Day 6 - Short Day

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We altered our agenda somewhat today - due to a late start, an unrealistic initial agenda, and low energy (Mom). We made it to our destination in Williams, AZ but we haven’t seen the Grand Canyon yet. Going tomorrow morning will allow us more time to see it and then head west toward Vegas. I’d hoped to reach mid-Nevada by tomorrow night, but as long as we land somewhere with a casino, I’ll be fine. Poker room, here I come!

It felt like we were just driving for most of the day, but we did, in fact, see two fantastic places. We skipped the visit to Acoma and the ancient dwellings of Sky City, which I hope I can see on another trip. It would have taken up too much of our day. Instead, we drove through National Park #5 to see the Petroglyph Forest in Arizona. I’d estimate the temperatures were 95-100, so we stayed in the air conditioned car for most of it. But we did get out at one stop to hike a .75 mile loop through the Crystal Forest, a scene of petrified logs with multicolored crystals imbedded in the rings from silicon and other deposits long ago. It was such an unusual site. It was beautiful, but in an odd way. Just as I was thinking it seemed like we were on another planet, Mom said she imagined the moon would look like the scene before us. The entire landscape of the park around the regions of petrified wood was so different in color, texture, and formation. There are no trees growing now in the Crystal Forest, so there was no escaping the heat. Mom paused for a couple of pictures but mostly we just wanted to get back to the car.

After we were back on the highway for a while, I saw a sign for a meteor crater and I was intrigued enough to exit and drive the 6 miles to the attraction. Unfortunately, it isn’t a National Park, so I couldn’t use my special pass. But it was a stop we all enjoyed. Who knew that a 150 ft. diameter meteorite had smashed into Arizona just south of I-40 over 50,000 years ago? I didn’t. It turns out that NASA had astronauts train there before any missions to the moon. Besides learning some history, we got to touch a large piece of the actual meteorite that caused the 550 ft. deep and 2.5 mile round crater, as well as have an opportunity to walk a path on the rim of the crater. We didn’t take a guided tour around the whole rim, but we took in its enormity and felt like we had seen something pretty incredible.

At that point of the day, we knew that if we sped to the Grand Canyon, we’d arrive after 5:00 PM and have a relatively short visit. The stormy weather was less than ideal too. Hopefully it’ll be better in the morning.

This Motel 6 is quite a bit better than the one in SLC. Still no wireless internet service though. I'll be a day late publishing this one. Williams is considered a typical “Route 66” town in that many of the motels and restaurants are stylistically out of date and simple in offerings. It’s also a very convenient starting point for our Grand Canyon adventure tomorrow.

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