads of European Tourists there too) and yet, it’s really unbelievably beautiful.

After that, we left. See ya, Page!

Okay, I’m going all in and finishing. We drove through some really beautiful land, we drove near Monument Valley, but didn’t have time to stop (I’d been as a kid but Louie hadn’t…another time!) and then we finally ended up on the interstate and made it to Albuquerque where went stayed at a Super 8. We walked to a nearby mexican restaurant and had food and margs, and slept very well in beds.

The next day we got to Las Vegas, NM in the late morning to visit an old friend of Louie’s and his friend’s family. We hung out all day and stayed the night. Of great interest is that the show Longmire is filmed in Las Vegas, along with quite a few other movies/tv shows over the years! The town is cute with a really nice town square, and New Mexico has some really lovely landscapes.

That’s us in front of the fake door for the Sheriff’s Department of Absaroka County.

We left Las Vegas the next day and drove to Tulsa, spent the night, and then drove home. I didn’t take any more pictures worth showing, so I guess that’s the end!

It was an amazing trip! It was a hard trip, as I’ve expressed, and I wouldn’t do it the same way again nor would I recommend this itinerary, but we made it through and saw some fantastic stuff. The sites were great, the pace was just tough, and then ending up with two separate deductibles for the car repairs wasn’t the best…but the car is now fixed, and we’ve recovered. Part of why I planned a far less ambitious trip this year is because we were worn out. This August we are going to stay in three different campgrounds in the Great Smoky Mountains for three nights each, and three nights at an AirBNB in Asheville. Rather than seeing a little of everything, we hope to see a lot of a few things. And less unpacking and packing. We are already talking about seeing Glacier the next summer and I might have started thinking of an itinerary involving Theodore Roosevelt NP in North Dakota, a state I don’t believe I’ve gone to? In any case…my ankle and toe are now completely healed, and we are recovered from the trip…I think.

Final Tallies:

Nights Camping: 14

Miles Hiked (estimate): 80, more for Louie

National Parks visited: 7, plus 1 National Monument and 1 National Recreation Area and 3 State Parks

Miles Driven (approximate): 3800

Thanks for staying with me on this journey! I’d wanted to do a post about the budget, but you can estimate what you’d spend: gas, camping is usually $20, food, which can be cheap if you cook/pack lunches (plus you’d have to do that at home), firewood is $6 a bundle usually, and that’s optional in most places unless it’s really cold, showers/ice along the way, plus entrance fees, which we saved a ton on. Honestly I think the whole trip, NOT counting car repairs after, was probably about $2000-$2500 for the two of us.  That’s a 3 week vacation! The bigger expense is my lost wages, but I consider that to be a necessity—I can’t work/teach every week all year or I will lose my mind. For our Smokies Trip this August: so far expenses are camping $180 and our air BNB is $244. Other than that, it’ll be some meals in Asheville and the Biltmore House (next biggest expense at $55 per ticket), plus the cost of gas, firewood, ice. I don’t even know if it’s fair to count groceries, as if we are cooking meals we’d be doing that at home, so it’s a wash. I think we’ll get away with under $1000 for two people for a 12 day trip. Of course you have to already have all the camping gear, but at this point, we do. We’ve spent some money on that over the years, but we don’t have crazy expensive REI stuff, lots of Coleman, stuff from Amazon, and we just try to take good care of it. Having a reliable car helps too, of course, and a sense of adventure.

And somebody that you can spend that much time with in a car without killing them. We didn’t go without disagreements, and we definitely had some challenges, but I am glad to have a partner like Louie that is up for a crazy trip like I am!