Day 7: Albuquerque, NM to Williams, AZ

Miles Traveled: 420
Travel Time: 12 hours
Pictures Taken: 155

Today was a very long travel day - thank goodness for the time changing once again in Arizona!  We left Albuquerque early and headed out.  There wasn't much to see along the way.  We traveled through Native American Indian Reservation land for a good deal of the trip today.  At one point there was a sign along the highway marking a little town on the reservation with a very old church at it's center.

The land became quite scrubby and rocky the further west we drove today.  We took a little side trip about 10 miles south of Route 40 (yes, I know this is supposed to be about Route 66, but Route 66 not only parallels Route 40 it is impassible in parts so Route 40 continues to be the faster way to go).  The land was labeled "Malpais" which means "bad land".  I can see why.

Just a little way off of I-40 are lava beds.  Very old lava just laying around amongst the scrubby vegetation.  It looks like the remnants of a fire.

At the "scenic overlook" sign we drove up a hill for about a mile and a half and were rewarded with incredible views of a very desolate land.  There was evidence of at least one farmer making a go of growing something, but for the most part, it was barren but beautiful.  There was also a lot of cacti.

The only wildlife we saw was tiny little lizards that scurried around too fast for my camera to capture.  Despite the elevation being somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 feet, there was evidence that at some point in history, humans had occupied these caves that were below the outcrop we were standing on.  The caves look like the face of an owl to me.

Then it was off westward again until we came to the continental divide.  Despite having heard the term my entire life, I don't think I really understood the significance of the continental divide until today.  This is the point at which the major watersheds of North America diverge - leading to the Pacific Ocean on the west and to the Gulf of Mexico on the east.  There is nothing special to mark the line along Route 66/Route 40, but this is what it looks like:

We continued on to Gallup, NM where we had lunch at Angela's Cafe - a place I'd recommend highly.

Arizona was not too far from Gallup.  Once in Arizona, we drove for a while and then stopped at Petrified Forest National Park.  I spent entirely too much time in the two gift shops at the northern end of the park, and then we started driving the 28 mile road that loops through the park - from the Painted Desert in the north to the Petrified Forest in the south.  My first time ever in a desert and it rained.  Not a lot, but enough to keep us from a site or two.  While the rain held off the views were spectacular!  Also, deserts are hot.  Also, deserts at high altitudes are extra-hot and exhausting.  But SO beautiful!

The Painted Desert Inn has been restored and you can walk through it and see what it looked like in days of yore.  It certainly offered fantastic views!

At the beginning of the Petrified Forest section of the park is a pueblo ruin that you can walk through.  Apparently more than 1,000 people lived there in the 12th century!  The shot below is of a Kiva - posted just for the Ann Arbor Scrabble Group ;)

 

The Native Americans who lived here a century ago left petroglyphs on the rocks. 

There is one rock with so many petroglyphs on it, it is called Newspaper Rock.  It's down a cliff a ways and kind of hard to see easily.

The Petrified Forest section of the park had a lot of fallen and petrified logs - the problem is, when photographed, the petrified logs look just like regular, non-petrified logs!  They were EVERYWHERE though - really amazing!

On our drive out of the park, we saw the twin mesas in the distance:

We also stopped to gawk at the Teepees - cone shaped hills with beautiful striations of color from the different minerals in them.  They are huge!  As are the crows out this way - one of which can be seen in the picture below.

We then drove to Williams, Arizona.  We'll stay here two nights and spend all day Friday at the Grand Canyon, which is about an hour's drive north of Williams.