This day was a very early morning…more so than normal. We had four major things to see on our agenda. One was Goosenecks State Park, then Monument Valley, followed by Horseshoe Bend and Grand Canyon National Park (north rim). This was one of my favorite days of the trip as we had to move very quick to get allot done.
We headed south on 191 and grabbed some coffee,gas, and power bars for the day. We were heading towards Page,Arizona. Our first stop was Goosenecks State Park which costs $5 per car to go see. It’s a unique landscape where the river has carved S patterns into deep canyons….very similar to Horseshoe Bend yet not quite as epic. As we enjoyed the view for about 10 minutes, we enjoyed the weather as well, then left for Monument Valley which is only about 10 miles down the road.
I was told that I should see Valley of the Gods when I was there, but unfortunately we didn’t have time. We did however come back to this place on another short trip about a year later.
Monument Valley has many famous movies filmed there but perhaps most famous is Forrest Gump’s ending scene when he was running on the road with his followers. This is one of my favorite movies so I tried to re-enact the scene as you can see from the video HERE.
It was kind of goofy but I thought it was fun. Once we finished this after parking at the Indian reservation, we continued on to Page, Arizona where our stop for the day was Lake Powell. We had lunch in this small town, which is known for Antelope canyon. Unfortunately, we did not have the time nor the reservations to see this area.
Our lunch was awesome however. We ate at Big John’s Texas Barbeque, and this is the best place to eat in Page in my opinion. It is known for their famous brisket. Definitely a great choice. Down the street was the famous Lake Powell, which is a man-made reservoir and with the super hot temperatures we definitely want to swim…not to mention it was time for another bath since we hadn’t had a shower in two days. We decided to clean up by grabbing the shampoo and going for a little dip and washing up. This was a great feeling and experience out in the hot sun having the natural water on you. Now Horseshoe Bend is one of the most famous landmarks in the country that is not a national Park. It’s only five minutes from Page,Arizona and it is a giant river cut out that turns 180°. It is much larger than you expect from the pictures and it is a very scary thing to watch people get so close to the edge. With the wind changing at any moment people have fallen before, but that doesn’t deter them. Of course not everyone falls, however as you can see we were very close to the edge from the pictures.
Now this put us about 3pm in the day and we still had yet to find camping or get to the Grand Canyon, so we had to rush back to the car and rush to the Grand Canyon North Rim before sunset. The north side of the canyon is my favorite view of the park as it is the highest. I believe it is over 1000 feet higher than the southend, And as you can imagine the beauty and jaw dropping majesty of the Grand Canyon was on full display during sunset.
We stayed about an hour taking pictures and enjoying the view and doing some short hikes to the outer edge. In the future we will come back and do the rim to rim hike. Now as you can imagine that with the popularity of the Grand Canyon, we knew there would not be any camping Available last minute, and we were correct. However there is a large national forest called the Kaibab National forest that, upon entering the north side road, you have to drive through to get there. The National Park visitor Center informed us we could camp anywhere off the dirt roads there for free. This was a great experience and great way to save money as we found a great spot for a fire and tent location. We ended up cooking a nice meal having a great fire and a great view. This is a very unique national forest as there is an environment that is rarely seen anywhere in the world. We ended up going to bed around 8 o’clock and as you can imagine we were very tired but very content with what we saw today. We ended up playing Uno till we passed out.
June 21 Expenses –
11.75 gas
6.44 subway
1.55 coffee
14.90 gas
6 snacks
45.59 lunch
Total – 86.23
Miles Driven – 421