Friday
October 4th, 2002
Day 170 (page 3)

Start: Bryce Canyon, UT
Finish: Flagstaff, AZ

Miles Today: 303
Miles to Date: 16926
Trooper Mileage: 185847

I could have taken the road south to the north rim of the Grand Canyon, but I have been to the Canyon a number of times. I headed east to Marble Canyon and a crossing of the Colorado River.

Colorado RiverNavaho BridgeI had crossed the Colorado at the beginning of my journey, from Arizona into Nevada at Hoover Dam, 169 days ago - not quite half a year. Now I was crossing it again at the end, over Navaho Bridge, just a few miles downstream of Lee's Ferry.

This is actually the most upstream segment of a chasm which, going downstream, continues to widen and deepen, relentlessly cleaving the Kaibab Plateau, becoming the Grand Canyon itself.

Navaho landFrom the river, traveling south, you are on the Navaho Reservation until just north of Flagstaff. The roadside is dotted with small wooden stands advertising jewelry and rugs for sale - but buyer beware - not everything sold there is actually made by Navaho craftsmen - I suspect a lot comes from China and Taiwan.

The traditional Navaho house is the hogan, an eight-sided single room structure. The old ones were built of logs - a neat trick, since to obtain the logs, they must have traveled for miles up into the mountains, and then had to drag them back somehow. Although some of these have been replaced by more conventional mobile and prefab housing structures, hogans like the one above are still built today with their eight sides, but constructed out of modern building materials.

Some people have said that Navahos are somewhat stand-offish. I have only met a few, but I have not found that to be true. They seem to be a proud people, retaining a sense of their traditional culture, and although poverty remains a problem on their lands, they refuse to succumb to the lures of tribal casinos, assuming (correctly) that the easy money generated could be poisonous to their traditional life.

Sunset Crater

Northern Arizona mountains are for the most part old volcanoes. They are, thankfully, not particularly active. But again, they are not altogether dead, either. Sunset Crater (left) errupted not quite a thousand years ago, covering a large part of northern Arizona with ash. There are bristlecone pines in Arizona, as there are in California. Certain specimens of this tree are amongst the oldest living organisms on the planet. Some in California are 3000 years old. In Arizona, however, none are older than just under 1000 years - probably due to the erruption of Sunset Crater.

Just to the west of Sunset Crater, and just north of Flagstaff, are Arizona's most famous volcanoes, the San Francisco Peaks, almost 12,000 feet high, and home to one of the states two major ski resorts. The sun had just dropped behind them as I was coming out of the Sunset Crater area and heading into Flagstaff.

Once again, I was going to spend the evening with Pat and Paul - they were my first hosts on my first night of wandering, and they were my final hosts before returning to the Valley of the Sun.