Bluewater Lake and the Land that Never Was

So, today we left our camp site early and piled in the car, driving south and then east on I-40. We got slightly lost near Flagstaff thanks to some confusing signs and some highway construction, but we managed to get to the Petrified Forest by mid-afternoon.
We had a great tour with a Park Ranger named Tiffany who turned what could have been a mildly entertaining excursion through some pretty petrified wood into a mind bending tour through a land described in scientific projection. A washed forest in the tropics full of 200' tall coniferous and rampaging reptiles. A giant river that carried trees along, stripping them of bark and limb and root and then submerging them and covering them in mud and ash, sealing the away from oxygen so the silica could slowly replace the trees' cells with crystal.
After bidding Tiffany goodbye, we drove north through the park and exited on I-40E... So far so good... Then came New Mexico.
When we crossed the border and passed Gallup, it was still PLENTY light out, and between the GPS and the AAA Road Atlas, we felt confident about our ability to find our camp site in Bluewater Lake State Park. I mean, it was a state park after all, how hard could it be? ...That's when we turned on the NM-612...
For anyone travelling through New Mexico, who happens to want to stay at or even visit Bluewater Lake, be warned: DO NOT TAKE NM-612! It's a dirty trick. There's a road that ends in water. And there's a tiny town that doesn't appear on the map or the GPS, and the ratio of cars to houses is rather alarming. What was that movie with the mutant cannibals in New Mexico? Well we were a little worried that the residents were collecting the vehicles of the lost tourists they'd eaten. Also, the only living people we saw in town were four 10-13 year old boys on bicycles who were riding down the road into oncoming traffic (and by oncoming traffic I mean us, cause there were no other cars to reassure us, which should have tipped us off perhaps) and they looked at us as though they'd never seen other people before in their lives and weren't at all sure what to make of us. Another house we passed had several abandoned kids bikes strewn along the driveway, but no sign of life. The town seemed quite abandoned, despite the twelve cars in various states of repair in every single yard. And some of those cars were quite shiny and new looking. Anyways, we were content to follow NM-612 despite the warning signs, trusting that it would eventually lead us either to our camp-ground or turn into NM-412 and loop back around to I-40... Untill the pavement stopped and the road started going through an uninhabited part of Cibola National Forest and the sun started setting. As we turned around and decided to force the GPS to recalculate, the giant ominous cloud began obscuring more and more of the sky. We followed the GPS back through the tiny town (the boys on bikes now nowhere in evidence), and soon we were turning onto some other tiny unpaved road. Concerned that the sun was setting and it was starting to throw random drops of rain at us every once in a while, not to mention worried that the driveways of the two lonely farm houses on this side of the lake looked more worn than the unpaved road that led past them, we decided to stop and ask a local for directions. BAD idea. We never actually caught the man's name, but apparently his neighbour (who may have been his brother or his cousin) was named Jerry. Anyhow, when Irwin shouted "hello", he shouted "goodbye!" from somewhere inside his house. When Irwin asked if we could bother him for directions cause we were lost, he told us every question would cost us $5. Irwin and Grayson told him we didn't have that kind of money on us and he demanded what we planned to do if we got robbed, because, he assured us, robbers prefer cash. Luckily that's when Gray cut in and asked him how to get to the Bluewater Lake State Park Campgrounds. The man didn't know, but he became very chatty. He went on some long rant about going fishing with his brother-cousin-neighbor-Jerry and how they ran into a bear with two cubs and he nearly didn't make it back in time to meet with his parole officer. That's about when Irwin and Gray started backing toward the car. We thanked him for his help as he told us Jerry would know better, and the boys jumped in the car and we left as fast as we could, retracing our steps to I-40.
Eventually we found our camp ground, but it was dark and the sky was full of mosquitoes and threatening rain and the camp ground was closed. So we drove back toward I-40 yet again. As we crested a hill and came into view of the interstate, someone set off a bunch of fireworks to our left. It felt congratulatory as though celebrating getting out alive.
So tonight we're staying in a hotel nearby. Linzy and I used the pool which is open all night. It was extremely refreshing.
And now I'm off to go enjoy a real bed for the first and last time in a while.

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

So after changing cars and loading up on provisions, the City Kid Liberation Front marathon drove to the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona where we pitched our tents and napped for two hours. We decided to take in our first awake views of the Grand Canyon from Grand View Point, and the beginning of the old Copper Miners' trail there.
We're going to do a little hiking and explore the Painted Desert and Antelope Canyon before we move on to the Petrified Forest and then to Bluewater Lake in New Mexico on the 6th.

The smell of Desert Sage

I told Sophie I'd show her the Grand Canyon... So here they are. A bunch of lovely pictures from the 24th of August. There's a fire on the north rim of the canyon. Can you see it?






Today we took a longer route to the Grand Canyon than we'd originally planned on.
We had to cross Joshua tree country, but while crossing the Colorado River, Ennis started telling me about Oatman, AZ (just past Boundary Cone Peak on the old 66). We decided to take the detour. It was excellent. The tiny little one street town was overrun by wild burros that came down the mountain looking for food. The tourists are sold carrots and water, the only things they're allowed to feed the cuddly animals. Signs hang on all the buildings reminding us that the burros are wild and may bite or kick, though they seem pretty gentle to me.
While there we also took a look at the Oatman hotel where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard honeymooned. It made me think of Irwin, and listening to Death Cab For Cutie.
We drove up the 40, which has taken up much of the old Route 66, and tried to get post card stamps at a post office in Kingman. The post office was closed for lunch, which I found supremely amusing because it harkened me back to the towns in Montana with no post office or post boxes.
Anyways, we made it up to the Grand Canyon and spent some time on the Southern Rim and in the gallery where they have an exhibit on the Native Americans who live there, the Havasupai. It was all so breath-taking. And no pictures, especially not mine can truly capture the vastness of such a place. It's sheer immensity and the length of time it took to forge, not to mention the age of the rock everywhere but especially at the bottom... It's incredibly humbling. It's impossible to think that your problems are huge when you're looking at it, because next to that canyon they are inconsequential. A speck of the sands of history.
After the Grand Canyon we drove on. The night is beautiful, with black clouds that drift over the moon, making the edges silver, and leaving patches of sky clear and full of stars. But even though there are bright clear patches and intensely silver linings, the clouds themselves spill rain and lightning. The sheet lightning looks like beautiful pink gold jelly fish tentacles. The rod lightning is crisp white and strikes the ground. Both the flashes and the silvery moonlight filtered through the clouds are just enough to illuminate the miles-long trains that stretch and crawl on the Santa Fe line, and the sage bushes that are showy but aromatic on the fields to either side of us. Their smell intensified by warm rainy air.
We crossed the border to New Mexico tonight. Tomorrow there's more world to see.