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Looks like the god of travelling still isn't done pulling my strings. I arrived in Flagstaff, Arizona around 7:30am. If you remember from my last entry I was supposed to get a much earlier bus, which would have arrived at 10:30pm the previous night and give me a nice sleep in my booked hotel room. That didn't happen. So I'm there at 7:30am and, of course, my bag isn't on the bus. It's most likely on the other bus which will arrive later. I thought that rather than sit and wait for it I could check into my conveniently nearby hotel and come back for my bag.
I had been unable to cancel my hotel room because they require 48 hours notice. So to get something for my money I decided I would check in, shower and freshen up and check out. Probably the most expensive shower in history but at least not a total waste of my money. The hotel is less than half a mile from the bus station because I've worked it all out and made sure it would be easy on me. But the room that would be mine had a plumbing problem so the owner sent me up the road to another one in the same chain that would have a room for me. Now my convenient hotel is a 15 minute walk away. But at least I had a room. I couldn't shower though because my clean clothes and washbag are still in my backpack somewhere in Arizona.
I did get a chance to sit down though before I went back for my bag at 8:30am. By luck (looks like the gods were looking away at this point) the bus had just pulled in and I was able to claim my bag straight away and get back to my hotel. Then I immediately set off walking to go and pick up my car. That was two miles away and I walked straight past the place the first time because I was looking for a big Alamo office and didn't notice that the Holiday Inn had an Alamo sign beneath its main one. I got there in the end though and collected my car, a nice grey Chevrolet Cobalt. The guy working there was very friendly and chatty which helped my mood improve.
I drove back to my hotel, stopping off for some groceries, and finally got the shower I needed. No rest for the wicked though because it was an immediate start for me because I had a long drive ahead of me to Moab, with one stop off. But wait! There was one final twist. As I was taking my last bag down the stairs to the car I had to wait several minutes as a woman, with a towel to her, obviously bleeding, elbow was helped slowly down the stairs by two paramedics and, presumably, her husband. Then they had to strap her to a gurney and load her up. That meant I had time to pack the car, check out and wait a few more minutes for the ambulance to leave.
Finally I was on the open road and it was stunning. Most of it was a two-lane highway rather than an interstate so it was more in tune with the environment rather than blasting a straight course through everything. The long straight sections provided me many opportunities to test out the acceleration of my new car and overtake something slow - or at least slower than I wanted to go.
I got to Monument Valley Tribal Park well ahead of my GPS again and I had to change my watch for the second time that day because Arizona is an hour behind New Mexico due to it not observing daylight savings, but the Navajo Nation, which includes Monument Valley, does observe it. On my approach to it I was surprised how excited I was when I saw the large chunks of rock (I really need to find the geological term for them) at the distant end of the highway, just as in Forrest Gump and endless shots of the American West. To me it was the same as seeing the Statue Of Liberty.
The Navajo Nation, I believe, is the largest Indian reservation in the US. They run the Monument Valley park, so it's not a federal National Park where I could use my newly-purchased annual pass. But it only cost $5 so it's a bargain really. After looking round the gift shop and taking a photo of the three large rock chunks the only thing left to do was the 17 mile rough road self-drive through the park. It was only a hire car so I didn't care about it getting dirty or wearing out the suspension, just so long as it came out in one piece and didn't cost me anything.
The drive was totally amazing. There were a number of stop-off points for taking photos and to allow you to walk ten metres away from your car before getting right back in again and carrying on with the air conditioning on. At one point I thought this was silly so I turned the a/c off and put the windows down. Although it was 90 degrees out the breeze still felt cooling and I really felt like I was more at one with the Great Spirit. Also, because the windows are slightly tinted, I could now see properly what the terrain looked like and it was even more beautiful than before. I bet you're wondering what the drive was like. Well, thanks to the wonders of modern recording equipment you can check out a video on my blog of a small bit of the drive.
I could finally understand why people would want a truck, because those things were flying along. Except for the lame people who didn't know what they had and were going slower than me. But that was at the end when I was getting the hang of swinging the car back and forth one handed around the most destructive bumps and rocks. It was so much fun! Especially when it beeped and warned me "low traction" on a fairly steep and sandy uphill bit. The car came out in one piece, but quite dusty. Luckily it has electronic tyre pressure monitors so periodically I could check them to make sure none of the tyres had a puncture and was going down slowly.
It had taken me an hour and a half to get around and I was glad to be on my way again towards Moab, Utah - my base of operations for the next few days. Again my GPS over-estimated the drive by and hour and a half. The drive was still spectacular and at one point I came over a high point and through a gap in the rocks and suddenly the landscape changed drastically from red rock to a white-yellow rock. I have never seen landscape change that suddenly before. I think the gods rolled snake eyes during that drive because as I was calmly whizzing down the highway a car coming the other way kicked up a piece of gravel and it smashed right into my windshield causing a nice penny-sized starburst effect. So now I have to deal with the rental agency and my CDW insurance company. I couldn't believe I'd got through Monument Valley without any damage and now I had a cracked windshield!
I got to Moab and checked into the hostel there. It's a bargain at $9/night! But it has no internet access so I've been cut off, except for when I sat in a McDonald's car park one night for half an hour using their, or someone's, wi-fi. The next day I asked at the visitor information centre and they sent me to the public library where I got all the fast free wireless internet I could handle. Ahead of me I have two National Parks to explore by foot. My feet can hardly wait!
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