Route 66, Day 3, Petrified Forest National Park

Leaving the hotel in Flagstaff went more smoothly than most of our other departures, especially ones where there's more to pack than was unpacked.  The drive to the Petrified Forest National Park was far more interesting than our Night 1 drive, with daylight illuminating all manner of interesting things.  Among them were stone ruins, cows, abandoned trailers, horses, abandoned houses, burnt out houses, abandoned motels and old, DANGEROUS playground equipment.  Dad also noted we were passing right by Meteor Crater.  Plans for Day 4 were filling in.

The Petrified Forest National Park was spectacular and spectacularly sparsely attended, even for it being the National Park Service's 100th birthday (this was a complete coincidence, something we didn't know until we talked to a ranger later).  Unfortunately, the short hike Dad planned made a 3 1/2 year-old cry.  It wasn't the hike itself, of course.  She just wasn't getting her way.  Mom was saintly enough to take Child back to the car, allowing Dad the hike he had originally planned.  Lots of pictures of the scenery known as The Painted Desert were taken and at least one jackrabbit was scared off on the trail between Tawa Point and Kachina Point.

Painted Desert as seen from Kachina Point (click for the much better big version)

Despite the tumultuous beginning, Child was ready for the rest of our visit.  Stopping off at Whipple Point, she made friends with an elderly couple from Phoenix.  But it was the Route 66 stop where she took over.  After hearing about how the National Park Service swindled the land required to connect The Painted Desert to the Petrified Forest and how that led to Route 66 being decommissioned, we set out with three rangers and a French couple to see what kinds of litter people had left on the side of the road.  This litter was now considered archaeologically significant and, like the natural resources of the forest, were not to be removed from the park.

It's rare that a non-historian gets to play archaeologist.  It's even more rare that such non-historians are more excited by what they find than the actual historians.  Mom, the yet rarer breed, gets downright giddy.  Bottle remnants, car parts, used cans of beer and some things unknown made her practically squeal with excitement.  The locals recognized some of the ephemera printed on the bottles better than she did; and when they told her, it was clear she was filing it away for later research.

The amazing thing about this walk was the help Mom got in item discovery.  Child is still low to the ground.  Child doesn't yet have a generic "junk" category that things seen get filed into.  And, as such, Child was the best finder of them all.  Her grand prize was a 7-Up bottle with only its neck broken off, leaving the front and back label fully intact (pictured below).

While the petrified wood was cool, the landscape, especially the alien Tepees location, was the real treat for the remainder of the drive.  It's the landscape of Mom's soul.

One of the features at "The Tepees" (like Kachina Point above, bigger is much better; do click)