I have just two things to say about our visit to Canyon de Chelly National Monument – “Awesome!” and “If you have never been to this natural wonderland, put it at the very top of your travel plans NOW! You won’t regret it!”

I have been to the Grand Canyon and the Salt River Canyon, I’ve seen Canyon Diablo, and a lot of other natural wonders of the Southwest, and in my opinion, none of them are as impressive as Canyon de Chelly! I only wish I had discovered this magical place years ago.

Canyon de Chelly (pronounced d’Shay) is located at Chinle, Arizona, on the Navajo Indian Reservation, and has been inhabited by native peoples for nearly 5,000 years. At the canyon’s mouth, the colorful rock walls are only 30 feet high, but deeper in the canyon, the cliffs tower over 1,000 feet above the valley floor.

We had been advised not to take our 40 foot motorhome to Canyon de Chelly, and I’m glad we didn’t. There are two campgrounds, one the free Cottonwood Campground, which is best suited for small (under 30 feet) RVs, though we did see a couple of larger rigs that had somehow managed to squeeze in. But between the small spaces, tight turns, and trees close to the roadways, there is no way I’d take our motorhome in there.

Spider Rock Campground, about nine miles from the National Park Service Visitor Center, is privately owned, and it looked pretty run down to us. About the only amenities you’ll find there are lizards, porta-potties, and dry camping

We left the motorhome in Show Low and drove our van to Canyon de Chelly, and after a stop at the Visitor Center, we took the seventeen mile long South Rim Drive, which offered seven overlooks, each one more magnificent than the one before. Each overlook gave us a different perspective on the canyon. Our first stop was the Tunnel Canyon Overlook, which gave us nice views of the canyon, which is very green year around due to the river that flows through the bottom of the canyon.

At our next stop, Tesgi Overlook, we saw this farm, which is owned by a Navajo family who lives in this dramatic wonderland. Can you imagine what it would be like to wake up to these kinds of views every day?

Further along the South Rim Drive, at the White House Overlook, we took this photo of these ancient Indian ruins that date back to 1060 A.D. Archaeologists say that at one time the ruins had over 80 rooms, though only about 60 remain today.

It is very had to choose just one, but if I had to pick, my favorite view in Canyon de Chelly is of magnificent Spider Rock, which towers over 800 feet from the canyon floor. This rock formation is sacred to the Navajo people, who say that Spider Woman lives on top of the rock, and it was this deity who taught the first Navajo women to weave, creating a tradition that has been passed down from mother to daughter for generations.

Navajo mothers tell their children that if they misbehave, Spider Woman will carry them away and take them to the top of the rock spire to live until they learn their lesson.

I wish I had room to show you all of the wonderful photos we took at Canyon de Chelly, but there are just too many. And it doesn’t matter, because the photos just don’t do this natural wonder justice. You have to see it for yourself to believe it!

In tomorrow’s blog I’ll tell you about our visit to historic Hubbell Trading Post, another Navajo Reservation landmark.

Thought For The Day -A good traveler has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

After suffering intolerably for way too long, today we’re going to scratch our hitch itch, at least a little bit. We’re off on a road trip to historic Hubbell Trading Post and Canyon de Chelly National Monument, on the Navajo Indian Reservation in far northeastern Arizona.

This is familiar country to anybody who has ever read any of bestselling author Tony Hillerman’s books, but I’m ashamed to say that as many years as I lived in this area, I have never been there before. I guess it’s like the people who live in New York City all their lives and never visit the Statue of Liberty, or the Empire State Building. Or, for that matter, the folks right here in Arizona who never get to the Grand Canyon.

We’re looking forward to the trip, and to sharing it with all of you. We’re not sure if this will be a long day trip, or if we’ll spend the night in a motel someplace. I also don’t know, if we do stay somewhere overnight, what kind of internet access we’ll have, if any. Much of the Navajo Reservation is still a pretty remote place.

So if there is no blog tomorrow or the next day, we haven’t fallen off the end of the earth, been eaten by a coyote, or fallen victim to any of Tony Hillerman’s villains. But do check in, and if I’m not back online in a couple of days, send out a search party. Or at least a Domino’s Pizza delivery guy.

If you aren’t tired of seeing what Miss Terry has been accomplishing with the new Levolor blinds in our Winnebago motorhome, here is one final picture. She installed the blinds over my desk yesterday, and we think that they really change the look of our home on wheels.

Since I couldn’t get to my desk most of the afternoon, while she was installing the blinds, I stayed out of the way and played Scrabble on my iPad. And I’m proud to say that I’ve finally gotten to where I can beat the computer more than half the time! It’s a small victory, but I take them where I can get them.

Now, I can hear some of you saying how lazy and worthless I am, letting my wife do all the hard work while I goof off. But that’s not true. Terry and I have a very good relationship because we each have our own strengths and weaknesses, and we understand them. If I had tried to hang the blinds, Terry would have been calling somebody to replace the RV’s window with one hand, while she tried to stanch the bleeding I was doing all over the place with the other hand, all the while using her knees to steer as she drove me to the emergency room.

So instead, I stayed on the sofa, complimented her skills, and played word games. Well, I wasn’t exactly playing. I’m a wordsmith, and I was just honing my own skills. At last that’s what I told Miss Terry, and don’t you dare tell her otherwise!

I may have been goofing off, but Bad Nick was hard at work, posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled I’m All About Overkill. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – I like you. You remind me of when I was young and knew everything.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

We pulled out of Juniper Ridge RV Resort about 9:30 yesterday morning, drove twelve miles  in to Show Low, and then followed U.S. Highway 60 south 48 miles across the White Mountain Apache Reservation to the Salt River Canyon, a dramatic chasm that folks here in Arizona refer to as the “Other Grand Canyon.”  The route took us from the high pine country of the Mogollon Rim to the fringe of the desert. The road between Show Low and the canyon is mostly two lane, with frequent passing zones.

The seven miles down to the bridge at the bottom of the canyon are a series of tight switchbacks, with more twists and turns than a politician’s biography. It can  be intimidating to a flatlander driving an RV through here for the first time, and the rule is slow and easy. I shifted our Allison automatic transmission down to third gear and let the transmission and exhaust brake hold us back.

Climbing back out of the canyon on the south side, the Cummins diesel engine did a fine job, and before long we were out of the curves and making good time rolling south. We did have to stop for a few minutes at a road construction zone that had the highway down to one lane.

In Globe, we picked up State Route 77, a narrow roadway with its own share of hills and curves, and took it south past the mining towns of Winkelman and San Manuel, then past the historic town of Oracle, and the turnoff to the Biosphere, until we eventually came to Tucson.

We pulled into Tra-Tel RV Park a little after 2 p.m. We had covered exactly 200 miles, dropping from 6500 feet elevation in Show Low to 2300 at the RV park. With that drop in elevation came a steep rise in temperature. On Sunday we had two inches of snow in Show Low, and it was 95 degrees when we stepped out of the Winnebago in Tucson!

Tra-Tel  is a small, friendly place, which is our base whenever we’re in Tucson. The RV park is less than half full, and we got a nice 50 amp full hookup pull through site. The minute I had the electric cable plugged in, Miss Terry turned on the air conditioner to cool it down inside the motorhome.

The purpose of our visit to Tucson is to spend some time with my cousin Beverly, who is one of my favorite people in the world, so once we were settled in, we drove across town to her apartment near Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Along the way, we passed the Pima Air and Space Museum, with it’s impressive collection of military aircraft, and then the Davis-Monthan “bone yard,” where retired military aircraft are brought for storage and eventual dismantling. There sure are a lot of taxpayer dollars sitting behind those chain link fences!

We had a nice visit with Bev, took her out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse, and then went back to her place to chat some more. By about 8:30 I was getting droopy from our long day, so we said our goodbyes and promised to see Beverly again today. Miss Terry drove back to the RV park, and we spent the hours before bedtime catching up on e-mails that had come in during the day, and watching the Biography channel on television.

We’ll be here in Tucson a week or so, and it’s supposed to be in the mid-90s all of the time we’re here, so I expect our air conditioner will get a good workout.

Thought For The Day -  A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

We had originally planned to stay in Kingman, Arizona until Monday, visiting my old friend Mike Howard. But a combination of Mike not feeling very well, terrible cell phone and internet service, and a scheduling mix up changed our plans.

We had been in contact with the marketing folks at the Grand Canyon Railway in Williams, Arizona about doing a story on the train ride to the Grand Canyon. The original plan was to arrive in Williams Monday, stay overnight at the Grand Canyon Railway RV Park, and ride the train Tuesday.

But somehow communications between their main office in Denver, Colorado and the folks in Williams went awry, and after a lot of phone calls back and forth, a bit of frustration further complicated by it being the holiday weekend, and a false start or two, it was decided that we’d come to Williams yesterday, and take the train to the Grand Canyon today.

I know that Mike was disappointed to see us leaving so soon, but if he’s anything like me, the last thing I want to do when I’m under the weather is have to entertain guests. We hope to stop in and see him again in a few weeks, after we spend some family time with my daughter in Show Low.

I think Mohave County, Arizona was just as happy to see me go as I was to leave. Is it just me, or is that mountain giving me the finger?

What a difference a year makes! Exactly one year ago to the day, we left Kingman headed for our old hometown of Show Low. I just re-read my blog post for that trip, and noted that it was a slow, torturous trip uphill, and that between Seligman and Williams, we were crawling along on the shoulder of Interstate 40 in our old MCI bus conversion at 10 miles per hour, radiator misters on, and temperature gauge just bumping the red line.

This trip, in our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, we were doing over 50 miles per hour, passing eighteen wheelers on the steep climbs, and our Cummins diesel engine never missed a beat. There are a lot of things about that old bus that I really loved, but driving it in the mountains wasn’t one of them.

Once we were settled into our site at the RV park, we went looking for someplace to eat. A girl at the railroad depot, and somebody at the local Visitor Center, both recommended the Pine Country Restaurant, which features 25 different pies, baked fresh daily. Well, let me at them!

The service was friendly, the portions huge, and while our dinners were good, I wouldn’t call them great. But the pies! Oh, the pies! The servings were just as large as with the rest of the meal, and beyond delicious. I had the pecan pie alamode, and Terry had cherry Dutch crumb, and we argued over whose was better. Miss Terry said the next time we go there, we’ll just have a sandwich to have room for more pie!

Once we had finished our dinner, we had to make a quick run into Flagstaff, 30 miles to the east, to go TV shopping. While we were at Best Buy, a pretty young lady sales clerk invited me to play with the new Apple iPad, which was just released yesterday. Anytime a pretty girl asks me to play with anything, especially a new gadget, I’m all over it!

To be honest, when I first heard about the iPad, I wasn’t at all interested. But after spending a few minutes browsing the web and watching a video on it, my thinking changed 180 degrees. This thing is cool, and I could find a hundred uses for it.

Would I buy one? Probably not, but only because in another month or so they are introducing a new, improved version with 3G capabilities, in addition to the WiFi the current models have. The young lady also told me that Apple will be making its iPhone available to Verizon customers by the end of the year. I’ve heard rumors of that before, and if it does happen, I’ll definitely make the change from my Blackberry Storm. I’ve used the Blackberry for almost a year now, and I have also played with a few iPhones, and the Apple product is far superior in my opinion.

Okay, we’re off to ride the train!

Thought For The Day – Finding fortune among the accidents of life – is there any greater talent?

We know many RVers who work in RV parks around the country to offset their traveling costs. Typically, they work a set number of hours per week in exchange for a free RV site, and any hours over those agreed upon for the site are paid at an hourly wage. Some workamping RVers return to the same campground to work every season, while others prefer to move about and see new places.

Workamping in an RV park can be interesting, and can help you save some money in camping fees. However, as I always say in my seminars on working on the road, as well as in my book Work Your Way Across The USA, if your goal is to make the most possible money in a given time period, often you would be better off to rent a site in an RV park on a monthly basis, and got a job at the local Home Depot or a restaurant in town. RV park wages are just not that good in most cases.

But if you want to do something a little bit different, and still earn money, there are many, many opportunities out there to make money and have fun that don’t involve cleaning bathrooms in an RV park, serving French fries in a fast food restaurant, or working in retail stores. Here are ten jobs that RVers we know have done that you may never have thought of.  

1. Beet Harvest – We have known several RVers who have worked the sugar beet harvests in places like North Dakota and Minnesota. Jobs include everything from driving trucks to sorting the beets when they arrive at warehouses. One website on the sugar beet harvest claims that some workers make as much as $7,000 in a month or less.

2. Canoe & Kayak Tour Guide – From the Florida Keys to Michigan’s wild Upper Peninsula, canoe and kayak liveries are busy all season long introducing tourists to the joys to be found on the water. It’s a great job for RVers who want to make some extra money and spend the summer (or winter) paddling. 

3. Working For Amazon – During the Christmas rush, online retailer Amazon.com hires many RVers to work at their fulfillment center in Kansas. The last I heard, the wage was $11 an hour, plus bonuses, with overtime available.

4. Dealing Blackjack – The gaming industry, in places like Las Vegas, Reno, and Laughlin, Nevada, provides many working opportunities for RVers. Jobs range from dealing blackjack to working as a customer greeter in casinos.

5. Driving Tour Bus – From Alaska to the Grand Canyon to Florida, tourist areas provide many employment opportunities for RVers. Driving tour buses, ranging in size from extended length vans to full sized coaches, is a good way to make money while spending time in places where the tourists pay big bucks to visit.

6. Fish Cannery – This is hard, dirty, smelly, physically demanding work, but one fulltime RVer we know spends a full summer in Alaska working long hours at a fish cannery, and he tells us he makes enough in a season to pay for two years of fulltime RV travel.

7. Working The NASCAR Circuit – Every race car driver, from the superstars to the new guy in the pits, have somebody selling souvenirs with their names and car numbers on them. We’ve met a couple of RVers who tow a vending trailer behind their motorhomes and follow the circuit, selling souvenirs to racing fans.

8. Selling Christmas Trees – This is obviously a seasonal job, and is hard physical work, but we have known many RVers who sell Christmas trees on lots across the country, and several have told us that they have made $8,000 or more in less than a month. Many times the same companies who hire RVers to sell Christmas trees hire them to sell fireworks for the Fourth of July, and Halloween pumpkins on the same lots. One couple we know made about $7,000 in two weeks selling fireworks this past summer.

9. Horse Wrangler – I make it a point never to ride anything you can’t put gasoline in, but if you are an equestrian fan and are comfortable in a saddle, you may find work as a horse wrangler, leading trail rides at one of the many dude ranches in the Southwest. The pay isn’t usually top dollar, but tips can be good, and if you love horses, it’s your chance to get paid for playing cowboy (or cowgirl).

10. Gas Line Survey – There is a long, ongoing thread on the Escapees forum, on working as a gas line surveyor, and the RVers we have talked to who have done this work all say that it’s a great way to make good money and get a lot of exercise in the process.

For more ideas on making money as you travel, check out my Working On The Road web page. What are some of the ways you have earned money on the road?

Thought For The Day – My wife does all the driving; I just get to hold the steering wheel.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally