Plans, There is Only One Thing Certain About Them, They are Always Changing!

Since we had been restricted from going down into Canyonlands White Rim Trail with Salsa and since camping ended up being prohibited on Chickens Corner Trail in Moab, we decided that with the Cold Fronts/Severe Storms moving into the Northern States that we should just head back South and down into AZ for the weekend.

We drove until we couldn’t drive anymore that night, and ended up staying outside of Monument Valley in Kayenta.  We woke up, looked at the Map, and decided we should go check out Canyon de Chelly.

After Canyon de Chelly, we thought it would be fun to explore The Petrified Forest. On our way from Canyon de Chelly to The Petrified Forest, we took smaller county back roads instead of the highway. The nice smooth paved road we had been on, brusquely changed into a grated clay road with deep ruts. The road was very strange and a little eerie considering we were still on Navajo Reservations, nevertheless it was awesome! It was the perfect little adventure that we had been looking for in the day.

Our little backcountry road safely took us back out to the highway and on to The Petrified Forest we went. To most, the word “Forest” would yield an image of dense trees and greenery. The Petrified Forest however, is anything but; it is the epitome of an Oxymoron.

The Petrified Forest is home to Arizona’s Painted Desert, the Badlands, and has some of World’s largest and most colored concentrated Petrified Woods. The drive through was intriguing to say the least.

We continued on back down the Rim, through Payson, and into Scottsdale where we ventured around a bit on some back roads before arriving back at my grandparents house.

We enjoyed a wonderful, unexpected extra weekend with my mom, grandparents, and uncles. We spent the weekend barbequing, laying out in the sun, and relaxing.

Salsa spent the weekend hanging out in the flower bed and did some relaxing tooJ

Oops! How could I Forget A Whole Day?

I got a little ahead of myself blogging the last few days, I completely forgot to put up pictures from our adventure back from Zion to Lake Powell. 

When we left Zion we headed to Pink Sand Dunes National Park in Utah. However, when we arrived, because it had been snowing for the past day or so, the entire Pink Sand Dunes pretty much had a white blanket of snow lying on top of them. Needless to say, since the dunes were covered in snow, we continued on down to Kanab where we stayed the night.

Sunday morning we woke up thought that this might be an opportune time to fill up the spare gas can… The towns at this point in road trip were truly getting far and few in between each other!

After filling up the spare, we were off for another days adventure of who knew what. We knew our final destination was to be in Lake Powell for the night (for our reservations of Antelope Canyon the next morning) other than that, we had no idea. We took out the map and looked at what might be an interesting route for the day. We saw that we were decently close to the North Rim Grand Canyon. Excited as could be, we headed to the North Rim.

I have at this point in my life been to the Grand Canyon a handful of times (its soooo beautiful I cant help but want to share it with everyone who comes visits AZ). In all the times that I have been to the Grand Canyon though, I have never ever been to the North Rim. I was ecstatic for us to have this opportunity. As we neared the Canyon, we saw signs that said “Grand Canyon North Rim closed for Winter.” (Sooooooooooo bummed-Especially since we are currently in the 6^th week or so of Spring?!)

We pulled out our trusty maps and see that there is a scenic route that we had not yet taken from Utah into Arizona. As we were going down the scenic by-way, we saw off the side of the road a set of worn two-tracks that led up to a vista.

We couldn’t resist…we turned the truck around and drove up to the top of the vista. The view from the top was captivating and vast. We could have hung out there all day long, it was incredible, but we knew we couldn’t.

There was much land ahead of us for us to still go explore.

While heading back into AZ, we drove through Lee’s Ferry; home to Balancing Rock and Vermillion Cliffs. The landscape we saw while driving through this area was unquestionably serene and picturesque.    

We stopped to have a little picnic by the Colorado River and then headed back towards Lake Powell.















On our way back to Powell, we stopped at one of our favorite little overlooks right outside of Tuba City. We were able to enjoy it a little more this time since the sun was shining and there were no threatening storms near us.

Salsa was also really happy with the weather change and enjoyed a little exploring around herself.

After our little rest stop, we were feeling a little snacky. What better to have than some homemade deer jerky? Good thing we were lucky enough that Bruce (Joshs 2^nd Cousin) had given us some for the road trip…SOOOOO DELICIOUS!

When we got back into Lake Powell, there were no actual campgrounds for us to stay in so we ended up staying in a hotel. By the time we got all settled in we were definitely hungry for dinner, and even though we were staying in a hotel, we still wanted to “camp out.” So, we got out our Coleman Grill made ourselves our hamburgers and enjoyed the sunset.