RETIREMENT TRIP #6

   ON THE ROAD AGAIN
                                September 2015                                          

A year or two ago the Willie Nelson song, "On the Road Again" haunted my thoughts as Andy and I headed for parts unknown. In my Little Red Saturn we had cruised west and south. This trip Little Red waits patiently in the garage at home.  But ironically we are still driving a little red car on Retirement Trip #6--a bright red Toyota Yaris, since the rental company had no Ford Focus as promised.
Over the phone Drew said, "Sounds like a lunchbox." He's absolutely right, but it drives. Maybe we'll call it Midget Red.
So it's "on the road again" as we head away from Phoenix northward toward Holbrook. And what normally would be parched desert plateaus and steep dried out hillsides along Route #87 instead are now slopes lush with vegetation--another irony since Connecticut landscape begs for rain.

Without stopping, we snapped pictures
from the Yaris window along Route 87.

A few raindrops dampened the windshield as we drove northeast on Route #260. At home we had not had a drop of moisture for 21 days.
It's amazing how the land changes with elevation. With the turn onto Route #377, a few miles outside of Heber, all the pines and junipers disappeared. Quite suddenly a flat panorama of grasses opened before us, dotted by bush-like cedars. A few miles later, the trees disappeared completely.

An interesting sky suggested we
might get rain later in the day.

"It's a lot drier here," said Andy. He was right. A herd of cows grazed among the clumps of sage brush and in the 
distance the tops of windmills from a wind farm spun gracefully. For sure, this is big sky country.
The two Tiponi Point pull-outs offered panoramic views of the Painted Desert.

Painted formations lined the desert horizon as we entered
the Petrified Forest National Park in the late afternoon.

"Do you remember this area from five years ago?" asked Andy, as we followed the low adobe wall around the parking area.
"Sure do," I answered, shaking my head.
Then bitterly cold, the wind had swept across the parking area in icy gusts. A damp drizzle penetrated everything.  The next night the blizzard hit where we were in Gallup. It was certainly a different world this visit with Mormon tea in full bloom and Utah juniper loaded with berries.

Utah junipers accent the rim and struggle for life in the
harsh desert landscape.

Tawa Point featured a half-mile trail to Kachina Point and the Painted Desert Inn, a historic adobe lodge from the 1920's.  Refurbished, the building is used as a museum to display local art.  A spotted lizard scurried under a clump of sage as we passed, and a turkey vulture circled overhead.
High above the badlands of Chinde Point we watched shadows creep across the formations far below us.

A recent rain triggers plant growth along the rim.

Chinde, part of a Navajo word for "ghost left behind after a person dies," reminds onlookers of the "spirits" buried far below. Here embedded in the preserved layers of rock, are the remains of thousands of animals and plants from the Triassic Period. Paleontologists continue to make fossil discoveries here that provide clearer understanding of life 227 to 205 million years ago.
Fossil bones of an early dinosaur named Gertie (Chindesaurus bryansmulli) were discovered near Chinde Point in 1984. Gertie was thought to be the most primitive dinosaur in the world found up to that time. The remains were reclassified in 2011 after careful analysis of the anatomy, and then Gertie was classified as a therapod, a family that includes birds and Tyrannosaurus rex.  But even today scientists are unearthing "ghosts" of the past.

By the time we walk back along the rim,
the sun bakes the landscape. 

And so Retirement Trip #6 has begun, and we two are ON THE ROAD AGAIN.
Some way to celebrate a birthday, I'd say!
Up at 3:30 a.m. we caught an early flight to Phoenix, but an unexplained 45-minute delay taking off really put a cramp in our O'Hare connection. Disembarking at the far end of Terminal F and boarding at the far end of Terminal C didn't help much either, but we made it and thankfully so did our luggage.
And so our next adventure begins.