Utah continues to be a state full of surprizes for me. I swung back north through Utah, with a vague plan of then turning east through Colorado, and visiting Arches National Park along the way. Unexpectedly, I also found myself driving through Monument Valley in southern Utah. Somehow I had managed to completely miss the fact that this place existed on my maps, but it certainly made for a lovely drive, and I’d like to see more of it again…
First let me start by saying that winter is coming in the US, and even if I am in the southwest, the temperature at night is dropping quickly. The night after leaving Tucson I was sleeping in my FJ at a truck stop, and in spite of having put a new quilt over my thick blanket, and wearing fleece, a warm hat, and mittens, I was freezing! In the morning I found that the temperature was just below freezing and…
Most people have probably heard of the Airplane Boneyard in the Arizona desert, a place where the US military keeps retired or damaged aircraft. I had seen it on TV or in pictures a number of times, but had never realized that it was open — or at least partially open — to the public. In fact, the tour is run by the Pima Air and Space Museum, which I think is even more interesting than the Boneyard itself! I…
Since I was heading back west to Tucson, I really couldn’t just drive by the turnoff to Tombstone without visiting it for a couple of hours. After all, this is where the shoot out at the OK Corral happened, where American childhood play of cowboys and Indians came from! Interestingly, Tombstone is still a thriving little town of just over 1,300 people, and the streets outside the old historic district have a decidedly modern feel to them. Ah, but the…
I’ve always been a bit curious about the early people that populated the Americas, from the first primitive peoples to the complex societies of the American Indians. So when I discovered that the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument was not that far away, I took the opportunity to visit them. [Note: The correct pronunciation is “Hee-la.”] The dwellings are reached by a lovely drive though the mountains of western New Mexico, which turned out to be surprisingly cool and damp,…