Strolling Amok

Roadside Vistas

Sunrise at the Petrified Forest National Park.

Originally posted 12/5/2012

Tuesday, October 23rd was my first full day of touring the Petrified Forest National Park. I’ve mentioned the driving views from the road that goes through the park. Maybe it’s the economic depression that we don’t officially have, but not many people are at the park these days. I’m told that the prime season ended in September. At any rate, traffic along the roadway is almost nonexistent. For the sake of really taking in the scenery, that’s good, because there are very few places to stop at roadside, since there’s no room for a gravel shoulder. When you want to stop and gawk or take a holiday snap, you have to barely drop two wheels off, or just stop as-is. Either way, you’re blocking your lane. With no one in sight for several minutes, this is not an imposition.

But the view is always worth the stop, however awkward. I’m just going to paste a few pics here, but take note that the park road contains much, much better – they were located in a potentially dangerous section of roadway as it wound tightly up and down between badlands hills. With no place to stop safely, I have the memories, but no photos.

Below is a closeup of the one above. The badlands areas are fascinating because they challenge our sense of scale. The mounds and gullies often look like an aircraft view of mountains and valleys, even up close. An HO-scale model railroader would go nuts in here.

This is why it seems an absurdity to me to try to blow through this park in an hour and then say, “Yeah, been there.” Safe or unsafe, you have to stop.

During the day, I headed nearly all the way up to the north end of the park to see where old Route 66 went through. The road wasn’t there any more, but the telephone poles were.

This is where old Route 66 passed through the park.

A railroad still passes through near the location of the old highway. The Park claims not to have torn out the highway, which despite appearances is so because the unused power poles are still there. I have no idea of whether this section of 66 was ever paved, so it’s possible that it was simply grown over, but I would have expected to see some remnants asphalt.

An early Ford perched on cinder blocks commemorates the location of the highway.

Actually, this “Mother Road” of song and TV show, had a mother. It was the National Old Trails Highway, also called the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway. It went from New York to Los Angeles, pieced together from parts of the Cumberland Road, Santa Fe Trail, railroad track frontages, ancient American Indian trails, plus some new connecting pieces. So Route 66 was merely the most recent incarnation, taking on sections of various dirt tracks, the N.O.T.H. included. If you were driving through prior to 1926, you wouldn’t be on Route 66, since it hadn’t been commissioned yet. I’m not certain you’d be on the National Old Trails Highway here, either. I suspect that this particular section originated as a railroad track frontage road, because the nearest piece of National Old Trails Highway converted to 66 has been described as starting further westward, at Las Vegas, NM and running to the Pacific.

There’s not much point in being pedantic about it though. Parts of Route 66 were swapped around since its beginning, and trying to retrace the old road in a nostalgic drive can be problematic, and not just because of collapsed bridges, torn up sections, a ton of dead ends, and privately-owned land. In some areas, you face a choice of which of three routes of Route 66 you wish to follow. It ain’t easy because, except for commercial signage inside some towns, none of it is marked in any way, and the original path has frequently been obliterated in order to cross over or act as a frontage road to the Interstate that replaced it. Business is business, and Federal and State DOTs don’t have much of a sense of nostalgia when new construction will provide a better solution than the old.

I can attest that if you think you can discern what’s Old 66 and what isn’t by pavement appearance and direction, you’ll probably guess wrong. I only dabbled with small bits of it a couple of times, when it was handy. Despite having rudimentary documentation onboard, I frequently found myself thinking either, “I can’t believe this isn’t 66 right here, it looks right and makes sense”, or “I can’t believe this is Route 66!?! Narrow, flooded areas, zero shoulder, guardrails right at the pavement edge. This is a glorified cow trail. The directions must be wrong.” But they aren’t.

I suspect that many online Route 66 guides are winging it now and then, but it hardly matters. Nobody, not even me, is going to try to retrace every mile still available, backtracking down 20-mile stretches of unmarked dead ends over and over. Such a painstaking journey would take more months, fuel, patience and money than anyone has. Not to mention the difficulty of having to reverse direction in anything bigger than a car, since there are precious few dead ends with anywhere to turn around nearby. Still, driving a small piece of old 66 here and there is often a fascinating and fun exercise, if you’re in no rush to get somewhere.

Petrified Forest Arrival

Originally posted 12/3/2012

I didn’t mention in my previous post that the Painted Desert Visitor Center at the north end of the park did offer an orientation film about the park, but with time being limited, I passed. I was too excited about actually being at the park anyway. Having seen “stereoscopic” slides of a few petrified logs when I was a kid, I wanted to be inside it. I had expected my “America the Beautiful Interagency Lifetime Senior Pass” to let me through the gate at half price, but I had happily misunderstood the terms. I was admitted at no charge. Being a certified cheapskate, that did my heart good.

The road traversing the park was paved and in fine shape, with posted maximum speeds varying from 35-45 MPH, but towing the trailer over the uneven surface dictated lower speeds. Fortunately, traffic was almost nonexistent, so I wasn’t holding anyone up as I trundled along. Since I had a little time to spare, I couldn’t resist stopping at a few viewpoints or outlooks over the Painted Desert area.

I found that the main road’s outlooks were complemented by several side roads along the way, which led to other viewing areas with distinctly different features. Even without stopping further, the vistas and geological features along the main road itself were awe-inspiring.

The park’s size and variety of features were much bigger than I had mentally pictured, and I realized that it would take me several days to see even the majority of what it offered. The park’s printed guide offered suggestions on what to see if you had one hour, several hours, half a day, and one day or more, but this seemed seriously out of sync with reality. Seriously. Even with a fast car, the stamina of youth, great physical condition and running shoes, there would be no way to gain any real appreciation of the park’s features in half a day.

This wasn’t something to go flying through, like a slideshow. It was to be savored for the experience itself. That became obvious right off the bat. The faster you’d go through it, the less you’d be able to appreciate what it is that you were looking at. You could check it off your bucket list, sure, but that’s about all you’d get out of it. In the rush, you wouldn’t really have seen or experienced it. That would be a shame and a waste, because what is here is nowhere else in the world.

It was time to move on and set up camp. Camping is not allowed inside the park, except for tenting out in the open wilderness areas where walking is the only access. My goal was to find a parking spot at the Crystal Forest Gift Shop, located just outside the South park entrance. When I arrived, the shop was closed, but a large “Free RV Camping” sign and a generous parking area with electrical hookup boxes made me feel less like I was clogging up some poor businessperson’s parking lot. Being a rank newbie with 26′ box behind me, I took my sweet time backing the travel trailer into a spot. I could afford to, since no one else was there and I had the whole thing to myself.

The house batteries were fully charged because of the day’s travel, and I cooked some dinner and settled in for the evening. I might be unable to recharge anything but the house batteries, and had no idea how long the water or waste tanks might hold out, but I was officially boondocking. And, electricity was available if the length of my stay would make it necessary. Or, so I thought.