Albuquerque, NM to Holbrook, AZ (Day 8)

We really hated to have to leave the Isleta this morning. It was such a nice place and the beds were amazing! We were on the top floor, and as we rode up the elevator it always told us we had reached the Penthouse, haha! But we had to. Time to head over to Holbrook and see all we could see along the way.

We followed a lot of Route 66 today, most of the beginning of our journey, past Albuquerque was in tribal land and they post that you should not trespass or take photos or video, so we fully respected that and only kept memories of Owl Rock and Deadman’s curve. The drive was breathtaking. This side of New Mexico is gorgeous! We saw Red Mountains and White ones and Lava outcroppings, too! There was so much to see on this leg of our trip.

We were finally able to take photos when we got out of the reservations and we did see a few hotels and some beautiful scenery. We pulled over once to just take in the beautiful scenery that I know photos cannot do justice.

We pulled into Continental Divide shortly and Jon learned that this was the point where water divided. On the west, it flowed to the Pacific and on the east it flows to the Atlantic. There was a cool gift shop there, too. Seems to be a theme. Eat, Sleep, Shop. Oh well.

Speaking of, we stopped for lunch in Gallup, NM, another town with a lot of photo ops. We had a really nice lunch at a little diner and then picked up a geocache for New Mexico!

Next we crossed into Arizona and decided that we were going to spend most of the rest of the day in the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park. We drove through the entry gate and approached the first pull-out and as we drove up, the first glimpses of the painted desert were breathtaking. The closer we got, the louder the Ooo’s and Ahh’s got. Jon had picked up a Junior Ranger booklet and we started working on that right away by spotting a lizard an elk and some ravens. We drove from overlook to overlook and to the Painted Desert Inn all the way taking in the beautiful colors of the painted desert.

As we got ready to cross I-40 (inside the park), we noticed an old car sitting beside the roadside and realized that we were now standing where Route 66 once crossed the park. We took some photos and noticed the telephone poles that were left when the route was bypassed, they simply left them and put up new poles by the interstate.

Then we crossed the interstate and we were now in the petrified forest. We first saw some ruins of ancient civilizations that have been unearthed as well as some petroglyphs and then we saw some more mesas that were even more colorful than they were in the painted desert. Soon we came upon the petrified forest, this place kind of made us a little upset. See, when you look down on what was once a forest full of trees, you see that it has been plundered by people. There were pieces strewn everywhere. Reading the sign, we realized that this was exactly what had happened. That people had gathered these treasures in hopes of selling them, but of course this was before there was a national park to protect it. Jon learned a valuable lesson with that. We continued on and completed Jon’s Junior Ranger book and stopped by the visitors center on the other end of the park to have him sworn in. After that we drove into Holbrook.

This was a night that Jon looked forward to the whole trip. We are going to Sleep in a Wigwam!

As we approached the wigwams Jon got so excited. I think everyone was a bit excited, because, really, this is a crazy thing! This honestly has to be seen to be believed. It just takes you back to being a kid. We checked in and went to look for a place to have dinner. Seems every restaurant in Holbrook has Mexican and American food. It was actually pretty funny seeing every place was passed advertise the same thing! While we were driving around, we found this cool shop, Kerster's Volkswagenwerks. I could not resist, we stopped and I took a photo of every one of the cars in the parking lot. There were some real unique ones!

We also saw the Rainbow Rock Shop Dinosaurs.

Now we were expecting the rooms to be small, and they were, but not really as small as we were prepared for. The only thing was the beds were not all that soft, and they were full size beds, and when you are used to a King back home, this presents a fun challenge to sleeping. I like my space, and don’t really like to be touching while sleeping, but it worked out pretty well. I asked Jon what he thought about being there, and he loved every minute of it, so for the lifetime memory, a night of being a little uncomfortable is well worth it!