Petrified Forest National Park and driving to Flagstaff

 Most of yesterday and half of today looked like this.

But somewhere before Albuquerque the scenery began to change…and then revert to flat and boring. Good thing I was knitting to pass the time. 

 

Steve’s sister used to teach at Thoreau Junior High. We lived in Brazil at the time and never made it out to see her there. I-40 passes right by Thoreau, so we got off and followed the signs. “Go toward the red rocks,” Patty told us. And sure enough, there it was--with a police car outside to enforce the no-entry-after-school-hours rule. (Sorry, Patty; this was as close as I could get.)

 

We stopped for lunch in Gallup, the nearest town when Patty was teaching here. El Rancho was another local experience. Like our Boomerang diner yesterday, it was on US Route 66. I kept thinking of my friend Stephanie Landsem’s book In a Far-Off Land, a retelling of Christ's parable about the prodigal son (or the prodigal father, as some call it) set in 1930s Hollywood. The hotel/restaurant in Gallup dates from the 1930s and hosted numerous Hollywood personalities whose pictures were all over the walls. 

 

 

As if the 8-and-a-half hour drive from Amarillo to Flagstaff weren’t enough, we decided to add Petrified Forest National Park. (Love that lifetime seniors pass!) The northern section is mainly painted desert.

 

If only we had had time to walk some of the trails! Those are petrified logs in the foreground.

 

The petrified forest part in the south is full of stone stumps and even whole fallen trees turned to stone. Again, I wished for more time to explore.

We are staying two nights in Flagstaff so we have time to explore the scenic highways and byways in the National Geographic book. Steve had just turned on his computer when it beeped at him and reminded him we were traveling to Santa Fe tomorrow. Uh... That's supposed to be next week. Our snacky, crash-in-the-room supper was delayed while he got that straightened out.