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Day 51:  We left the camper and bikes at Teresa & Mike’s to make a day trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  In addition to various tanks of fish, jellyfish, puffins, and sea otters, there is a giant tank with deep ocean fish and another giant tank with a kelp forest community.

An interesting display on the rise and fall of the sardine fishery in Monterey Bay recalls the Monterey of John Steinbeck’s time (his “Cannery Row” was based on the neighborhood where the aquarium now stands).  Several displays are geared for children and others focus on the problems of overfishing and oceanic pollution.  The amphitheater show was an engaging multimedia presentation of the historical and cultural development of Monterey revolving around the fishing industries of the bay.  We also watched three different 15-minute shows in the auditorium.  All were superbly and attractively presented.  We took a break to stroll along part of the pedestrian and biking path along the shore of the bay and spotted a couple of sea otters floating on their backs in a nearby kelp bed.  Before leaving town we had dinner at a local seafood market and restaurant (the grilled sablefish and trout were very tasty and not too expensive).

Day 52:  Teresa, Mike, and their son Charlie arrived in the week hours of the morning after a long airline delay and expensive taxi ride on their return from visiting Mike’s family back east.  We enjoyed a visit with them in the morning over a pancake breakfast before heading south to our next destination, Wheeler Gorge in Los Padres National Forest.

We elected to take Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway along the Big Sur coast, rather than the much faster and more direct Highway 101, and the views rewarded us for the extra time spent on the road.  More than once we rounded a sharp curve or crested a hill to see a great view—the highway hugs the steep and rocky shore—but there was not often a safe place to pull over with the trailer to try to get a photo.  Cutting inland at dusk toward our campground, we had more hills and hairpin curves going over a range of big hills, through a valley, and up into the gorge through three narrow tunnels to where we were staying.

Day 53:  The hike we had picked out for today was up the road from our campground some 35 miles or so (more switchbacks—very steep hills and valleys up to a 5,160-foot-high pass at Pine Mountain Summit), but as we approached the turnoff for the trailhead, we saw fire trucks parked on the side of the highway where they had been putting out a forest fire during the last few days.  The trail we had picked was closed—the fire was out but the crews were still checking for hot spots.  Luckily we knew of an alternative hike nearby, so we hiked to the Piedra Blanco (white rocks) from another trailhead off the same road.  This is chaparral country, so we were seeing a lot of shrubs, trees, and flowers new to us easterners.  The white rocks are a rounded whitish sandstone formation sticking up out of the gray shrubs and reddish sandstone and soil typical of the surrounding valley.  One formation was shaped a lot like a giant elephant or mammoth, perhaps 150 feet high.

Day 54:  We were dreading the traffic near Los Angeles, but fortunately didn’t hit any significant amount of traffic on our way to Coronado.  Situated across the bay from San Diego, the very upscale city of Coronado has a Navy base, a long tradition as a tourist destination (including the iconic 19th century Hotel del Coronado), and a great beach.  Paul’s brother Bob and his wife Marilyn have lived there since 1968 and raised their three sons there.  What a great place for us to relax for a while and visit with folks we see none too often.  The first thing we did after parking Vagabond in Bob & Marilyn’s driveway was to go for a swim at the Coronado beach.  The water felt wonderful.

Day 55:  Before getting down to serious visiting with the Lindsays, we devoted a day to visiting with retired friends Manya and Ken, who recently moved from N.H. to Carlsbad, Calif.  They led us on a scenic bike ride along the coast in the morning.  Later we had a nice long soak in their local swimming pool with their daughter Britta, son-in-law Judd, and grandson Kale, before reconvening for tacos and gelato in Carlsbad Village.

Days 56-58:  The visit with Bob & Marilyn was the goal around which the rest of the trip was planned.  This cornerstone of our big adventure was supremely enjoyable.  Bob took us on bike rides around Coronado’s scenic and historic sites, including a variety of big old “heritage” trees.

We twice got together with Bob & Marilyn’s son Robb and his wife Rosa.  Marilyn and Amy had lots to share about good recipes and good books.  Bob showed Paul old family photo albums.  The companionship and great meals (both home-cooked and at interesting eateries) got us well relaxed before beginning our return trip east via the desert Southwest.

Day 59:  Heading east from the coast, we pretty quickly got into the summer heat.  Rather than sticking to the interstate highways, we took a more scenic route from Coronado to Joshua Tree National Park, which took us on some winding roads over a couple of passes and through the Salton Sea valley, where the temperature was 111°F.  We did find a picnic shelter for lunch, where it was a “cool” 104 in the shade.  At least the temperature moderated after sunset.  By blind luck we arrived at Joshua Tree NP on the peak date for viewing the Perseid meteor showers and saw a good display.

Day 60:  About half of Joshua Tree NP is in the Colorado section of the Sonora Desert and the rest is in the more northern and higher elevation Mojave Desert.  We camped and hiked in the Mojave section, which is where the Joshua Trees are found (and the heat is less intense!).  Besides the distinctive Joshua trees (a species of yucca) and a wide variety of desert plants, the Mojave section of the park is characterized by many islands of rounded granite formations protruding from the flat gneiss landscape.

A big highlight for us was a sighting a bighorn ram up close on the Ryan Mountain hiking trail.  We also hiked around one of the park’s very attractive and informative interpretive trails.  The Native Americans pounded the leaves the Mojave yucca to separate the fibers to use for weaving cloth and rope.

Day 61:  On our way out of Joshua Tree NP at the start of another travel day, we stopped at some more roadside display panels and a couple more interpretive trails.  At one area there was such a thick migration of yellow caterpillars crossing the park road to feed on the tiny yellow chinchweed flowers that it was impossible to avoid running over several of the critters.

Once down at lower elevation, we were back in temperatures around 110 for the drive into Arizona, where we began to see saguaro cactus and prickly pear cactus in addition to the ocotillo plants we had first noticed in southeastern California.  Then our route climbed steeply out of the broad desert valley onto pine-covered mountains a mile high, where it was cooler.  We just had enough time before dusk for a bike ride on the Peavine rail trail through the beautiful granite dells in Prescott.

Day 62:  Camping under tall ponderosa pines in Prescott National Forest was a pleasant contrast to the heat wave in “the valley” (the Sonoran Desert) while we went visiting.

We had not seen Susan, my first cousin (once removed) for about 35-40 years.  We joined Susan, her friend Betty, and Betty’s daughters Ann and Ellen at the Desert Caballero History Museum in Wickenburg—a good place to get the flavor of a western town, get a glimpse of its early days, and savor some good Mexican cooking followed by ice cream.  I particularly appreciated hearing Susan’s memories of her Grandfather Lowry (my great grandfather), who died at Falmouth when Susan was nine and I was only a little over a month old.  Driving back to our campground we saw our first roadrunner, as it darted across the road.

Day 63:  We had originally hoped to visit our friends Teresa and Randy in Colorado on this trip, until we heard they had moved away, but luckily they ended up in Prescott, only about a mile and a half from the campground where we were staying.  While at Normandeau 19 years ago, Teresa inspired me and several colleagues to start running.  Chef Randy served a gourmet breakfast and they gave us a tour of their beautiful home.  Randy had also helped us by charging our run-down camper battery overnight.

In the afternoon we headed off for our next destination, the red rock country of Sedona we had heard so much about.  We took the scenic route, over yet another twisty mountain road, this one passing through the town of Jerome, incredibly nestled into a steep mountainside high above the valley below.

Day 64:  The red sandstone scenery around Sedona fully lived up to our expectations.  A short but steep hike up to the saddle of Cathedral Rock rewarded us with good views of the surrounding cliffs, mesas, and canyons.

In the late afternoon we went on a three-hour guided tour by jeep and hiking trail to the Honanki ruin located against the base of a cliff.  This particular ruin is the original structure (not reconstructed).  Damage from looters and souvenir seekers has been reduced by limiting public access mainly to authorized tours led by trained professionals.

The people living in this arid region in the late 1100s through early 1200s were called the Sinagua by the Spanish (“without water”).  They cultivated corn, beans, squash, and cotton by carefully managing what little water they had.  Our guide “Diggy” pointed out several pictographs (drawings) and petroglyphs (carvings) on the vertical rock face above the ruins, and explained their symbolism.

We cooled off with prickly pear gelato before leaving Sedona to head back to our campground.

Day 65:  In the morning we hiked up the West Fork of Oak Creek, near our campground north of Sedona.  The trail was surprisingly well shaded, as it crossed and recrossed the creek many times under tall pine, oak, and Douglas fir trees at the bottom of the very high and narrow canyon.

In the afternoon we explored two national monuments north of Flagstaff:  Sunset Crater NM and Wupatki NM.  Sunset Crater volcano erupted in the late 1000s and blanketed a wide area with cinders, lava, and ash, forcing the relocation of the Sinagua people living in the area.  The extinct volcano is now a large cinder cone, with some lava flows and smaller cinder cones nearby.  The Wupatki Ruin is the remains of a large pueblo-style village built in the early 1100s and occupied through the early 1200s.  This was a multi-story complex on a sandstone outcrop in an arid plain, complete with a ball court and a kiva (round ceremonial structure).

One unique feature there is the “blowhole,” a small opening to an underground limestone cavern below, through which the cave “breathes.”  When the outside air pressure is lower than the air pressure inside, the air flows out (it was a nice cool stream of air on the hot day we visited, feeling just like an air conditioner).

Day 66:  Walnut Canyon National Monument has another Sinagua ruin, but in a very different setting than the Honanki and Wupatki ruins we had previously visited.  The canyon is narrow and twisting, with walls that are steep, but not vertical.

The adobe rooms built there are tucked inside natural alcoves formed when softer sandstone layers eroded faster than the harder overlying limestone layers.  Farming was done on the forested plateau above the canyon.  The canyon walls had varying sun exposure due to the meanders of the creek, so a very wide variety of native plants provided food, medicines, etc., to supplement the cultivated corn, squash, and beans.

Day 67:  Petrified Forest National Park in eastern Arizona not only has a lot of large petrified tree trunks, but it is special because much of them are “agatized” (the development of the mineral crystals in the petrified wood has advanced to a colorful gemlike state rather than just looking like the original wood).  The brittle petrified tree trunks have been broken into sections over the ages, the way a candy cane snaps if you try to bend it.  The scenery in the park included bands in the eroded sedimentary rock.  At the Painted Desert visitor center we chatted with a Navajo woman who told how she died wool from various local plants.

Day 68:  Canyon de Chelly is unusual among National Monuments because the canyon is not only valued for its scenery and ancient ruins, but it still provides homes and a living for an active Native American community.  Unlike the Sinagua sites, which were only occupied for one or two centuries, Canyon de Chelly has been the home of various native people nearly continuously for the last 2000 years (and it was visited sporadically or seasonally for several millennia before that).  We hiked down into the canyon in the morning guided by a ranger and an intern, who showed us ruins and pictographs and described the history of the people in the canyon.

For lunch we sampled the local cuisine of roast mutton, white corn stew, and frybread at the weekly market in town.  In the afternoon we viewed the tall sandstone spire called Spider Rock in the upper canyon, joined a geology walk, then hiked down to the canyon floor to view the White House Ruin.

Day 69:  In the afternoon that we arrived in Mesa Verde National Park, we took a short hike on an interpretive trail that in 1914 was a precarious section of the main road into the park (later replaced with a newer road with a tunnel).  Signposts and a pamphlet identified several of the native plants.  The conspicuous yellow blossoms of the rabbitbrush shrubs were in full bloom.

The evening ranger program discussed competing theories of how humans immigrated into the New World (Bering land bridge and ice-free corridor, coastal migration by boat following the resources of the kelp beds, and trans-oceanic voyages from Polynesia).

Day 70:  The Ancestral Puebloans of Mesa Verde originally lived on the mesa tops where they farmed, but around 1200 they started building impressive cliff dwellings below the mesa rims in large natural alcoves.  We took a ranger-led walking tour through the Long House ruin and a self-guided tour of the Step House ruin, which are prime examples of the cliff dwellings.  These were multi-level complexes built of sandstone blocks and mortar, consisting of living quarters, storage rooms, and kivas.  The kivas were round subterranean rooms that appear to have been used for social as well as religious gatherings.

On a self-guided tour of Badger House Community we saw examples of stages in the evolution from simple pit houses to clusters of sandstone and mortar houses and kivas that were built on top of the mesa before they built cliff dwellings below the rim.  The evening ranger program discussed trade connections of the Mesa Verdean people with three other New World cultures around the year 1200:  coastal Californian, Mayan, and Mississipian.

Day 71:  We spent this day in the Chapin Mesa section of the park, including ranger-led tours of the Cliff Palace and Balcony House ruins, perusing the archaeological museum, a self-guided tour of the Spruce House ruin, and a hike around the Petroglyph Point trail.  Each tour gave us more insight into how the Ancestral Puebloans thrived in this challenging climate and environment, so we were glad we went on all three tours.

Today, tourists hike to the ruins on trails and ladders built by the Park Service and the CCC, but in 1200 the only access was by extremely steep and narrow trails that in many places were no more than small hand and toe holds chiseled into the steep sandstone cliffs.

The museum has many artifacts recovered by archeological excavations and a set of exquisite dioramas painstakingly crafted by CCC artists depicting life at Mesa Verde from the nomadic hunter-gatherer times to the 1200s.

Day 72:  Chimney Rock National Monument is on a mountain ridge in southwestern Colorado where Ancestral Puebloans lived during about 925-1125.  High on the ridge are the remains of many pit houses of the people who farmed in the nearby valley.  Their kivas were above ground, unlike at Mesa Verde, because the soil was so thin above the bedrock.

Higher, where the ridge is very narrow, is Great House Pueblo, a building complex constructed of sandstone block and mortar in the late 1000s.  The excellent quality of the masonry is similar to that found in Chaco Canyon.

When the two tall rock formations at the summit of the ridge, Chimney Rock and Companion Rock, are viewed from Great House Pueblo, the gap between them frames the position of the lunar standstill, an alignment that occurs every 18.6 years.  One of the exterior walls of Great House Pueblo aligns with the solstice and another with the 1054 crab nebula supernova.  These astronomical alignments suggest that Great House Pueblo was built primarily for ceremonial purposes.