Petrified Forest to Canyon de Chelly to Flagstaff to Meteor Crater (362 miles)

 Before I left for Canyon de Chelly, I made sure Google Maps was loaded up with the right route and ready to go. I've discovered that you may lose internet service and phone service, but Google Maps will manage to work, even if GPS loses you for awhile. Well, up until the jaunt over to Canyon de Chelly, anyway.

From the south exit of Petrified Forest, the drive is about 125 miles, mostly through the Hopi Reservation on Arizona highways 77 and 191. I was able to stop and take some really fantastic pictures along the way--beautiful, anonymous mesas, buttes, and hills. They certainly have names, but I've failed at finding them online. 

I wanted to check the status of the trip so opened the app and was a bit perturbed to find Google Maps declaring "You have arrived!" when I was only about halfway there by my estimation. I've been dropped before, with the "rerouting" message running and running, but I'd never experienced a false arrival. Somehow, this is much worse. 

Luckily I had my handy Atlas to rely on and it saw me through to Canyon de Chelly and back through to Flagstaff again. The atlas, I might add, is hilariously huge and sort of makes me feel like a bespectacled explorer and cartographer, owlishly tracing all the squiggly little lines and mumbling to myself. 

When I was researching the route I would take for this leg of my trip, I looked up "Things to See in Arizona" and Canyon de Chelly (pronounced d'SHAY) popped up in the results. I had never heard of it, but it sounded worth the drive. This park is different from other parks I've visited--it is on reservation land, so does not belong to the US government. The Navajo people cooperatively run the park with the government, but it is entirely their land. When you drive to each of the viewing areas, you are also driving past neighborhoods and farms, with many roads marked "private" so that the thousands of tourists that take this route aren't constantly tromping all over homeowners' property.

Nope. Not disconcerting at all.

All of the surrounding civilization is what makes the canyon itself so astounding. For most of the drive, you can tell something is over there, but it isn't clear just what you are in for...then you reach one of the better viewing points and it's like getting smacked between the eyes with a clown hammer. Boink. It is absolutely beautiful and stunning. The drops are horrifyingly gorgeous. To be a bird living in this canyon...if I am very, very lucky, I'll dream of it someday.

A couple of days later, when I was packing up my camp at Grand Canyon, I had a great conversation with a lovely family that had arrived only the night before. They had driven there from Wisconsin--mom, dad, and four kids under 10--in a fully loaded minivan packed to the gills with camping gear and supplies. We were comparing adventures and my recent Canyon de Chelly visit came up--they were wondering if it was worth the side trip on the way back and I offered that I thought it was. The dad said he'd heard it was more beautiful than the Grand Canyon and wondered if that could be true...it is an interesting question. There is no doubt that the Grand Canyon is more gobsmacking incredible--I can only imagine how people discovered it without losing a little piece of their minds in the process. It's almost too much. Beautiful, intense, unreal...it's the one place I wish every person on earth could see at least once.

Canyon de Chelly is not as large, but it is greener and narrower, and it even appears as deep as the Grand Canyon in places. It must be the immediacy of the walls of the canyon, the clarity of the light and air to the ground deep below, but it only ever drops as far as 1,000 feet (source) vs. Grand Canyon's heartstopping 6,000 feet depths (source). I found it very difficult to express why Canyon de Chelly was more beautiful to me, and the only word that I kept coming up with is how immediate it was. Driving up and down hills past all these homes and cars and normalcy, then you take a few turns down the right road and there is this incomparable, enchanting vision of grandeur and shocking, swoon-y heights. Words are, to be clear, stupid and pale.

What it most reminded me of was, weirdly enough, the movie Legend. You can ignore just about everything about this movie: the dialogue, the Keebler elves, the storyline, sexy Darkness Tim Curry, and awkward and miscast Tom Cruise, but you will not ignore the rich, vibrant locales created by set designers and imbued with magic by the cinematographer/art directors. It is an almost comically beautiful film where every last detail was sweated over and created within inches of perfection. I could easily see the Canyon de Chelly playing a part in a movie like Legend. It is a place you revisit in dreams.

The drive back toward Flagstaff was serene and kind of gloomy, despite the bright skies and loud music. I was thinking about the night ahead of me, sleeping at the rest stop near the Meteor Crater, as I'd originally planned. Having spent the prior evening freezing my ass off, the thought of another night shaking under the cold lights, never really sleeping but dozing to a shiver then waking up hour after hour was weighing heavy on my mind. When I finally arrived at the rest stop, the decision was made: I had to spring for a hotel. The rest stop was serviceable, but remote and bleak. I just couldn't make myself do it. I managed to secure a room at the same place I would be staying just a few days later and, while it wasn't the Ritz, really...what is these days?

Boom! Goes the Meteor!

Freshly rested under real blankets and sheets in a properly insulated building, I headed out for a quick visit to the Meteor Crater. I was a bit reluctant to pay for admittance, but figured it would be the one time I would visit the site and, as it so happens, it did have some minor significance in my little world.

Part of that mean ol' meteor. You can touch it if you like.

Do you like Jeff Bridges? He's someone you could sit on the fence debating yea or nay until the stars fall out of the sky. Some people love The Dude (I was too drunk to remember much of that movie), some spit venom at The Fisher King...and I will admit his reputation took a massive hit when he appeared in The Vanishing, a movie that creeped me out so completely I still really haven't recovered from it (and don't think road tripping wasn't forever affected by it, either). But! First and before anything else, there was Starman. I saw this movie in theaters with my mother when I was 12 years old. I was already a fully formed Space Nerd, so Starman was added to my considerable love list from the very first viewing. I loved how he called her Jennyhayden and was such a freaking weirdo--a typically Jeff Bridges weirdo--but he was a charming kind of weird. We all want to believe the Visitors will be nice and curious and it will be humans who threaten first contact...and people especially love his assessment of our species (You are at your very best when things are worst). At twelve, it plucked all the right heartstrings (nice alien! mean government!) still violently twanging from just a couple of years previous by a far more precious and squishy E.T. I loved it.

Spoiler Alert: The movie came out over 30 years ago so cry me a river? They go to the Meteor Crater because that's his pick up spot to go back with his kind. So I had to go there, too. Besides, this is where a space rock slammed into the planet and caused some serious havoc--space things! It's kind of mind blowing just how much awesomeness Arizona has within its borders when you really think about it (meteor craters, grand and magical canyons, cacti). And to think: I just wanted to come here for the sunsets and the otherworldly silhouettes of mesas and buttes on the horizon. 

Crazy upside-down rainbow over the crater.

It was worth the $18 admission and I strongly suggest a stop by if you're ever in the area. First of all, once you leave the main road and breach the first big hill of the access road, you can see the impact of the meteor very clearly. The edges of the crater rise up from the desert floor so starkly there's no mistaking what you are seeing. The crater is actually privately owned, but they do a really great job at presenting it to the public. The facility is accessible to everyone (lots of elevators and non-scary stairs) and they have higher platforms outside for the more daring and curious. I didn't feel compelled to climb farther up because you can see the whole thing from the main platform, and really it is quite a sight. 

They also have a great, interactive museum, a 20 minute movie about the history of the crater, exhaustive gift shop offerings, and a Subway. (Sing along: Meteor Crater foot looonnggg)

When you think of the universe and all that it must contain far from our infinitesimal perspective, it is fair to marvel even at the somewhat pedestrian happenstance of meteor impacts. They happen to all planets all the time. Look at our lovely Moon, or space puppy, constantly circling our ankles and chasing the tides in and out. She's a pocked creature, shining those marks brilliantly through the night (I have now spent many a restroom run to and fro pausing to wonder not only at the stars but our singular, shiny moon), and even our own planet has plenty of craters to evince a wild thrashing over the years we've been orbiting the solar system. 

But it is that otherness, I guess, that confounds and inspires...it's the reminder that there is so much more out there. And yes, 99% of it is probably space junk (debris from the big bang and all that followed), black holes, and void...but not everything is terrestrial. In fact, earth is a rare, tiny jewel set deep in the back pocket of this one small galaxy. Well, you could fall into a 550 foot deep crater thinking about it. 

Big Bend, Really Far Away Texas (Part Two)

 Things I saw at Big Bend, in no particular order:

Birds! So many birds--there were vermillion flycatchers everywhere, zooming and divebombing all day long. They were entertaining, and obviously keeping the bug population down because I had zero issues with pests or biters at Big Bend. There were bright red boyos and I believe the orangey looking ones were their girlfriends. I am not an aves expert, so couldn’t say for sure, but they did look like matching pairs.

The most striking birds were the turkey vultures--they're big with impressive wingspans. Their flight patterns over the campsites were something to see…but my favorite part was when one would come down to the ground and carefully walk around looking for morsels. These are large, awesome birds with the scary vulture face, so to watch one carefully strut around on the grass was kind of hilarious, sort of like those less-than-majestic, face-front photos of bald eagles. So regal and suddenly so...gawky. They look like a first-day waiter balancing a large tray of drinks.

The best bird of all was the roadrunner. Look here: I have despised roadrunners since one tortured a skinny coyote on my favorite childhood cartoon. I always wanted Wile E. Coyote to catch that stupid, taunting bird and roast its little ass over a fire. I know there are fan drawings depicting that very scenario, and wouldn’t doubt someone’s put together a Looney Tunes snuff film because the outrage was just too much to bear. If only we’d known just how wonderfully dreadful real roadrunners are, and if only some of that sick twisted truth would have translated into the Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Show.

This is him. Cute little murderbird!

My roadrunner sighting happened as I was driving from the campsite to the general store—it’s not terribly far, but hello, my name is Lazy, and I just put up a tent IRL and wasn’t about to hoof it. I almost ran it over, and it was a close call because the thing was taking its sweet time getting to the edge of the road, as though it saw my car and was like, What. Bitch? After staring at it for a minute, I made my way to the store. Being approximately 5-years-old when it comes to animals, I told the cashier I just saw a roadrunner as though he cared or was my mom and also I am five. But he was game (God love him and his kindness) and proceeded to tell me all about our friend, the roadrunner.

For example, if you’re driving through the park and hit some random bird and it happens to stick to your grille, the roadrunner will come up to your parked car and rip that carcass right off of there for ya and proceed to chow down. When I gawped at this, he sort of got this contemplative look and proceeded to tell me about a day he and some customers were at the store and looked out to see an amazing sight: three rare, colorful birds, bright and beautiful, congregating right there on the pavement just outside the window. Everyone was enchanted and delighted, sharing the moment in a crystalline bubble of wonderment…then a roadrunner comes zooming out of nowhere, stabs one of the pretty little birdies in the head with its beak, and proceeds to dismember it right there in front of the horrified audience. It’s like a little Hannibal Lecter bird! It’ll eat your parakeet’s liver with fava beans and a nice Chiantiiiii. Actually, according to park literature, the roadrunner literally lives on the blood of its enemies. Seriously, their main source of hydration is the blood of their kills. Now isn’t that some Vlad the Impaler shit or what?

On my second day at Big Bend, I ventured out to see some sights. I didn’t get crazy with the hiking but did take some rumbly roads to see weird rocks (and in my head, repeating and repeating, T.S. Eliot—who else—“There is shadow under this red rock,/(Come in under the shadow of this red rock)," documented thusly.

I enjoyed the walk up to look over the valley where the Rio is nestled as it afforded some strange scenes, like this bridge over boggy waters where all the foliage is blasted gray and lay flat as though some life leeching weapon had detonated and they decided to build a park upon it. The bridge itself was ridiculously boingy which I kind of enjoyed because what’s the worst that could happen, I fall into the slimy, slurpy watermud and, I don’t know, yell until someone drags me out? It actually did remind me of that part in LOTR: Two Towers where Smeagol leads Sam and Frodo through the Dead Marshes—very similar except no (visible) bodies.

Much of the path was walled in with plants and trees pushing inward, and there were many spots where everything would snarl together into dense patches of thicket which somehow made me feel safer. The top of the hill rendered lovely views of surrounding hills and the lush greenery around the river itself, and after doing the one, two, three, okay we’ve seen it now can we go it was time to go back down the stone steps and set up for dinner.

Stars! Both nights I stayed up as long as I could, but I was in bed (1st night, the wind cavern/tent, 2nd night, the car) by ten at the latest, so really the best stargazing didn’t happen until I had to get up to go to the restroom. Oh the days when I might have missed all those starry opportunities, but not anymore! Especially if it is cold, and if I wake even just a little, then I’m lying there cursing at or to whom I don’t know, and it is time to unzip the zipper of the tent, negotiate shoes and flashlight and overcoat, and trudge through the dark to the dimly lit facilities. Thrice the first night, twice the second.

 As groggy as I was, I still made myself stop and look up and wonder at what I had been missing for all these years. If you are in a part of the country with good stargazing opportunities, do not take it for granted. I am grateful that I will never recover from the awe of considering the universe and just where we are in it. And there are no words for how it feels to be able to do what I am doing now…not the opportunity (for which I am separately grateful, of course) but the ability to do it at all.

When I first got sober, I was terrified of the night. Every hour of darkness was spent wrapped tight in low grade anxiety. Going anywhere outside was not acceptable and to be avoided at all costs, and every hour was spent wrenching my hands together, watching the clock, and dreading the time I would have to go to bed and turn out the lights. I never had the TV off, ever. Since my drinking was uniform (wake up, go to work, start drinking after work, drink until bedtime, sleep 6 hours, repeat) and my nights were dedicated to one endeavor and one endeavor only, was it any wonder why the terror sunk in as soon as the sun set?

That first year of sobriety was full of every emotion you can imagine—and in full, clear technicolor—and so much of it was truly wonderful, but it’s hard to think back to those nights spent clenched in despair. I didn’t think I would get over it; though I’d been coached I could find a “new normal,” it still seemed a fool’s dream. And the thought of driving almost 800 miles to the middle of nowhere to camp outside and stand in the middle of the darkness to contemplate the universe by myself without imploding in a fury of panic stricken, introspective horror…unthinkable. Insane. Impossible.

Thank God, the Lutheran Hospital in Brooklyn, the Resource Counseling Center, and my own inner strength (which I never believed I had until these past couple of years), for getting me to this place. I feel like I could stand on the edge of the earth and fall backwards into the universe, to whatever’s next, come what may. Give me all the stars and endless nights of clear eyed and brilliant reverie.

Big Bend National Park, Really Really Far Away, Texas

Wow.

Wow wow wow wow.

That's all my idiot brain could think as I drove to the Big Bend National Park, then through it, to get to the Rio Grande Village campground. The Chisos mountains are knock-you-on-your-ass breathtaking, and it was honestly a challenge to focus on the driving and stop gawping. So much twisty, windy, hilly roadway--there may have been an exclamation of "Wheee" or three, no lies.

Full disclosure: The last time I camped in a tent was when I was very little (maybe 4-6) and it was pretty much a disaster. It's a whole story, with drenching rains, a soggy tent, and a dog with half a face. It just gets more awful with details, so suffice it to say it ended with a rainbow and my written-in-stone belief that I would never camp again.

Did y'all know camping is cheap? It is--some places are just $7 a night--at least one place I looked into was free. And that's where the idea started. It wasn't exactly because I wanted to camp, per se, but as the idea bloomed, so did the appeal of the challenge. Never pitched a tent (or knew how it was done), never worked a camp stove or built a fire, knew absolutely nothing about camping (how it works, where to park, where to put the tent, what tools I would need, etc.)--so I started studying in the months I was breaking down my apartment, getting rid of stuff, and making plans to head to Kansas.

I made my lists, revised them, cross compared pricing of different items, and read many, many online reviews to get a sense of what I would need, what to expect, and help start narrowing down to the list to what is required (because there is a whole lotta extra crap you don't actually need).

I even watched videos on how to put up a tent...which they kept saying was a "two man job," but it turns out it just takes one woman.

That's right, I said it. Me. (C'mon, you had to know that was coming.)

So, when I practiced putting up the tent in mom's living room it was probably a bit too easy. I made sure not to rely on things I wouldn't have with me at the campsite, but I was still on carpet, in a climate controlled environment, out of the sun and wind. Once I was doing it "for real" at Big Bend, I got most of the tent up without breaking too much of a sweat, but hammering the tent pegs in turned out to be a real bitch. I did it, though--I got them in and they were nice and tight. I felt triumphant and made a sandwich. Mighty yawps abound.

Well, then came the night.

I stayed up until maybe 10 o'clock--I wanted to see the stars I was promised and I was not disappointed. The skies were clear and as the night progressed the sky grew brighter and brighter with a clean view of all those distant suns. But I was tired from all my mighty tent building and campsite set up, so I went to bed. And of course woke up about two hours later needing to visit the communal ladies room. Because I'm old, it was cold, and ya know, nature. Ugh.

The camp was so quiet that every noise I made felt jet engine loud, from the zip of the tent door to the crunch of my feet on the gravel--don't get me wrong, there were night sounds of little bugs and whatnots peeping and cheeping, but it was otherwise completely windless and silent. Every footstep I made sounded like a titan crashing all the stone pillars of the world and I was sure the whole camp could hear me. When I came out of the ladies room, I happened to look up and nearly fell down. What a difference two hours makes...millions of stars and not one cloud in the sky. I don't think I've ever seen the night sky quite like this, not ever in my life, not even as a child.

I was very tired, though, so titan stomped back to my campsite, felling more cities and waking the rest of Texas along the way, zipped myself up into my tent and my sleeping bag, and tried to settle back down. All in all, it was going pretty well! I had put up a tent. I had a flashlight. I was sleeping in nature and not freaking out. It was good.

I was in a doze when it started. A hollow sound that seemed too far away to be of any consequence, except that it was.

Did I forget to mention the wind forecast for that night? It said 30-35 mph winds, with 50 mph gusts. The night was so still up until that point that I figured the forecast had simply been wrong. Not so. Not at all.

For the rest of the night the wind shook my tent, yanked it to and fro, beat it up, down, left, and right. Three of four tent pegs came loose, leaving the tent anchored by one stubborn peg and one highly annoyed occupant, curled tight in a ball of shivering distress. One of the flaps of the canopy also came loose and whapped it up all night long.

The wind howled and roared, receded, then would scream and gust and caterwaul and there was just no end to it. And no consistency of course, since this wasn't some breeze coming off the mountain to gently lilt all the little baby animals to sleep. No, this was the wailing and screeching of the banshees locked in the 4th circle of Hell, spewed up from graves in the dark folds of the canyons to shriek us through the night and into daylight so that eleven full hours in that tent equaled maybe four or five hours of actual sleep. I'm guessing.

It was like living in that Night on Bald Mountain part of Fantasia except there were no ripped demonoids, just me in my little tent made of tissue paper and tears.

But I did it! I made it through the night with zero panic attacks and only just a little tired. Although I did pack up the tent that very morning and prepped the car for sleeping. Because nope. Nope nope nope. That was enough of that.

More Big Bend later...gotta motor.