All too soon it's home again.

We're home! The run from Ely today was just a milk run. We broke camp at 7:00 a.m. (it would have been sooner but I got into an RV discussion with the camper next door) and, after a quick stop for petrol, headed for the wilds of the Great Basin and that storied "Loneliest Road in America."

First thing we did was plug in our very last book on tape and sit back for twelve disks full of what appeared to be a very well written murder mystery. Alas it was not to be as the disks had been poorly recorded and spent much time bleeping out every third word or so. Disappointed, we popped in some of our Italian music and just enjoyed the scenery, each other, and, thanks to the Italian tunes, much thoughts of past trips to Italy

Today was one of the finest trips across central Nevada that we can remember. The sky was so blue that it hurt your eyes even with sun glasses. Here and there wild horses roamed close to the highway. The road was so sparsely traveled today that it was an unusual occasion when someone passed us -- well except for the chap in the jeep 4x4 who was going so slow that we had to pass HIM, and that on a hill no less. We figured he was probably a geologist and was trying to memorize the road-cut strata as he drove.

One thing about Nevada, if you like geology it's all there to see. I don't think it's quite as interesting as what we so recently enjoyed on the Colorado Plateau, but with the sparse vegetation, you don't have any trouble finding it.

We didn't do much stopping today so I don't have many photos. However, at lunchtime we stopped at the Rock Creek Butterfield Stagecoach station and I snapped the accompanying photos. Of course there's not much left of the stations but low walls of igneous rock. Any wood that might have been found has long ago been burned up in one wild fire or another.

Not being content with just surveying the surrounding sagebrush-covered playa from the safety of the pull-out. I scooted under the barbed wire and went in search of something to photograph. Interestingly enough, I ran across a lone stone wall that ran for perhaps a hundred feet north to south and didn't appear to have any usefulness at all. Now I know that in times past nearby ranchers would mine the old stations for rock, so maybe the wall had once been an enclosure, but it certainly was odd to see it sitting there at least three or four hundred feet north of the Butterfield Station.

I scanned the hills surrounding the stage station. Wow! How I would love to climb those rugged hills and peer from behind a boulder while pretending to be some lone native American keeping watch on the stage company's employees. It looked to me that the strategic position was definitely those hills and maybe, just maybe, those station keepers had to keep a sharp eye on them as well.

After stopping at the Carson post office and newspaper office to pick up our accumulated mail and papers, we dropped by the local RV park and pumped the holding tanks for the final time. I'm getting so good at this routine that in less than ten minutes we were on our way again.

We arrived home about 2:30 p.m. and set about unpacking all the goodies in the RV before we ran totally out of energy. Tomorrow, we'll finish up the rest and then the only thing left to do is find the fiberglass expert who's been recommended to us so I can see about fixing the damage that some unfriendly cottonwood tree in Sedona inflicted on the upper left corner of the cabover when I innocently passed by just minding my own business.

So, that's all for now. We're not totally sure how soon we'll hitting the road again because there's a million things to do at the ol' homestead this summer. And, come fall, we're probably going to be called back to work for the legislature for six or eight months during the upcoming session. Still, I can tell you where my thoughts are going to be: out there on the open road. So ultimately, we'll be right back here with more adventures. So stay tuned.

Bye, y'all.

Zion and the Steptoe Valley

Kanab, Utah, turned out to be a very pleasant place to park for the night. Nothing special, but a very quiet, well ordered park with well mannered neighbors. The space was easy to back into. The utilities easy were easy to access. And we were parked far enough away from the main highway where we didn't hear much in the way of traffic noise all night. With yet another day dawning clear and bright on the high desert, we pulled up stakes on Wednesday morning and headed north and west toward home. Pausing only to grab a bit of grocery shopping we were soon rolling out of town. We thought we would probably be able to reach Ely, Nevada, by nightfall. That's what we thought.

As is turned out, we made it all the way from Kanab, Utah, to Springdale, Utah on the west side of Zion National Park, a distance of perhaps sixty, maybe seventy miles.

Now that's nowhere near the fewest miles we've every traveled in one day. That distinction goes to a tent-camping vacation a couple of decades ago when we traveled exactly fourteen miles up the California coast in an eight hour period. Still it was somewhat surprising when I sat down this evening to bring this blog up to date and discovered how little miles we'd traveled yesterday.

Maybe you can guess the reason. If not, I'll tell you. It was due to the absolute jaw-dropping magnificence of Zion National Park. Neither one of us had ever been to Zion and the place just completely mesmerized us. Between our constant stopping to take photos and the time we spent at the visitor center and park museum, we simply exhausted our entire travel day. Discretion always being the better part of valor, we soon decided that the RV park in Springdale and a cocktail as the sun went down was just what the travel Gods had in mind.

The RV folks gave us a site right down by the Virgin River where we could hear the water cascading by as we went about our camp duties. The site was largely level and dry and in short minutes we were all set up and enjoying our vodka and cranberry juice "picker-upper" in our lounge chairs. In the background, above the river, the jagged sedimentary cliffs of Zion glowed with the rosy hew of a setting sun. We've never before seen such expressive geology as we encountered in Zion. The towering rocks stuck us as so ancient and humbling that we were moved to seek out a book on the park's geologic history.

This morning, our flirtation with Zion over (if it could ever be over) we once again loaded our gear into the trusty Ford and headed for the open highway. Our goal today (as it had been the day before) was to reach Ely, Nevada, on Highway 50. I sort of guestimated that it would be an easy run and it certainly turned out just so. Traffic was extremely light as we powered up Interstate 15 toward Cedar City. We didn't plan on stopping anywhere and hitting Ely by early afternoon appeared to be a cinch. Appeared to be.

Of course, we hadn't reckoned on running across an attraction in Cedar City called the "Frontier Homestead State Park Museum." Now, if you've been following these on the road tales for any time at all you know that our Tioga almost never passes anything with museum in the name. This time was no exception. Almost before we knew it we were jockeying the motor home into the parking lot and presenting ourselves at the entrance counter. We were about to have our day improved about 200%.

Seeing that we were about the only patrons present, a docent immediately volunteered to take us under his wing and give us about a ninety-minute guided tour of the facility. We looked at each and every exhibit, from wonderful photography, to fabulously-restored wheeled vehicles, from a fully-stocked print shop, to an authentic sheep-sheering facility, from an early-day school house, to an extensive children's hands-on exhibit, from sample weaving, to early and exotic firearms. Gee Wiz, I was in complete heaven. There was lots and lots more, but you get the idea. My favorite exhibits were the wheeled vehicles, especially an authentic "mud wagon," a sort of stripped down stage coach, that was completely restored.

As you might guess, we spent so much time in Cedar City that we were significantly behind schedule by the time we left. In fact, shortly after we left we came across a roadside rest and pulled in for our lunch. Once lunch was finished, it was perhaps 1:30 p.m. and once again we hadn't gone very far since breaking camp that morning. However this time we decided that we were simply going to make Ely or else. So we put the pedal to the metal and our eyes on the road ahead and by 5:30 p.m. we had reached our goal and were pulling up to the KOA.

I have to tell you that if you're on the the road in this part of America you will find no lovelier place to camp than the KOA at the foot of the magnificent Steptoe Valley on Highway 50 near Ely. This Valley and its surrounding mountains are take your breath away beautiful.

Tomorrow we're on the road again, headed west on Highway 50, the self-proclaimed, "Loneliest Road in American." It's a long run to Carson City, at least long for us given our penchant for stopping at the drop of a hat and sampling the local color. We'll be getting up pretty early tomorrow and with any luck will be home by sundown. Not sure when we'll be back on the road again, but there has been some talk of upgrading the RV to something newer now that we're certain that we've become addicted to this RV lifestyle. We just want to say, thanks for coming along and we hope you have a chance to get out there and try this grand adventure for yourself.

Nothing grander than the Grand Canyon

You may remember that Concetta and I decided to move south as the snow seemed to be threatening. Reversing our northerly direction, we moved south from Sedona to Prescott where we hoped to avoid the worst of the weather. The next morning we awoke to a blanket of the white stuff which, fortunately, turned out to be largely melted by the time we broke camp and headed for downtown Prescott for a little museum touring.

Since the weather continued to look threatening we decided to head west, out into the desert regions. We headed south out of Prescott, then circled around, grabbed highway 93, and landed in Kingman (photo left) where the desert skies were oh so blue and the weather warm. Our intention was to continue heading west.

However, reader Richard suggested a visit to Seligman just down the road to the east. Since the weather was so beautiful that next morning after our arrival in Kingman, we decided to take Richard's advice and fudge our decision to move west. The plus was that we'd get to travel a section of old Route 66 in the bargain. So it was Richard's fault that we ended up spending two days at the Grand Canyon.

What? Yes, the weather continued to improve and once we reached Seligman we decided that maybe we'd just keep heading east. Before we knew it, we'd reached Williams, Arizona. At Williams you could easily see that snow had been a recent visitor. Still, the skies were blue, the mountains to the north looked inviting, and we threw caution to the wind and jumped on highway 64 north toward the Grand Canyon.

My initial plan was to just skirt the south end of the park and head over to Cameron. At Cameron we could head north into Utah. We were certain that without reservations there would be no way to find a place to put the RV. That belief came from the last time we visited the Grand Canyon, our very first vacation together back in 1976. When we drove up to the gate we were stopped by a ranger who asked us if we had reservations. When we said no, he told us that the park camping spaces were sold out and we'd have to camp outside the park.

This time the ranger didn't ask if we had reservations so we just rolled right on into the park and, with a modicum of difficulty, wandered around until we came across a state-run dry-camping site called Mather. Not expecting much success, we approached the check-in window and a very pleasant ranger with the appropriate name of Angel asked, "how many nights would you like to stay?"

Well, that was a surprise. We told her just one. But once we paid our very reasonable (being seniors with a senior National Park senior pass card) fee and headed toward our camp site we saw that there were lots and lots of empty camp spots for RVs and we probably wouldn't have a problem changing our minds if we so wanted.

Let me just say, if you're coming to the Grand Canyon, or have just been thinking about coming, don't put it off. Coming in the off season is your best bet. It's cold, yes. There's still lots and lots of people, yes. Reservations are still a good idea, yes. But the experience is one of the grandest adventures you'll ever have.

As you might guess, we decided on the spot to spend a second night in the park. On a whim, we decided to inquire at the full-hookups facility known as "Trailer Village." I didn't hold out much hope, but since we had headed out for a walk and ended up walking right by the aforementioned Village, we stopped in at the office and asked if they had a spot for the next night. As it turned out, they did and we grabbed it right on the spot.

"Trailer Village" is where we'd stay the next time we come. The dry camping part of the experience is nice for its woodsy character, but the water and sewer hookups are so nice we'd just forgo the woodsy character and choose Trailer Village. They even have barbecues set up for the campers.

The next day, our RV set up in "Trailer Village," we set out for one of the very best days we've ever spent in a national park. We went on a ranger walk to discuss geology. We explored the visitor center and book store. We rode the absolutely fantastic bus system to all areas of the park, getting out whenever we wanted to, and visited many of the overlook areas where the scenery will just knock your socks off.

We took tons of photos which, at one point, resulted in Mr. Klutz here coming out second best in a confrontation with an ancient juniper tree. I was tip-toeing around the edge of the canyon, getting as close as possible to the cliff, when I turned smack dab into a low-hanging branch. This resulted in the sharp edge of the branch slicing across my ear and instantly giving me the look of a pirate who came out second best in a sword fight.

For the rest of the morning I had to hold a thoroughly blood-soaked handkerchief to my ear while I dashed from rest room to rest room to launder the handkerchief. I'm sure anyone who walked by me found themselves wondering if a slasher was wandering the park. We even tried putting snow on the cut to stem the flow of blood which worked to an extent but certainly felt weird. By the afternoon my blood had finally clotted and I was able to just occasionally dab the cut. Ever since we started taking the 81mg aspirin daily, as seniors are recommended to do, my blood flows like, well, water whenever I cut myself.

As you might have guessed when no blog entries showed up for several days, we've been unable to find any working WiFi, either at the RV park in Kingman, nor at the two parks in Grand Canyon Park. This morning we're sitting at a very nice RV park in Knabe, Utah. When we exited Grand Canyon Park we drove highway 64 east to Cameron, Arizon, then turned north on Highway 89 toward Utah.

Wow! What a drive! Although Highway 89 is neat for all the great geology you get to see along the way, taking Highway 89A between Bitter Springs and Knabe was the genius stroke. This highway takes you along a geologic feature known as the "Crimson Cliffs." This ruggedly beautiful part of Arizona is just absolutely wonderful. It's like something out of a technicolor TV western. The highway is little traveled, so be prepared. But if you want to see raw western beauty, you have to drive this road.

Once you leave the desert on Highway 89A you begin a climb into the forest that abuts the northern rim of the Grand Canyon, facilities for which are closed this time of year. Still, the view of the desert below from the snaking highway is to die for. This section of road certainly begs a return trip someday when the northern rim is open.

So, here we are in Utah. We're not exactly sure in which direction we're headed (surprise, surprise), but we'll think of something. I'll try and add photos for this blog come nightfall. Right now I've got to turn this computer off and get about my chores. Until we meet again, as Rick Steves would say, keep on travelin'.