Eastern Arizona

Homovoli State Park desert isolation

Dry one day, flooded the next.

Leaving Sedona we headed east towards New Mexico with a couple of stops planned. The first was a meteor crater just east of Flagstaff. Due to the craters location in low rainfall high desert, this is said to be the best preserved example of a meteor crater on Earth. The meteor hit 50,000 years ago with a speed of 26,000 miles/hr creating a crater 2,4 miles in diameter and 600 ft deep. We thoroughly enjoyed the tour of the crater and visitors centre. We were lucky that there was no wind as the previous day there were no tours of the rim as it was too windy. At times they record wind speeds of 190 kph on the rim. That evening we drove onto the Homovoli State Park to camp with power for $20 and enjoyed the beautiful desert solitude.

Very impressive meteor crater

Trying to take it easy, last photo of Rob's 'Montana Man' jacket
before it was stolen in Breaking Bad country.

The next morning we explored the 14^th century ruins left by the Anasazi people. The first site was next to the Little Colorado River and littered with broken pieces of 600 year old pottery. The next site, Homovoli II contained an estimated 1,200 to 2,000 rooms.  Speaking to the Ranger at the Visitors Centre we realised we should also explore the nearby town of Winslow that we had bypassed the previous day. Little did we know of the hidden gem of popular culture that we missed ‘Standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona and such a fine sight to see. It’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford slowin’ down to take a look at me. Come on, baby, don’t say maybe I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me……’ After some photos and a tour of the local tourist shops, we walked to the highly recommended La Posada Hotel (1930) which was the last of the great Harvey/Santa Fe railway hotels. It was designed by the famous SW architect Mary Jane Colter, who was also responsible for many of buildings at Grand Canyon. Amazing the Hotel, in near ruins, was brought for $130,000 and then restored by the artist Tina Mion and her husband in the 1990’s. We spent an hour wandering around the hotel appreciating the vast amount of Tina’s art on display.

With rain threatening, the next day we headed to the Petrified Forrest National Park. 255 million years ago, at the height of the dinosaur era, this area of land was just 4ᵒ north of the equator and was a tropical rain forest. The trees fell and were washed into adjacent floodplains where a mixture of silt, ash and mud buried the logs. Silica seeped into the logs replacing the original wood tissues with silica and petrifying the logs. There was a good analogy of the Earth’s history at the Visitor Centre. If the life of the Earth was a year, then the dinosaurs appeared about mid-December and disappeared by the morning of Dec 27. Humans did not appear until 11.15pm on December 31 and recorded history represents the last half minute of the entire year. With this in mind our thoughts were that we should keep the predictions of the planet over the next period of time in perspective. We spent the afternoon dodging showers and walking the highlights of the incredible petrified trees. At times the landscape looked like a lumber yard, with logs lying around ready to be hit by a log splitter. Luckily there was some RV camping just south of the park where it cost $10 to plug into power for the night.

 

The next morning the rain had set in further and we drove to the northern end of the park. We passed numerous creeks that the previous day were dry and were now in full flow. There was a quick photo stop at the Tepees, hills showing distinctive colour bands that represent ancient layers of sediment deposited by a Triassic era river system. Next we crossed the modern interstate 40 and stopped at the old Route 66. The area north of the i40 consists of many viewpoints of the Painted Desert. The rain allowed us to see a rare glimpse of water flow in the desert. After a short wet walk it was time to leave and continue our drive towards New Mexico.

Get your kicks, on Route 66

PS. Rob admits to playing with the colour of some photos here.