Before departing Kayenta, we were lucky enough to be in town to catch the first day of their annual Arts Festival. Brent and Mike made Pam and Tami walk down, while they drove by in the car jeering the two hikers. Tami did, however, get to see several rabbits. We enjoyed many booths with high quality art pieces and also got a sneak preview of the soon-to-be-completed Kayenta Center for the Arts, which Brent and Pam have been involved with for several years. It will be a very nice center when it’s complete.
Arts festival at Kayenta
It’s a wabbit!
Interesting sidewalk art at the festival
Mike was visibly anxious to get going, having loaded the car shortly after the sun came up, so Tami let him drag her out to the car without any lunch. We were soon on the road heading towards Arizona, passing through the odd polygamous communities of Hildale and Colorado City, and then past Kanab into Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. The scenery was gorgeous with multi-colored geologic formations (Tami kept thinking of chocolate marble ice cream), eroded red rock bluffs, and fantastical wind-formed rock formations. Nope, we don’t have any pictures. We were busy driving and it is just impossible to try and capture the grand beauty and largess of the formations with a little ol’ camera lens. But don’t worry, we’ll try down the road!
We kept passing from Utah to Arizona to Utah and back to Arizona again. Arizona doesn’t observe Daylight Savings Time, so we were technically going in and out of two different time zones. Mike never did change his watch to Utah time, so by the time we got to Page, he was right on time. Tami forgot she had changed to Utah time and was quite surprised that stores were still open, not realizing until dinner time that she was the one who was late.
Page is a town that was built in 1957 to house the workers on the Glen Canyon Dam. It turned out that our motel for the night, Debbie’s Hideaway, was on the Street of the Little Motels, considered to be the Old Quarter of Page. These motels were all originally worker housing for the dam workers, and now the entire street is lined with these little motels that date back quite a few decades. It’s all slightly run down looking but in a very charming way. Each motel has the rooms backing onto the street, but with doors also facing onto pleasant courtyard areas. Our room was quite spacious, if a little tired, and it even had a full kitchen and living room. We did okay considering how full this town is!
The Street of the Little Motels- this street seems to be the entire Old Quarter
Looking up the street at our motel
The person who checked us in also clued us in to a new restaurant in town, started by two Navajo guys, that she said made the best fry bread she’d ever had, and she grew up around here. So we knew where dinner was for the evening, and sure enough, we enjoyed our pulled pork green chili Indian tacos immensely. The only seating was outside but considering the temperature was in the mid 70’s, that was not a problem. Back to our Little Motel for the night.
The courtyard area outside our motel