6 August 2025
Day 1 and 2 – 30 April to May 1 – 210.1 miles – Tucson to Camp
Verde, AZ – We decided that we’d spend our first night at a lovely hotel and
casino we found on our first trip to Tucson in 2018. The Cliff Castle Hotel (and casino!) are
named for the cliff dwellings built nearby by 
the indigenous people, maybe 700
or so years ago. So, we enjoyed our
hotel room, played in the casino (enough to pay for meals), and I visited the
cliff dwellings again. It’s quiet and
peaceful, and I’m amazed each time that the indigenous people were living in
multi-level condominiums way up on cliff, while our European ancestors were
living in thatched cottages made either of stone or mud and wattle. Well, the privileged few might have lived in
grandiose palaces or palazzos, but most of us are descendants of tenant farmers
and such. Yeah, we weren’t such an
advanced society way 
back then.
My other constant question is why humans built structures based on
squares and rectangles – we don’t see those shapes very often in nature, there
are rarely straight lines. So why did we
develop linear architecture? My only
possible answer is 
that if one is stacking stones or bricks, I guess they
naturally create straight walls, and openings for windows and doors would also
end up being rectangular. Otherwise the
buildings would likely fall over. Basic
physics?
Day 3 – May 2 – 185 miles – Camp Verde to Page, AZ – very close to the Utah border. Beautiful scenery in the Flagstaff region, with snow-capped mountains and evergreen trees all over. Then back to desert north of there. And past the Vermilion Hills, which are really incredible, glowing red in the distance!
We found a wonderful place in Cameron - huge souvenir store with really fabulous Navajo weavings, gorgeous jewelry, and a really good restaurant (they call it a dining room). It was overlooking a narrow canyon of deep red rocks, and the river was called the Little Colorado River. I suspect we've been past this place previously, but never stopped here. I think this will be one of our new must-do stops along the route!
Day 4 – May 3 – 74.5 miles – Page, AZ to Kanab, UT – We
didn't get very far today, but we deliberately gave ourselves 15 days to drive
north so we could go slowly and stop at the various national parks. As
soon as we left Page, AZ, we arrived at the Glen 
Canyon National Park - it was
mostly about the dam and hydroelectric plant at the canyon, and the creation of
Lake Powell as a result of the dam. Very interesting, and I especially
liked the dinosaur footprints found in the rock!
After our visit there, we drove a bit and found the 
Lake Powell National Park (and marina). We drove through, admired the
views, and had a luxurious lunch at the resort there. Yes, a very posh
hotel complete with a swimming pool and fancy restaurants right in the
park! It was on a cliff overlooking the lake, and was very pretty.
But the rooms were outside our budget, so we headed onward.
So, we ended up in Kanab, Utah - a small town of some 5000+ people. We looked at a hotel but they were pricey, but the the desk clerk sent us to a cute little motel (though they call themselves a lodge). Put it this way, they have movie photos and posters in the office; one of the photos is the youngest pic of John Wayne that I have ever seen! So of course, their wifi password is JohnWayne. They own the Iron Horse Restaurant (or diner?) across the street. Yep, we're in the west and it's homey!
Day 5 – May the Fourth – 237.5 miles – Kanab to Nephi, UT, via
Bryce Canyon – What a day! Sometimes
even I don’t understand how Richard and I end up in the situations that occur
when we travel!
We had an easy drive from Kanab to the smaller Red Canyon, and then Bryce Canyon. Found a nice café on the way for lunch, drove
around the canyon a bit, stopped and I walked out to some of the scenic
overlooks (at an elevation of 8000 feet!).
Bryce is full of hoodoos, which are basically tall thin spires of
rock formed by erosion. 
They end up
looking like carved posts, because the rock is different layers of rocks, some
easily eroded and some which erode more slowly.
Some are a couple of hundred feet tall – the whole thing looks like come
kind of other-worldly architecture in sort of a rosy-to-coral earthy color!
Our atlas made it look like the road went through Bryce and came
out the other side. No, it’s a road in,
visit the various lookouts, back out the same entrance. Not through.
Okay, so we turned around and went back.
Programmed Greta the Garmin for Salt Lake City, a bit beyond the day’s
plan. We really aren’t sure 
where we
drove, they were definitely the back road county highways of rural Utah. Farms, open range with “watch for cattle”
signs, forests and fields, signs to watch for deer and elk migrations. Our most exciting was a pair of female
pronghorn antelope, crossing the highway and then 
scampering off across a
field.
Greta told us to periodically turn from one highway onto another. We remember a few names of towns we passed through, all so small they didn’t have an open coffee shop or diner, never mind a possible place to spend the night! Tiny communities of maybe 300 or so people. Just, driving through a whole lot of nowhere!
We finally hit the big town of Gunnerson, and stopped at a gas station mini-mart place. Met an absolutely wonderful woman clerk at the store, who suggested we head to the next town, maybe 45 minutes away, for more hotel/motel options. She even looked up a few and wrote down phone numbers for us. She was a total sweetheart – meeting helpful people like her are part of the reason we keep travelling!
And that is how we ended up in the town of Nephi (KNEE-fie). We’re at a little motel with a comfy room, next door to a gas station/gastro pub. Really, that’s their sign. Made us laugh, it’s so funny!
Onward tomorrow!
Day 6 & 7 – May 5 & 6 – Nephi to Brigham City, UT – 143 miles – We’ve have iffy wifi for a few days, and I somehow forgot my apnea machine headgear in Page, AZ. So I’m not sleeping as soundly as I do with my machine, and my restless sleeping is waking Richard. Between being a bit tired and wanting to catch up with email, we opted to just drive two hours, and found a hotel/motel. Actually, we’ve stayed here previously! Not that we know our way around the town, but it does help to recognize the actual hotel!
Weather turned very chilly, the mountains all have snowy tops, and the wind became crazy. We snugged down into our warm room, and decided yeah, maybe we’ll stay here two nights to just rest up. So that’s what we did. I explored a bit by driving to the middle of town for a diner breakfast, but other food comes from the gas station mini mart, or the DQ attached. What can I say, road trips for us usually include some fabulous diners, interspersed with garage station pre-made sandwiches, or yogurt-fruit-granola parfait cups. It works.
Day 8 – May 7 – Brigham City, UT to Twin Falls, ID – 167 miles – We’ve never been to Twin Falls on all our trips through southern Idaho. The town is nearly ten miles off the interstate, and it took forever to find a hotel, even with Greta Garmin. On the other hand, it seems like a nice medium-sized town, with about 51,000 residents. We drove around some residential areas, then a mixed business neighborhood, finally found the hotel we were trying to locate. A word to Idaho politicians: It helps visitors to your cities when you put up signs on the highway with arrows indicating which way to turn for what hotel/motel. Having nothing on the sign makes life quite confusing!
Day 9 & 10 – May 8 & 9 – Twin Falls, ID to Ontario, OR –
180 miles – This morning, we left our hotel and went to Shoshone Falls,
the "twin" falls for which the town of Twin Falls is named. They really are more like double-decker falls
- and the lower fall has a drop of 
212 feet! HUGE falls, just gorgeous! The Snake River is in a fairly deep gorge or
canyon at this point, with almost sheer rock sides, and the water just plummets
over the drop with so much force! I'm
really glad we finally did this!
A man we chatted with lives in town and takes his dog to the
park – he said in another month, when the snow melts on the mountains, the
falls will be twice the size and will be covering much of the bare rock area we
saw. If you look at the photos, all the
white rock to the right of the falls will, at max level, be covered by the
cascading river!!!
We’re ahead of schedule, so we thought we’d enjoy a day to relax in Ontario. Nothing special going on, but we have a nice hotel for a good price, and it’s in walking distance of shopping, eating, etc. We can sleep late, enjoy the hotel pool, whatever.
Day 11 – May 10 – Ontario to Hermiston, OR – 195 miles – We hoped to find a hotel somewhere between Pendleton and Umatilla, OR. Umatilla is just about the last town on the Oregon side of the interstate before crossing into Washington. There probably are a few hotels in Umatilla, but the signs were confusing, and sent us in the opposite direction. So we ended up in Hermiston, a bit to the south. Oh well, we’re only about 100 miles south of Yakima, so that means tomorrow we’ll have a very casual drive northward.
The route we were on for most of our drive through Oregon, I-84,
follows the Oregon Trail. Each rest area
seemed to be some stopping point along that trail, and the information signs
included excerpts from letters or journals written by people either exploring
or travelling in wagon trains to “settle” the west. Most of the excerpts focused on the long
arduous travels, with comments like “hundreds of miles over pure rock until we
reached a green valley.
However, one woman traveller seemed focused on the indigenous people encountered in the Oregon Territory: the Nez Percé, Umatilla, Cayutes, Paiutes. Her comments described the young girls with long black hair worn in braids, the women with similar braids topped by “a jaunty hat similar to a flower pot, used for gathering berries.”
She also talked about how each nation in this region had numerous horses, plentiful food, and seemed to have more physical riches than most of the other Native Americans the settlers met in the Great Plains region.
However, my favorite part was when she marveled at “the men who are excellent physical specimens” – uh huh, she apparently thought they were hot! But apparently in 1859, ladies did not write that. I burst out laughing when I read her words!
Day 12 & 13 – May 11 & 12 – to Yakima, WA – 106 miles – I have a few items to leave at our storage unit, and we like to visit my brother and sister-in-law when we’re passing through. We’ve had a few hotels we like to stay at, though this year we were able to get our favorite. Some rooms face the Yakima River as it runs through the town, and the ground floor rooms (which we have) enable us to walk up the slight hill to the paved trail, and either walk some more or just watch the river. It’s green and shady, the perfect place to sit outside our room and relax after the long drive up from Tucson!
Day 14 & 15 – May 13 & 14 – Yakima to Bellingham, WA – 235 miles – It’s always difficult to estimate the time of arrival in Bellingham, so to make it easier to meet up with our landpeople, we’ve started staying at a hotel in the general vicinity and meeting up the next day.
Google maps says we travelled 1736 miles! Each day's route is a different color, and the towns we stayed in are the white dots. (Next time I'll use another color, the white dot doesn't show up well in Puget Sound.)
