April 27- May 1
Beautiful flowers still grow in the desert along the Petrified Forest
On Friday, April 27th we started our long drive West. The original plan had been to take the northern route up to the Dakotas and start there, driving a big loop across to Washington and Oregon and down through California, over to Arizona and then finish up in Utah and Colorado. When I told my sister Sheila (who lives in AZ) our plan, she suggested that we may want to start in Utah and Arizona before they get too hot and give the colder northern parks a chance to warm up, especially since we would be camping. We decided that was a better idea and since, as usual, we had no reservations, we quickly adjusted our plans. The night before we left, Shaun went down to the local AAA office, joined up, then loaded up on the free maps and books for the drive. We filled up the tank, packed the car with camping gear, clothes and a cooler and we were off.
From everything we had read, it was quite possible to drive from Boston to Phoenix in four days, but you really had to drive about 10-12 hours a day to make it happen. We decided that if we switched up the driving fairly regularly and tried to make lunch stops quick and healthy, we would both be able to stay fresh enough to push on through. For entertainment in the car, we used an old Amazon gift card to purchase three audio books. Neither of us had listened to audio books before, so we weren't sure whether we would like them, but it turned out to be a wonderful way to pass the time. We started with a Bill Bryson book called "A Walk in the Woods", a story about the time he attempted to hike the Appalachian Trail accompanied by his hapless friend Steven Katz. We were laughing out loud as we drove along, and even sometimes sat in the car for a few moments when we stopped for a break, just to get through some of the really good parts.
By the time we got to Buffalo the first night, we were both feeling really good. We had picked Buffalo for our dinner stop because it is the home of Duff's Famous Wings, allegedly the home of the Buffalo Wing. (Yes, I know they all claim that!) Anyway, Shaun had been before and he was dying to go back so we stopped in and ordered up some delicious wings for dinner. After we finished, we decided to see how much farther we could get that first night. We drove and drove, out of New York, through the corner of Pennsylvania and into Ohio, where finally, at about 9:30PM we made it to the outskirts of Cleveland to a town called Lakewood. In Lakewood, we found an inexpensive Red Roof Inn that got good reviews. We pulled in, booked a room, grabbed some clothes from our bags and fell into a deep sleep.
Not exactly a healthy dinner, but it was delicious.
The next morning we woke up early, threw the bags back in the car and headed out again. We were headed into the only part of the drive that made both of us nervous; Tornado Alley. As you probably know, Tornado Alley is a huge area of the Unites States between the Rockies and the Appalachians that has the most Tornado activity in the US. Over the next two days we would be driving straight through the heart of Tornado Alley, and the meteorologists were already warning that things were going to get messy. We decided we would make a concerted effort to get as far as we could over the next two days and hopefully have an uneventful trip.
Well, that didn't quite happen! At first, things went fine. We drove through Ohio, across Indiana and through Illinois, stopping for only a quick salad at Chipotle and bathroom breaks when we needed them. Finally, late that afternoon, we were cruising along, about to head into Missouri when things started getting weird. As we drove along, listening to the Bill Bryson story, we noticed the weather take a sudden turn. Acutely aware of where we were, we turned off the CD and tried to find a local radio station. It only took a minute to find a station and right away we heard something like this: "Repeat, there is a Tornado Warning for Madison and St Clair Counties and a funnel cloud has been spotted in the city of Collinsville. If you are in this area, you need to take this seriously and find cover." He said lots more but Shaun and I were quite busy scrambling at this point to try to find out where Collinswood was located. We zoomed in on the GPS and realized to our horror that Collinswood was the next town ahead!
Having no experience with Tornados, we just operated on instinct. We listened to the DJ talk about the direction of the storm and then took an exit and drove in the opposite direction for about 10 miles. We ended up at an Applebees where we sat down and had a very long dinner while we watched the television reporting. Finally, after an hour or so, when the Tornado warnings had been lifted, we set out again. Back on the road, we crossed the border into Missouri and saw the beautiful arch that marks the city of St Louis. I was commenting on how pretty it was when we both noticed things were getting weird again. We tuned back into the local channel and were shocked to hear another Tornado Warning being announced, this one for downtown St Louis!! All of a sudden it started pouring rain and it became as dark as night. All the exits just led to city streets and we couldn't see a parking garage or any other kind of cover so we just knuckled down and kept driving. Eventually we could see that our general direction had clearer skies so we just decided to go until we got out of there.
The funnel cloud itself didn't end up becoming much of a tornado, and there was no touch down in St Louis, but the damage that came along with the storms was severe. Over 100 people ended up in the hospital from a beer tent that was ripped apart outside the Cardinal's Busch Stadium and cars all over the area had their windshields completely bashed in by the baseball sized hail that fell. At last estimate, roughly 100,000 people have filed insurance claims on their houses and cars for damage caused by the storm. Shaun and I consider ourselves more than a little lucky to have made it out unscathed.
So needless to say, even though we were exhausted from the white knuckle driving we did that day, all we wanted was to get as far away from the St Louis area as we could. We drove for another two and a half hours until we came to the town of St Robert in the middle of the state, where we booked a Fairfield Inn, mainly for it's proximity to a Ruby's where we knew we could get a beer. We checked in, dropped our bags and headed straight to the bar.
The next day we set out again, wary of the fact that we were still in this active belt. Nothing made that more clear than passing through the city of Joplin, Missouri, which was leveled by a massive F5 tornado on May 22, 2011. Needless to say, we didn't stop in Joplin! We just drove and drove that day. After leaving Missouri, we crossed all of Oklahoma, and through the top of Texas until we reached New Mexico. Amarillo, TX had been the outer edge of what the meteorologists were saying would be the severe weather line, so it was a symbolic victory to get past Amarillo and into New Mexico where the weather was much more temperate. We found a little city called Tucumcari that was a part of the old Route 66 and decided it would be a great place to spend the night.
We stopped for lunch in New Mexico at a place called Blakes
Tucumcari is a little slice of 1950's Americana and the Motel Safari is a great place to rest your head. The motel has been restored using all the original 1950's furnishings, but updated with new beds, flat screen tv's and a cool CD player that looks like an old radio. We had a great night's sleep, packed up and stopped down the block at a little diner called "Kix on 66" for breakfast before heading out again. Now that we were out of the danger zone, our trip had become much more fun. We were taking the time to pick places like Motel Safari and Kixx to get a better feel for the cities and towns we were passing through. For lunch that day we stopped at another, a burger joint called Blake's that is apparently a New Mexico institution. They weren't going to win any awards for nutrition, but the trip was almost over and the burger hit the spot.
Loved the Motel Safari!!
And Kix on 66!
As we crossed the border into Arizona we were within hours of my parents place, but first we had to make one stop. We had reached our first National Park! The Petrified Forest National Park is a small but beautiful park in eastern Arizona. Route 40, the highway we were on, cuts right through the park so we just had to stop. The first thing we did was purchase our National Park Interagency Annual Pass. For eighty dollars, the pass gave us entry to every national park in the country for one year. Considering the fact that entry fees range from 10-25 dollars per park, the pass was a no-brainer.
Our first National Park!!
Pass in hand, we started our drive through Petrified Forest National Park. The drive from West to East starts wonderfully with a trip through the Painted Desert. You only need to look through at the pictures to know why they call it the Painted Desert. It was just lovely. Anxious to get to Phoenix, we had planned to just buzz through this park, but one look at the Painted Desert and we were hooked. By the time we got to the end of the Petrified Forest, we were leisurely wandering the paths like we had all day. That, I believe is one of the great things about the National Parks. They get you to slow down and forget the minutia of everyday life while you contemplate instead beautiful places that have been created over thousand and in some cases, millions of years.
The trees in the Petrified Forest have broken up into slices that look like they were done with a knife
Inside, the trees look like jeweled rocks
We only spent a few hours at Petrified Forest NP, but we both agreed it was worth the stop. It was a wonderful introduction to our National Parks tour. For the next five or six weeks, we planned to really immerse ourselves in these wonderful parks. Our goal was to experience them as close to nature as we could, hiking the trails, spotting the wildlife and camping in the parks whenever we could. We had planned this all so suddenly that we had no reservations and just a vague idea of the route we would take, but we had eternal optimism that we would be able to work around all that.
Our first stop after Petrified Forest was Fountain Hills, Arizona for a visit with my Mom and Dad. We had let them know we were going to be getting there around dinner time so Mom had dinner all ready for us when we arrived. She had cooked a beautiful piece of salmon with green beans and a big salad. Everything tasted wonderful, especially after our days on the road! We hung out with Mom and Dad for a while until we could no longer keep our eyes open and had to head to bed. It's pretty sad when you can't stay up later than your parents!! (I wish we had photos of our visit but my camera had died on the way out!)
The next few days were a blur of family time and planning. About half my family has migrated to Arizona over the years so we split our time between my sister Sheila's, my brother John's and my parents place. It was fun to see everyone, and great to catch our breath a bit before embarking on the big Parks tour. The only one we didn't get to see was my brother Brendan, who was working, but we'll catch him on our next trip!
As for planning, our next stop was the Grand Canyon so we went onto the National Park Service website and looked for campground reservations. We wanted to stay right in the park, and luckily we found a spot at Mather Campground that was available for three consecutive nights. We reserved our spot for the bargain price of $9 a night, packed up the car again, said our goodbyes and drove off on the morning of Thursday, May 3rd. Next stop, Grand Canyon National Park!
Shaun at the Painted Desert
No comments:
Post a Comment