RV Winter Rambling 2006-07

"Ta-i ke-mo sah-bee" ("Greetings trusty scout")……….

The Navajo Nation stretches from New Mexico all across the north of Arizona. It’s the largest reservation in the USA. Parts of it reminded me of the South African townsites, with the rows of tumbledown huts but here they all had high-priced pickup trucks and autos parked outside and the children were skidding along on skateboards in their expensive label clothing. There is really no comparison to life in South Africa – it’s insulting to the Africans who have absolutely nothing. I really do think that the ‘reservation system’ in North America has mostly been a failure – it hasn’t promoted education or ambition and the resulting society has degenerated.


Ominous purple-black skies were cut with sharp slashes of lightning as we headed southwest. The storms were all around us but miraculously we always just skirted them. We saw lightning hit just to the east of us and that gave us the willies; I kept my eyes peeled for tornadoes. I’m terribly afraid of them.


We stopped overnight near the Petrified Forest National Park in northern Arizona and visited the park the following morning. There are acres and acres of petrified wood, which is strewn around haphazardly on the arid wasteland. The millions-of-years-old logs still look like wood before they are cut up; then the most brilliant colours are unleashed. Large warning signs notify that it is an offence to remove anything from a National Park….. “But can’t I please have one little bit of petrified wood?” Beside the walkways, cameras were trained across the viewable area to catch those who’d dare to put a rock into their pocket. I’m afraid enough of ‘Big Brother’ to not attempt to snafu even a tiny bit and I was glad when we reached the park exit and another sign warned ‘Be prepared for your vehicle to be searched’.

As we travelled on, we heard weather broadcasts of the areas we’d left behind. Tornadoes had levelled a small town in eastern New Mexico. We had originally planned on going as far as San Antonio, Texas but thought we didn’t have enough time and that area had many tornado warnings, so we made the right decision.

We roared right up, over and through Flagstaff all at a high elevation and then west of Flagstaff, slowly descended way, way down to not that far above sea level. The temperature soared and when we reached Laughlin, it was almost 90 degrees.

posted by O'Leary @ 9:51 AM