Arizona February 6, 2020

I had originally planned on doing Page on the 6th, but ended up finishing up Navajo National Monument before noon on the 5th, so I was able to combine the activities I wanted to do in Page on the same day.

When I first started doing research I had found 3 other National Monuments in the area but because of time and weather decided to exclude them
  Now I had a full day to blow and I looked to add teo of them back on:  
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah just over the state line and Pipe Spring National Monument in Arizona.  The day ended up being a lot of driving and not a lot of adventuring, but that's ok, sometimes it's good to slow down.

Pipe Springs is most well known for the conflict between a Mormon group that relocated to the area and the local Native Americans that lived there for generations  the Mormons took all the water and just waited for the Native Americans to die.  No water meant no crops, no animals to hunt and no water to drink for the tribe.  Eventually the federal government stepped in and luckily the fatilty numbers weren't as bad as they could have been.  But along with other white explorers, they subscribed to the idea of Manifast Destiny.  

Definition

Manifest Destiny was the idea that white people were divinely ordained to settle the entire continent of North America.

The Native Americans were seen as inferior and therefore not worthy of rights.  The Mormons didn't share the water, they took it all without consideration of the consequences.  There is a fim at the NM that walks you through the history of the area and an exhibit that includes artifacts from both the Native Americans and the Mormon settlers.  The site sits on the original Mormon ranch that was owned by the church.  There are still original buildings that you can explore.  There are chickens and a Texas Longhorn on property to provide more of an original ranch experience.  They offer tours there but due to the park ranger hating me, I didn't stick around for it.  Not sure if it was a miscommunication or real dislike.  Regardless, I was irked enough that I didn't stick around.

The Grand Staircase is very large and offers a lot of hiking options.  I didn't hike the tube did stop and take some beautiful photos.  There is also some odd dinosaur activity in the area and the visitors center on the eastern side of the Monument has a great display.  The visitors center on the west end has a display about the Native Americans and the geography of the area.  Both were interesting.

I ended the day driving around the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.  The area was a bit of a ghost town as bsb it's off s eww Jason, but I got a few pretty photos.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

May 2021

Image
May has turned into a the beginning of the next stage.  We’ve been fully vaccinated and the world is slowly starting to open back up.  I’ve put together the Costa Rica trip, which is now taking place in August, as the airfare is much cheaper.  I was able to get it through SW and use my point, yay!  I’ve booked lodging for 11 days - $300 for the first 10 days and $100 for the last day, lol.  I could have gone cheap on the last day, I have places that I use close to the airport, but the name brand hotels next to the airport are usually really expensive and I was able to get one for $100.  We’ll have a full hot breakfast (included in the room) and a ride to the airport.  Our flight is at 8am, so I figured being really close and having that breakfast available would be worth the extra cost.  Plus, a pool, a bar and air conditioning will be nice as we wind up to go home.   I’ve rented a room in Paris for the month of November.  Th...
Read more

July 2021

Image
July started off with a bang – Hurricane Elsa came up the coast and after much tracking and work warnings, it did virtually no damage.  We barely even got any rain.  Based on the radar, someone was getting it, but it pretty much skipped over us. The weekend before the hurricane we were still getting a bunch of rain.  It limited what we could do and I know Gil likes to go out and do things on the weekend as he spends way too much time in front of the tv during the week.  So we went to a flea market in Lakeland that offered a free circus show and alligator farm on the premises.  The circus performed on two different stages at different times of the day and were basically just local performers with some skill.  There was a girl who had trained cats, a magician, a mime…they were all talented individuals but it was about what you would expect from a free circus.  Gil and I both took our turns to be photographed with a live alligator....
Read more

End of March

Image
End of March:   Final Covid 19 number at the end of March Total on March 31 Corona Cases      28,300,487 Corona Deaths       521,388   Numbers for the Month of March: Corona Cases      1,030,027 Corona Deaths       25,959     March was a pretty good month.  I’ve decided to stop doing weekly blog entries and just do a monthly one until I’m traveling again.  Life really isn’t that exciting and it’s a struggle to come up with interesting events sometimes.  Monthly would be more appropriate.  We are getting our vaccines Saturday (1 st  shot) and the world will be back to normal (or as close as we can get) soon.  At least in the US, the rest of the world may take some time to catchup as not all the vaccine programs are going as quickly or being distributed at the same rate.  Manufacturing and distribution wi...
Read more