GETTING HOME

OK, so the plan was to stay in The Canyons as long as possible but to get home by about June 1^st.  We did this by staying up to the last possible day then jumping onto I-40 and pounding it from Flagstaff to the US276 exit to Waynesville—I needed to take US276 from Waynesville, where we touched base with my Aunt Betty and cousin Anna Watson, then over Wagon Road Gap—just to get a Blue Ridge fix.

Basically 3-1/2 days at 75mph surrounded by 18-wheelers:  Grand Canyon to Santa Rosa NM to Oklahoma City (great seafood place: Pearl’s Fish Shack) to Nashville to home.  Right at 2000 miles.

 The TX Panhandle is possibly where hell is located, I have never seen such a godforsaken place. Hours pass at high speed and nothing changes, totally flat, brown, dry and dusty.  We also had a tremendous tail wind all the way, basically driving in a haze of dust with an occasional dust browning of the white-hot steel colored sky.  You begin to experience déjà vu, haven’t I just been here? This picture tries to capture the experience but…

5 miles ahead a truck in the dust; in the mirror 5 miles behind a truck in the dust—note the white haze of dust in the lower sky

At one place we saw a small abandoned shack in the middle of a vast desolate plain with a weathered “For Sale” sign; what a great picture! But we flew by too fast.

Finally we saw a sign for a Lake!  Possibly a mirage but we rode a few miles off the Interstate and my God, a small artificial lake surrounded by green trees! Nice shaded picnic tables (the sun is unmerciful but the place seems sheltered from the wind) , a few folks boating and swimming.  While eating out PB&J’s we saw turkeys, a coot, a red-headed woodpecker and BOTH an Eastern and Western kingbird, in the same tree (but at different times).  Well, it was the only water we saw for hours, the birds knew what they were doing.

Amazingly just about the time you leave the panhandle and enter Oklahoma you start seeing green plant life. At least traffic was light; however, as we got east the truck traffic crescendoed.

We had no motel reservations, it was just uncertain where we’d stop each night (basically we’d stop when I’d begin to go blind).  Being a Marriott Rewards person I would call their number a few hours out and ask for a Marriott property at our target town, trying to get a room for under $100—and which was also “pet friendly.”  In one case Marriott told me they had only one place that accepted pets and it was $135. OK, close enough.  We get there pretty late, both really tired;  they bring up my reservation OK—but they want to charge an extra $100 for Bella—this was not mentioned on the phone.  I give the poor receptionist hell but it’s not his fault—except this is so much more than any place we have stayed.  I tell them to stuff it and we go looking for another hotel.  The next place doesn’t take pets but the guy at the desk is very kind and solicitious, tells us that a nearby Baymont Inn takes pets. We find it (Mary sees it, thank God, I am driving in a mental fog) and the lady at the desk says she can get me a room with Bella included for approximately one third  what Marriott wanted; enough to make me question my brand loyalty.  Chili’s  is right next door, I order one of their 4-sliders plates and have one of the great beers of my life while waiting, go back to Mary and we eat a very late dinner with great joy and relief.  And the room was really nice.

Eastward, eastward as Oklahoma turns to Arkansas and Arkansas to Tennessee, and the landscape continually getting greener and the air getting wetter (of course the two are correlated) . When we hit east Tennessee we really feel like we are home.

***

We are home (have been for a couple of days) and I’m writing out on my deck.  Here’s what it looks like if I look up:

Oh, my.  Lush green trees. There’s an ovenbird singing and a pileated wood pecker yowping in the woods and I can hear Mary’s falls, a small cascade, below. The air is cool and the sun is merciful.  Yes, the air feels like I’m immersed in gumbo.  But oh God what a pleasure to sleep in our own bed. We had begun to get pretty homesick by the end.

What a privilege—to have been able to see some of the most beautiful and magical places in the world and yet return to our own place and be joyful to be here.  Need to cut the grass…

There is a 4’ black snake that we discover periodically around the property, but we haven’t seen him for many months, were afraid he was gone. Today I took the cover off our grill ( after a month) and there he was (or probably she), in a nest made amongst the control knobs:

Ah, the frisson at first sight; but a nice snake, a beautiful snake.  Welcome home.

Lagniappe: The Vermillion Cliffs

The adventure part of a trip like this is discovery and the unexpected. Finding a great little place to eat, like a Cajun-style fish place--in Oklahoma city!   Or Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah?  We just went there because we had time and it was close--it was wonderful.

This was the case with The Vermillion Cliffs.  We needed a place to stay 2 nights while we visited the  Grand Canyon.  The fancy lodge on the North Rim itself has to be reserved many months, even years, in advance. Our guide book suggested two lesser places, both built many years ago and much less grand, one at the crossroads that is the entrance to the GC and this other little lodge called the “Lee’s Ferry Lodge”, out on the desert much further away from the park entrance.    So we called and it worked out we had to spend our first night at Lee’s Ferry then move to the other, closer place the second night.

So we get to the crossroads, see our motel for the following night, and then turn east away from the road to the GC, in fact taking the road we would take 2 days later to head for Flagstaff.  And driving down off the plateau toward the vast desolate desert that we have so generously bequeathed to the Navajo nation, we had one of those Great Western Entrance experiences: rounding a curve and cutting through a gap, bam! Spread out for miles across the desert before us in a grand panorama in the late-afternoon sun: the Vermillion Cliffs: we had no idea.

There was a corner butte that I just loved:  massive, lonely, a Tolkienesque "fastness":

Note  the town of Vermillion Cliffs (all of it) at the base.

These rocks have a wondrous color any time of day. And hoodoos.

Our Motel was right at the foot of the escarpment, and had this look like an old worn-out movie set, a really old-timey western bar, pool table, grill and rooms.  It was SUCH a refuge from the brilliant blast of desert light outside, low ceilings, shutters closed,  worn dark wood, about 200 brands of beer, and a really informal atmosphere.  Food was, uh, hearty.  At one point I was trying to hurry Mary to pick something from the menu and the waitress told me to shut up and give her time. The sisters rule.  Rooms had cowhides on the floor and a horseshoe over the door.  God, it was perfect.

Lee's Ferry Lodge

A few miles east the highway crosses the Colorado River at Marble Canyon; the bridge built there is the only crossing for many, many, miles, its construction was a huge deal, opening up this entire area to the world.

Top: looking south from the original brdge, now a pedestrian crossing.  Bottom: looking north up Marble Canyon. Its a loong way to the next river crossing.

Now, actually, we saw all these delights again, on our way home after staying at the other lodge; but the fact that we stayed at the Cliffs and had time to walk around gave us time to really be there and experience them, as opposed to “windshielding” them on our way to Flagstaff.  There’s a lesson there.