Traveling the USA Part II

We pack up our rig and head to the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park. It’s a short drive. Of course our first stop is the visitor center with its museum and film. Then we start our drive through the park.

The wind is unbelievable today. Sustained winds of 30-40 mph and gusts of 50-60 mph! We make many stops in the park to see the scenery and read the roadside signs, but at every stop we make sure only one person opens their truck door at a time (otherwise everything blows out of the truck). And sometimes it’s hard to get the door open against the wind.

One of my favorite stops is at the historic Painted Desert Inn. It's a 1930 refurbished rest stop that is near the beginning of the park road:

Painted glass ceiling:

Dining room mural in the inn (one of many murals):

We also crossover the remains of historic Route 66. Grown over, with only telephone poles to mark the location:

The park is more scenic than I expected and we enjoy the drive and take lots of pictures. We take one short hike behind the desert museum at the south end of the park—it is just too windy to take any other hikes.

After leaving the park we stop at a petrified wood gift shop to look around and get our free piece of petrified wood.

Our other interesting stop today is in Winslow, Arizona, made famous by the 1970s Eagles song (Take it Easy). We stop and take some pics of the statue they have commemorating the song (lyrics “standing on the corner of Winslow, Arizona”). Fun but windy stop.

We had planned to drive to Flagstaff or even the Grand Canyon today, but the wind is making for tough driving for Jere so we stop at Meteor Crater RV park.

We leave the RV park and head toward El Morro National Monument. On the way we stop at another Historic Route 66 landmark, the Rio Puerco bridge:

We stop at the El Malpais Visitor Center and make lunch; then continue to El Morro National Monument. We look around the museum and then outside for our walk/hike around and then to the top of Inscription Rock. Inscription Rock's claim to fame is the inscriptions that travelers made on the rock in the 1600 to 1800s. Travelers would carve their name and date in the soft sandstone.

We find the inscriptions interesting, but the hike to the top of the mesa and then walking around the top of the mesa is more 'fun'.

View from the top of the mesa:

Ruins (probably occupied in the early 1300s) from Anasazi on top of the mesa:

Then we take some smaller roads and stay in an RV park about 20 miles from Petrified National Park (tomorrow's destination).

We drive out of the canyon campground at Palo Dura Canyon State Park and get on Interstate 40 just west of Amarillo, Texas. This part of I40 follows the historic Route 66 route.

We stop at Vega, New Mexico to drive on part of the old Route 66 and stop at an old refurbished gas station.

We drive around 325 miles today to just west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and stop at a campground that is located on the old route 66 and was originally Hilltop Trading Post on historic route 66. They have some antiques, but their most interesting antiques are some refurbished old trailers. There are also several old Airstreams staying here in the campground.

They have a photo of how their building used to look 50+ years ago, and I tried to take a photo of the photo but it didn't work very well (too many reflections off the glass). It is amazing that it's just a simple building with gas pumps and nothing else around (only desert/plains). Today just ten minutes east of the RV park there is a section of interstates where at least 5 expressways pass over each other in a maze of bridges.

We run to the local Wal-Mart after dinner and end our day by watching a DVD on the history of Route 66.

We travel 30 miles south of Amarillo, Texas to Palo Dura Canyon State Park, the "Grand Canyon of Texas". We had planned to camp here last night, but the campground was full. The park attendant said there would be lots of spaces available today.

On the way to the park we pass another Texas roadside "attraction", Combine City. It's a take-off of the Cadillac Ranch artwork, but using farm combines. Not sure if there is a message with these half-buried combines or not.

We reach the park, are assigned a nice campsite, set up, and have lunch.

There are several birds around our campsite, including a wild turkey.

We drive around the park and end up at the visitor center. The visitor center area has a great view of the canyon and Joe ask to have his picture taken (he's in no danger of falling into the canyon, so please don't report us for child endangerment).

We stop at the 5ver for a snack and more water, and then start our 7 mile hike (roundtrip) to Light House Rock. Great day for a hike, sunny, breezy, high of 66 degrees. Enjoyable hike with wonderful western scenery.

After hiking several hoursg we head back for dinner. While we're eating dinner, two wild turkeys come over to the side of our RV.

I take a nice long shower, watch Desperate Housewives (I can't believe we get TV reception down here in the canyon) and call it a day.

We drive 250 miles to Amarillo, Texas. We had hoped to camp at the state park, but it's Saturday night so that campground is full. We find a Passport America (half-price RV parks for Passport America members) on the east edge of town, Amarillo Ranch, and set up there instead.

The skies are getting dark at places so we decide to skip our planned hike to the canyon and explore Amarillo instead. We stop at the visitors center (very friendly people) and then head out to Cadillac Ranch, one of the oddest roadside 'attractions' that we've seen so far on our travels. Over 30 years ago a rancher hired at art group, The Ant Farm, to create a tribute to Route 66 on his ranch. The Ant Farm bought 10 old Cadillacs and buried them in the ground with their front ends buried. The Cadillacs are still there and now people freely spraypaint the cars with anything from their names to drawings.

Texas seems to have more than it's fair share of roadside 'attractions'. We passed the "largest cross in the western hemisphere" this morning just east of Amarillo.

We leave Cadillac Ranch and drive on the Historic Route 66 through a section of Amarillo. Amarillo was the largest town in Texas when Route 66 first became the only car route between Chicago and Los Angelos. That section of Amarillo is pretty run down today, but it made for an interesting drive. Looks a lot different from today when we drive through Amarillo on Interstate 40 heading west, with dozens of chain restaurants and hotels.

We decide to go out for dinner. We're in cattle country so we go to a Texas steakhouse that was recommended to us, The Country Barn Steakhouse. The meal is wonderful (steak is from grainfed/non-hormone/etc cattle and very tender; veggies are very tasty). The atmosphere is just as good and their bathrooms are unique, with Texas shaped sinks.

We make a quick stop at Kohls for pants for Joe (he continues to grow at a phenomenal rate) and then head back to the RV park. When we get back, Jere takes a quick dip in the indoor pool (it closes early so Joe and I didn't even bother putting on our suits) and then the wind starts blowing! It keeps blowing all evening and I start wondering if I'm going to get sea sick in the RV cause it's swaying. There is dust storms on two sides of the RV park and we turn on the Weather Channel to hear them mention on their national forecast that Amarillo is experiencing high winds with gusts up to 47 mph.

We relax inside the rest of the evening. They have cable TV at this park and we take advantage of it.