Petrified Forest National Park
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| Some of the many logs scattered throughout Petrified Forest National Park |
This was an eagerly anticipated stop at
one of our favorite places. Who can resist petrified wood? Certainly
not us! We decided the trip from Ute Lake in New Mexico was too far
so we decided to do an overnight in the parking lot of Route 66
Casino. Parking lot stays are not my favorite but this was a much
better experience than our Pilot truck stop earlier on. Keep this
stop in mind as it plays a role in an incident described later.
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| Pearl on one of the logs at the National Park |
There are no campgrounds in Petrified
Forest National Park but we stayed about as close as you could get.
There is a tourist stop with shops on either side of the road just a
few hundred feet from the entrance to the park. Crystal Forest offers
free overnight camping or there are a few sites with electricity for
$10.75. This is Arizona in August so we decided on electricity for the three nights. First time we ran the AC it promptly tripped their circuit breaker. Turns out the
weather wasn't that hot so did w/o the AC anyway and could have got
by with the free camping. Keep this in mind as it shows up in an
incident described later.
We spent a few hours at a site nearby
to collect small pieces of the beautifully colored petrified wood.
While there a rancher stopped by to see what was going on. His
great-great grandfather had been sent by the Mormon church in Utah to
settle in the area. Delightful conversation and ended with an
invitation to go ahead and go through the fences onto surrounding
property for our search for petrified wood. Interesting that having
lived his whole life in that area he had never seen the Petrified
Forest nor the nearby Jim Gray Petrified Wood “store” that has
some of the most beautiful petrified wood products that could
possibly be imagined. Some items costing tens of thousands of
dollars.
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| The Petrified Forest is located in the Painted Desert |
Our daughter, Bert, had asked me to
check out a Do Bell place near the park. My Internet search turned up
half a dozen Taco Bell's in the region and one reference to Dobell.
It was only a few miles away so I checked it out. The Dobell family
had dug for petrified wood there for decades and currently offered
individuals to dig on their property to fill a 5 gallon bucket for
$28. What a delightful few hours I enjoyed, digging in the banks and
in the piles of earth that had been dug out by machine. I ended up
with far more than my bucket would hold of beautiful pieces ranging
from a few tens of pounds to pebble size. Definitely want to return
there.
A Lost Day
Pearl and Bert talk frequently on the
phone. Pearl never calls Bert at work but often calls on Wednesday,
Bert's day off.
Pearl calls and is chatting away with
Bert but I can tell from listening in that something is amiss as Bert
reveals she is at work and Pearl asks why she is working on
Wednesday. After Pearl ends the call we look at the calendar, not
convinced that it is Thursday instead of Wednesday. We carefully
recount our departure from Ute Lake on Monday, our arrival at Crystal
Forest and what we have done each day—every time we come up with
Wednesday but surely Bert knows what day it is at work.
We know we have paid for three days at
Crystal Forest so Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday nights means if its
really Thursday we need to depart. Its already mid-afternoon so we
rush around and are on the road within thirty minutes or so, still
trying to figure out where the missing day has gone.
Somewhere down the road we remember. We
often, even usually, depart on Monday and arrive at our next camping
spot the same day to stay for a few to several days. We were
thinking, leave Ute Lake on Monday, arrive at Crystal Forest on
Monday—completely forgetting the overnight stop at Route 66 Casino.
The humiliation of completely loosing a
day was bad enough, reinforcing the knowledge that we are getting
old. But what really hurt was that we left our campground at Crystal
Forest a day early! That was $10.75 down the drain. :-)
Homolovi Ruins State Park
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| Every evening had a beautiful sunset |
This stop was second choice. A county
park in Joseph City was our late afternoon destination from Crystal
Forest. Unfortunately Gertrude led us to a residential area where the
roads were getting smaller and deteriorating rapidly. When we stopped
we soon had a line-up of native-American children and young people
who had no clue where we were trying to go but were interested in
watching. We ended up detaching the toad (the towed Subaru),
maneuvering the motorhome to turn around, re-attaching the toad and
heading on down the road to our second choice.
We've been very fortunate so far
regarding storms. Not so fortunate this time. We were late in the
afternoon and eager to get to our campground and thought the dark
clouds and lightning might be just to the south of our route. That
was not the case. Soon we were right in the midst of it with
lightning all around us, the accompanying booming thunder, strong winds and
torrential downpour. Glad we haven't had much of that!
Homolovi Ruins State Park features
archaeological sites of native-americans who lived in the area from
time to time. There was a little museum and several sites to visit.
Also enjoyed visiting with a small herd of burros that roam the area.
The campground was well-maintained and provided a beautiful overlook
onto desert scenery. Definitely should have been our first choice!
We were still in petrified wood country
and took advantage of collecting along a road a few miles away. After
finding quite a few smaller pieces we decided to turn around and head
back to the campground. We came up on a place where the recent rain
had washed across the road and saw a car parked there with a young
man carrying large pieces of petrified wood. We stopped, chatted a
bit, and then invited ourselves to join in the search. It was a wash
where flooding takes place during the rains and brings and/or
uncovers the petrified wood. Very productive. Only concern is the
weight we are heading for our motorhome to carry up the hills yet in
our path. May regret not having a burro to help.
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| Almost daily scene at our current campsite at Grand Canyon National Park |
