Since we left home on this journey on March 20th, we have basically been "winging it." We left with no reservations at all. This has generally worked for us, allowing us to stay until we're ready to go, and not forcing us to adhere to a pre-arranged schedule that may not suit our needs when push comes to shove. Sometimes we're having so much fun that we want to stay longer in a place than we thought we would want to, but sometimes it's not as great as we had hoped, and we decide to move on.
Usually, a day or two before we move on to a new location, I call the campground where we want to stay next and make a reservation. We have only been turned away from one campground (in Fredericksburg, TX), and our second choice was perfectly nice. When we left the rally in Natchez our goal was Grand Canyon National Park. Before we left Natchez, I had attempted to get reservations at the two reservable NPS campgrounds within the Grand Canyon park. They were both completely booked until the end of July! So we left Natchez on a Sunday not knowing where we would be staying when we reached the Canyon. Since there is a third NPS campground in a less desirable location that is "first-come-first served" we reasoned that arriving on Tuesday or Wednesday would give us a better chance of scoring a campsite than if we arrived later in the week. But that made for a rather exhausting trip across the country.
We had several very long days, but Rick was a trooper. The first night we stayed in a Cracker Barrel parking lot in Alma, Arkansas. The second night we stayed in a nice little campground in Tucumcari, New Mexico, and the third night in Holbrook, Arizona. Both of these campgrounds offered dinner and breakfast for a reasonable fee, and we gladly took them up on it. We didn't arrive in Holbrook until after 7:00, because we had spent a few hours touring the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert along the way.
We were pleasantly surprised by this beautiful area. The "painted desert" is a colorful area of desert badlands that is partially contained within Petrified Forest NP. There was a thunderstorm going on as we drove through, so my photos really don't do the colors justice. You can click on these pictures (in fact any picture anywhere in this blog) to get a larger view.
The petrified forest part of the park is an area where more than 200 million years ago trees fell into streams whose riverbanks were eroding. The trees were carried downstream to the then swampy lowland which is now the desert park. They were trapped underwater where they were buried under sediment that contained volcanic ash containing silica. Over time silica began to replace the wood until the logs were literally turned to stone. The silica logs were stained by iron oxide and other minerals, causing them to have beautiful colors. Later the park area was "uplifted" and many of the logs were exposed. Many contained beautiful semiprecious stones such as agate. I say "contained" because most of the stones and much of the petrified wood has been stolen from the park over the years by collectors and dealers. We enjoyed our short time in this park and may return on our way back through the area in a few weeks.
It took many hours of driving to get from Natchez to Grand Canyon. But we were helped by multiple time changes. We left the Central time zone and hit Mountain time when we arrived in New Mexico. And Arizona's in the same time zone as New Mexico, right? Wrong! Did you know that those independent Arizonians don't do daylight savings time? So this time of year, it's actually as if they're on pacific time. Except, of course, the Navajo Nation which DOES do daylight savings time, even though it's in Arizona. This caused all sorts of confusion for us. Thank goodness for cell phones. The Petrified Forest visitor center had four clocks on the wall giving the time in Arizona, the time in New Mexico, the time in California, and the time in the Navajo nation!
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