USA 2005

Saturday 30th July 2005 - Departure from Grand Canyon National Park and drive to Hite, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah

We left Grand Canyon NP quite early in the morning and headed east out of the park, following the Desert View road. Our route took us through Northern Arizona, south east along the Little Colorado River to Cameron, then north east up through Tuba City, right through the Navajo Reservation to a town called Kayenta where we stopped for a break from driving and a bite to eat. The Scenery had been fairly arid scrubland in the main, with small (by comparison!) canyons and rocky outcrops here and there.

After Kayenta, we continued north, heading towards the Utah state line. The scenery was improving all the time, with classic "road runner" style red rock outcrops everywhere. The trend continued as we crossed into Utah and continued north west.

One of the most spectacular (and slightly unnerving!) parts of the journey came when we were just passed an area called Valley of the Gods. Our way appeared barred by a line of 1000 foot cliffs that ran on for miles. But no, the road continued up and over the cliffs. It was however, "unfinished" all the way, basically a gravel track, with speed limits as low as 5 mph in places. The car felt very unstable on the gravel and the drop was not a pretty sight! Actually it was a very pretty sight as some of our photos hopefully show.

From the top of these cliffs, we travelled fast across miles and miles of straight and empty road, across a fairly green plain. We saw barely any other cars and pretty much no human habitationin over a hundred miles! Utah is big, beautiful and on the whole empty.

Our ultimate goal was to reach Capitol Reef National Park, but we'd concluded that this was too far from Grand Canyon to drive in one go, without it being really unpleasant, so we'd decided to stop about 80 miles short of Capital Reef, somewhere in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a place we knew nothing about except that it was shown on the map. It's a very big park and the south western end contains Lake Powell, which we believe to be the consequence of damming the Colorado river further down stream. Lake Powell is itself massive, over 100 miles long and seems to fill a fractured series of steep walled canyons.

We noted from the map that there was a campground at a place called Hite in the Glen Canyon NRA. So we followed the sign off of route 95 to Hite and arrived at about 3pm. Hite turned out to be a gas station/shop, a ranger station and a toilet block. There was pretty much no other sign of life!

We used the loos first and whilst Martin was waiting in the car, a man appeared out of nowhere carrying two petrol cans and asked if he could have a lift to the gas station up the road. Martin readily agreed. It turned out he was called Dave and was a facial surgeon from Denver, Colorado. He, his uncle, aunt and daughter were spending 2 weeks cruising Lake Powell in their boat and fishing. They'd been close to running out of fuel and had headed for Hite, where there had been a marina sometime in the past. Unfortunately the marina had gone so they were worried about where they were going to get fuel from. Happily they got what they needed from the gas station and Dave was very thankful for the lift.

The camp ground itself was down by Lake Powell and for the first few hours we were the only people there. Camping proved difficult. The ground was very rock in most places. It was also somewhere in excess of 100 degrees and really felt it. Martin left Marina and the kids in the car and set about trying to find somewhere it was possible to pitch the tents. Eventually he found an area, complete with picnic table, where the ground was soft enough to get tent pegs in. There was a reason for this however. It was basically a dry river bed and given the very real risk of flash floods, this had to be thought about carefully before deciding to set up camp there.

After pitching our tents, we decided to walk down to the lake and swim in it. The walk was about 100 metres and when we got there we found the lake to be very muddy and it really didn't look like a good (or safe?) place to swim, so we abandoned that plan and instead got a tub of ice cream out of the cooler box and ate that!

After our simple evening meal, we went for a walk, exploring the area near our camp and the lakeside. We saw lots of lizards, most of which were an orangey colour, and a rabbit. Happily we didn't see any snakes!

Back at camp, Martin lit a camp fire using the large amount of drift wood that was lying around and we sat at our picnic table playing cards and later, gazing at the stars. The evening was lovely though marred by increasingly irritating mosquitos that eventually drove Bekky into her tent, then Jack, then Marina and eventually Martin, who stayed up a little later, watching the bats fly about and gazing at the stars some more.

Click on the photos for full size versions

The Amigo Cafe in Kayenta, Arizona in the Navajo Reservation. We stopped here for lunch.

North of Kayenta, Arizona. Classic wild west landscape.

On the road north of Kayenta taken through the windscreen of the car

Just over the border ni Southern Utah. Not far from Mexican Hat. Amazing rock structures and colours.

Mexican Hat rock after which the town is named

The scary road over the cliffs after Valley of the Gods

The road was unpaved most of the way. The speed limit was down to 5 mph for a while.

Red Rock Plateau, Route 95, not far from Hite, Utah

And again

Hite in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Lake Powell in the background. Hite was basically this gas station, a ranger station and a toilet block by the empty camp ground. *Very* isolated and slightly eerie.