Turning the Page (Arizona) to the Balloon Fiesta

We had another day to explore Page, Arizona, and one of the things left on Denisa's list of activities was walking the bridge over the Glen Canyon Dam.  Just a few feet shorter than Hoover Dam, it's still one of the biggest in the country.  We went to the visitor's center to watch the national park film, and found they had three different films.  We have found these national park documentary films are very educational.  They are also a cool and comfortable place for a nap on a hot afternoon (ask us how we know that).  In the picture above, we can see Lake Powell peeking over that very tall dam.  

In the picture below, we see the view from the other side of the bridge.  That would be the Colorado River, meandering its way towards the Grand Canyon.  The electrical lines that are seen angling up the ridge to the electrical towers will provide the power to over two million homes this year.  That energy is produced from the hydro-electric generators in the dam.

We also took a drive to another part of Lake Powell.  This is the Wahweap boat ramp area, with another view of those big house boats, now anchored in front of and even bigger Castle Rock.

We looked for the best hike in the area, and found few to pick from.  We opted for the Hanging Garden trail that leads to an alcove under a sandstone hill close to the lake.  Water seeps through the porous sandstone, watering the wall of ferns under the ceiling.

Instead of posing under the ridge, of course Mark climbed on top of the ridge.

Denisa would follow him anywhere, so of course she followed him over the ridge, where we could get a view of Lake Powell in the distance.

Under some of those rock overhangs we found an exceptional modern art painting.  Actually, it was a kaleidoscope of different colored lichens.  We could see orange, yellow, green, gray, black, and white all within a camera frame.

The swirling sandstone forms ridges and curves that are fun to see.  Even though it would be a nice level walk along a pebble-lined trail back to the car, Mark had other ideas.  He found a "short cut" that only took us twice as long to get back to the parking lot.  This was because we had to back-track several times to find a less steep way off that hill.

But as always, he finally found a way down, and Denisa snapped a picture of Mark's latest hill to summit.

The next morning we left Page, Arizona, heading south and east to our next destination.   Because we had taken the interstate route on another trip, this day we drove through the Navajo and Hopi reservations on a very lonely highway.  We realized after several hours that we hadn't seen a gas station or a grocery store since we left Page.  What we did see were miles of fences, but no cattle.  Of course, we didn't see any grass behind those fences for the cattle to eat.  After many miles, we finally arrived at a new state, but we could barely read "New Mexico" through all the bug splatters on the windshield.

We pulled into a familiar campground to spend the night at Gallup, New Mexico.  We love going to new places, but it was nice to come back to Red Rock Park, with its view of Church Rock on top of the red cliffs that surround the campground.

 Gallup was a good place to wash clothes, and ready for the next four nights of camping with no hookups.  We are now jammed into a huge parking lot along with over 6,000 other RVs that will attend the Balloon Fiesta here in Albuquerque.  In the picture below you can see the black front of our motor home, hemmed in with the other vehicles and RVs.  Our slide-outs are almost touching our next door neighbor, but we are all glad to be here.  There should be pictures soon of some hot air balloons!