“dam . . . Otter Creek / and all the water backed up” – Live
Today may go down as the best dam day of the entire trip. Although that isn’t saying a lot because I think it might be the only dam day. Last night we decided to use today mostly for recovery from the past couple hikes making for a pretty boring dam day. We slept in and took our time getting ready before heading off down the dam road toward Page, AZ. I took the first shift and ended up driving the whole dam morning. It went smoothly except crossing the dam bridge. The dam speed limit was 25 but traffic was crawling along even more slowly as people snapped their dam pictures.
Before visiting the dam visitor center we decided to have some dam lunch. We were all hungry since we hadn’t had a dam breakfast or dinner the night before. We found a cute little dam restaurant where I enjoyed a burger. It’s also noteworthy that Ellie’s dam lunch was biscuits and gravy, her second in two days.
A couple weeks ago we decided that we would each choose a team to cheer for in the world cup. I went with Uruguay because I think they have the best damn team in the tournament. Luckily, we walked into the dam restaurant just as their match against Portugal was kicking off and we got to see them take a 1-0 lead and hold onto it the entire first half.
After finishing our dam lunch we climbed back in Fred and headed for the dam visitor center. It’s hard to believe, but out of all the places we’ve been in the past few weeks this was the first dam NPS site. Officially, the name of the area is the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and it is comprised of the dam lake, the dam visitor center, the dam bridge, and even the damn dam. As we were walking in to the dam building Ellie informed us that the dam biscuits and gravy she’d eaten at the dam restaurant weren’t sitting too damn well. Molly brought her to a dam bench to sit for a while well Zoe and I perused the dam exhibits.
I learned, among other things that Page, AZ was built as a dam town. The dam highways on either side of the dam canyon were also constructed as part of the colossal dam project. It was also interesting to learn that this dam project was a compromise reached after protests caused the cancellation of the proposed Echo Park dam. We learned about the Echo Park dam project a few years ago during our visit to Dinosaur NM. Thankfully they didn’t build that dam thing because it would have destroyed a beautiful area.
The next scheduled stop of our dam day was Horseshoe Bend. Ellie was still feeling dam sick so she took a nap in the backseat and I listened to the end of the Uruguay-Portugal match (They won!). Zoe and Molly hiked without us and returned to report that we didn’t miss anything.
Molly drove the afternoon stretch of dam highway to Navajo National Monument. The girls picked up junior ranger packets, we signed up for tomorrow morning’s ranger led hike to Betakin, and browsed the museum. We made the wise choice of setting up camp and then heading out in search of dinner. A billboard claimed we would find “good food” at the Amigo restaurant and the billboard told the truth. Well the dam restaurant we ate lunch at was good, the Amigo’s enchelladas were even better.
Now we’re back at camp writing our dam blog posts. As I mentioned at the start, with all the dam things we saw and did today I’d be truly surprised if it isn’t the best dam day of the trip. I’d rate it 3 dammed mountains.