Other Half and I have made a decision to get our tourist on on a more regular basis. There’s so much beauty in this country. It’s our goal to see as much as we can manage. After all, that is the overriding point of living in the Big Rig.
We left Albuquerque bright and early Monday morning and headed west on Interstate 40. We did 240 miles landing in Holbrook, Arizona. We are in the Arizona corner of the Navajo Nation. Other Half educated me on the WWII Navajo code talkers. He has an extensive 7th grade knowledge bank. I, of course, had no clue.
The code talkers were bilingual Navajo speakers recruited by the Marines in WWII. Their primary job was the transmission of secret tactical messages. Pretty cool.
We’re staying at a place called OK RV Park. It’s ok for sure. The pull-thru sites are plenty big enough for the Big Rig and we have full hook ups. Full hook ups means we can take showers, make toast and do laundry without worrying about running out of water or running the generator. The first thing we did was laundry. It’s good to have clean clothes.
The other more than ok thing about this place is the collection of petrified wood. The current campground owner told us the original landowner collected the pieces when the railroad was built back in the late 1800’s. She said their ancestors still own the collection. She happily displays it on the grounds.
Holbrook is an easy drive to the Petrified Forest National Park. That was our goal in staying here. (That and clean underwear.) This morning we packed a picnic lunch and headed to the park. Other Half is a proud owner of a National Parks Senior Pass so we got in free. The Senior Pass is the best $10 we ever spent.
We started at the Rainbow Forest Museum at the south entrance. We caught about half of the orientation movie, enough to learn a little bit about the dinosaur fossils and the evidence of human occupation. The land seems unforgiving. It’s hard to imagine life thriving here.
We headed out of the Rainbow Museum onto the Giant Logs Trail. They’re not kidding when they say giant logs. The trail provided up close views of the whopping petrified logs.
The park road is 28 miles and provides access to overlooks, trails and killer views of the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert.
The Painted Desert is soft sedimentary rock in an array of colors. It’s breathtaking. We walked several of the trails, the paved ones, and took it all in.
The Petrified Forrest and the Painted Desert make you feel like you’ve stepped back in time. Not a little step – a whopping step – a couple hundred million years.