{"id":737,"date":"2009-07-26T20:49:33","date_gmt":"2009-07-27T00:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/?p=737"},"modified":"2009-07-26T20:49:33","modified_gmt":"2009-07-27T00:49:33","slug":"leaving-the-desert-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/2009\/07\/26\/leaving-the-desert-behind\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving the desert behind"},"content":{"rendered":"

The time had come that our travels would start to take us back East, closer to home.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what it was that changed the energy just a bit but you could sense something was different.\u00a0 Maybe it was that we were starting to lose an hour with each time zone we crossed instead of gaining one?\u00a0 Maybe it was because we had started to recognize time as days left instead of days to go.\u00a0 Maybe we were just too darn hot!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Oak

Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona<\/p><\/div>\n

Our New England bodies weren’t adjusting to the 100+ degree temperatures quickly.\u00a0 Most likely, the energy shift was because we knew we had three days of driving in front of us with very little sightseeing and R&R along the way.<\/p>\n

Our drive north out of Arizona was lovely.\u00a0 Climbing into the mountains with the red rock in the background gave us the last look over Sedona as we left the city limits.\u00a0 We decided we would \u201cstop by\u201d the South Rim of the Grand Canyon because it was only 2 hours out of our way.\u00a0 What\u2019s another 120 miles between family?!\u00a0 Our drive by Mather\u2019s Point brought to light two good decisions we made.\u00a0 First, seeing both the North and the South Rims was worth the drive.\u00a0 Both were very different, both beautiful in their own way.\u00a0 Second, I\u2019m glad we camped in the North Rim.\u00a0 The number of visitors and volume of traffic in the South Rim was 10x more than we experienced in the North Rim.\u00a0 We had lunch on the east banks of the South Rim before we continued our journey east.\u00a0 It was goodbye to another treasure of the desert.<\/p>\n

\"Four

Four states at once!<\/p><\/div>\n

Up next was the lamest tourist trap of them all and I was so excited to finally go there in person!\u00a0 When planning our trip, we had a few must see stops and the Four Corners was #1 on all our lists!\u00a0 The Four Corners is the only place in the country where the four right angles of four states, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah meet at a central point.\u00a0 It\u2019s the only place in the country where one person can stand in four states at the same time.\u00a0 Recently it was\u00a0discovered the monument about a mile off the actual spot, making it even more fabulously lame.\u00a0 It costs $3 per person to experience 5 minutes of vacationer paradise.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t have missed it for the world!\u00a0 I even got in the picture for this one-Luke in Utah, Den in Arizona, Cam in Colorado and me in New Mexico.\u00a0 Before the flock of wild Girls Scouts swarmed into the area, the boys and I couldn\u2019t resist the opportunity to physically touch four states at once.\u00a0 Like their mother, they can now tell people they\u2019ve been in Colorado even though it was just one foot!<\/p>\n

The next camping stop wasn\u2019t until Arkansas, several hundreds of miles away.\u00a0 Three days of driving brought us through New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas before we hit the state line for the Clinton\u2019s home state of Arkansas.\u00a0 Most of the drive was uneventful, long straight roads with little descriptive scenery.\u00a0 A few highlights were the ancient Indian ruins perched high in the hills throughout New Mexico and parts of Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Shiprock

Shiprock Pinnacle<\/p><\/div>\n

You can only imagine the history that lies in the doorways of the towering rock formations.\u00a0 In hind sight, I would have set aside time to visit and learn more about this fascinating culture.\u00a0 At another point, Dennis and I reminisced about the past when we passed Shiprock Pinnacle, most likely the inspiration for \u201cClose Encounters of the Third Kind\u201d, even though the real New Mexico fixture holds deep spiritual solace for the faithful believers.<\/p>\n

Regretfully, Route 40 East passed through several poverty stricken areas and hundreds of unusable acres of Indian Reservations in New Mexico and northwest Texas.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure our limited perspective isn\u2019t indicative of the entire area but it wasn\u2019t until eastern Texas that dry, barren fields were replaced with cattle roaming green fields and seeking shelter under a single shady tree.\u00a0 It was easy to say goodbye to that facet of the desert but will be hard to let go of the images.<\/p>\n

We ran into some of the worst weather of the trip on the Oklahoma\/Texas border.\u00a0 Driving directly into a lightning storm ahead, my imagination ran wild with thoughts of tornados throwing cows and trucks through the air!\u00a0 I watched \u201cTwister\u201d, I know what I\u2019m talking about.\u00a0 Trailers and RVs are always the first to get hit!\u00a0 It was a rough but short lived storm and we made it through untouched.\u00a0 We spent the night in a skin-crawling, nasty Days Inn in Elk City Oklahoma and were up and out very early the next morning.\u00a0 We slept with one eye open that night but at least it gave us a chance to charge up all our electronics before our next stop.<\/p>\n

\"Southern

Southern Missouri<\/p><\/div>\n

Buffalo National River was just outside a small town called Yellville.\u00a0 It was only about a 5 hour drive from Oklahoma but we took a planned detour into Kansas and Missouri so I could cross them off my list of states visited!\u00a0 In the three days of driving, the most beautiful views came from this stretch of the trip.\u00a0 I never expected southern Missouri and northern Arkansas to be so clean, lush and filled with rolling hills and farmland.\u00a0 I guess I never really thought about it and after the desert it was a welcomed change.\u00a0 We made it to our campsite early evening.\u00a0 It should have been sooner but I gave Betty a bum steer as to the location of the campground and actually programmed in the business office three towns over!\u00a0 Thankfully the ranger set us straight and we arrived at a well kept, clean and spacious site alongside the Buffalo River before dark.\u00a0 Juicy steaks on the grill, BBQ chicken, baked potatoes and veggies never tasted so good!\u00a0 Four happy yet tired campers turned in for a wonderful night sleep with the promise of a sunny 85 degree day ahead of them!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The time had come that our travels would start to take us back East, closer to home.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what it was that changed the energy just a bit but you could sense something was different.\u00a0 Maybe it was that we were starting to lose an hour with each time zone we crossed instead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[103,108,63,107,26,27,110,106,105,35],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/snapshotchronicles.com\/roadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}