The Epic Drive, Part 5
Feb. 13th, 2011 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanarillI forgot to talk about the time MW and I got off the highway, sometime after entering Arizona but before getting to Holbrook. The reason we did this is because out Rout 66 guide (did I forget to mention we rejoined Route 66 a little bit before Gallup?) advised us to go out in Arizona at night and look at the stars. I think I saw a little bit of my soul, as it happens.
The next day was the Most Amazing Day of the Epic Drive. It started with us getting up and backtracking eighteen miles to the entrance of the Petrified Forest national park. This is a bit of a misnomer, because as the little entrance museum video showed, it is in fact a petrified swamp. Still. Fossils! Also in the park is the Painted Desert, called such because the minerals in the rock layers make it look, well, painted, and an old pueblo, where in times of yore the native people made their home.
Also, please forgive if this looks all strange, this is my first biggish picture-post.
First, of course, is a picture of a petrified tree. I know it looks like an actual tree, but in fact that is a fossil, made of stone. It is illegal to take stone from the park (although people do it all the time anyway), but I don't see why since it is perfectly legal to get it from the privately-owned land next to the park, and there is so much of it that they gave a free sample away at the gift shop.
Next, a bunch of hills. These were part of a formation called the Teepees, because there were a lot of smallish, conical hills. You can really see the mineral layers in this one.
Quoth, the raven. Ravens are one of the few birds to live there full-time. It's hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. This was just a random one that was near the pueblo. It came out a bit blurry, sorry.
A vista. On clearer days, you can see all the way to the San Fransisco Mountains, well over a hundred miles. Of course, it was not so clear. Still, pretty desert.
Another one. That rock is something like nine miles away, according to the little placard. Can you imagine that all filled with buffalo, the way it would have been back in the day?
Then we skedaddled via I-40, mostly ignoring the guidebook. Except for that one time it told us to get off the road and go for a little ride. The GPS unit promptly routed us onto roads that were not there, except for ruts in the road, mostly overgrown.
Yes, those are wild-ish horses. We didn't get close enough to see if they had tags or shoes or anything, but there was no one watching them but each other. They shied away from us humans, so I took the picture and left them in peace.
Then we drove some more, until a sign said to get off the road and go six miles that way. There is, basically, a big hole in the ground.
Yes, you could fit several football fields in there, or an Eiffel Tower. The point is that it's a place where, fifty thousand years ago or thereabouts, a space rock came hurtling out of the sky and left a big hole. It is called Meteor Crater (imaginative, I know) and it is one of the first places where, thanks to the lack of erosion, scientists were able to prove that it's an impact site and not, say, a dead volcano. They did this by looking at rocks under microscopes and stuff. It's kind of cool, even if it is not so much to look at.
Then MW and I drove and drove. We went through Flagstaff, which is in the mountains and was thus all snow-covered. We went through an eye-searingly bright sunset, and then drove through all kinds of bingleys and neons and arrived in . . . Las Vegas! Panda was waiting there for us. We went to dinner at one of their famous buffets, and everything.
Now I have some things to write and also things to do IRL, so don't worry if I vanish for a couple of days. Epic Drive is not quite done, so I will return, to finish it.
The next day was the Most Amazing Day of the Epic Drive. It started with us getting up and backtracking eighteen miles to the entrance of the Petrified Forest national park. This is a bit of a misnomer, because as the little entrance museum video showed, it is in fact a petrified swamp. Still. Fossils! Also in the park is the Painted Desert, called such because the minerals in the rock layers make it look, well, painted, and an old pueblo, where in times of yore the native people made their home.
Also, please forgive if this looks all strange, this is my first biggish picture-post.
First, of course, is a picture of a petrified tree. I know it looks like an actual tree, but in fact that is a fossil, made of stone. It is illegal to take stone from the park (although people do it all the time anyway), but I don't see why since it is perfectly legal to get it from the privately-owned land next to the park, and there is so much of it that they gave a free sample away at the gift shop.
Next, a bunch of hills. These were part of a formation called the Teepees, because there were a lot of smallish, conical hills. You can really see the mineral layers in this one.
Quoth, the raven. Ravens are one of the few birds to live there full-time. It's hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. This was just a random one that was near the pueblo. It came out a bit blurry, sorry.
A vista. On clearer days, you can see all the way to the San Fransisco Mountains, well over a hundred miles. Of course, it was not so clear. Still, pretty desert.
Another one. That rock is something like nine miles away, according to the little placard. Can you imagine that all filled with buffalo, the way it would have been back in the day?
Then we skedaddled via I-40, mostly ignoring the guidebook. Except for that one time it told us to get off the road and go for a little ride. The GPS unit promptly routed us onto roads that were not there, except for ruts in the road, mostly overgrown.
Yes, those are wild-ish horses. We didn't get close enough to see if they had tags or shoes or anything, but there was no one watching them but each other. They shied away from us humans, so I took the picture and left them in peace.
Then we drove some more, until a sign said to get off the road and go six miles that way. There is, basically, a big hole in the ground.
Yes, you could fit several football fields in there, or an Eiffel Tower. The point is that it's a place where, fifty thousand years ago or thereabouts, a space rock came hurtling out of the sky and left a big hole. It is called Meteor Crater (imaginative, I know) and it is one of the first places where, thanks to the lack of erosion, scientists were able to prove that it's an impact site and not, say, a dead volcano. They did this by looking at rocks under microscopes and stuff. It's kind of cool, even if it is not so much to look at.
Then MW and I drove and drove. We went through Flagstaff, which is in the mountains and was thus all snow-covered. We went through an eye-searingly bright sunset, and then drove through all kinds of bingleys and neons and arrived in . . . Las Vegas! Panda was waiting there for us. We went to dinner at one of their famous buffets, and everything.
Now I have some things to write and also things to do IRL, so don't worry if I vanish for a couple of days. Epic Drive is not quite done, so I will return, to finish it.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 12:12 am (UTC)Those pictures are so pretty! It looks like it must have been pleasant to be there.
My morbid imagination insists every time that I look at the first picture from the corner of my eye that there are dead birds lying in front of the petrified trees (wings spread), but then I take a closer look and tell my imagination, that, no, there are not, stop saying that. :/ D:
no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 07:57 am (UTC)No dead birds! Just Quoth.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 07:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 08:02 am (UTC)