Under Pressure
National Park Road Trip – Days 16-18
Grand Canyon – Petrified Forest
We arrived at the KOA Flagstaff for after-hours check-in around 9:30 p.m. This means the office is closed, but they leave all the stuff you need to find your space and a map of the park outside the office. After leveling the trailer, we take a look at the map to see where the bathroom was so we could get ready for bed. We could easily brush our teeth in the trailer (like I do all the time), but it’s nice to have some more room every now and then, when it’s available. On the map, the bathroom that was closer to our site had a big X through it and the only other bathrooms were near the office. No joke, this was about a quarter mile from our site. No big deal in normal temperatures, but when there is still some snow on the ground and it’s about 28 degrees outside overnight, not so much fun when you have to go to the bathroom half asleep in the middle of the night with your jammies on. After further investigation, we found out that the bathrooms were getting ready to undergo some construction (not mentioned during booking), and while the women’s bathroom was still open, the men’s was not. And this, folks, is why we left the Flagstaff KOA 3 days earlier than we had planned. I’m so glad we left though, otherwise we would have missed out on the absolutely awesome Meteor Crater RV Park, but that’s a little later in my story.
After leaving the KOA and letting them know why we were moving on, we drove up to Grand Canyon National Park. I have been to the Grand Canyon maybe 3 times before, but G had never been. It was a gloomy morning with lots of fog. Unfortunately for us, fog does not equal optimum viewing quality of the canyon. To stall for time waiting for the fog to clear, we made sandwiches on the side of the road so we could eat while walking around the Bright Angel Trailhead. When you are driving large distances over varying elevations, things in your fridge, in your bathroom bag, in your pantry, and even in places you wouldn’t expect, build up pressure. The mustard was at its height of pressure that morning when I opened it up and it exploded all over me. Everyone has asked for a picture, and normally I would have no problem showing embarrassing photos of myself, but this blog will contain no images of G or I where you can recognize us, no references to our names, no indication of who we are in real life, except a detailed travel log of our experiences on the road. Obviously, this is for our own privacy, but also for our own safety and the safety of our home in Portland. Maybe one day I’ll post the picture long after we are back from this adventure. Maybe.
After cleaning up and having G pick mustard out of my hair with a paper towel, we started walking around Bright Angel. The sun popped out every now and then, but for the most part was swathed in low fog. In many older National Parks there are historic lodges and I absolutely love going to check them out. At Bright Angel Lodge there are little casitas that you can stay in right on the edge of the Grand Canyon. They are incredible and one of these days we will stay there, right on the canyon rim. The lodge itself, built in 1935, has a little store, an interesting exhibit on the Harvey Girls, and a bar area. So of course we thought, “When in Rome” and sat down at the bar to do a little more waiting for the visibility to improve. G ordered a local beer and I got a Peppermint Patty (Hot Chocolate with Peppermint Schnapps), perfect for a chilly day. We quickly finished those and got outside just in time for the sun to pop out, the fog to clear, and we ended up getting the best pictures of the canyon after the pit stop at the lodge. I think G said it perfectly on an Instagram post, that beer is usually the correct answer.
The beautiful Grand Canyon revealing herself after grabbing a beer at the Bright Angel Lodge.
Please don’t judge us for not taking a hike down into the canyon. We wanted to see Wupatki National Monument on the same day and we were already close to not making it to the visitor center before it closed. The goal of this trip is not to see everything as fast as we can, because we would miss so much. However, we also are limited in what we do with the weather and future reservations that we have made, meetups with friends and family along the road whose schedule isn’t as fluid as ours, etc.
Wupatki National Monument
After leaving the Grand Canyon area we drove to Wupatki and toured around several of the ruins. Some visitor centers close at 4, some at 4:30, and some at 5. This one happened to close at 5 pm and we lost track of time in the Puebloan structures. The visitor’s center is a few miles drive from the first structures we got out to look at. We had very little time to get to the visitor’s center and in the best scenario would get there right at closing. As it turns out, they had just locked their doors as I ran up the sidewalk. The park ranger was taking down the flag and he said he would let me get my passport stamp as long as I assisted him with folding up the flag. I did my flag duty, stamped my passport, and we were on our way. Afterward, while technically we also drove through Sunset Volcano National Monument, it was closed. The sun was going down and we didn’t get to see the volcano, though there is significant lava flows visible for a few miles on the side of the road. We didn’t mark Sunset Volcano as an official stop in our passport. Ethics is part of my fabric so no cheating will happen on this trip. That’s my girl scout promise. We pulled into the Meteor Crater RV Park after sunset and made Camp Pizzas for dinner, a Camp Buy Me Love staple. I can’t state enough how much we loved this RV park. The bathrooms were phenomenal and each had their own shower stall and toilet. They had laundry facilities, a gas station and store, and each space was perfectly groomed. It’s sparse with very little vegetation, but that didn’t matter to us since we were only there overnight.
Camp Buy Me Love Specialty - Camp Pizzas
Meteor Crater RV Park is named so because of the giant meteor crater located about 5 miles from the park. It is privately owned and has a huge facility, including a slightly awkwardly placed Subway. They have cheesy signs, even cheesier tchotchkes, and we had a ball. Not to mention the incredibly awesome hole in the ground created by a meteor some 50,000 years ago. After touring the grounds in the morning, we left there to do another cheesy tourist rite of passage by “Standin’ on the corner in Winslow, Arizona”. If you’re in the area you must do it. It takes no effort and you will never regret the awesome picture like the one below of @theyappycampers.
Standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.
Also in Winslow, we got the “Harvey Girls” experience at The Turquoise Room at the former Harvey Hotel, now La Posada Hotel. We shared the Crispy Pork Carnitas and Navajo Taco “Fry Bread” with Churro Lamb and Charro Beans. What an awesome splurge roadside meal! We usually make sandwiches for the road, but I think I had run out of bread or some other sandwich staple, which obviously worked out in our favor. You will not regret a meal there and it’s a beautiful hotel to boot.
La Posada Hotel
With full bellies, we drove over to Petrified Forest National Park. The park ranger said 6 simple words when we pulled up that melted my heart, “We are a dog friendly park”. We cheered. We smiled. We thanked the ranger. Score!!! I sort of already knew this about Petrified Forest, but I was blown away that we were told this at the fee booth before we got in. Usually you must ask which (if any) trails are dog friendly as well as where they can go in the park. My aunt got me an awesome book, “Your Guide to the National Parks” by Michael Joseph Oswald. There is detailed information about the parks in there, but he always has a special Pets section that tells us where we can take them. Petrified Forest is extremely easy to view in one afternoon as there is one road that goes right through it. There are short and medium length loop trails at many of the lookouts and behind the visitor center so we had a blast stopping at each one throughout the park. Once you cross the 40 you enter the Painted Desert. I grew up right behind the Painted Desert Golf Course in Las Vegas, but I never knew what it was named after. We didn’t have wonderful visibility, but 5 minutes of sun on the hills was all we needed. We got some lovely early sunset pictures and finished up at the Painted Desert Visitor Center. All in all, Petrified Forest is a wonderful park, but the happiest tourists of the day were @theyappycampers. They felt like special visitors to a park with open arms to four-legged family members, and we are grateful.
Happy doggies in Petrified Forest National Park.
Highlights:
Bright Angel Lodge
Wupatki National Monument
The Turquoise Room at La Posada Hotel
Standin’ on a Corner in Winslow, Arizona
Petrified Forest National Park (if you have dogs and have to choose between parks)
