04-07-10

Okay, I have put this off as long as I can. We are in Blanding Utah and finally have Internet access so I am out of excuses.

We left Quartzsite Monday morning and drove to Wickenburg where we went south and took a cutoff to I-15. Along the way Patti got a picture of Saguaro cactus almost ready to bloom.

Maybe someday we will see them in full bloom.

We drove north on I-15 to Munds Park, which is about 15 miles south of Flagstaff.
there is a very nice RV park there and the area is very alpine and beautiful.
We got a spot for the night at Munds Park RV Resort.

We thought that we might spend a couple of days in the area, but after we got set up we took a ride to check out the forest roads. Unfortunately all the dirt roads were closed and gated. Apparently they don't open the roads until after Memorial day.

That's to bad because I was looking forward to doing some jeeping in the forest for a while.
We left Munds Park Tuesday morning and drove across many miles of desert

to Chinle AZ, the gateway to Canyon de Chelly National monument. There is a free camp ground in the monument so we decided to spend a couple of nights there.
Wednesday, morning we headed out to drive around Canyon de Chelly.

There are two roads that you can drive to see the canyon. One is called the north rim and the other is the south rim road. Both roads are paved and have view spots where you can park and walk a short distance to look into the canyon. We decided to take the the north rim road first.
We took lots of pictures.

Here are a fiew of them;

We also got some shots of ruins in the canyon.


Near the last turnout we found a little dirt road heading for the canyon so we took it, looking for a nice spot to have lunch lunch.
All day the wind had been blowing verry hard so we wanted a place out of the wind. We got very lucky and found the perfect spot, surounded by Pinyon pines and Junipers. on the edge of a 600 ft cliff with a view of the canyon.

After lunch we went back to the RV for a little rest and a hope, that later in the day the wind would lessen a bit.

No such luck. If any thing, the wind blew harder.
Around 5:00 we headed out the south rim road.
Here are some of the pictures from that ride;

There were also ruins in this part of the canyon.


Patti did get some pictures of wild life (well semi wild anyway). Here is a goat eating on the edge of about a 500 foot drop off.
We checked on a guided jeep tour through the canyon. If you drive your own Jeep it costs $25.00 ber hour. I decided to pass on that tour, thank you very much.

We have been having a little trouble with the starter on Plan "B".
There are little to no services in Chinle so I figured if I could get it to start we would drive non stop to Blanding Utah where I know there is a repair shop.
After several attemps the engine started and off we went. Along the way Patti got several pictures out of the window as we drove along.





We arived at Blanding around 11:00 and got a spot at the Blue Mountain RV park.
After we set up, we drove the jeep back to Bluff Utah for lunch at the Twin Rocks Cafe.

On the way back to blanding we took a couple of dirt roads.
Patti got some pictures of the San Juan River.

One "road" ended on a bluff with a nice view.

OK, I am now going to go clean the battery terminals and see if that fixes the starting problem on Plan "B".