Petrified Forest, Painted Desert, and Heading East

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We packed up again at Wahweap and headed back south one more time. Back over the escarpment south of Page, through the huge rock cut, down into the lowlands, and then the long, long climb back up to Flagstaff. We were surprised see a pretty large range of mountains just northwest of Flagstaff, the snow covered San Francisco Peaks. It had been cloudy with a bit of rain here on our way down, and we had driven right past them without seeing them at all. Then it was onto I 40 east to Holbrook AZ, where Cathy had secured a spot in an RV camp for the night. Holbrook is the nearest town to The Petrified Forest National Park, and we would be checking that out in the morning.

Holbrook is an old Route 66 town, and it's fallen on pretty hard times, but there are still some cool things to see there. There is a "Tee Pee Motel" still in business there, and we stopped and toured it. There were all kinds of old cars there too, I liked the Packard. We also had a nice late lunch at another diner from Emily & Peter's "Road Food" book -- chicken enchiladas in a green chili sauce -- yummy!

In the morning we headed to the National Park down some very quiet roads. We had a great time walking about on the trails there looking at the fossilized trees. Cathy like the the trunks that were completely mineralized, with the centers looking like multi-colored glass. As beautiful as those were, I preferred the trunks that were preserved to look more like living wood. Amazing that a huge log about 230 million years old could look just like the wood we see today. Some of the broken sections even displayed annular rings. Imagine, a visual record of the kinds of growing seasons those trees experienced that long ago. In some places, the logs had broken down into small wood chunks, the ground looking for all the world like somebody had been running a chipper. I would not want to be around when one of those logs was fed into one though, that's for sure!

After a bit, it was back into old Moby Dodge for a short trip over to the Painted Desert overlook. There was a high vantage point there with a 360 degree view of the surroundings. I could not believe that from there we could still clearly see the San Francisco Peaks that we had driven by yesterday. The sign there said that they were 108 miles away -- amazing! In fact, it was all amazing, but it is the sad nature of vacations that they have to end. So the time had come (Cathy was not so sure!) to point the rig east and start making tracks for home. At the speed we run, that will be a five full-day slog, but I think we're ready for it.

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