Painted Desert and Petrified Forest

We made it and in record time! We are 2 days ahead of schedule. Partly because I scheduled 2 stops in relatively the same place–not intentionally. I think I just forgot to delete one when I found the second one. One thing about planning these trips, I never know just how far we will go each day. I have to guess. Traveling with a trailer takes longer and sometimes we just take a detour at the drop of a hat. Sometimes John just doesn’t want to stop yet.

We arrived at the Painted Desert at 4:56. They close the gate at 5:00–we just made it in, whew! We had to drive all the way through to the other side to our campsite. There is free camping outside the south gate. I am going to be honest. There isn’t a lot to see at this national park. While I would never say, “Don’t go.” Once you drive through you pretty much have seen it all. It’s beautiful to see. We set up camp and made dinner. It was so windy I had to stand outside with a blanket held out to block the wind. Even though it was hot all day the evenings definitely cool off–which is good because we did not have power. John did check in the museum/gift shop to make sure we were in the right spot. She confirmed and let John know she would be there at 6:00 am making coffee.

The next morning we got up bright and early and John went next door to buy coffee. Because we are members of Harvest Hosts, our coffee was free. You know John was in heaven. Free camping, free coffee!

We left about 3:00 and headed to Winslow, AZ so we could stand on the corner.

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Crater of Diamonds State Park 

As you know, we were too late to go to the park when we arrived so we hung out, made dinner and went to bed early so we could go hunt for diamonds before we headed out in the morning. Drum roll please. . . Sorry, no diamonds for us. But we had fun and we found some pretty rocks to put in a tumbler one day.

We arrived early and there was already a line forming but only about 10 people ahead of us. By the time the doors opened there were probably 30 people behind us.

After the park we headed back to camp and took showers and hooked up the camper. We were on the road just a little after 10:00 am. We put Albuquerque in the gps and just headed in that direction. We knew we wouldn’t get that far but we did make it into Texas for the night. At mile marker 131 on I-40, Texas has a beautiful rest area with picnic tables and beautiful views. I think we arrived about 9:00 PM and left the next morning about 7:00 am.

We arrived in Santa Rosa around lunch time so we stopped at Lake Santa Rosa and made some sandwiches and enjoyed the view before we got back on the road.

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Grand Canyon Here We Come

This year’s trip will be so mild and tame after Alaska. I am not even sure if there are any wild animals to be on the look out. Hmm, should probably look into that. I am sure there are snakes and birds and deer–all your typical animals. In Utah there should be wild horses somewhere and bison somewhere. We shall see.

Earlier this week I hurt my foot which had me out of commission for a few days. Of course there was nothing wrong per the ER and foot doctor and two days of rest I was good as new. No clue what happened but I was in excruciating pain for two days and then it stopped. Though I had no problem sitting around with my foot up doing nothing, it did prevent me from “getting” things ready for our trip. Normally we leave the night before we plan to get a few hours into our trip. This time we stuck to the plan to leave in the morning. As we finally pulled out of the driveway at 9:00 am there was a big clunk sound and John couldn’t move forward. Seems the spring on the axle broke and we could only back up and because the trailer was now sitting lower, we scraped the tire as we backed off the road. Not a good start–but it could have been worse. We could have been on the road driving 65 mph when this happened and who knows what that would have meant. Not to mention working on the camper on the side of the road, trying to find parts. OMG! That would have been so much worse. John was smart enough to buy 2 springs to replace both–so it didn’t happen on the other side. He also changed both tires and we finally pulled out at 5:00 PM.

We spent out first night at a Cracker Barrel in Meridian, MS. We arrived about 8:15 and had dinner there and retreated to the back lot to spend the night. We try to have dinner there because we generally leave before they open in the morning. Which is exactly what we did. If they opened at 6:00 am like a good breakfast restaurant should we would just have breakfast before heading out. It’s the least we can do for a nice quiet “free” night of camping.

We headed out toward Shreveport, LA and then north to Murfreesboro, AR to Crator of Diamonds State Park. We arrived about 4:00 PM and thought we were going to head over to the park to look for diamonds but that section of the park closes at 4:00. Our only option was to tour the town, relax at the campsite and we will head over in the morning for about an hour before we leave. We are staying at Murfreesboro RV Park. Our site is awesome. This place is so nice. Very spacious sites, level lots, picnic table, some shade and a firepit. You are going to have to wait for my next post to find out how we did in the diamond field. Don’t hold your breath.

On our little tour we discovered Narrows Dam about 5 miles outside the city. Thought we should check it out so we can compare it to Hoover Dam when we get out there.

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