Wednesday, April 6
It’s almost 9
a.m. (Arizona time) and I’m the only one awake.
Kim stayed up last night stargazing…I don’t know what time he called it
quits but I do know that he brought a bunch of cold into the warm nest I’d made
in the blankets. I woke up at one point
and realizing he wasn’t in bed, went out in search of him…luckily he was set up
near the trailer. He encouraged me to
come see what he found so I did. There
on his computer screen was Saturn!! How
cool is that?! Then I went back to bed and left him out there trying to find
whatever he was trying to find.J
**9:15
a.m.----Kim is now awake and he just told me he went to bed around 4 a.m. Might be a long day for him!**
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Grand Canyon,
Hoover Dam, Lake Havasu City….and so many other touristy places we’ve been,
hearing multiple foreign languages being spoken has become the norm. It almost comes as a surprise when I hear a
bit of English in the mix. However, I’ve found that among a group of people
rambling on excitedly in a language that I don’t understand, there might be
someone who sneaks in some English....maybe with an accent or maybe not, but I hear
it in passing. Kim has talked to people who
look blankly back at him, not replying…meaning they probably don’t understand
what he’s saying. He said it’s easy to
forget because we’re visiting all these American landmarks, that not everyone speaks
or understands English. In fact,
somewhere in our travels, as I was trying to take a selfie of Kim and I, a man
approached us, not saying a word but using pantomime to say “Do you want me to
take a picture of the both of you?” When
I said, ‘No, but thank you for offering’, he then replied in English. He must have come to the same realization
about not everyone being able to understand English and came up with a work
around. J
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What I realized
yesterday is that all the people milling around the corner in Winslow, Arizona,
were speaking English. Guess this little piece of American pop culture made
popular by a song hasn’t made it onto the map of must see places for foreign
visitors. J
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Daytime temps have
been in the high 60s to mid-70s. Very nice riding weather, but once the sun
goes down, so does the temperature. That’s
why I spend the evenings in the trailer with the heater going. And to avoid any middle of the night bathroom
trips, I’ve learned to be mindful of my liquid intake. We are about as far from the bathroom as a
person could get in the park. Well,
there is a closer one but it’s still closed for the season. The park isn’t very busy right now and the
night temps are still dipping into the 30s to 40s, so only the bathroom up by
the office is open. Makes for a brisk walk to the bathroom once the sun goes
down.
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While the
Picacho KOA closes for the summer, I’ve heard that the campgrounds along 40 do
a brisk business in the summer because the temperature is more moderate. It’s that elevation thing again.
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Didn’t get on
the road until about noon…made it out of the park and then stopped about ½ mile
down the road for lunch. There is a little
café on the corner of the main road that had a bunch of cars in the parking lot…usually
a sign that the food appeals to the locals. Because I had the best BLT ever the other day (I
didn’t want to tarnish the memory by eating another one so soon), I ordered something
new…an ‘Open faced Chili Burger’ which was a hamburger laid out on an open bun
covered with a sauce and cheese. I chose
green chili sauce. Overall it was very tasty and not too spicy, although it
gave my chapped lips something to complain about. After lunch, we got on the road for real.
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*No matter how firm the air mattress is, if you sit on the corner of it, you’ll lose your balance.
*Not all Caucasians speak or understand English and not all Hispanic/Native Americans speak English with an accent.
*Taking your suitcase out of the car and opening it on the sidewalk so you can rummage through it is guaranteed to embarrass your teenager.
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Today we rode to
the Petrified Forest National Park. In
total it was a short ride….79 miles. We took
the scenic route there (Hwy 180) which took us to the Rainbow Forest entrance,
rode through the park and then exited by the Painted Desert entrance. Jumped on US 40 to head back to Holbrook. The Rainbow Forest visitor’s center had an
informative 18 minutes film that gave a quick historical overview of the area
and a display that described how Nature made the petrified wood found in the
park: 200
million years ago, tree grows next to river…tree dies, falls in river…tree
eventually sinks and quickly gets buried under layers of sediment which seals
it from decay…silica infiltrates tree and eventually replaces the organic stuff
with quartz crystals…tree is petrified/becomes stone. Erosion of the surrounding layers eventually allows
the petrified tree/log to be exposed. As
the land shifts and changes, the weight of the wood causes it to break into
smaller pieces.* I
didn’t know what petrified wood was when I entered the park but by the time we exited
the park over by the Painted Desert entrance, I was able to recognize it quite
easily.
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Behind the
visitor center, there is an area with a lot of chunks of petrified wood and
even a log that has broken into sections.
There is a nice walking path so visitors can get out and see the
wood. There is wood in other parts of
the park, but not as accessible as at the visitor center. There were two older gentlemen on the path in
front of us and as we got closer, we heard the kind of conversation that
happens only between longtime friends or possibly Abbott and Costello. I thought of them as Chuck and Andy…don’t know
why, that’s just the arbitrary names I assigned them. Chuck had a tiny camera…Andy had a flip
phone. When we came upon them, Andy was
instructing Chuck on how to take a proper picture with it. See
this area here? You can’t put your
finger there because that’s where the picture gets taken. So hold it down here…no, you can’t hold it
there. So hold it just like that, then
push the button in the middle. At
this point, Andy is sitting on a rock waiting for Chuck to take the
picture. Chuck is having a hard time
seeing the screen with the glare of the sun on it, then says ‘Hey, I see a
light’ to which Andy replies Whaddaya
mean, you see my wife? Then after
the picture is taken, Andy checks it and mutters, Awww, you cut my head off again. Chuck offered several times to take our
picture with my camera but since this was less of a people picture area and
more of a scenery picture area, we declined.
Now I think that maybe we should have taken him up on it just to see how
it would have turned out. J
We followed them along the path and interacted with them a couple of times before
asking where they were from. We figured
somewhere on the East Coast…California was the answer. Through the conversation, it became apparent
that these two had taken other trips together…I can only imagine the
conversations and have to wonder how many headless pictures of Andy have been
taken.
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