Day 3 - 7.2.17

Our Route on Day 3

Day 3 proved to be another beautiful, action packed day! Quick summary: more drone action, wildflowers, petrified forests, lost laundry, and a meteor crater!

Quick addition to Day 2- I forgot to mention that near White Sands N.M. is a missle range that the U.S. uses regularly. When testing is being done, parts of the highway and the park itself are closed for safety reasons. Anyone watch the recent series Genius on History Channel? Albert Einstein was the focus of the series. The connection to this area is that this was ground zero when the first atomic bomb was detonated. Interesting stuff!

We left Las Cruses around 7 am after fueling up on breakfast and packing our ice chest. Our driving today was mostly on the interstate but we did have long stretches of highway driving. We like highway driving better because we tend to pull over quite a bit for taking pictures or flying the drone. The terrain changed several times today- wide open vast expanses to collections of plateaus with beautiful hues of red. The amount of 'green' varied somewhat, but there was never an abundance of it. Lots of beige with sprinkles of green.

We were able to stop to get drone footage of the area around us. Here is the link to that footage and here is what it looks like on the other end of the drone camera....

We've been relying on Google for navigation, and well, just about everything Route 66! We felt like

else, and at one point 'she' suggested an alternate route due to the road work going on on the interstate. We obeyed and followed the alternate route. What a lovely surprise to find out we were traveling the infamous we were transported back in time and Dean reminisced on traveling this same route some 50 years ago with his parents. Many of the locations along the Route have been restored to their glory for those interested in going back to how it used to be.

During our morning drive to our next destination I compose the blog post for the day before. As I was putting together pictures of our day in White Sands I noticed that I was wearing a shirt that was very similar to the one I was wearing while blogging. I freaked a little and wondered, did I put the same shirt on this morning? Quickly realized that was not possible as the bag of our dirty clothes was still in Las Cruces, New Mexico.... some 400 miles behind us at that point. Ugh! Really? We forgot dirty clothes? We sure did. The amount of bags that we bring down nightly is probably that equal to a family of 6. Very little of those bags are about clothing... so much equipment! I called the hotel, sure enough they had our forgotten stuff. They will FedEx it to us Monday morning... heavy sigh. Since that time, we've instituted a No Clothing Left Behind program- keeping our fingers crossed it's successful. We are down two sets of clothing for this trip. LOL

Painted Desert

Our first stop was Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. The Painted Desert is on the northern end of the park. I'm certain that photos cannot truly capture the colors that are present in this landscape.

Painted Desert

Beautiful Colors

As you travel south on the 26 mile long road through the park you enter the Petrified Forest. When we visited Yellowstone National Park a few years ago I remember thinking how the landscape looked almost alien- the mud pots, the geysers- just so very unique. The Petrified Forest fits the same bill. The colors of the hills or mounds is incredible. Reds and pinks are prominent. But as we go further south blues began emerging. We took a mile long hike at Blue Mesa. It was a fairly steep hike that brought you down to the  floor of mounds allowing you to see all of it up close.

The color palette that Mother Nature has created here is my favorite. The

Conglomerate

mounds start off with a light grayish color, pink/red, plum, steely blue, then a dark grey. The mounds are composed of conglomerates- pebbles and sand that have been cemented together- the texture of the mounds in the badlands is very crusty- somewhat like dried mud- when touched it just crumbles...(at least that is what I've heard...not that I touched it or anything).

All throughout the hike and the rest of the park are pieces of petrified wood. It all plays with your mind- it looks just like wood, but it's rock. You are not allowed to take any of it with you out of the park- so tempting though. It's just so unique.

Petrified Wood

As we continued through the rest of the park we stopped to get pictures of the  sweeping landscape and just stand in awe of all of it. I did manage to get a picture of the master in his element.

We left Petrified National Park and headed towards Meteor Crater.  What an awesome site this is to visit! 50,000 years ago at this spot an 150 foot meteorite weighing several hundred thousand tons crashed into the Earth. The results is a crater 700 feet deep and over 4,000 feet across carved into this once-flat rocky plain. The site has been developed very nicely with different tiered viewing decks in which to get a different perspective on the crater. Truly something to see.

Meteor Crater

I forgot to mention the wind. Not breeze, wind. It is evident isn't some pictures that we regularly are facing very windy conditions. It is a nice addition to the heat, it just seems to wear you out along with the heat.

We are laying our heads down in Flagstaff tonight with the intention of spending Day 4 in the Grand Canyon. Deets to follow....

Pictures from Day 3