Trip Report: North Arizona

Thank you for this trip report, I really enjoy this type of report, especially the wildlife reports. It also brought back memories of my trip to Arizona several years back. I agree entirely with your thoughts about the Grand Canyon, I think it was on "West Wing" somebody says the Grand Canyon "is one thing in life that never disappoints". I also drove the I-10 but somehow missed the Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch.
 
MRJ said:
...I also drove the I-10 but somehow missed the Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch.
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Depending on how long ago you went, it may not have been an attraction yet. It started as a commercial ostrich farm with no public access (you could still see ostriches from the freeway if you were looking - its on the south side of Picacho Peak State Park). However people starting pulling off at the dead-end road that goes to the fenceline to see the ostriches. So the owners starting selling feed bags there to feed the ostriches and then slowly added other attractions to make it a public farm / family zoo.
 
What a great trip! Lots of these types of animals I have seen in the wild, but I do not have the great photography gift so I mainly observe the animals without a camera. I remember when I was 8 My cousins and I were at our grandparents house in Iowa. We sat low in a field and I saw my first coyote in the wild about 10 feet away from us run across a path. Ah, what nostalgia.
 
Wonderful trip report! Thanks for taking the time to write it up and share with us. Oddly enough we over lapped at the Grand Canyon. I was there Sunday 9/20 to Friday 9/25 at Mather Campground. Real close to where you stayed. Too bad we didn't get together, I would have loved to meet you in person. I took the same sunset shot as you from Navajo Point on Wednesday, and basically the same sunrise shot from Mather Point. The campground was almost deserted. They stopped taking new reservations in April, but honored existing ones. I made mine in March. The elk, deer, coyotes, and other creatures were having a field day in the campground, but I didn't concentrate on getting good photos of them. I just enjoyed watching their natural behaviors. I also stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park, what a very beautiful and interesting place.
 
Excellent report. I was able to visit a few of these areas in 2019 and your review is spot on, especially the magnificence of the Grand Canyon. Elsewhere, I also found Petrified Forest to be surprisingly lacking in animals, and the landscape there was less dramatic than I expected since the main route only brings you to a little overlook of the Painted Desert. I expected something more along the lines of Badlands or Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which are similar grassland/badlands environments and are both dripping with wildlife.
 
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