Arizona Again

Petrified Forest National Park

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.

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.

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

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.

Almost daily scene at our current campsite at
Grand Canyon National Park