Arizona: Part 1

Day 1

Long drive from Broomfield to Holbrook AZ. I'm getting too old for this shit.  Asked for restaurant recommendation from the hotel desk, she recommended the "eye- talian" place. When i went there, the person next to me ordered antipasto, and when the waitress brought it, she pronounced it "ant-eye-past-uh".

Day 2

I used to meticulously plan my national parking trips, including exactly which hikes i'd go on in each park. Over the last couple years I've switched to instead going to ask at the visitor center what they recommend. Today that backfired on me, a little bit.Up and at petrified forest national park at 8 am, and did a tour through the park. 

Turns out there's not much to do there. No hiking, really, just a few paved nature walks through spaces with petrified wood. The most interesting was learning how the stuff got there. 

Huge downed trees got infused with volcanic silt after a flood 200m years ago.I did get to have the park mostly to myself for most of the morning. I love that: being out on a trail, hearing nothing but the wind in the trees around me.So after going on the nature walks, taking oodles of pictures of fossiled trees, watching the visitor center video, I was out of stuff to do and it was only 11 am. I hop in the car on to my next destination, which will take me near Flagstaff AZ. And it turns out, there's a trio of national monuments near Flagstaff, and I have time to kill, so I visit all three.
Walnut canyon NM, 

Sunset crater NM, 

and Wupatki NM. 

They we all pretty interesting, and right next to each other, so it was easy to get to each one, do some easy hikes and snap lots of pics.Then on the Cameron AZ and the Cameron past trading lodge, which is like its own little city. next: Grand Canyon