The [Arizona] Strip

By:  Porter Haney
September 30, 2014 7:03 pm | Category: General Interest, Summer

IMG_3401 - IMG_3407aFor my money, I’ll take the band of desert known as the Arizona Strip.  It’s beautiful, raw, really damn hard to get to, and generally unencumbered by tourists gallivanting from one National Park rest stop to the next. It’s cleaved off from the rest of Arizona by the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon, meaning you can really only get to it from Nevada or Utah – with the little exception of the Glen Canyon Dam.  But even that is over a hundred miles away from the nearest highway.

Personally, I’d enlarge the Strip and define it as an area from the top of Lake Powell to the bottom of Lake Mead, and on both sides of the River (Lake) for a hundred miles or so.  With this expanded, albeit loosely defined and otherwise completely unofficial definition, you get everything from the Grand Canyon, to Lake Mead, to the Valley of Fire, to the Vermillion Cliffs, to Monument Valley, to the Virgin River Gorge, to Escalante and it’s Grand Stair Case National Monument, to Navajo Peak, the Little Colorado River Canyon, to Antelope Canyon, to Canyonlands, Kaibab National Forest, to Zion National Park, and to Beaver Dam Wash.  All of it, and that’s just the short list.  In this three hundred mile stretch you’ve got dozens of public lands with not many people and simples rules – leave with what you came with, and don’t ruin it for anyone else.

Click the image for a full Google Map

Click the image for a full map.

Mind you, this map isn’t a perfect outline of the Arizona Strip, but it is pretty good.  It’s about as close as roads can take you to entering the strip without rafting down the Grand Canyon itself.  You can see before what a giant area this is.  Roundtrip it’s almost 1,000 miles to circle the dang thing.  In addition to the myriad for Federal lands there’s a venerable list of Native American tribes who’ve called this land home for much longer than we have – Navajo, Hualapai, Havasupai, Hopi, Kaibab, Moapa.  In many regards, I think the Native American land managers have done a substantially better job of preserving their lands than the Federal Government has.  Some of the towns on reservation land are beat up – mobile homes, garbage, the like – but most of the rolling lands outside the towns are unbuilt, clean, free, roadless swaths that I imagine look much like they did 500 years ago.

I’ve been wanting to travel to Monument Valley and see their famous spires for myself ever since watching  The Eiger Sanction, where Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy climbed Totem Pole one of the prominent towers in the valley in preparation for their trip to The Eiger.  Unfortunately they didn’t bring along George, Clint’s amorous training partner.

In one of the best scenes in all of modern film, at least in my opinion, is when Clint and George summit the Tower after Clint’s led the final pitch.

George leans over to Cliff and says, “Clint, wouldn’t it be great to have a beer up here?”

“Sure, would,” Clint says, “but who would be crazy enough to bring beer all the way up here?”

“You would, you crazy son of a bitch,” as George leans over and pulls a cold 6 pack out of Clint’s back pack.

Now that you’ve got the lay of the land we can start a proper story. The desert might be famous for it’s solitude, or Solitaire as Abbey would say.  But it’s most striking quality to me is it’s confounding weather.  It’s either nice – hot, dusty, unbearable – or it’s not – rain, floods, blistering winds, general act of god type weather.  Either way it’s almost always a little bit unpleasant, at least for part of the day.  There are shining moments, typically early in the morning just as the sun has crested the horizon and it’s not been too hot, or have a torrential downpour as a rainbow comes out and basks the momentarily cooled desert floor.

Thunderstorms are finicky in the Desert.  They’e one of my favorite parts because they’re hard to find and can be forecasted for weeks on end and never materialize.  You can have a sunny day with not a cloud in the sky and then be suddenly doused in a downpour.  They’re unpredictable, scarce and can be a bit dangerous.  I’ve been in and out of Vegas a lot the last few months, so when a large front was forecast to spin up some storms on a Friday afternoon, I decided to head East and see if I could see these storms in action.

The Storm Prediction Center had issued a warning for strong thunderstorms, hail, and the possibility of tornados on Friday.  Knowing this meant it might still not rain, I ventured out to see what their hype was about.  I left intending to just camp by Boulder City for the night and return the next day.  Utlimately I ended up driving the route in the map above, nearly 1,000 miles in 2 days to Monument Valley and back across almost all of the Arizona Strip.

The first evening, just a few miles out of Vegas, I didn’t see any rain, but I did see a rainbow. What could have been a masterpiece turned out to be just a smudged lens and some drops of water resulting in the haziest, misaligned, and generally unfocused rainbow shot I’ve ever taken.  However, it gave me hope that they’re might be some big storms over the next ridge.

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So I went over the next ridge, and the next one, and the one after that too.  Eventually, I reached an impassible barrier, at least without pontoons or a bridge.  Knowing that I didn’t have much daylight left, I scampered down a long dirt track and off to one of the better campsites in Southern Nevada below the hoover damn.

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I set up the site, which really just means I pulled a lawn chair out of the truck and proceeded to have a 4 course meal.  3 beers and a sandwich.  This edge of the water site didn’t disappoint and I was treated to an amazing storm shrouded sunset, at the end of a dead end road, without another camper in sight while looking up river towards Lake Mead and Boulder City.

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All night thunder boomed around the truck and lightning flashed in the distance, but while threatening this cove it never did actually come over head.  I woke up with sunrise and realized I’d been shut out of another round of storms! Damn it.  I should have just stayed home, as the messages on my phone showed that Las Vegas had been pulverized by storms all night.

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On the drive out the sun started lighting up the valley I was in, and I realized there were still quite a few storms off to the East.  A quick (70 mile) drive down to Kingman, Arizona would get me back in the thick of things.  I filled the truck with gas and myself with coffee, turned the Guardians of the Galaxy playlist to 11 and hit the road.  I was fast approaching the right spot, the mobile radar was lighting up with Emergency Alerts and giant thunderboomers to my east.

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Kingman came and went on the highway with no storm action, and soon I was on historic Route 66 on my way to Peach Springs and the Hualapi reservation.  Finally, FINALLY, I was getting some desert Thunderstorm action.  And, it didn’t disappoint.  Flooded rivers (read: normally dry washes), lightning crashing down, swirling clouds, loud music.  Just the party with mother nature that I was looking for.

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By this point I was long overdue on my trip and the logical thing would have been to return to Las Vegas the way I’d come.  If I turned around now I’d be back in time for a hangout with the Jacobson’s and some yard long margaritas.  But with Radarscope open on my phone, I noticed these cells had their sights set on some serious sites.  In particular the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley.  A detail not lost on me in chasing this storm, is that much of the Grand Canyon and all of Monument Valley aren’t even within modern Doppler Radar – meaning I’d be chasing these storms blind.  Or more accurately, the old fashioned way.  The way god? intended.  By looking up at the sky and using some intuition.  Chasing by feel, chasing by luck, and when that doesn’t work chasing some more.

A jaunt through some national forests in central Arizona and I turned North headed for Grand Canyon National Park, the South Rim to be exact.  On my way, I finally got out in front of the storms.  Instead of chasing dark clouds, they were chasing me.  It felt oddly rejuvenating and a little bit scary at the same time.

I happened across a large wind farm on this portion of my drive.  I’m still not sure why we call it a farm, as we don’t plant the things, and they certainly don’t grow after they’re installed.  Maybe it’s because we’re harvesting the wind?  But we’re really not harvesting it at all, we’re just using it to turn a blade in a circle.  But then again, why do we call all of the other electricity generating things power plants?  They aren’t growing anything at all.  They’re just turning one form of energy, into another form.  Upon seeing the future, or more aptly just a smarter way to generate electricity, it reminded me of the stark difference between burning coal to make electricity and letting blades spin in the win.  I know what I’d pick, but I’ll let you decide for yourself.

 

I know you all just want to scroll down and see the nice picture of the lightning, but tough luck.

My drive continued north towards the Grand Canyon. As I pulled up to the welcome gate, the line was unusually long, especially considering the sky was releasing a torrent of water and by all accounts it was an awful day to experience the famed natural attraction.  When I reached the poor park ranger handing out maps and checking passes, he told me it was a “free” day for “National Public Lands Day” which happens to be September 27th – perplexing, but I can’t argue with free. It turns out National Public Lands Day is an initiative to let people into parks for free in the hopes that they’ll volunteer to pick up some garbage, or save some endangered species, or get rid of invasive plants.

The only invasive plant I saw while I was roaming around the Grand Canyon were the tourists themselves.  The place was over run with them.  There wasn’t a parking spot to be found that wasn’t full of tourists taking pictures of their windshields.  I drove a dozen miles to so and finally found a turn out that wasn’t over run and went out on a spire overlooking the Canyon to get the full effect of the storm.

A blustery, cloudy, downright cold wind was afoot moving clouds up and over the rim of the Canyon.

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That was enough of the tourists for me, so I hit the highway, and rolled the remaining 150 miles out to Monument Valley through Cameron, and Tuba City, and Kayenta which are a series of Indian towns on the Reservation.  This part of the drive, along with next morning’s drive to Page, Arizona was my favorite of the whole trip.  Traversing the Reservations 100s of miles at a time you realize just how vast the American west is and how little of it has actually been disturbed by people.  Thankfully, there are still lots of wild places, ready and waiting to become the canvas for the next adventurous person.

Monument Valley is actually a Navajo Tribal Park – which is like a National Park, but on Reservation land.  The National Park system really has it’s ups and downs, and I’ve talked about that at length before.  The most irksome thing is their massive investment in buildings and visitors centers and educational centers and general non-natural bullshit.  I was very refreshed to see that Monument Valley didn’t have any of this crap.  It did have a hotel with a restaurant and a barebones campground, but other than that, it was very much dirt roads and leave it to nature kind of attitude. This is how I think all parks should be.

I arrived at the park at just about dusk.  They had a fantastic little campground on top of the ridge at a place called “The View.”  Not knowing what the rules were on the Reservation about sleeping in what look like public lands, and noticing what a good perch they’d located the campground on, I elected to stay there.  I got a few pictures or the valley and proceeded to grab some dinner and a few beers by the truck.

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After a few hours, the sun went down, and the laser light show came on.  The storm had finally caught up to me, and to Monument Valley and was primed to put on a serious show.  Heading the roar of the thunder echoing around this valley filled with sounding boards was an entirely new experience. It was comparable to listening to a song with only the bass turned up. The storms spread out across the valley and I decide it was time to capture the action.

I was fortunate enough to have a cooler full of beer, some weird international companions camping near me who also liked Coors, and a nearly unlimited amount of lightning bolts to practice with.  I finally honed in on the proper settings and as if by magic the perfect strike happened in front of me.

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Holy shit.  Let me tell you something for a bit here.  This picture was really gratifying.  Here I’d driven halfway across the desert Southwest in under 24 hours looking for a storm that had yet to really materialize, and I just got a seriously good shot of this thunderstorm. I’d like to say I didn’t overflow with enthusiasm, but I did.  Myself and my assembly of international campers proceeded to have an Original Banquet Beer celebration right on the rim of Monument Valley.  Who knew a blurry picture on a DSLR screen could be cause for so much celebration?

It proceeded to start raining, and continued to rain all night.  By dawn it was still sprinkling, but not enough to keep my hopes down for a fantastic sunrise.  I drove the rough, washboarded road down into the valley, and out to one of the farthest lookouts, so I could see East. As I got out there sunrise came and went, but nothing of consequence materialized.  A nice morning and a nice place for a cup of coffee but all I got was moving clouds and spires.

While the drive back to Las Vegas through the true Arizona Strip was a lot less eventful, it was no less beautiful.  The Navajo Reservation, Lake Powell and the Vermillion Cliffs provided a serene and wonderful drive back.  I’m sure the Monkey Wrench Gang would have scoffed at my ability to cross that vast amount of terrain in mere hours, but it gave me some solace knowing these incredible swaths of land are just a stones throw from where I live.  Well, maybe a big throw, but they’re out there, just waiting to be explored and adventured.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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One Comments

  1. ml242
    wrote on October 13th, 2014 at 11:09 am  
    1

    cool stuff, never been anywhere like that myself. really like the last gif, too.

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