May 25, 2019 Coal Mine Canyon, Arizona

The Navajo call this Black Canyon, the Hopi call it Blue Canyon and the white man calls it Coal Mine Canyon. Mid 70's, sunny and very little wind. There is also question of whether we need to go with a native american guide- many places on the reservation you need to. No one in town seems to know. John found on the internet that we don't need a guide to walk along the rim, but do to go into the canyon. We walked along the rim.

It is a very colorful canyon with lots of cool hoodoos. 

Move views and hoodoos. 

Yellow princes plume in front of the Coal Mine canyon. Hoodoos.

Blooming yucca in front of the hoodoos in Coal Mine Canyon.  View from our lunch spot on the rim of Coal Mine Canyon.

Weird looking goose neck hoodoo. Cool hoodoo.  

   

John walking in flowers with the San Francisco peaks in the background. Hoodoos in Coal Mine Canyon. 

Delphiniums on the rim of Coal Mine Canyon. Yellow desert dandelions on the rim of Coal Mine Canyon. 

 Yucca on the rim of Coal Mine Canyon.  Yellow desert dandelions and mormon tea on the rim of Coal Mine Canyon. 

Field of desert dandelions.  Hopi sheep in front of a windmill. Desert dandelion,

 Three shots of delphiniums, desert gems, prickly pear cactus blooms and a gopher snake in the trail.

May 22-24, 2019 Homolovi State Park to Tuba City, Arizona

65, partly sunny and very windy again.

We hiked on the Rattlesnake Trail so I guess we should not have been surprised to see these warning sign! Prickly pear bloom, blazing star and this petroglyph looks like a snake, must be what the trail is named after. A purple flower. This is a view from a viewpoint looking back at the rattlesnake trail around the butte. We didn't see any actual rattlesnakes. In the foreground of this photo is a field of purple phacelia.  

Sunset last night.

Sunset tonight. A scene on the Hopi Reservation. 

We stopped at the Hopi Cultural center and visited the museum and had lunch.  Entering Tuba City. 

The bus parked at the Quality Inn RV park in Tuba City. There is very little camping on the reservation. This was all we could find.

May 19-21, 2019 Flagstaff to Winslow, Arizona

We drove back to Flagstaff for the Overland Expo. It was all about everything burly and 4 wheel drive. It was raining, snowing and very windy. Here is a crazy 4 wheeler, a rugged trailer and a really rugged trailer.

A huge burly 4 wheeler, A tiny tent on a tiny truck, Roof top tents, A foil insulated pod and another burly 4 wheeler. We saw our friends Elena and Matt from Oregon Motor Coach, where we get our coach worked on. They are also customizing vans now too. 

Our friends Bec and Emmett. They ordered a sportsmobile two years ago and it is still in the process of being built. They are here for the expo, camped with the other sportsmobiles and taking classes. 

Meanwhile back at the bus we have 30 mph winds with 40 mph gusts and some showers. I didn't think there would be a sunset because of the dark clouds, but we got this weird mini sunset. We moved down the road about 30 miles to Homolovi State Park. There are indian ruins here. It was very windy, with some showers. Here we are in our campsite. 

I went for a walk along the trail to the Visitors Center this evening.  There are lots of flowers blooming. Apache plume seeds, gaillardia, purple flowers and evening primrose. 

Gate in the trail. White mustards.  milk vetch seed pods, prickly pear and yucca.

Yucca flowers, and three flowers I don't know the name of. Sunset sneaked in at the last minute under the clouds. 

We went to the ruins at the Homolovi state park where we are camped today. This ruin is at the visitors center, they built it there. The view from the visitors center. 

The ruins here are not restored, still just ruins. But there were large indian pueblos here. 

There must have been millions of pots here, there are tons of pot shards here still.  

We took a side dirt road and found a bunch of petroglyphs.  And a horn worm and phacelia blossoms. They are pretty old and hard to see.  John took me to dinner at the famous Turquoise room restaurant at the historic La Posada tonight. We had the famous stuffed squash blossoms. They were really yummy.  

This is our waitress Kayla. The waitresses are dressed as Harvey girls since La Posada was a Harvey house hotel on the Santa Fe line. In town we found indian drummers and dancers at the city park.

One of the dancers. A mural in Winslow. Welcome to Winslow, 10,000 people welcome you to Winslow, Snake Dance country on route 66.

Sunset in historic downtown Winslow.