Arizona
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Yuma Sunset
Palm trees tower over a street of manufactured homes at sunset in one of Yuma’s many retirement communities. Warm winters and plenty of activities (we floated in an outdoor pool and enjoyed line dancing) make it a magnet for seniors from across North America.
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Cabbage Harvesters
Yuma, Arizona grows most of the green vegetables that Americans eat from November to March. It’s impressive how quickly a line of workers can cut and toss heads of cabbage onto a conveyer belt – for hours at a time. It also shows how dependent we are on low-paid workers for basic foods.
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Date Palms
We visited our friend Deanie in Yuma, Arizona for a couple days, where we walked through a grove of date palms, learned how labor intensive it is to produce the sweet fruits, and sampled a date shake. Most of these Medjool dates are shipped to the Middle East, where they are highly prized.
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Cactus Country
As we began our return trip from Gallup to Spokane, our first stop was with a friend in the Phoenix area. She showed us the artsy town of Cave Creek in the nearby hills, surrounded by cacti that gave it the feel of the Wild West.
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Dorothy’s Weaving
Elaine found a lovely woven rug in a Navajo Market near Monument Valley, and the store owner shared this image of Dorothy Begay, a local weaver who created it out of homespun and dyed yarn from her own sheep. The image of a cornstalk with birds now hangs in our hallway at home.
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Monument Valley Sunset
Looking east into Monument Valley at the end of our tour, the sunset light touches the buttes with orange fire. From left are West Mitten Butte, East Mitten Butte, and Merrick Butte in a classic view from the visitor’s center.
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Totem Pole Reflection
Off-roading through Monument Valley, our guide Harry pointed out this view of the Totem Pole and nearby spires reflected in a small pool. This image was taken with my phone just 6 inches off the surface of the water to capture the distant spires and their mirror image.
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Sleeping Dragon
Several tropical storms had drenched Monument Valley a couple weeks before our visit, leaving standing pools that acted like mirrors. This shows Sleeping Dragon Mesa and its reflection in the afternoon light.
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Ear of the Wind
Harry, our Navajo guide through the valley, took us off-roading to this hard-to-reach arch called the Ear of the Wind. Framing it above a dead tree made for an interesting image.
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Monument Valley
Our visit to Monument Valley the day before Thanksgiving, one of the first stops was at John Ford’s Point, where that director of classic western films made this view synonymous with The West. For $10 you could sit on the horse and wear a cowboy hat for a keepsake photo.
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Canyon de Chelly
Just before Thanksgiving, we drove north through the Navajo Reservation to look down into Canyon de Chelly (pronounced d’SHAY). The ancestral home of Pueblo, Hopi and now Navajo peoples, this shows Spider Rock standing rising nearly 1,000 feet above the canyon floor.
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Long Logs
Near the southern entrance to Petrified Forest National Park, we took a two-mile hike on the Long Logs trail past scenes like this of Triassic-era fossilized logs. Hard to picture this dry landscape as a tropical rainforest, but that’s why there are so many trees preserved here.
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Petrified Wood
The southern half of the park is covered with chunks of petrified wood from the forest that covered this landscape over 200 million years ago. Soaking up groundwater with silica, over time they fossilized into quartz, with the vivid colors created by different minerals.
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The Teepees
Several of these colorfully banded pyramids in Petrified Forest NP are called The Teepees. The park was established as a national monument by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. After adding more acreage over the years, it was upgraded to a national park in 1962.
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Petroglyphs
Halfway through Petrified Forest NP is an overlook where you can see Newspaper Rock, covered with over 650 petroglyphs carved into the rock by native residents and visitors, some over 2,000 years ago!
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Nizhoni Point
Another view of the “Painted Desert” worth contemplating is this one from Nizhoni Point on the road through Petrified Forest NP. Nizhoni is the Navajo word for beautiful, and these rock formations certainly live up to their name.
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Painted Desert
Our first weekend at Rehoboth, we drove an hour west to explore Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. The first view you get of the park is this panorama out over the “Painted Desert” – a 200 million-year old wilderness of sedimentary rocks full of colorful hues and tones.
Words Are Inadequate 