Raven Lunatic!

Monday, July 22, 2013
Painted Desert to Globe

The Ramada, masquerading as a Howard Johnson's, serves a continental breakfast with choice of cold cereals, muffins, breads, juices, coffee and a waffle maker.  And a heaping service of Patty, who tells us how the local school district works.  She seems to feel the same way about their superintendent as we do about ours!  She says he is "special"!

indoor pool, for those so inclined

Breakfast!

Our stuff is in the car and I turn in our key (which looks like a thumb drive!) and ask about ice.  Patty goes off for a moment and returns with a little bag which I accept gratefully.  I suspect she doesn't give ice to just anybody!

Our plan is to enter the Painted Desert from the north and drive down as far as Blue Mesa so we can do the one-mile hike before it gets hotter or the rains come.  Then we'll work our way back north.  And a good plan it is, too!  The pamphlet says there is just one short steep section to the trail;  we can do this! Down we go and the steep part is right here at the beginning!  Everything is so beautiful and every time we look somewhere else another painted dune demands to have it photo taken!  A couple of young people go sailing past us;  they don't know how hard you can land!

We are all decked out in our hats and sunglasses, sunscreen and for the first time our new cold cloths that I found at an art show on St. Pete Beach.  These things really work!  They stay cold a really long time and when they dry out you just wet them again and you've got instant cold!

On safari!

As the bottom of the trail it evens out and splits.  In keeping with Jeannie's directive, we go widdershins around the loop.  There are lots of pieces of petrified wood lying around and some of the areas look like a saw mill, with tiny little shards as well as the large pieces of trunks.

Surprisingly, the trip back up isn't as difficult as the downward part had been!  I think it's because I'm not so worried about getting up too much momentum and tumbling down the whole slope!

Look how far the trunk goes down through the rock!

The next stop is the Tepees, more gloriously "painted" siltstone, mudstone and shale.

For a change of pace we stop at the Pueblo Puerco ruins and petroglyphs.  This ancient site was once home to as many as two hundred people between 1250 and the early 1300s.  There are one hundred rooms and the site is easily accessible.  A short walk takes us to a platform from which we can see a split rock.  On the summer stolstice the sun shines through the slit onto a spiral petroglyph!  There are other petroglyphs to be seen as well.  One might be a bird eating a baby or perhaps delivering it a la the stork legend!  Or it may just be a fertility symbol!

Summer Solstice indicator

Spiral on the left is illuminated by the sun on the Solstice

Fertility??

When we get back to the car there are two ravens having a conversation, or they may both just be hollering for food!  I take a short video so I can remember their calls!  And there is a little guy, maybe a five-year old, who is taking pictures of one of the ravens with one heck of a big camera!

Next we see the official spot where Route 66 crosses the Petrified Forest Park road.  The bench and the road marker both have the official Route 66 logo and there is an old car there and the back of the concrete bench has the grill from an old car embedded in it.  Do you know what it is?  Marilyn says it's a Caddy!

Gettin' my kicks on Route 66!

We stop at several more beautiful points and our ravens come along, too.  At one point there are four of them, all with open mouths, calling in one direction, then another!

Time for lunch!  There are covered picnic tables and we build peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to go with our salt and vinegar chips and more water.  Always more water!

Not everyone uses a table for serving and eating food!

Refueled we go on to the Desert View Inn.  It has undergone several incarnations but owes a lot of its existence to the guys of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

The art work was all done by a Hopi artist, Fred Kapotie.

At Tawa Point we meet a mounted park Volunteer, Trish, from Punta Gorda, atop Pintado.  She will be in the park for two months before returning home to her husband.  One of her daughters is a teacher in southern Illinois.

Our last stop is the Visitors' Center for something to drink that isn't water!  And just a little shopping!

We're back on Route 66!!  But only for a little while, then it's back to I-40 and then south on AZ 77. Our goal for this evening is Globe, a two or three-hour drive.  Who thought our second day in the Painted Desert would still be five or six hours long!  There is so much to see!

Happily the drive is pretty uneventful.  We pass through several charming little towns like Snowflake and Show Low and notice the changes in the vegetation and geology.  The clouds have been building all afternoon and the weather stations have all been warning of monsoon season and flash floods.  In Arizona they have a Stupid Motorist Law.  If you drive into a wash without knowing how deep it is and you have to be rescued, you have to pay for the service!  Anyway, we just encounter a few raindrops and never even turn the wipers on faster than "interval"!

See!  There's water in the river!

We aren't sure just where our Days Inn might be;  but as soon as we turn onto AZ 60 we can see it! The young girl behind the desk suggests Zen's Cafe across the street for dinner.  And if we show our key, they will give us a ten-percent discount!  We don't even go to our room but drive straight to dinner.

They must be short staffed and we suspect that our waitress is really the hostess and might be waiting tables for the first time ever!  She is harried and flustered and the only other person around, a guy who might be the manager (?) keeps coming behind her and picking up the slack.  It's fine.  We both have salads and I get a burger while Marilyn has a Rueben.  Neither is spectacular;  but we're full and we do get our discount, so what more is necessary?

We drive around the back of the motel to our room and there is a spectacular sunset!  Life is good!