August Road Trip Day 2 Phoenix to Kanab

Happy Sunday to everyone.

Quick update from last night (Saturday, August 1st). After I had finished putting together the Blog for Day 1 and posted it, and began working on some of the pictures that I took, my kid brother realized that the air conditioner for his house wasn't working properly. SO here he was climbing on the roof of his house to fix it, his wife and I helped him out by grabbing tools and such that he needed to try and fix it. After about an hour or so of working on it, he admitted defeat and made the wise choice to get someone to fix this. Please understand that my brother is smart as hell (smarter than me) and is a mechanical engineer with a specialty of A/C work. So for him to admit defeat was a bitter pill to swallow. Still proud of you Scott.

So I got up around 630am and proceeded to pull myself together and check a few things on line, get dressed and begin to re-pack my stuff to put back into the truck and begin today's adventure.

The fun part of the re-packing was the resealing of the two coolers that have all of the canned goods in them that my wife made, yeah for some reason the dang cargo straps kicked my butt (the need to put a thing on the ratchet part that says "feed this way stupid"), ANYWAY, thankfully my brother's wife (who is a very smart woman, she designs buildings for crying out loud, I can't even build a Lincoln Log set without it falling apart) figured out what we needed to do, and she got the straps to stay in place and to tighten them down.

At this point, my brother and I proceeded to put everything in the truck AGAIN!!!! , I filled out my "Trip Ticket" (Motor-T you know) with today's trip information and got everything in place to include all of my ice water bottles that are now fully frozen, and my sandwiches and WAIT (the girls at my work and family will get this) I got my Peanut M&M's back frozen and not melted!!!

We took off to my parents place at around 830am to have a homemade breakfast prepared by my father (he's a way better cook than me, yes I have burnt food and I'm not allowed to cook at home either). We had pancakes, Corned Beef Hash and Eggs. IT was a great breakfast and even nice to be around with my entire family (less my wife, but she had a get out jail card so...) and talk and just had a really nice time.

Finally the time had come to leave and get the show on the road, prior to leaving my brother and his wife found out through the news that there was a fire on Interstate 17 and that it might be closed and then we had to discuss and talk about alternate routes to get around that. Once that was figured out and another family picture it was time to saddle up and move out (is that some sort of Cowboy thing?)

The drive from my parents home to Flagstaff was pretty uneventful, but it was really a beautiful drive, with lots of colorful high desert rocks, cactus and such. At around mile marker 300 traffic slowed up a little bit and everybody had to merge to the left lane, as the right lane was closed due to the fire. I couldn't believe how quickly people actually merged over to the left lane, I thought I was in the land of Oz at this point, cause if you drive in California, people do NOT know how to merge in traffic.

After a little while longer I got a hold of a photographer friend of mine Brian and we talked about what I was doing and where I was going and such, and then he suggested we meet up in Flagstaff (he lives there, DUH!!!) and have a beer and talk. The plus side was that by the time I got off the phone with and got the address for where we were going to meet I was 20 minutes away!!! Hell yeah. BEER!!!! Brian suggested that we meet at place called the "Beaver Brewery", it is on the right side of the street called wait for it... "Beaver Street" (I crack myself up).

Brian and I caught up on all things Aviation/ Aviation Photography related and had some great beer and pretzels at "Beaver Brewery". While we were sitting there I heard a boom in the sky and realized, that's Thunder.. It's gonna rain. Nope at least not at that minute. Finally it was time to get back on the road as I wanted to see what I could see. Thanks Brian for meeting up we have to do it again soon maybe you can come to Ventura!!!

Heading out of Flagstaff, I took State Route 89 North towards the City of Page. While leaving town, it started to rain, it was awesome, you well you would think so too if you lived in California where we don't get much rain ("It Doesn't Rain in Southern California") but the drive out was pretty nice with lots of rolling hills and just open land with not a lot of stuff on it.

On the outskirts of Cameron, Arizona you could see smoke coming from by the road, at first I thought it maybe a brush fire, but as I continued on and got closer, it turned out to be a Dodge Ram Pick-up truck that had caught fire. When I passed the truck it was entirely ingulfed, the Arizona State Trooper that was there was pushing traffic in both directions away from the fire and kept that flowing. It was truly a sad sight as the family that it belonged to was out in front of it and all they could do was watch it burn. Thank goodness they were all okay though.

As I came up on the town of Cameron, I kept noticing signs pointing towards the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and decided at the last second to head towards that direction.

Once I was through the traffic circle and on route 64 there was signage stating that the entrance to Grand Canyon National Park was closed. Darn!!! But I trooped on just to see what I could see. I finally came upon a parking area that overlooked the Little Colorado River, but it was completely shut down and the gates were closed, I tried in vain to get some pictures, but didn't get very much. I moved a little further down the road and came upon a sign that said "Trail Head". It wasn't blocked off or anything and I decided to pull off here and walk out towards the canyon. I figured if I wasn't supposed to be there or someone had an issue, I'd get stopped.

The trail I walked down was obviously used by off road vehicles at some point and recently, but the walk felt good and there was a slight breeze, so it was perfect. It took about 10 minutes to make it to the first edge of the canyon and it was WOW!!! I walked up close enough to the edge to see and thought "now would not be the time to fall in". I started snapping pictures and then saw another section that jetted further into this Canyon. Bingo!! it was worth the further walk and I even climbed down to a lower shelf area and got some really great shots of the river bed area and the canyon below. It was windy and I did stay away from the edges. Once I was done there I climbed back up to the main path and walked back to my truck and jumped back out on the road.

The drive back to Cameron was uneventful and I thought I'd stop for a minute and use the facilities and such once I got back to the town. Well... you see...

With this Pandemic thing that is happening in our country, pretty much everything (and I do mean everything) in Navaho Nation is closed. I mean everything. It is my understanding that the American Indians have had a bad go of things with this nasty disease that they just shut everything down and are sheltering in place. So on ward...

My next stop would be Horseshoe Bend and Page, Arizona.

The drive from Cameron to Horseshoe Bend was more of what you would expect of Northern Arizona, lots of mountains with tones of Red Rock, painted desert, and just a lot of open spaces. Along the route 89 you see all of the closed and shuttered shops of the local Navaho tribes, which is just sad.. You also get a chance to see how these people live and to me it is a disgrace, but I'm not a politician (hate those guys) and I don't fully understand everything...

It is about 80 miles from Cameron to Horseshoe Bend, but like I was saying, the scenery was just beautiful and unfortunately wasn't very many good places to pull off to take pictures. It took me a little over 2 hours to reach Horseshoe Bend and I arrived there just as the sun was about to set.

Driving north on route 89, you will have to turn left to get into the park so make sure you are very careful, once in, you must pay a fee to gain entry. There is no special discount for being in the military or being a Veteran. So $10.00 was spent to get in and park. From the trail head down to the view point is about 3/4 of a mile. The view the entire walk down is really pretty, on one side you could see the town of Page and to the other the Grand Canyon.

The viewing area at the bottom of the 3/4 mile hike is packed with a lot of people from all over the world. I heard several foreign languages being spoken and then I heard people talking about coming from Orange County, Florida and Orange County, California to see this magnificent spot. I walked all along the edge of the canyon that overlooked Horseshoe Bend, and snapped a few pictures with my camera and my phone. I realize now after having a chance to look at a few of my pictures, that I should have brought my Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens instead of my Sigma 17-70mm lens. Oh well, it looked good either way and my phone pictures actually look good too... I spent enough time there to watch the sun go down and decided to hike back up to the truck and get back on the road.

Heading into Page, Arizona it is just about your typical tourist town, a lot of hotels, restaurants and of course WAL-MART!!!!, I drove through the town and headed towards the Glen Canyon Dam. Yeah got there a little too late to see much as it was dark out but I still got out to check out the Dam (need to get some damn bait). Oh well maybe another time.

Off to my next stop...

My original plan was to make it out to Bryce Canyon National Park and find a place to crash for the night. Yeah well that didn't happen. I made it to the town of Kanab, Utah, purchased some fuel and decided enough and was able to get a room at one of the hotels here in town. I intended to write up this blog last night and to get up early in the morning to get on the road, yeah well here it is 745am and I'm just now finishing this up and I'm not out the door yet.

I will be heading up to Bryce Canyon today and then Capital Reef National Park, for those of you that are reading this and are monitoring me..

To my wife Corrine, love you baby thanks for everything. To my Brother Marines/ Corpsmen, Co-Workers, and Family thank you all for the support.

Time to get moving again.

See ya...

Semper Fi,
Frank
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