Holbrook, Arizona

March 10 - 15, 2009




Holbrook KOA
Holbrook, Arizona



First of all...I've been looking over the last couple of blogs and you might have noticed that same old Converse sweatshirt. I really need to buy more sweatshirts...never expected I would need so many. Where's the warm weather?



We left Williams after another very, very windy night. It was so bad, we put the slides in before going to bed, afraid the slide toppers might rip in the wind. I'm not sure I'm fond of weather at 7000 feet!!



On the way to Holbrook, we made a stop to see Meteor Crater, the best-preserved and first-proven meteorite impact site. The crater is nearly a mile across, 2.4 miles in circumference, and over 550 feet deep, as tall as a 60-story building. The floor of the crater is large enough to accommodate 20 football games being played simultaneously as over 2 million fans watch from the sloping walls of the impact site. The terrain of the crater closely resembles that of the earth's moon. It was an official training site for the Apollo Astronauts and it was the setting for the movie "Star Man".




The crater is in the middle of nowhere. Your first thought is thank goodness it didn't hit near civilization but then you realize the meteorite impact happened over 50,000 years ago...there was no civilization!















The crater was formed when a meteor 150 feet across crashed into the earth. This is a small piece of that meteor that didn't burn upon impact.



After a drive through nowhere with nothing to see, we arrived in Holbrook, an older Arizona town without the same "new" areas we've seen through the rest of Arizona. Our objective here is to see the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert and of course, we are headed east and closer to home.



The Petrified Forest National Park was established in 1906 to protect one of the world's largest and most colorful deposits of petrified wood.






About 225 million years ago, this area was a floodplain littered with fallen trees. Periodic flooding buried the logs beneath layers of silt. Over time, silica-laden waters filtered through these logs and petrified the wood by encasing the trees' organic material with minerals. Centuries of erosion then exposed these petrified logs.







It is interesting to note that the eruption of Mount St. Helenes has produced two requirements for the petrification process - wood and silica-producing sediment (in this case, volcanic ash).


We walked the short 1-mile Crystal Forest Trail and it felt like we were on a different planet... nothing like what we've seen before.



A 3-mile loop road in the park, Blue Mesa, was one of my favorites with views of the badlands. The blue, purple, red and gray sediment layers were absolutely beautiful.














We continued north on the 28-mile park road to come up over a rise and see the Painted Desert. We stopped at every overlook with long-distance vistas, trying to beat the coming rain clouds.



At one vista, the wayside exhibit boasted the air to be cleaner than anywhere else in the world. On a clear day (which we had at that time) you could see mountain peaks 120 miles away.











The north end of the park road deposits you out to Route 40 where we traveled 20 miles back to our campground. Along this route we saw miles and miles of flat desert-land filled with small sage-like bushes. It was so hard to believe what we had just seen was part of this desert.

We had a surprise when Greg and Marilyn arrived at Holbrook KOA on Friday. Their schedule had changed a bit and they joined us here to visit the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. But, we had already seen it so we went our own ways on Saturday. We will meet up again in Albuquerque before we both start the journey home (them to Pennsylvania and us to Cape Cod). By the way, I had them over for dinner and everything went well...nothing fell on the floor; so, I guess I redeemed myself even though I will never live my corned beef fiasco down!



Saturday we took our longest day trip yet. We traveled north on Route 191 first to visit the Hubbell Trading Post. John Lorenzo Hubbell was one of the most respected and well-known Navajo traders of his day. He opened this Trading Post in 1858. We could feel the old wooden floor give slightly and squeak (quite loudly) beneath our feet as we entered the oldest, continuously operating trading post on the Navajo Nation. As our eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the "bullpen" we could almost see the trader negotiating a deal with a Native American artist for their art. The Trading Post was operated by Hubbell family members until it was sold to the National Park Service in 1965.







We then continued through the Navajo Indian Reservation to the Canyon de Chelly (pronounced d'shay) National Monument, a labyrinth of several canyons which include Canyon de Chelly and Canyon del Muerto. At the mouth of the canyon the rock walls are only 30 feet high; but deeper in the walls rise dramatically to reach more than 1,000 feet above the floor.








The highlight of the South Rim Drive was Spider Rock, twin 800 foot sandstone towers that rise from the canyon floor. We stood at the overlook and watched a group of horseback riders below on the canyon floor and we are determined to do that someday when we return to the Canyon.






The North Rim Drive followed the Canyon Del Muerto where we visited the overlook at Mummy Cave Ruin which contains a number of ancient structures that were built at various times in history. The caves take their name from two mummified bodies wrapped in yucca plant fiber, found by an archeological expedition in 1882. (This looks like two eyes, doesn't it? If you enlarge the picture you can see the remains of the dwellings; then hit your "back" button to return to the blog.)


There are a lot of slides, but I think you'll agree, we couldn't leave any one of them out.

Leaving the Canyon de Chelly National Monument, we headed east to continue the loop along Route 12 back to I-40. The weather was quickly turning nasty...we actually drove through a hail storm for about 20 minutes...but we did see some fabulous scenery.

















After seven weeks, we say good-bye to Arizona tomorrow when we travel to Albuquerque to visit my friend, Roberta, who (whom?) I haven't seen in 32 years. We have a lot of catching up to do!!!