Day 4 - Standin' on a Corner

Following a much needed Dunkin Donuts coffee run, we made a  stop at the 66 Diner

we were too early for take-out breakfast, so we peeked in the windows at the 50’s décor, snapped a few photos at the “pile-up wall”

and drove about 3 hours to our first “lord we have been in this car for too freaking long, can we please get out and stretch our legs” hike at the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest – the two parks are combined into one. 

Our first hike was Blue Mesa, only about a mile or so round trip, but down into a little canyon and then back up again.  The color gradations were unusual, very white and grey in a land of red dirt. Plus, we had our first glimpse of petrified tree nuggets – Damon was overjoyed and took pictures of darn near every log rock.  It was just good to get out and stretch. 

Second hike was supposed to be about a 3-miler in a place called Jasper Forest.  It was billed as an “off the beaten path” hike since it was not a marked trail, but it was still listed in the park info sheet.  I’m not sure how crowded this National Park is during a non-Covid summer, but overall, I would say that it was mostly empty when we were there.  We started the hike on discernible trail, which opened up into a wide valley with all sorts of directional options. 

We were so busy looking at the petrified wood that, go figure, we lost the trail and started wandering in hopes we would pick it up again.

There was petrified wood everywhere – if you haven’t seen it, over time (like billions of years), minerals leech into the wood and eventually overtake the space and crystallize.  I’m not sure if that is what actually happens, I made it up.  But that is what it looks like.  The colors in petrified wood are amazing – clears and whites, browns, reds, and all sort of crystalline.  There were big logs and millions and millions of little pieces of colored rock/wood everywhere.

Hitting a canyon dead end made us realize we had lost the trail, so we retraced our steps and tried another canyon, we eventually figured out that there was sort of a road that probably had not been used in 50 years, but if you really paid attention, you could sort of make out where it was, so we followed it until we hit the big payoff – “Eagle’s Nest”.  The picture from 1941 of the Eagles Nest was a tall thin hoodoo type formation of sandstone.  The 2020 reality was a rock lump with a pile of rocks beneath it where the hoodoo had toppled a long time ago. 

The “road” looped around the Eagle’s Nest, so we assume it must have been interesting at some point in time.  In any case, we followed the road back more easily, spent a lot of time looking at rocks, and eventually made it back to the car.

Third hike was called “Long Logs” and was a 1 ½ mile trail in the blazing heat that wound through the biggest concentration of large/long logs in one area.  It seems that there had been some type of log jam a billion years ago, all of the trees ended up in one place, and then petrified so people like me could blog about them.  Some of the logs are said to be recorded at over 100’ long – one supposedly 180’.  It was hard to tell because they were broken into pieces and sometimes partially buried, but I’ll take the park’s word for it that there were some big old logs there.

We left the park and went to one of our final two stops on Route 66, starting with the Wigwam Village Motel.  Back in the day, this was a chain of hotels catering to the notion that people would want to sleep in concrete replicas of Indian teepees.  Can you even imagine if someone tried to do this today… in any case, this particular hotel is still in operation by descendants of the original owner.  They put a bunch of vintage cars in front to keep the 50’s authenticity.

Final official Route 66 stop for us was a perfect ending to our nostalgic journey – Winslow, AZ – where some enterprising person decided to take full advantage of the Eagles song, Take it Easy, and created the “Standin’ on a Corner in Winslow Arizona”. 

How they determined exactly which corner to use I don’t know, but each of the four corners has good photo bling.  They even parked a flatbed Ford in front ( you can see reflection in window in picture above).  Also, a huge kick-ass Route 66 painted in the middle of the four corners as our final goodbye .to Route 66 

We had planned to stop at the Meteor Crater, but given the cost of entry and the fact that everything but looking at the giant hole was closed down, we opted to save that for another day. 

With no particular plans on where to camp, we headed North hoping to get as close as possible to the Northern Rim of the Grand Canyon, tomorrow’s activity.  The bulk of the drive was through the Hopi Indian Reservation.  The road was empty and at one point I only counted passing about 7 cars in 15 minutes.  Averaging over 100 degrees, we wanted to get through the reservation as quickly as possible to find somewhere we could crash.  Our target town was Page, AZ, which appeared to be an entry point for anyone going to the North Rim or spending time on Lake Powell.  When we finally pulled into Page (it was still 100 degrees), I jokingly said – “Look a Hyatt” hoping we could hotel it rather than sweat to death.  As we pulled into the campground, which resembled a hot, dry, desert parking lot, I saw a sign for Hampton Inn and said – “There is a Hampton…”.  Damon told me to check availability and while I was researching, the Hilton app was not loading, so I went to Travelocity and lo and behold, when scrolling through hotels, there was  a listing for a Hyatt in Page.  It didn’t take much convincing and within 3 minutes I had booked a room using points and within 5 minutes we were in air conditioning in the brand new hotel with our upgraded canyon facing room.

We had a quick shower and went to dinner at a huge outdoor BBQ place we had passed on the way into town.  So far, I’m okay with this roughing it business!!!  Another blissful and cool night of sleep followed by another shower (got to take advantage) and off we went.

The second part of our journey begins tomorrow as we spend the next few days hiking in the remote parks - primary goal being the exploration of slot canyons in Utah.  More to come.