5 National Parks in 3 weeks - Part I

On our way to Death Valley we met up with Jim and Della just north of Barstow at a KOA campground.  We decided to go to dinner at Peggy Sues Diner!  We have all passed the restaurant many, many times on our way to somewhere but never stopped!  Well, what a treat!  It is such a cute place.  The table center-piece was so clever…see picture!  We had a good dinner and really enjoyed looking at all the movie memorabilia, the gift shop and the back yard filled with ducks and a dinosaur or two!  There is a huge parking lot so we decided that next time we would just dry camp in the parking lot and have dinner and breakfast there next time!

This is the table center-piece!

We arrived in Death Valley on March 6th!  There were 5 motorhomes and 1 couple in the Furnace Creek motel!  Ted and I lucked out and had full  hookups!  Kelli Green, one of Ted's and Jim and Della Crownover's high school mates, stayed with us in our motorhome!  The first night she slept on the bed made on our dinette, Sophie came out with me and never saw her under the covers.  A little later Kelli woke up and scared Sophie to death!  LOL she barked and barked at Kelli until we could calm her down!  The next night we showed her Kelli going to be so she wasn't quite so scary first thing in the morning!

The group shared the evenings having happy hour and a fire, and of course, tall tales!  It was really fun catching up with the group!  One of the days we had lunch with Jim and Della at the Furnace Creek Inn restaurant after craft fair shopping!  As always, a great view and a delicious lunch!  Kelli was out riding her bike that day so we went to the Inn for lunch a second time with Kelli!

We left Death Valley on March 11^th followed by Jim and Della in their motorhome!  We were continuing our road trip!  We spent one night in Las Vegas before going to the Grand Canyon!  We spent four days at the Grand Canyon!

The Grand Canyon was a little chillier than Death Valley and beautiful as always!  We spent most of our time over at the El Tovar, adjoining shops and really relaxing!  It was more crowded than we thought so we used the bus system.  It picks us up at the campground and delivers you many different places in the park!  The first night we tried to sneak in the El Tovar for a nice dinner but they were booked up until 9pm (too late for us old folks)!   We ate pub grub in the bar and had a great time and a great Apple Cobler Pie dessert!

We left the Grand Canyon on the 15^th headed for Canyon De Chelly (pronounced shay).  The original name was Tseyi, the Navajo word for canyon, but with misspellings and pronunciations, became De Chelly!  We stopped for fuel in Kayenta a few miles down the road the wind really picked up and lots of dust!  Jim and Della called us because our slide cover sort of ballooned out while we were driving, but slammed back in a few minutes later.  All was okay with that.  The drive took a lot longer with that wind and Ted and Jim were shot by the time we arrived after fighting the wind.   The campground is first come first served and is dry camping.   It was not full when we got there but lots of campers came and went in the five days we were there! 

This was a first trip to the Canyon for all of us and we were happy the wind stopped the next morning and it was a beautiful sunny day!  We took a drive on the “south rim” of the Canyon.  It is a really pretty canyon with a lot of history.  For nearly 5,000 years people have lived in this canyon.  Today there are still Navajo families living in the canyon farming and raising livestock!  Our drive brought us to Spider Rock and Face Rock.  The "story" is that Face Rock would tell Spider Woman who the naughty children are and Spider Rock would take care of them!  Sort of like our boogeyman stories!

Also on the south rim drive we could see the beautiful canyon floor and found time to do a little shopping from the Navajo vendors selling their jewelry and pictures.  Meet Miles (brother of Niles and Giles LOL):

On Monday we took a tour with Leander Staley!  He is a young Navajo with a wife and child.  His family has a lot of history in the Canyon. His Dad owns property in the canyon, farms and is a little political and his mother becoming an anthropologist with the National Park Service.   The two sides didn’t mix and ended in divorce.  He was a great tour guide and very knowledgeable in the Navajo culture due in part to his in-laws as well as his his extended family. We were in a jeep flying across the canyon floor and through the river!  We saw many petroglyphs and ancient ruins, none of which were made by the Navajo but by the Pueblo and Hopi Indians. 

Tuesday was so windy it was a good stay at home day!  The winds really blew and the dust so strong.  We did manage to play some cards in the evenings during our visit to Canyon De Chelly.  We were playing cards one night when a horse walked over to the motorhome looking around to see what Jim had barbequed the night before!  They free range cattle, horses and dogs in the area!  They usually have a brand on their horses so they know what horse belongs to what family.  There are some wild horses but not many!

Our last day we toured the "north rim" of the canyon.  It has fewer things to see along this route and to really be able to see some of the petroglyphs you want to be there in the afternoon but you don't want to be there on a windy afternoon!   It was still beautiful!

We left Canyon De Chelly on the 20th going north into Utah to Monument Valley.  We went back to Kayenta to stop at the famous Burger King that was home to one of the Navajo Code Talkers.  He has passed away but they have a really nice memorial to him with lots of interesting information!   Moving on to Monument Valley, another beautiful and interesting place to visit!