The Return

There's a crater in Arizona

We took our time heading home from Denver. On our first day, we drove south on I-25 for around 5 hours and got to our first stop in Las Vegas, New Mexico in the early afternoon. It's a very nice town, but after seeing all the signs along the highway promoting their historic district, we were a bit disappointed to find that it was largely deserted except for the old Plaza Hotel in the town square. We did have a nice meal there at the Landmark Grill.

On our second day, we spent another five hours on the road and along the way had an interesting surprise in Albuquerque, NM. They were having their yearly Balloon Fiesta. As we neared the city, we saw hundreds of balloons taking off. Quite a sight.

A few hours later, we reached our first destination of the day at the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest National Park. Wow. So many colors in the rock strata that constitute the Painted Desert, but I was really impressed with the Petrified Forest. We took several hikes on our tour there. My favorite was Blue Mesa. It's a bit over a mile hike down into a ravine where thousands of petrified logs have washed out of the hillsides. There's no picking things up for souvenirs so I bought my piece of petrified wood at the gift shop. They check your car on the way out of the park, too.

Although we had allowed three hours for touring the park, we ended up spending four hours there and eventually ended our day in Holbrook, AZ where we enjoyed a steak dinner at the Butterfield Stage Company on old Route 66.

Day three on the road began with a short 30 mile hop over to Meteor Crater. That's an impressive spot. It's over two miles across and we were told that the bottom of the crater could accommodate 40 football games simultaneously. We took a hike along the rim and learned a lot from our guide, Harold, about crater formation.

When we were done exploring Meteor Crater, we got back on the road and completed our drive to my brother's place in Phoenix. Had a great time there, spent the night and, on day four, made our way back home to San Diego.