For the first stop on my trip with my mom we went to Petrified Forest National Park. It takes like 40 minutes to drive through the park one-way (it’s not a loop), and my mom thought we’d just stay around the north part where we came in, but I wanted to see the whole thing. The north part had some views of mesa’s that were ok. The middle of the park was pretty amazing and had what they called a blue mesa, where there were hills of rock with layers of blue and purple that were sooo pretty. This was definitely my favorite part of the park. Some of the mesas had pieces of petrified wood strewn about on them. 

We drove to another area called the jasper forest, which had a ton of petrified wood. There was a park ranger there who talked with us for a while. I learned that the land used to be a river and when trees fell they were covered by silt. Over years, silica-enriched groundwater seeped into the logs and replaced the wood with quartz. When the Colorado Plateau was uplifted, it brought the petrified logs to the surface and broke them up. The logs are very very old, and the park ranger said the petrified logs were on the surface when dinosaurs were alive. American settlers collected the logs to make sandpaper. Thankfully it was hard to deplete the supply because the logs are so big and heavy that they were hard to transport. John Muir recommended that Theodore Roosevelt protect the logs by making the area a national monument. 

We moved on to another part where we could walk around amongst the logs and get up close to them. They’re pretty cool looking and some of them have nice red coloring. A thunderstorm was rolling in so we hit the gift shop and drove back out through the park. 

On the drive to our next stop there was a nice sunset. My mom was telling me to get pictures of it while she drove. We eventually pulled over to get a picture. 

On Monday we got a tour of Canyon De Chelly National Monument, which is on Navajo Land. We had a Navajo guide take us around the canyon in an off-road vehicle with seats in the back. He told us that just days earlier, the canyon had been closed because there was flooding and a car got stuck in the mud. Our tour guide was funny but kind of hard to understand. He spoke really fast with no pauses between sentences so he sounded like an auctioneer. There was an Italian couple on the tour with us, and I’m sure they understood very little of what he said. 

I thought that the canyon itself wasn’t that interesting; it had solid sandstone walls that weren’t crazy high. The cool thing about this canyon is that it has a bunch of Anasazi (or Puebloan) dwellings in the cliffsides. The dwellings are very old (like a thousand years, I think) and they seem very high on the cliffs, but you can see that the bottom of the canyon was higher when they were built. The Navajo moved into the area a long time after the Anasazi moved out, and the Navajo respected the older culture and did not disturb the ruins. 

There were a few places where we could see petroglyphs and pictographs. Petroglyphs are carved into the rock while pictographs are painted on the rock. Some of them are from the Anasazi and some are Navajo. 

This rock had antelope painted on it. There are a few Navajo families who still live in the valley during the summer and farm. We stopped at a house where there were women selling crafts and food. My mom bought us some fry bread and it was pretty good. We also came across a woman who said she had walked three miles into the valley to sell her jewelry because he car was broken and she needed money to fix it. I bought a dream catcher from her. The whole tour was like four hours long and it was pretty hot because it was the middle of the day and the tour vehicle didn’t have a canopy for shade. It was interesting but I was relieved when it was over. I saw a cat in the parking lot after the tour. There were a lot of stray dogs wandering around the Navajo reservation. Twice, dogs ran out in front of our car while we were driving.

Next we drove to Page, Arizona where we saw Horseshoe bend in the Colorado River. The bend itself is in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, but the parking lot for the viewing area is in the city of Page, so I wasn’t able to use my national parks pass to pay for parking, which I didn’t like. It was a 1.5 mile walk roundtrip to and from the viewing area and it was very hot. I did not think the view was really worth it.

Tuesday morning we went on a boat tour of the Colorado river around Horseshoe bend. It started at the glen canyon dam, and we had to go through security because the dam is vulnerable to terrorism I guess.

My mom originally described this tour as rafting which was not accurate. We were in a motor boat with a big rubber rim that like 20 people could sit on. It was so safe and gentle they didn’t even make us wear life jackets. 

I, by chance, got seated in the front of the boat so I had a great view. I’ve gotten kind of jaded to the sights of the southwest so I didn’t think the canyon was that cool. The walls were solid chunks of sandstone. I think layers are cooler. We went through Horseshoe bend, which was pretty unremarkable from water level. It doesn’t look any different from the rest of the river.  

We stopped at a beach for 40 minutes so people could swim and walk to see some petroglyphs. I saw them quickly and then stood in the water for a while. The whole trip was very hot because it was midday and the sun was beating down right over us. There was no shade on the river and very little wind to cool us down. The river water was a welcome relief. 

Along the way down the river we saw some wild horses. 

The walls of the canyon eventually changed from Navajo sandstone to kayenta sandstone, which is a layered rock that is cooler (in my opinion). 

Right at the end of the trip we got a view of the vermillion cliffs. We got off the boat and took a long bus ride back to where we started and along the way we got some more views of the vermillion cliffs. There were patches of colorful dirt that I thought were really pretty.

Overall I wasn’t a huge fan of this raft trip because it was so long and hot. The trip was like 3 hours on the water, and they told us to get there an hour before the tour started, and we had to take an hour long bus ride back, so it was a VERY long ordeal. I guess the canyon was cool. 

After that we made the long drive to Las Vegas. In Vegas we stayed at a hotel called the Strat which has a big space needle-like tower. My mom said the room was cheap. In the lobby, I experienced a casino for the first time. It felt like being in a dystopian sci fi with all the flashing lights and people smoking inside and the scummy feeling that everyone there is losing money.

The next morning we walked the strip, which was also very hot. My mom really wanted me to see the Venetian because they have a recreation of Venice that is pretty impressive. 

This does look a lot like the Ducal Palace and the Rialto Bridge. 

We also went in the Bellagio and they had an interesting jungle display inside. 

Vegas was interesting. It’s…a lot. Definitely a monument to man’s hubris to build a city like this in a desert. I saw like a dozen showgirls while walking around. There were advertisements everywhere for all the shows being put on. There were a bunch of trucks driving around with advertisements and it appeared that was their only job–they weren’t transporting cargo. I have no interest in gambling but I’d like to come back to vegas someday to see the shows–particularly Drag Race Live, which I saw signs for. 

We drove out of the desert to Ventura, California where we stayed the night and boarded an early morning boat to Santa Cruz Island, which is part of Channel Islands National Park. This park is considered the Galapagos of the US and there are many species of animals native only to the islands. The boat ride over was 1.5 hours and very wavy so a number of people got seasick. It was very windy when we arrived so I went on a 5-mile hike to warm up and see the island. Along the way, I encountered a little island fox. There are a bunch of them around the pier and campsite. They’re not very afraid of people and we were warned to keep a close eye on our bags or the foxes will steal our food. 

I hiked to a point called Potato Harbor and then along the cliffs back to the pier where we arrived. The views were nice I guess but they were pretty similar to other ocean cliffs I’ve seen in California so I wasn’t impressed. 

I wanted to go snorkeling and there’s a company on the island with a little storefront that rents snorkels. Sadly, they were sold out of snorkels when I arrived after my hike. They told me a big group was out right now and they might have some later so I should come back in an hour or two. It was noon. So I checked out the visitor center and then went to the beach to dip my feet in the water. I saw a bunch of people snorkeling and then saw them get out of the water and head towards the rental place. I figured snorkels would be available so I went to the shop at 1 but they said a big group was out right now and that I should come back at 2. I did a little hike up to a viewpoint and then I went to the campground to look for more foxes (and saw none), and then went back to the shop at 2. This time they said that the big group was only coming back now and that they needed to disinfect the snorkels, so they wouldn’t have any available today. I was crushed, but also angry. It’s unlikely that not one person returned a snorkel during the two-hour period when I was waiting. That means they were probably waiting until they had them all returned to sanitize them, and if that’s true, then why did they tell me I could get one if I came back later?! They could have just told me from the start that they were sold out for the day. Very annoying.

Determined to experience the water, I decided to just go for a swim. I had originally planned to rent a wetsuit, but the water temperature was fine once I started swimming. I swam through the kelp forests which were just yards from the shore. The water was clear but I didn’t see anything besides kelp. I didn’t try to open my eyes underwater, but I put my phone in a waterproof case and took pictures and videos with it. The pictures don’t show anything but kelp. I heard one of the people snorkeling say they didn’t see any fish either. Maybe they were scared away. If I was a fish, I wouldn’t want to live in a kelp forest that was getting daily snorkeling tours.

(I tried to attach the video but it’s not working)

We took the boat back to Ventura. They typically see whales and dolphins in the channel but we got unlucky and didn’t see any. I did see a small group of seals jumping out of the water. We drove back to Morro Bay (my parent’s town) and that’s pretty much the end of the road trip. We took a day to relax and wash clothes. Tomorrow we’ll drive up route 1 to San Francisco, where I’ll fly back to Boston. We’ll make some stops along the way but they probably won’t be worth blogging about. If they are, I’ll make a revision to this post. 

This road trip has been really fun. I saw a lot of great stuff and things that were new to me. I saw so much desert stuff that it got kind of unexciting by the end. There were still things I didn’t get to see (like Arches national park) so maybe I’ll revisit this route at a later time. If I do, you’ll definitely hear about it. I’ll end this post with a cat. This is Monkey, the stray cat that my parents feed: