Part 3: Western National Parks RV Caravan -- Durango, CO to Grand Canyon, Arizona

 PART 2: Western National Parks RV Caravan -- Torrey, UT to Cortez, CO preceded this post if you are interested in hearing about the middle third of our caravan.

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9/13 - 9/16/22: Durango, Colorado

We drove less than 60 miles to Durango today and the group had a relaxing afternoon enjoying the cooler temperatures and lovely Alpen Rose RV park. It was "Taco Tuesday" at the park cafe, so many of us enjoyed them instead of cooking supper for ourselves. Thankfully they were "soft" tacos so easy for me to chew "one-sided" 😑

Our first full day in Durango was all about experiencing the famous Durango/Silverton narrow guage steam engine train. This is widely considered the #1 North American train trip. We started by taking an hour and a half bus trip through the high road passes directly to Silverton, ate lunch in town, shopped (yeah, there was ice cream too), and then gathered on our reserved train car for the return trip.

Silverton's cute downtown street

Our train car was built in the 1880s and has been well preserved and restored. The 3+ hour trip home took us mostly along the Animas river with cliffs on both sides at times. We could walk freely from car to car, but it was an unsteady effort as the train jerked and wobbled along. Some of the cars were open air, but at barely 50 degrees outside we were glad to be in one that was enclosed. 

The front of our train car was a conductor office

Catching a view of the forward train cars from our window

We then had two free days in Durango which we used to explore the town, the Honeyville store (where everything inside is made from their locally produced honey), and the small fish hatchery. Though it wasn't a formal tour activity, we made a reservation for most of our group to attend the Bar D Chuckwagon dinner show. In addition to the meal, we were entertained by an old west cowboy music and comedy performance. 

The Queen bee in the Honeyville hive

Chuckwagon performers

On our final night after a group campground meal of chili, salad, and cupcakes (and celebrating Jeffrey's birthday which is tomorrow), some of us gathered outside our wagonmaster's RV and watched the John Wayne movie, "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon" filmed in 1949 in Monument Valley where we are headed tomorrow. 

9/17 - 9/19/22: Monument Valley, Utah

Our drive today included a visit to Four Corners National Monument where the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. It is managed by local Indian tribes and includes stalls where they sell their wares. The parking area was a bit rough for RVs, but we managed to safely get in and out.

Us posing at Four Corners with a foot in every state

Our RV park destination was the Monument Valley KOA. Our group takes up at least half of the park spaces and, while mostly dirt and gravel, the park has some amazing rock formations in the distance that were nicely lit up at sunset. 

Saw this formation on our drive into Monument Valley. We think it is called Church Rock.

Visible at sunset from our campground

A bus picked us all up for our first full day of touring the area. The first stop was The Monument Valley Tribal Park owned and operated by the Navajo nation. After a brief stop at their visitor center, most of the group boarded open air trucks to tour the monuments. Six of us volunteered to ride in a closed van -- which we were happy to do so Jeffrey's allergies didn't go haywire. Our caravan of 3 trucks and one van bumped along the very dusty dirty roads to see the famous rock formations. 

West and East Mittens

Upside down selfie at "Eye in the Sky" skylight

Normal selfie at Moccasin Arch

Totem Pole (far right vertical pole)

After lunch at the local Gouldin's restaurant, the bus drove us to Gooseneck's State Preserve to view the meandering San Juan River. We were warned not to get too close to the edge of the cliff! 

One of the "goosenecks"

On the way back to the campground we passed the "Mexican Hat" formation -- too rough for our bus to navigate to but we were still able to get a quick picture as we drove by.

Mexican Hat formation

Our last stop of the day was a pullout along highway 163 near where Forrest Gump stopped running across the country in the movie. It was pretty crowded with other tourists stopping too, some even standing in the middle of the highway to get the perfect picture 😳

Forrest Gump road

Our final day was another bus trip -- this time to Natural Bridges National Monument back over in Utah. The big sights at this monument are bridge formations that go over water. There are 3 big bridges and our tour bus took us to the overlooks to see all of them. Though our time was limited, Jeffrey was able to hike down closer to two of them, though only one yielded better photos.

Sipapu Bridge

Kachina Bridge

Owachomo Bridge

The trip back into Arizona included a stop at Bluff Fort Historic Site in the city of Bluff where a hotdog lunch and ice cream dessert greeted us. The site itself commemorates the pioneer town established by Mormon missionaries at the end of their expedition to settle the San Juan area in 1880. This expedition helped build a wagon road that connected established communities in southwestern Utah and the Four Corners area. 

9/20 - 9/24/22: Grand Canyon Village, Arizona

The final stop on our trip was on the south edge of the Grand Canyon. Most of the drive was in light rain/mist which has the benefit of reducing the number of bug splats on the front of Max. We got a nice picture enroute of the "Elephant Feet" formation and I was able to use a cool camera feature that "deleted" a few vehicles parked in front of them 😁

Elephant Feet

The sun started to shine through as we got close to Trailer Village campground within Grand Canyon National Park, letting us take one of our first nice pictures of the canyon as we drove by a pullout that we would not have fit in.

Grand Canyon view caught as we drove by

We had a few issues settling in the new park -- prior site resident hadn't left on time and then we had trouble with the power pedestal -- but all finally got worked out and the group gathered for a pizza party at a local restaurant followed by a campfire with our neighbors. You are rarely lonely on a trip like this as there are 40+ new friends to hang out with!

Our first full day here started with a bus tour of the main lookout point on the east and south canyon rims. Unfortunately, our weather luck ran out and it was drizzly and foggy at most of our stops, almost completely obscuring our views of the canyon interior. We will make another attempt tomorrow. 

Foggy picture at Mather's Viewpoint

After the bus dropped us off, we picked up some fellow RVers and drove the car into Tusayan (the closest town) for a Mexican lunch, an IMAX movie of the Grand Canyon's history, and a quick stop at the small grocery store. We finished the day walking through the campground getting pictures of the free roaming elk herd. It is "rut" season, so we have to be careful not to get too close. Friends also shared a photo of a wild Javelina pig that greeted them at their site when they awoke today. 

Elk buck

Javelina (a swine variant)

Our first free day at the south rim of the Grand Canyon was a slow morning as we waited for the morning fog to burn off. We then drove to the canyon rim's Bright Angel Lodge and then took the shuttle to Hermit's Rest (the end of the line for vehicles). From there we walked almost 6 miles of the rim trail, working our way back to the lodge by late afternoon. Thanks to the digital age, we took way too many pictures!

We expanded our menagerie of animal spottings with this cute squirrel. He posed nicely for us and another group on the trail and was probably sorely disappointed that he didn't get rewarded with a treat (it is illegal to feed wildlife here).

We did, however, reward ourselves with dinner at the close-by Yavapai Lodge Dining Hall with another couple on our caravan.

For our second free day we took the car to the main Visitor's Center and re-viewed a non-foggy Mather's Point before walking the rim trail to Yavapai Point and the Geology Museum. We then hopped on one of the park shuttles and rode it to the South Kaibab Trailhead where we enjoyed our packed lunch in perfect weather, then shuttled to the final stop of Yaki Point to make sure we didn't miss any more special canyon views. That said, the Grand Canyon is over 200 miles long and our access to see it from the ground is only a small portion of that.

Our group met at a local steakhouse for a final dinner together -- a wonderful meal but somewhat bittersweet as we remembered our fun weeks together. The caravan ended the next morning with an early continental breakfast in the campground so we could all say goodbye before scattering in all directions on our own paths again. Jeffrey and I have already signed up to do another caravan with Fantasy RV Tours at the end of next summer -- following the path of the Mississippi River from its creation to New Orleans.

Though we were no longer officially in the caravan, we started our drive east and stopped enroute at the Meteor Crater near Wislow, Arizona. Jeffrey's family stopped here when he was a little boy but he was too young to remember it, so it was really "new" for both of us. A picture makes it hard to judge the true size, but it could hold 20 football fields at the bottom and seat 2 million fans around the rim!

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This concludes our Western National Parks caravan, this Part 3 covering September 13 through 24, 2022. We hope you enjoyed following along with us! 

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