We've put a lot of miles, almost 1,200, on The Traveling Koala since we left the Grand Canyon and the last blog. We left the Canyon on 3/28/14 traveling back down AZ 64 to I-40. This shot is of the San Francisco peaks, just north of Flagstaff. Mary shot this from the car while on I-40 between Williams and Flagstaff.
This shot is Humphrey Peak, part of the San Francisco peaks, the highest point in Arizona, over 12,000 feet.
On the way to Kansas, we first stopped at Meteor Crater, located just off I-40 east of Flagstaff. It's fascinating to see, and really large, over 500 feet deep, and 2.5 miles around the rim. One example given to help vizualize the size is 10 football fields will fit on the floor, and stands for over 2 million fans could be built on the circular wall of the crater.
This first image is looking back towards the San Francisco peaks at Flagstaff.
After leaving Meteor Crater, we traveled on over to Holbrook, AZ where we jumped off the interstate in order to visit the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. The neat thing about this national park is 1) it's about 28 miles long, with a single road running through it, 2) it terminates further east on I-40 which is the way we were headed.
The petrified wood made some pretty designs.
There was other interesting terrain to see while driving through the park. Like most of the national parks in the southwest US, it was dry, many times stark, but beautiful none the less.
There were also the ruins of a Native American band who lived along side the Rio Puerco back during the period 1200 to 1300 AD. The river carried much more water then and the people raised a lot of different grains and vegetables. The stone foundations of many of their buildings remain along with a number of petroglyphs.
Coming up is the depression of the old Route 66 and telephone lines that were eliminated with the opening of I-40. The Mother Road and the old Santa Fe Railroad used to run through the park. The Santa Fe still does, but is now is the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, owned by Warren Buffett. Route 66 disappeared, to be replaced by I-40.
After passing over the extinct road bed of US 66, we now rolled through the Painted Desert. Again, great pastels were used.
Duffy liked this park since the Ranger said our "doggy friend" was welcome on any trail as long as he was on a lease and stayed on the trails.
After leaving the Painted Desert we drove to Gallup, NM and spent the night.
We rolled out of Gallup early enough on the 29th for Mary to catch a sun rise.
We stayed on I-40 until reaching Tucumcari, NM. Here we left the mind numbing interstate and got back on the "blue highway" US54. (Side note: I've referred to the non interstate roads as blue highways. As anyone can see today interstate routes are always colored blue. In the "old" days the back roads on maps were colored blue. William Least-Heat Moon wrote a book called "Blue Highways" about his travels across America on the back roads. That name has stuck when referring to non interstates, at least among many RV'ers ) It's path is a diagonal from Tucumcari, to Dalhart, TX. Interstates are great for getting from point A to point B quickly. Not much else good can be said for them.
Then on to the Oklahoma panhandle town of Guymon where we spent the night at Camp Wally World (Walmart).
The Panhandles' business is cows. We went by two vast feed lots. Even Ray Charles would have known we were traveling by these feed lots. We had the AC on recirculate and we STILL knew it.
We shoved on from Guymon, OK on the 30th. We pushed it this day. Drove for nearly 8 hours. Pulled into the camp ground at Louisburg, KS. It's about 32 miles south of Prairie Village, KS. We stopped here to visit family, our daughter in laws' parents. Spent a great day with them today.
After dumping (one of the necessary but least pleasant chores connected with RVing) in the morning, we'll head out for Hannibal, MO on US24. We may or may not stay over and look for Mark Twain.
If we don't stay in Hannibal, we'll be off the wifi grid until we reach Ypsilanti, MI.
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