I was as giddy as a schoolgirl (how old is that saying?!) when we traversed SARA’s Crack a few weeks back. That was a trifling of emotion compared to the Sunday we experienced Maggie Canyon and beyond. As Dave put it “Things I never knew needed to be on my bucket list, driving through a slot canyon!”
Sunday started as most of our Sundays do with coffee, chai and travel shows. Just relaxing for a bit before starting the day's exploration at 11:00. Looking back, would I have pushed us to begin what turned into a 9.5 hour excursion (returning us home at 8:30 in the evening) earlier?
No.
Many of my favorite memories were created when a plan failed or the urge to wander about without a one struck. This was one of those days.
Being perfectly honest, most of the drive towards Maggie Canyon was a bit tedious. 45 minutes of driving to reach the freeway exit then another 30 minutes on a dirt washboard road through what appears to be someone’s housing development plan that hasn’t quite achieved its full potential yet. There are so many side roads with street signs yet few houses that could be seen.
It didn’t matter though. The top was down on the Butterfly, the sun was shining, the temperature was perfect and I had my favorite person for company.
As we finally neared the canyon, we took a slight detour to check out what was once supposed to be a mine. Not finding an entrance to the underworld, we concluded the gouges in the surrounding earth must be what we were looking for.
Not terribly exciting but still a nice stop to stretch the legs and explore before continuing on. Looking at the GPS, we agreed that the road which led into this area should eventually meet up with the one to Maggie Canyon.
From previous outings, we knew this part of Arizona was a maze of driving trails constantly criss-crossing each other. This knowledge made us comfortable with our decision, knowing that even if this road failed to go where we wanted it to, we should easily be able to find another that would.
Our chosen path branched off a couple of times. Thank goodness we drive a Jeep because this place was filled with larger, denser brush lining trails with steeper drops than we had encountered before. Naturally, we constantly picked the wrong way forcing us to backtrack until we could cross over to another trail. It was really quite fun.
Finally we made it to the wash which would lead us to our destination.
This is only my second slot canyon. I don’t know if the overwhelming feeling of wonder will pass as we find more but I hope not.
The fantastic aspect of this particular slot canyon is you can drive through it...if your vehicle is small enough. The Butterfly was as large as I would want to try since there were moments when a scant 6” on either side was all the clearance we had.
As a bonus, there are two additional walking slot canyons in here. The first was a dark corridor of tight twists and turns, giving one the thrilling sense of being in an Indiana Jones movie.
The second was wider and lighter. The rocks glowed orange where the rays of the afternoon sun reached them. There was more of a Land of the Lost or Journey to the Center of the Earth feeling here. You almost expected to see a pterodactyl perched high on the rocks above.
A couple of hours later, after taking dozens of photos and taking in this amazing place we headed out for the next stop of the day, McGuffie Cabin.
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