The Last One

This is the last of our Arizona road trip posts.

Part of the Petrified Forest National Park is called the Painted Desert.  It leads the visitor on a tour of the varied colors and structures found in the desert of Arizona - a geologist's dream I'm sure, with varied colors and stripes and natural construction that makes up the topography of the desert.  My pictures don't do it justice but you'll get a sense of how beautiful it can be.

These pictoglyphs are centuries old - there are a lot of them in this part of the desert



This place seems so ancient - the different stripes in the formations indicate millenia of sediment deposits and tell a story of how this area came to be.  It just makes me want to go out and study geology so I can figure out for myself what all of this means.

Hubbell Trading Post

I realize I've probably bored you all to death with my Arizona Road Trip (notice I let those three words out of my title today - that's so I'd lure you in thinking it was something different!), but even though I'm home now I have to share a special place with you.

As we were driving through Granado we spotted a sign directing us to the most beautiful historic preserve I've seen.  The Hubbell Trading Post was the center of commerce in the high desert, next door to the petrified forest, and in the middle of the expanded Navajo Nation.  It's founder, John L. Hubbell, was one of the most respected traders of his day, even going so far as opening his home to the victims of the smallpox epidemic in the late 1800s.  He became the first Senator of Arizona when it became a state in 1912.  Here is his trading post.

Inside the main room

Woven baskets on the ceiling of the second room

The front of the trading post with a petrified wood chair

The naturally formed petrified wood chair

Inside the livery and stables

The wagon wheel

The guest house (hogan) that J. Hubbell built to accommodate guests to the trading post

The overgrown gazebo

A look inside the gazebo - you can see the hogan through the window.

I'm not sure what this is - I thought bird houses but on closer look, it's wired for power.  Probably held lanterns so the outside could be enjoyed after dark back in the day.

I loved this spot and would like to go back some day.  I can't promise that this is my last post about our Arizona road trip - which only took two days by the way - but I'll try to move on now that I'm home.

A Winged Visitior

For the past few years I've been trying to get a decent picture of the hummingbirds that come to our yard, but the little critters are so fast and skittish I figured it would be impossible.  Then, as Lloyd and I were enjoying our final swim in the pool before heading home to Canada, I spotted one darting from our orange flowers and landing near the top of the ocatilla (stick tree) cactus.  I worked my way to the edge of the pool nearest him - about four feet away - and just watched.  When he didn't show any signs of leaving his perch, I slowly and quietly backed away, got out of the pool and ran for my camera.

These are the pictures I got.

It's almost as if he was posing for me.  He knew I was there but didn't seem to be afraid and stayed there for at least 15 minutes while I admired him and took pictures...a lovely treat on my final day in Arizona.

Arizona Road Trip - Part 4 - Holbrook

Holbrook is one of the towns along the old Route 66.  All of the towns along that route seem to have something to offer, mostly in the way of historic route 66 memoralbia.  Here's what we found at Holbrook.

A Wigwam Motel, with cars from a by-gone era...just as it was in the hay-day of the 1920s, 1930s and 40s...when Route 66 was The vacation experience.

"Have You slept in a Wigwam Lately?" reads the sign.  This motel has been placed on the National Register of Historic Properties.  It is rumored that Oprah and Gayle stayed here on their much publicized cross country road trip.  Each wigwam is an individual room but there is a 'regular' motel just behind the wigwams for those who wish to stay there.



Some of the cars there pre-date our very existence! *gasp*  I have no idea what this one is but Lloyd thought it was important for me to pose between the word 'special' and the three little crome ovals on this one.

Lloyd liked this old car.  Was it a Packard?  I'll ask him.  Look how the trees are trimmed to resemble the wigwams.

Isn't this one a beauty.  Lloyd thought it was too 'new' to be in the picture, but I mostly wanted a picture of the line of wigwams.

That was a fun stop along the way.  We're finding out that Arizona is full of these little surprises.  You'll have to come and find out for yourselves!

Arizona Road Trip - Part 3 - Petrified Forest

The Petrified Forest National Park was not at all like I had imagined - there wasn't a tree in sight! Just miles and miles of desert.  Studded throughout the park though were the remains of an ancient forest - fallen and broken trees that had been transformed to quartz ridden petrified wood.

A large petrified log with a smaller broken off piece

Here is what the guidebook says about it.

"...The trees fell, and swollen streams washed them into adjacent floodplains.  a mix of silt, mud and volcanic ash buried the logs. This sediment cut off oxygen and slowed the logs' decay.  Silica-laden groundwater seeped through the logs and replaced the original wood tissues with silica deposits.  Eventually the silica crystallized into quartz, and the logs were preserved as petrified wood.  Over the 225 million years since the trees lived, the continents moved to their present positions, and this region was uplifted.  As a result the climate changed and the tropical environment became today's grassland.  Over time, wind and water wore away the rock layers and exposed fossilized ancient plants and animals.  The hills will yield more fossils as weathering sculpts the Painted Desert's soft sedimentary rock."  National Park Service. U.S. Department of the Interior

It is against the law to collect even the smallest piece of petrified wood from the park to maintain the integrity of the park.  However, there is some to be found outside the park boundries and enterprising residents collect and sell pieces outside of the park itself.

A large log on a cliff at center left, with fallen logs below

A piece of petrified wood with the colored quartz visible

The logfall in the center looks like people hiding in the rocks

A cluster of petrified logs

Another type of old fossils with petrified wood on the ground in the background

A field of mineral-rich petrified logs

The petrified wood is just one aspect of the Petrified Forest National Park.  Next time I'll post pictures of the Painted Desert portion - a beautiful park for exploring and learning about the prehistoric past.

Arizona Road Trip - Part Two - Winslow

I'm sure any Eagles fans out there are familiar with their song "Take It Easy".  The second verse which starts "Standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona...." is the claim to fame of the town of Winslow.  They have a "Standing on the corner committee" which has made a tourist stop centered around the song, complete with a statue of lead singer Don Henley standing on the famed corner.  It's a fun place to visit. 

Winslow also is on the famous Route 66 - the first east-west two-land highway that spanned the US and was such a popular road back in the 1920s to 1950s.  Now it only exists in patches, having been replaced by the much larger interstate highway system.



Lloyd with Don Henley on the famous corner

The fun store on the corner - part of Route 66

"The Corner"

In the window of the building is the flat-bed Ford mentioned in the song.  I'll have to go back some day and get some better pictures.  It was a fun stop on our road trip, and Lloyd has the t-shirt to prove it.

Stay tuned....

Arizona Road Trip - Part 1 - Four Corners

Four Corners - where four of the United States states meet - has intrigued Lloyd ever since seeing it featured in an episode of Breaking Bad on HBO TV last year.  Never mind that it's almost a full day's drive from where we are in Surprise, AZ, miles from any sizeable town where one could spend the night., the trip had to be made.

The four states, clockwise from top left: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona. The monument is where the red circle is, where the four states meet.  (Photo from Wikipedia)

Off we went!  It was a beautiful drive through eastern Arizona and into western New Mexico, north into Colorado and west to Utah.  However, because we stopped so often to take pictures along the way, and with a flambuoyant lack of forethought and planning, we embarked on an unplanned adventure.


The scenery was beautiful - somewhat barren and desert-like, but very interesting.  I especially liked the part of New Mexico we saw - such beautiful cliffs - but I was driving and didn't get the pictures I would have liked to.

It was getting dark by the time we found the monument's location, and, surprise! surprise! the area was closed - locked down for the night.  It's out in the middle of nowhere on the Navajo reservation.

Looks like this sign was used as target practice

The towns we had passed through didn't appear to have anything in the way of tourist accommodation so we decided to keep going and see if we could find accommodation in Utah.

 So we drove, and we drove - up winding twisting mountain roads with signs that said "free range".  Do you know what 'free range' means?  We didn't either until we rounded a bend on a mountain road in the dark and came face to face with a couple of cows standing on the side of the road, staring us down!  Well of course, why shouldn't cattle have the run of the roads, in the dark, to scare the life out of citified sort-of-lost tourists.!  You can bet we kept a sharp eye out for animals on the road for the rest of the trip.  We had no, or little, idea where we were or when we would find a motel.  (we did say though that we'd like to see what the scenery on that mountain looked like in the daylight) We thought we were on the road to Blanding, Utah but when the treacherous road ended the sign pointed east and said 'Blanding 15 mi.'  We groaned!  We were so tired - that 15 miles sounded like 150.  But on we drove until we finally spotted lights.  Civilization!  The first motel we spotted was bright and clean and blessedly had vacancies.  We checked in and had a lovely, comfortable sleep, before heading out again, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.

We retraced our drive of the night before and discovered that the awful mountain road really was quite awful - narrow and twisting, with switchbacks and crazy turns.  The scenery was quite beautiful though and before you know it we were through the corner of Colorado and into Arizona again.

When we got to the Four Corners monument there were quite a few people there already.  Everyone wanted their picture taken standing on the monument with feet and arms in all four states.

Photo from Wikipedia

 People were friendly, patient and polite and took turns standing in the center where the four states meet.

Lloyd, standing in Utah while I take his picture from New Mexico

 
In the center of the circle is a surveyor's disk verifying that this is indeed the spot where the four corners come together.  Although the actual site is off by 2.5 miles, the US Congress determined that it's close enough and the four states agreed that, politically and legally, this spot marked the actual boundries of the states.

Other than take pictures of the monument, there's nothing else to do at the site except shop in the booths offering Native American goods and souvenirs.  I bought a lovely hematite and tiger's eye bracelet, a souvenir fridge magnet and a souvenir mug.  Twenty dollars well spent I figured.  After spending less than an hour at Four Corners, we moved on.

This proved to be an interesting start to our two-day road trip.  Hopefully the rest of the trip would prove to be less harrowing.  We're glad we went to the monument though and saw all the sights between here and there.

To be continued....