America is beautiful. And my oh my, did we see a lot today!
So we were reviewing our itinerary this morning and Rick (with the self-appointed title of “A Planner”) said hey, we are driving right by Petrified Forest National Park. Mind you, this was not on our list! Repeatedly, I said you must have planned our route specifically for this, but he assures me he did not. He was simply using an app to plan the best route/stops from KC to Joshua Tree. But we had the best surprise… to see another park today!
It was amazing. The painted desert area is just as you might imagine, but even more beautiful. As we will probably say every time we visit a National Park, pictures will never do it justice. It is literally in the middle of nowhere, but if you find yourself in the area, please take our recommendation and stop there. We are so glad we did!
I am a bit ahead of myself, though. Let’s go back to NM.
We loved our stay there. Again, being in the middle of nowhere allows for little light pollution. So we set our alarm for the middle of the night and did some incredible stargazing! We didn’t get to see the Milky Way as we had hoped, but still worth it.
As we headed out this morning, we had more beautiful landscape whose defining color was red. As we crossed into Arizona it changed quickly to brown. And the wind. Ugh, the wind. It made for a brutal drive all day long.
There was literally nothing on either side of us for miles on end. Just fields with dirt and some brush. No real agriculture, very little livestock. Although we did see some sheep, complete with a sheepdog!! This went on for lots of miles and lots of wind, and we were primarily going uphill. Pretty miserable.
Oh and this was on Route 40. Now officially our least favorite road. Not only did the wind cause us stress but lots of rough patches. (We had these same issues on the same Route 40 in January in TN)
We did drive through Winslow, AZ and yes, I did have the appropriate Eagles song playing as we did.
But just outside of Flagstaff it became green and stunningly beautiful – multiple national forest areas, gorgeous rolling areas with interesting plants, mountains, etc. Still windy and still lots of hills, but the scenery makes everything better.
And so now we are outside of Phoenix. Which is near Glendale. Which is near dear friends of ours. And of course I didn’t realize any of this until late this afternoon. I guess I need to do a better job of looking at a map! But there are some gorgeous areas around here and national parks we didn’t have time to visit, so we will be back someday. This is a super quick stop for dinner and a good sleep. Tomorrow, we reach CA!!!
Leave a Reply