Tuba City and Camp Verde, Arizona (Day 8 - 5/1/14)

Meteor Crater. To give you an idea of scale, 12 football fields would fit into it. Another great photo by the Duck

It was very hard saying goodbye to May and Floyd. They have treated us so nicely, and want us to stay longer, but we must move on. Three days ago I viewed the visit with some apprehension, but after meeting May I soon came to see her as a comforting presence, always listening and always welcoming. Floyd is a quietly dignified and warm leader, living modestly in the centre of Tuba City and always ready to share, teach, and learn. The sheer wealth of knowledge and wisdom that flowed forth from Floyd over the last few days has been invaluable, and his candid insights into the scandals and triumphs of the Navajo Nation's political system has given me a unique perspective on Arizona's history.

After a breakfast at the Hogan Restaurant, and a packed lunch gifted to us from May, we depart Tuba City for what will be the last time. I feel a little sad to be leaving. 

On our way through the neighbourhood we almost run afoul of a lone bull on the kerbside, and the Duck decides to head up the hill to another part of Tuba City to look in on the family she lodged with two years earlier. The visit is very short; after a brief moment of confusion the lady remembers Duck's name and there is an awkward exchange of pleasantries before we decide to bail.

Streets of Tuba City

Our plan is to head down to Phoenix over the course of the next two days. New Mexico is unfortunately a little too far but we decide to look in on the Wupatki National Park on the way back south. It's another amazing sight in a state that seems to have an endless diversity of habitats, and we drift through blue-green savannah crowned with more remarkably preserved Native American pueblos. What's most amazing about this location though is that very few other people are in the park, which lends the ruins a stoic solitude. I keep hoping some Pronghorn Antelope will appear on the horizon, but some douchebags turn up with a dog instead (despite a prominent sign outlawing the presence of canines).

Wupatki is a national park with several ruins from ancient pueblo peoples, notably the Anasazi and Sinagua

You can literally walk through these ruins, the area was full of solitude and history. It's estimated that these structures date from 500 AD.

There's no filter on this photo, the grass really is this colour.

We explore four separate pueblos throughout the National Park, and stand within the boundaries of a reconstructed Anasazi ball court. I try to imagine what it would have been like 800 years ago, with tribespeople competing within the semi-sunken stonewalled oval while others cheered and watched on. It's such a mysterious and vague history, I can't help but feel its magnetic pull. 

Snowmen like these could be seen alongside the road everywhere

Next we drive on to the Sunset Crater, a volcanic ash-strewn forest currently frozen over with large swathes of ice. Duck seems to get extra excited at revisiting this location (she went here on her first visit to America), and after a few minutes of walking along its paths her girlish enthusiasm becomes a little too much... her foot catches on a knob of volcanic rock and she falls over in a big way, grazing her knee and spraining her ankle. She isn't in a good way, although this doesn't stop her from exploring further... the Duck just can't be told!

Sunset Crater erupted just over 1000 years ago, leaving a 10 kilometre circumference of blackened lava flow

[NOTE: A whole month later, upon returning to Australia, the Duck finally consented to letting a doctor examine her still aching ankle. X-Rays revealed that it did indeed break in at least two places at this exact point in time back in Arizona. I can tell you that, even though she had walked on it for a whole month while carrying heavy baggage and had also returned to playing hockey once we arrived back in Australia, her complaints about said injury increased by several hundred percent once she learned that it was actually a break.]

[ADDITIONAL NOTE: At the time of transferring this journal entry to this blog, nearly 3 years after our trip, the Duck has broken this exact same ankle again by tripping over while walking outdoors. She is currently hobbling around our house on crutches due to sustaining several avulsion fractures.] 

Next stop, Route 66! The highway is not called this anymore, but all the service stations and road-stops still milk this 'historical' cross-country route for a few hard-won dollars. The landscape changes once more as we head east, becoming incredibly flat and featureless. We pass a ghost town here, a watching Bald Eagle there, and eventually find our next destination - Meteor Crater Road. As we drive down this lonely turn-off we keep our eyes peeled for the famous 50 000 year old meteor crater. I scan the horizon for evidence of it before realising with a shock that it's much closer than I assumed, so large in fact that it looks like like the sawn-off bottom of a mountain.

Brochure, presumably created around the same time the meteor struck

Postcard. Ditto.

After visiting several ancient ruins and natural wonders for next to nothing, it seems strange to pay to see a crater, but it transpires that this attraction has a lot more clout than most. Heavily staffed and featuring a tech-heavy museum about the nature of meteors, it turns out that the creatively named 'Meteor Crater' is famous for being the first proven meteor-created crater, and has been used extensively by NASA astronauts over the years for training purposes. The strike-zone is yet another gobsmacking sight on our American journey; large enough to house 12 American football fields, and humbling in its sheer depth and width.

By the time we finish with the crater it's starting to get late so we decided to stop about halfway to Phoenix, and return to Camp Verde.

The Duck made me take this photo. Between tears and sobs, she snapped 'Quick, take a photo of me!' In my defense, I really did not want to do this!

Guest Diary Entry from the Duck:

What you are about to read is 100% true and may disturb some readers. It was a beautiful day, the sun was out, the clouds were hiding and there was a sharp winter snap in the air. Duck decided to take her beloved husband to an amazing outlook where he could visualise the lava flowing, cutting through the rolling mountains and destroying everything in its path. Duck thought that her husband would really enjoy this but to her surprise it only enraged him. He was so furious; he couldn't understand why she was blessed with the skill of finding awesome places and driving the American way, and his anger slowly boiled up inside of him until his body could no longer contain it and he erupted like the very volcano they were looking at... his eruption could be heard from miles away and took the form of utmost pain for the Duck.

The Duck, skipping along the path gleefully while squirrels danced around her and birds merrily chirped in harmony, was about to turn around to proclaim her undying love for her husband when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, him raising his arm and using excessive brute force to knock her down. [ED: This most definitely did NOT happen] What he didn't realise was that whilst the Duck was falling she was scrambling to keep balance, so he snapped off a branch from a nearby Alligator Oak and placed it directly in front of her. She was able to counteract his initial shove, but at the last minute rolled her ankle on the discarded tree branch, catapulting her directly down into the broken shards of lava.  

The Duck wept and wept and all the squirrels stopped dancing and the birds stopped chirping and the world for her seemed to stand still. With all her crying, her husband realised she was only trying to let him experience what pleasures she had already seen, and he wished he could take all his mean action back. He promised he would never tell her the truth, and instead be grateful for everything she brought to the relationship. When the Duck quizzed him, and pointed out that she saw him push her, her husband swore black and blue (the colour of her knee) that he tried to catch her before she fell, mostly definitely not pushing her!

And so the two continued on their adventure together.