Arizona & New Mexico

We didn't want to leave San Diego, but if we stayed any longer, we wouldn't have any time, or money, to finish the southern leg of the trip. We drove east for the first time in weeks. We made it to Flagstaff, Arizona, where we held up for the night at an altitude of 7,000 ft.

The next morning, we visited Walnut Canyon National Monument. This canyon contained cliff dwellings of migrant tribes from centuries ago. In order to investigate these dwellings, we had to descend 221 steps; a feat that would prove difficult at our elevation. Jojo made fun of visitors that were making the trip back to the top, winded and gasping for air. I laughed at her, knowing she would have to make the trip too. Then we'd see if she was still making jokes.

We hiked the mountain path, taking time to stop inside some of the ancient cave homes. Jojo commented that, "It was probably really hard to go to your friends house! you had to climb a mountain, barefoot, in the snow sometimes!" I agreed.

As we began our ascent, I kept a close eye on Jojo. Twenty steps up, and we were gripping the hand rail. Forty steps up, we were huffing and puffing. Sixty steps up, and we took a break on a bench, while we gasped for air. She wasn't making jokes anymore. When we arrived back at the top, we both agreed that life at 7,000 ft. was a lot different than the life that we lived at sea level.

We had no time to waste. Our day in Arizona was packed full of natural landscape adventures, and we only had another eight hours of daylight left. We drove East to Meteor Crater. This stop was not originally scheduled, but Jojo insisted we go since it was on our way. It was worth the detour. On the drive to the crater we drove by the abandoned Twin Arrows Trading Post on Historic Route 66.

We arrived at the crater, paid our admission fees, and made our way through the museum. We couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. We saw nothing that resembled a meteor, or a crater. When we left the exhibit and stepped outside onto the viewing platform, we were speechless.

We were standing on the outer edge of a massive crater, formed by an astroid that collided with the earth over 50,000 years ago, at approximately 26,000 miles per hour.

The result was a crater a mile across, 2.4 miles in diameter, and over 550 ft. deep. As we looked out at the Arizona desert, then back at the crater, the red-orange sand of the dessert seemed more like the landscape of Mars than Earth.

Meteor Crater is one of the largest meteor collision sites on planet earth. It was an amazing sight.

(In the middle of the Crater, in the white area, there is a 6' tall astronaut holding a 3'x5' flag. Just to give you a picture of how big the crater is)

Our next stop was the Petrified Forrest National Park. The way the park was laid out allowed for us to take a 22 mile driving tour of the sights, with stops and look out points every mile or so. Our first look out point was the painted dessert.

These badlands had hues of red, pink, orange, brown, and purple, depending on which way the sunlight hit them. It looked like a multi-colored bed sheet, crumpled across a mattress after a night's use.

After the painted dessert, we stopped at Tepee look out point, where tall, tepee shaped rock formations scattered the landscape.

They all had the uniform color scheme of bluish-gray with maroon stripes. They looked like large Tepees.

We also stopped by Newspaper Rock, where ancient farmers had carved thousands of pictures, shapes, and characters into the rocks, centuries before. At first we had no idea what we were looking at.

Thankfully, a knowledgeable old man showed us where to point our binoculars, and we were amazed at how many carvings were right under our nose.

Just when we started wondering why the park was called the petrified forrest, we arrived at Jasper Forrest. This arid, dessert landscape was littered with thousand of petrified logs.

These logs looked as if they were crystalized, with rainbow colored streaks throughout the rock like wood.

The 200 million year old logs were dated back to the Triassic period, which, together with their gem-like appearance, made it easy to understand why hundreds of thousands of the them had been stolen from the dessert floor.

Jojo and I toyed with the idea of picking up a large log and carrying it back to the car, just to see peoples reactions. We decided against it. It was a long day, and we were too tired to lift 200 million year old logs.

We spent the night in Albuquerque and visited the art museum there the next morning. We didn't have much time to spend in the city which was unfortunate. We kept driving East toward Texas. We kept hearing good things about Santa Fe, so we took a northern detour and looked up D3s in the area.

We decided on Zia Diner. I ordered the smoked salmon quesadillas, but all I could taste was smoke. Jojo ordered a salad instead of a signature dish. It had fried goat cheese, cranberries, walnuts, with a vinaigrette. She was quite partial to the guacamole as well. We decided on 3 Burps

After lunch, we walked around the town square, where shops and restaurants lined the streets.

Tourists packed the sidewalks, as vendors sold jewelry, knives, artwork, and music to the public.

After purchasing a few souvenirs (Jojo with a new ring, and I with a new knife), we were back on the road, and cruising Southeast, toward Amarillo,TX.