God's Artwork

Wishing all of you a blessed Good Friday: As I'm sitting down to write this, I’m struggling to keep my eyes open. We lost another hour when we crossed into Arizona. They don’t observe daylight saving time, so we are now three hours behind Eastern Daylight Time. Originally our schedule shows us leaving Santa Fe tomorrow. I am glad that we decided to drive part of the way to the Grand Canyon with time to drive through the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. That makes tomorrow a little easier, about 100 miles.

We planned to leave Santa Fe around 10 am with a big breakfast of sausage gravy & biscuits before leaving. The first day at Santa Fe Skies RV Park, the guys talked to the owner of the park and she gave them a little presentation about the property. The girls went to the office this morning to hear her talk. She is a fascinating woman. Her parents came from Chicago then moved to New Mexico, homesteading the 120 acre property back in the 1930’s. She had an entire PowerPoint presentation on her family’s history. They built the RV Park in the 1990’s but not without jumping multiple hurdles. It is amazing to think about those times when they lived at that location without water (hand-carried from another location), electricity or paved roads. We really like that RV Park, but became big fans after hearing her story.

After breakfast we took of toward Arizona. Between Santa Fe and where we stopped here in Holbrook, AZ, the terrain becomes increasingly barren, rocky and more beautiful. I didn’t sleep or read much because of watching the scenery and taking pictures. We stopped for fuel, then again at the Arizona border for lunch. The state line area looks like the scenery in the movie “Cars” (Radiator Springs, home of ‘Mater, Sally and Doc Hudson)
We drove through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest much like we did in South Dakota at the Badlands. The land looks so similar. The bonus is the petrified trees dotting the eroded formations. Signs and fliers warn of not disturbing the petrified wood with fines for doing so. It’s easy to see how humans could destroy this treasure by scavanging. The funniest site is outside the National Park where an entire store sells BIG petrified wood pieces. Apparently the pieces found outside the park are fair game. Huh.... It was hard to choose which pictures to post. The internet connection is kind of fickle, so these will have to do. Not sure if we have internet in the Grand Canyon...