October 2013. Does that mean anything to my fellow travelers? That was the time of the last government shutdown.
Sure, the Senate and the House doesn't open, bills don't get passed, etc. But every federal employee goes without a check? Well, that's not good. Luckily I'm not a federal employee.
But, you know who is? All national park employees.
So, all national parks were shut down. Having planned a trip to New Mexico and Arizona based on the timing of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta... a year in advance, I had intended on seeing multiple national parks in that area...along with the grand poobah of national sites, The Grand Canyon. Luckily, state parks and Navajo parks were still open. With some last minute scurrying to change my plans, I found good alternatives to most stops I'd hoped to make. Instead of Carlsbad Caverns, we found Antelope Canyons. I'd still like to see Carlsbad at some point, but the Caverns just cannot be more beautiful or fun to see than Antelope Canyons. All of the cliff dwellings, Mesa Verde, Montezuma's Castle, and the Gila Cliff Dwellings, were all national parks. While not a cliff dwelling, Taos Pueblo proved a decent replacement for those (again, I'd still like to return to see them at some point).
White Sands National Park was closed. You can sled the white sand desert there! I wasn't sure how to replace that one...until I found the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in Utah, which you can also sled. So, sledding white sands or pink sands, either way you can check sledding on a desert off of your bucket list. Heck, if you're color blind, you'd not even notice the difference!
That. Leaves. The. Grand. Canyon.
There is no replacement worthy of the Grand Canyon. It's one of the modern 7 wonders of the world! That was the biggest disappointment. I downloaded the CNN app to my phone and paid keen interest to any headlines involving the government shutdown and its possible end.
At the point of the trip where we were supposed to see the Grand Canyon, where it made sense logically in our path, it hadn't reopened. In desperation, I started asking if there were back roads to the Canyon. I mean, it is a giant hole in the Earth. There should be more than one way to get to it, right? After a couple of "I don't know" answers and one "it's shut down, you shouldn't try," I found an older Navajo lady at a gas station. She told me of some old logging roads off of AZ-64 just outside of the east entrance to the park.
She said as long as you had a rugged vehicle, since the logging roads were dirt, rutted, and not well kept, you could make it to the Canyon. She recommended NOT even attempting it if you didn't have a 4-wheel drive.
We had a rented Ford Focus...and I thought, "How bad could it be?"
Around the 170 mile marker on AZ-64, we turned off on a small dirt road and hoped for the best. Initially, it wasn't so bad. We made it well past the logging trucks...of which I'm not sure what they were logging as the area was filled with only tiny little trees. We were on a bona fide adventure.
We had stepped off the main touristy thoroughfare into the great unknown.
It was like skipping class, knowing everyone else was suffering while you were free to do whatever you'd like. Free to the possibilities. It was bumpy. It was dangerous. It was fun. But, then the road started getting bad. The ruts were deep enough for the tiny little rental car to scrape on...and some were deep enough, if hit, I think the car would have tipped over. It also became very hilly. These hills were covered in loose rock. I began getting nervous that we wouldn't be able to get back if we kept going. We were bound to soon cross a point of no return...and if there wasn't another way out at the end of this road, what would we do?
So, sadly, at an unknown distance from the actual Canyon, we turned around and ventured back through the parts of the road we knew we were capable of crossing, never knowing how close we did or didn't get. At least we had a "Grand Canyon" adventure though...
Thank goodness, my CNN app paid off. On our next to last vacation day, we were in Tombstone. At 4 am, I saw the headline that Arizona was paying to reopen the Grand Canyon because they'd been losing all the tourist money. We skipped seeing Billy the Kid's old stomping grounds in Lincoln County, NM to steer back towards the Grand Canyon. Because, again, there's nothing else like it.
7 hours drive back to the Grand Canyon, 5 hours at the Grand Canyon, and finally 6 more driving hours to get back on path for the airport home the next day. It was worth it...and my boys did the Junior Ranger program and are now official Grand Canyon Junior Park Rangers!
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