GRAND JUNCTION - FLAGSTAFF

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Saturday 9th October

Grand Junction (Colorado) - Flagstaff (Arizona) - 436 miles.

We stayed over in a Motel 6 again and they are cheap and cheerful and only 35 quid for the room which is good considering they are clean and the showers are great plus it cost us 3 pounds to do our laundry!!! Clean socks and pants for another ten days!!! wooohooo!!!

We managed to avoid the traffic this morning and took off In a southerly direction through Colorado, skimming Utah again!!! then into Arizona. I dont know why but the route we've taken has got us crossing the Utah state line again before heading into Arizona. Ive checked the map and yeh we seem to have driven down the Utah state line almost. Neverheed we carrried on down the road a little and arrived at a place called Moab for breakfast and the guy in the restaurant was cool as bits as he gave us a bottle of green chilli sauce for free and also some free pecan pie. Very friendly guy and every sentenced ended with 'you got it'!!

We then stopped another 100 miles down the road at a place called Bluff!! yip, Bluff!! There was a cool cafe here called Two rocks and you can see why by the photo!! You can sense the Arizona desert and tumble weed is already drifting across the roads and plains around us. Road boredom madness kicks in again and we merrily whistle 'the good ,the bad and the ugly'..... 😊
We are passing through Navajo country and we see a lot of native Indians driving large 4x4's and they are all over the road and not really caring about other cars in front or behind so we are on our toes for about 50 miles until we pass through this part of the desert. Its really nice countryside in Navajo dont get me wrong but my eye's were fully on th road so i didnt really take much in. We stopped for fuel and got ripped off at an Indian petrol station as they had vastly inflated pump prices..hey ho...or is it 'how'..?😊


We arrive at a planned stop just before Holbrook as here is the Petrified Forest National Park.
Petrified Forest National Park straddles the border between Apache County and Navajo County in northeastern Arizona. The park is about 30 miles long from north to south and we plan to drive most of it as it has parts of the famous route 66 running through it.

Petrified Forest National Park in the Painted Desert is known for its fossils, especially fallen trees that are about 225 million years old. During this period, the region that is now the park was near the equator on the southwestern edge of the supercontinent Pangaea, and its climate was humid and sub-tropical. What later became northeastern Arizona was a low plain flanked by mountains to the south and southeast and a sea to the west. Streams flowing across the plain from the highlands deposited inorganic sediment and organic matter, including trees as well as other plants and animals that had entered or fallen into the water. Although most organic matter decays rapidly or is eaten by other organisms, some is buried so quickly that it remains intact and may become fossilized. So basically the solid matter has become quartzed and it has preserved alot of things here.

We took the circular road around the Park stopping at various view points and taking photo's as some of the scenery is stunning! Painted deserts and Newspaper rock formations to name some of the features. We reached a part where there were lots and lots of fossilised tree's lying about everywhere and its weird to say the least. We cant believe they are millions of years old!! We planned to visit some of the larger tree's in the forest walks but we were running out of time to get to Winslow to see the Meteor Crater which was 60 miles away. We missed a couple of the larger parts of the Petrified Forest out as it involved a couple of hours of walking and after driving most of the day we couldn't bear the heat or walk so we hauled off to Winslow instead.
The meteor site closes at 5pm....it is now 4pm so im hoping the freeway is empty which it was and we then turned through Holbrook to connect to the interstate 40 and then something unfortunate happened.
Its 35 mph limit in town changing to a 45 before it changes to a 65 leaving town. Muggins here is doing 49 in what i thought was a 45 when in fact it was a 35!!! I got busted by a policecar going in the opposite direction and ended up being fined $245!!!! Arggg! Nightmare! I was more bothered in the fact we had missed our opportunity to get to the Meteor Crater as seeing i had an international car license it took ages to get the paperwork done.
The cop was ok about it and just said to be more careful in future and asked us where we are headed next. He also told us how to pay the fine at the post office and which forms to fill out.
Well its a lesson learned and i had a lip on for about 2 hours till we got to Flagstaff and cheered up a bit as i got to drive more of the historic route 66 on our way to the motel.

Another motel 6 and another early night....We have a short drive to Las Vegas in the morning and we have an email from Jills mum saying that there will be a parcel waiting for her at the Hotel in Vegas...We are wondering what it colud be all night!!!

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