Our good buddy Dan from Colorado (the other Dan from Colorado; we know two of them) sent an email to me last night with a link to a very cool blog (the Maple Fiesta) about five guys who all bought new TT250s when they were first offered by CSC. They had a plan…they all bought the bikes to ride the Continental Divide Trail from Mexico to Canada.
A great read about a great adventure. Five men, five TT250 motorcycles, and three countries. Well done, guys!
Yeah, they had a few problems, but that’s what adventure riding is all about. They fixed the problems and trucked on, and they all made it. It’s a hell of story and it’s worth a read!
Petrified Forest National Park, east of Flagstaff. It’s an awesome destination.
Sue and I recently completed a 2700-mile road trip in the Subie. The idea was to drive a grand circle through the Southwest, with the apex of our trip being a visit with Joe Gresh at the Tinfiny Ranch in New Mexico. I asked Joe what to see on the way out and back, and wow, did he have a great list. Old Arjiu had a number of outstanding recommendations, one of which was the Petrified Forest in Arizona. Petrified Forest National Park straddles I-40 (which was mostly built over old Route 66) and it was easy to get to.
The place sounded cool. I’d never seen a petrified forest (or even a tree, for that matter). I remembered being fascinated by dinosaurs and all things prehistoric when I was kid, and the concept of a petrified forest sure fit in that slot.
The Petrified Forest…wow. As soon as Gresh mentioned the place, it became a bucket list item. I had to see it. We had to stop.
An abandoned car on what used to be Route 66.
Like I mentioned above, I-40 is mostly built over what used to be old US Route 66, and when you travel through Arizona, you see a lot of kitsch pertaining to The Mother Road. The sun was in just the perfect location to bring out the best of my polarizer on the 16-35 Nikon lens when we stopped by an old abandoned automobile you see in the photo above. There was a preserved stretch of Route 66 immediately behind it. In that photo above, it looks like it was a deserted area. Trust me on this: It was anything but. There were tourists taking photos at that spot from Germany, Turkey, Portugal, Brazil, and more, and I can tell you from reading the body language they were all having a good time. So were we. We all took turns getting out of each other’s way as we took pictures. It was fun.
We drove a little further down the road and came upon the area you see below. This part of the National Park is called the Painted Desert, for obvious reasons…
The Painted Desert in central Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. The colors really are this dramatic. This stop was a grand suggestion from Uncle Joe Gresh.
I was struck by just how beautiful the Petrified Forest National Park was, and then it hit me…I had driven this stretch if I-40 on many motorcycle rides several times before, and it never occurred to me to stop. Folks, take it from me: Don’t make that mistake. Although not as well known as other flagship US National Parks (Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, etc.), the Petrified Forest is a real gem.
Another view of the Painted Desert. It really is this dramatic.Yet another perspective on the Painted Desert. This is good stuff, folks.
There’s only one road that meanders through the Petrified Forest National Park, with numerous strategically-located viewing stops along its length. We hit nearly every one.
One such stop was Newspaper Rock. We thought it would be a rock formation that looked like a newspaper, but it wasn’t that at all. It was a collection of petroglyphs deep in a canyon. The newspaper moniker was related to the idea that early Native Americans communicated with and left messages for each other here. Fortunately, I had my 70-300 lens, and that allowed the reach I needed to get good images…
Cool stuff. Very early Native American newsprint.The people who created these petroglyphs lived here about a thousand years ago. They predate the Native American tribes we know of.
While we were admiring the petroglyphs, a couple of crows landed nearby. By that time I had already put the wide angle lens back on the Nikon, and I wanted to see just how close I could get before the crows flew away. The big black birds were cool until Sue and I were about 4 feet away, and then they took off. They were huge. We actually heard the wind they created flapping their wings.
An old crow in the Petrified Forest National Park. It was a big bird.
The scenery and the roads were stark and colorful. We stopped and I grabbed this photo of Sue and the Subie…
Sue and the Subie. My Outback was perfect for this kind of road trip. Over a distance of 2705.6 miles, the Subaru averaged 28.3 mpg. That included stints in the mountains, dirt roads, city driving, and many 75mph+ freeway stints.
You might be wondering…what about the petrified trees? Where were they?
Well, we saw those, too…
Petrified trees. They are really cool. You can’t take them out of the Park, but once you leave the Park, there are souvenir stores selling things like this.More petrified logs. As I understand it, over the millenia the wood leaches out and is replaced by silica until, oila, a petrified tree remains. It’s pretty cool stuff and this was the first time I’d ever seen it.
This was a great destination. We exited I-40 on the eastern edge of the Petrified Forest and followed the road through the Park all the way to the western edge. From there, you pick up an Arizona country road and follow it west for roughly 20 miles to Holbrooke, where you can get back on I-40. Good times and a great destination. You might want to add it to your list of places to see. It’s worth a trip to Arizona all by itself, and it’s certainly worth a stop if you are passing through Arizona on Interstate 40.
