USA road trip, Post 13: Dirt roads, ditches and detours

Friday, July 9th, began with a late breakfast at our hotel in Tuba City before we set off for Bryce Canyon in Utah, which should have been a 4.5 hour drive away (yes, that "should have" means there's a story coming up!). We had arrived in Tuba City after dark the night before, so as we left we were amazed by the landscape outside the town (which, despite its name, is not a "city" at all). It was dry and barren, but the dirt and rock formations in the surrounding fields were vivid shades of red and orange and brown. It was quite spectacular!

We didn't take any photos near Tuba City, but we saw many awesome rock formations during our drive - here are some from later on...





For lunch we had quite the fun experience... We stopped at a fast food restaurant where we pulled into a parking space equipped with a menu, intercom and credit card reader; ordered and paid while sitting in the car; had the food brought out to us by a waitress; and ate in the car! This takes the laziness associated with eating fast food to a whole new level!!





Soon after lunch, we came across a hydro-electric dam with this stunning combination of orange rock and turquoise water...





More of the southern Utah landscape as seen from the car...

As we drove along enjoying the scenery, Tommy (our GPS) directed us to take a right turn, thus leaving the main road we had been on. Although this seemed a little unusual, it was a bitumen road so we followed his instructions, assuming this was part of the "fastest route" option we had selected. All went well for the next 20 miles or so, and the scenery got even more impressive...

Suddenly, we came to the end of the bitumen. As the choice was between back-tracking 20 miles or forging ahead and hoping for the best - and the day was getting on - we decided to forge ahead.



Not overly comfortable about this development, we soon became not overly comfortable in a physical sense as well. The road was so bumpy that it caused this piece of the interior trim to come loose!...



As we drove further, keeping it nice and slow due to all the jarring, we passed only one other vehicle. But on the bright side, there were signs beside the road counting down the miles to a particular ranch (although we were hoping this road wasn't actually the ranch "driveway"!). The last sign we saw said 4 miles until the ranch.

Then...



Yes, not driving quite slow enough + swerving to miss a rock + soft sand at the edge of the road = car gets stuck in a ditch.





Well, we tried everything we could think of. We tried backing it out, lifting the front end up, digging around the wheels, shoving sticks and stones under the front right tyre to get traction... all to no avail. The underbelly of the car was firmly lodged on the edge of the road.

To illustrate the extent of this predicament, here are the facts:

The fuel gauge showed less than a quarter of a tank left.
Ben discovered the rental car was missing its jack.
It was a very hot day.
Our liquid supplies were three or four partly-filled water bottles and some ginger beer.
We had passed only one vehicle in the last half hour - and it was heading away from the ranch.

Yes, we were rather worried. (Although you may note I was still photographically documenting this for you, in case we made it out alive.)

Anyway, after what was probably only 30 minutes, but felt like much longer...



Rescuers!!! HURRAH!

I was the first one to see them arrive, as I was up on the bank and Ben and Delle were probably working on one of the abovementioned removal-from-ditch techniques. I believe I screeched rather loudly and went leaping down the bank and out into the middle of the road waving my arms. Pretty sure they wouldn't have driven past even without that effort, but oh well! :P

As it turned out, we actually ended up with LOTS of rescuers...



Part 1 of removal-from-ditch effort...

Part 2 of removal-from-ditch effort...

I didn't get the actual removal-from-ditch moment on video, but here's a photo:



And the ditch, relieved of its big blue burden...



Our kind rescuers were from Florida but had a farm nearby, and they informed us that this section of the road was the best part of it! Apparently it got muddy and boggy further in, and only 4WDs should be used. We were urged to backtrack after all... and backtrack is what we did!

We were pretty glad to see the edge of the bitumen again.



After stopping to fuel up and buy some icecreams in Kainab, UT, we continued on our way to Byrce Canyon. We'd lost a couple of hours due to our eventful detour, but luckily we would still have about 2 hours of daylight left by the time we reached Bryce. And I'll leave that for the next blog entry!

USA road trip, Post 12: Grand Canyon

On Thursday, July 8th, we drove all the way from Los Angeles to the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, about 8 hours east. Much of this drive was through the Mojave Desert, which was a lot of very hot nothingness. At one stage we were worried we would run out of fuel before we came upon civilisation again... but then we found a service station in the middle of nowhere, where we fuelled up and ate lunch. Check out the sign they had on their wall!



We reached the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in the late afternoon. The South Rim is the one that most people go to (as opposed to the North and West Rims), and where there are more facilities and accommodation options. (However, we had another 1.5 hours to drive before reaching our hotel for the night - the convenience of staying at the Canyon did not outweigh the inflated prices in our minds!)

Here's a panorama showing our first glimpse into the Grand Canyon - not from an official viewpoint; we just pulled over when we saw it through the trees beside the road. The panorama is 7 photos wide (probably about a 150 degree view). It's quite a feeling to just walk through the trees and see this in front of you!



We went into a visitor centre at the first viewpoint we came to. There we saw a model of the Canyon, and I flipped through a book about the 600+ people who have died there (most of them by falling in or not being properly prepared for hiking). After reading that, I made Ben promise not to take unneccessary risks to get the "perfect photo", or try to scare me by pretending to fall off the wall - as people have died doing just that!! We also listened to a ranger give a talk on how the Canyon was formed.













The Grand Canyon is 277 miles (446 km) long, up to 18 miles (29 km) wide, and over a mile deep (1.83 km/ 6000 feet). Our photos are not going to convey the reality of that to you! The thing we've most often heard said about the Grand Canyon is that "photos don't do it justice". This is absolutely spot on... for while photos do indicate that the Canyon deserves the adjective "Grand", they cannot bring to life how it feels to stand on the edge of it. It is immense, spectacular, powerful, beautiful... and head-shakingly, jaw-droppingly enormous. A masterpiece indeed.

It is absolutely the most impressive natural formation I have ever seen in my life.

The South Rim consists of many viewpoints/ lookouts along the road that winds along the edge of the Canyon. Here's what we saw from various viewpoints as we drove east along the South Rim...





































Sunset...













And that's the Grand Canyon for you! (Check out the Picasa album to see more photos.)

After sunset, we set off for Tuba City, Arizona, were we were staying the night before continuing on to Bryce Canyon in Utah the next day. On the way, we ate a huge dinner in the restaurant of a native-owned craft centre in Cameron, AZ. I had "chicken fried steak" - so unhealthy but I had to try it at least once while in America! Ben enjoyed a stew and a type of American Indian flatbread. And Delle's enchiladas were covered in lots of that orange cheese she loves...



Our accommodation in Tuba City was the Moenkopi Legacy Inn and Suites. This was a brand new hotel that had opened in the time I was organising this trip... when I first started searching for hotels there were only a handful of poorly-reviewed options in Tuba City, so we were originally going to drive a couple more hours that night! The Moenkopi Inn is native owned and staffed, and the first hotel to be built on Hopi tribal land in 50 years. We certainly recommend it if you're ever in the area!