"The Railroad Runs Through The Middle of the House,...." - Tuesday, May 31, 2011

"The Railroad Runs Through The Middle of the House,...." - Tuesday, May 31, 2011

"...and the trains are all on time." At least it would seem so. In most of the RV Parks in which we have stayed in the last 3 weeks there have been trains running either within hearing distance or seeing distance. They are within hearing distance here. I may get a look at them tomorrow. All of them in the other places were carrying containers, freight trains.

Today we spent about 4 and 3/4 hours driving time on Interstate 40 in California and Arizona: from Needles to Holbrook; from west to east. Tonight we are in a RV Park that will be okay for our 2 night stay here. As one of my friends says, "I can do anything for 2 nights." The wash houses are very clean but spartan. It will be fine for a base of operations.

The ride from Needles to Flagstaff on our way to Holbrook was a road that we have taken before but we kept seeing new things. We looked at the open fields where the elk were said to congregate but it wasn't in the evening so we saw none of them. We saw the San Francisco Mountains near Flagstaff  with their snowy peaks again. Both of us thought there was less snow this time than last time.

From Flagstaff into Holbrook was all new territory for us. We had climbs of mountains with new features to see. We even saw a power generating plant.

Holbrook is a long strip of businesses that cropped up to take advantage of the tourist trade. There are many hotels, motels, eateries and gas stations all for the purpose of meeting the needs of the people who come to this area to see the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert. Tonight we drove north to get to the Painted Desert at dusk and I was looking for a general store like Target or, heaven forbid, Wal-Mart but there wasn't any place that you could buy a spool of thread if you needed it. I didn't so I didn't worry. Tomorrow we will drive south through the other end of town and we will see what is there.

The Painted Desert is a part of the Petrified Forest in the National Park System. This was another place that our $10 expenditure got us in free. The Painted Desert is open from 7am to 7pm. We didn't arrive at the Visitor's Center until 6pm so we had to hurry. We drove to all of the lookouts on the upper loop and took many pictures. We decided that we were about a week and a half late for sunset to be before the closing of the park so that we could see what the sunset did to the landscape. You must remember that Arizonia is on Mountain Standard Time all year round. So it is dark here by a little after 7:30pm. And we are in the eastern part of the state so that makes it just a tad earlier too. But we enjoyed everything that we saw.

Tomorrow we are planning to go to the southern end of the Park and go through the Petrified Forest. There are several tourist traps that given us coupons to get pieces of petrified wood. One of the coupons say that the offer is "One Per Car." But I have 2 grandchildren. They'll want you to buy the other one at a ridiculous price. As I said, there are several tourist traps making the offer. ;o)

I suppose that one could say that we are in the "high desert" here. The elevation for Holbrook is 5083 feet as proclaimed on a board at the end of town. Average high temperature for May is 82; for June it 92. The average night time temperature in May is 43; for June is 51. We are going to sleep with the windows open tonight. We'll get some "real" air instead of the AC.

There goes another train. I suppose it's on time. ;o)