Across the Navajo Indian Reservation to Marble Canyon and on to Page

A mile north on US.89 we came to the historic Cameron Trading Post and Lodge, just before crossing the Little Colorado River. The first bridge across the gorge here was built in 1911 and Cameron was soon established as a trading post for the Hopi and Navajo people to barter their wool, blankets and livestock for food. The Trading Post has grown into a large complex of shops, motel, restaurant and RV Park, but is still run by a descendant of the original founders and owned by its employees. See www.camerontradingpost.com.

We continued north under a clear blue sky, across empty gravel desert at about 4,350 ft – part of the Navajo Reservation (the USA's largest). We passed roadside rug and souvenir stalls: some bare, some open with signs like 'Yellow Horse Loves You' and 'Genuine Tribal Art: MC and Visa Taken'. At Hidden Springs Mission there is a modern church and school for the Navajo.

The road climbed to 5,333 ft at the Gap (a trading post) and on to a maximum of almost 6,000 ft. Navajo shacks and old cars were clustered in isolated pockets across the high desert, with a few cattle, the odd horse, even one area where corn was planted. The coloured strata of flat-topped cliffs always rimmed our horizon, reminiscent of many a Wild West movie with 'Let's head 'em off at the canyon' ambushes.

After 60 miles, at Bitter Springs, we turned off for 13 miles to Marble Canyon on the Colorado River, down at 3,560 ft. Here, just below the Arizona-Utah border, a pair of steel arch bridges span the river, complete with visitor centre, Navajo trinket stalls and ample parking. An ideal place for lunch and photography.

Early pioneers had forded the Colorado hereabouts, until the Lees Ferry started in 1871. The narrow Navajo Bridge, built in 1929 and now a footbridge, replaced the ferry. At the time, it was the highest steel arch bridge in the world, 467 ft above the narrow emerald-green river. The parallel second bridge, wider and stronger, was built in 1994 in the same style. The ford, ferry and steel bridges, the first crossing upstream of the Hoover Dam, opened the way from Utah to the whole of northern Arizona.

Returning to Bitter Springs, we continued on US.89 for a final 23 miles to the USA's most remote and newest community (official), set on a desert mesa at 4,231 ft. Page was built in the 1950's to house the construction workers, who took 7 years to build the country's second largest dam at Glen Canyon, where the Colorado is held back to form Lake Powell. Two miles north of town, the lake is 186 miles long and has nearly 2,000 miles of shoreline.

'Camp Page' as the town was first called developed on land acquired from the Navajo Nation. Its reservoir, generating station and tourism now support a population of 8,000, plus nearly 2 million visitors a year. Page/Lake Powell is known as the Hub of the Grand Circle, being ringed by several national parks and recreation areas – Grand Canyon, Zion NP, Bryce Canyon NP, Arches NP, Canyon Lands NP and Monument Valley, to mention but a few. See www.pagelakepowellchamber.org for more. 

There is a visitor centre at the dam, boat tours and house-boats on Lake Powell and a museum for its namesake, John Wesley Powell (who we first encountered in the IMAX film – the first man to lead an expedition by boat through the Grand Canyon).

We found a good campground on Coppermine Road, with a variety of prices and a 10% discount for membership of just about anything: AAA (the American Automobile Association), the KOA or Good Sam's Campgrounds, a US Senior Citizen or Military Card, etc) – being none of these, we somehow still qualified! Top price sites have cable TV and full hook-up, followed by sewer/electric/water, then electric/water only (that's us) and finally tent sites. Complicated! Indoor swimming pool and showers are free, but using the central dump costs $4 extra. We told the motorhome to hang on!

The temperature is 82 degrees now, in late September, and annual rainfall is around 12”, although snow falls in winter.

We found Page a good centre for shopping (Safeway or Wal-mart Supermarkets), for getting bicycle bits at the Lakeside Bikes store (a good range of spares and repairs at www.lakesidebikes.net) and for email/internet access. The Library charged $5 per hour, with similar rates at 2 computer shops opposite Safeway, both of which let us plug the laptop into a broadband connection. Our Wal-mart bikes are now equipped with water-bottles and the first puncture (Barry's rear wheel) is fixed with a new thorn-proof tube!

Most interesting of all, Page is now the home of Michael Preller, the energetic young German we had found on the internet, who arranges motorhome hire and much else for Europeans. Michael had fixed us up with our motorhome from Happy Travel Campers in Los Angeles and we had exchanged a number of very interesting and informed emails. We met Michael for a 4-hour morning of intense conversation, subjects ranging from American politics, through German history to the Navajo culture and problems - even touching on local tourism. eHe HHHH He arrived in his 'Toy': a converted 37 ft School Bus, painted red, white and blue, with a Longhorn skull and horns mounted on the radiator! It certainly attracted attention from passing tourists, with his website prominent on the sides: www.destination.net.

A former teacher of maths and geography and then an entrepreneur in German mobile phone development, Michael had moved to the USA 9 years ago and set up business with his wife. He represents the best of the young European on the world stage: sensitive to history, cultural issues, politics and able to move freely between cultures – American, German, European, Navajo. His 2 young children will grow up to move with equal ease in a world increasingly demanding such skills.