The PENguin Blog

We spent our only full day, Friday the 13 th , here on a couple of “trails,” backroads, really. In the morning we covered about 45 miles over the Devil’s Backbone, a graded but unpaved road, and then in the afternoon we traversed about an equal distance on The Burr Trail, which was paved. A word of advice, anyone wanting to see all this place has to offer should bring at least an SUV, and the folks who seemed to have the most fun were in  ATVs. And you should allow more like three days, depending on how much hiking you are up for. But we managed. The Devil’s Backbone is presented no real difficulties for either us or Rocinante and took us through forests of aspen and pine and some spectacular canyons.  The Burr Trail, too, was spectacular, featuring more gorgeous red sandstone and those hoodoos that they do so well, but we were unable to find the unmarked trail leading to a slot canyon and some petroglyphs, still we found our own minor sl...

Today’s journey took us from Page, Arizona and Lake Powell across southern Utah to Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  Unlike the previous day, it was not an arduous drive and as we traversed mountain passes, plateaus, and canyons, the scenery grew increasingly spectacular until we hit Red Rock Canyon where we got out and walked among these rock formations. Some of the most vertically spectacular of these are called hoodoos. Interestingly, the camera did not, could not, I guess, replicate the intensity of the colors we saw. But these images get close. Dusty, but thus far undented, Rocinante awaits The final image is the hills outside our hotel window at sunset. We will celebrate Friday the 13 th  by going off-road, which is really the only way to see this place, in the coupe. What could go wrong?

Wednesday, September 11 took us from the Zuni Pueblo to Page, Arizona, about a 300 mile drive, but with an unanticipated twist, a twelve mile unpaved section of Indian Route 59 that I was not sure we were going to make it across.  Don't let the looks fool you, yes, this road was graded, but it was also washboarded and silted, yeehaw!! But we did, although both the car and we were covered in red dust by the time we arrived at Lake Powell outside of Page. In the morning I will pull the air filter and give it a curbside cleaning. Notwithstanding that portion, it was a very fast (don’t ask) drive, and we got into Page in time to take a tour of the Glen Canyon Dam. We’ve been through here before, but never took the time to do the tour. The shape of the dam is designed to divert water pressure from the center to the canyon sides The bridge was a project of its own Lake Powell, looking from the dam east Our tour guide was Page from Page, as she describ...

We spent most of the day Tuesday touring through the so-called Seven Cities of Cibola sought by Coronado and earlier conquistadores as great repositories of gold and diamonds. Our guide was Kenny Bowekaty, a Stanford trained archaeologist who now leads tours for the Zuni Cultural and Arts Center. Under Kenny’s lead the Zuni Center is aggressively seeking to promote ethno-tourism and is working with international tour operators to this end. Standing among the ruins of several different pueblos, Kenny gave us a tour of the Zuni culture, their migrations, their ancient forebears, the Paleolithic Anasazi; the origins of the A:shiwi (Zuni) people; their habitations; their fraught early relations with the Spanish; and the horrors of war. As it happened, we were here 479 years almost to the day, when Coronado showed up and attacked the village of Hawikku. For any number of reasons related to both resistance and accommodation, the Zuni kept their ancestral lands, but the Spanish with ...

On Monday we crossed Arizona, going along state route 264 from Second Mesa to Gallup, New Mexico and from there south to Zuni Pueblo. It was a travel day, so we stopped only a few times, mostly to shop at the famous Hubbell Trading Post, a National Historic site where we shopped last time, and at a local gallery here in Zuni. I find curios and artifacts irresistible, but Sharon is admirably immune to tschotskes, which meant more stuff for me.    As a result there were not many images for the day, but it was fascinating to travel down the mesa, across the desert, into pine forest and then to end up in scrub at about 6,200 ft. I could write an essay about the differences between the Hopi and their Zuni cousins (both are Anasazi). But I’ll leave it to those better qualified. Tomorrow we will spend with a Zuni guide and I should have more by way of images and stories. In the meantime here are a few random images. Our lodgings...