Travels in the 2nd half

  When you travel across eastern Arizona, there is one must see attraction - the Petrified Forest National Park. It is an amazing place, full of things that found almost no where else. The Petrified Forest National Park is a thin ribbon of a park, that stretches forty miles north to south, while varying from one to twelve miles in width. The north entrance of the park sits along Interstate 40, about 70 miles west of Gallup, NM. When you come into the park from this entrance, the first thing you will find is the Painted Desert. This part of the park is particularly beautiful.  225 million years ago, this part of North America was covered by a sea. Over millions of years minerals and silts were carried into the water, where they settled out. The weight of the new sediment caused those below to change from mud to rock, but they kept the color of the minerals that they were made of. Today, that sea has disappeared, but the rocks it formed are still here. As you drive through the ...

Route 66 memorabilia in Seligman AZ   Over my last two blogs I have explored some of the sights along Route 66 while traveling through California. Today we cross the Colorado River into Arizona. The Mother Road jumps onto the interstate for a brief span when entering The Copper State, but it quickly heads north, following AZ-10, through the desert toward The Black Mountains. I was lucky enough to pass through shortly after a rare July rainstorm, and I had the chance to see some of the local cacti in bloom. Oatman AZ   As I entered The Black Mountains of Arizona I arrived at the town of Oatman. Founded in 1863, Oatman was a small gold mining town. In 1915, tow prospectors struck a large vein, a Oatman became a boom town, swelling to over 3000 residents. Commercial mining companies came in. By 1924 the main employer n town, United Eastern Mines, shut down as returns diminished, and by 1941 all gold mining had ended. In total, over $40 million worth of gold ($202 million in 2019 ...

  In 2014, I took a trip along Route 66, starting in Pasadena CA, driving east. The western end of this famous road is a study in rapidly changing landscapes. From the urban Los Angeles/Pasadena corridor to the suburban passage through the San Bernardino Valley, Route 66 has changed tremendously from its origins. However, nothing prepared me for the sudden shift in scenery upon leaving the town on San Bernardino. Here, Route 66 jumps onto the interstate and climbs up over the Cajon Summit, gaining 4000 feet in altitude in just under 20 miles. But more striking, is that as soon as you leave the city limits, you have left the Southland behind, and entered the rural desert. This change in landscape brings about a change in the style and type of roadside attraction that I encountered over the next part of my journey. The High Desert California Route 66 Museum - Victorville CA   Victorville sits past the Cajon Summit, and is the first city of major size that I reached coming up ove...

  When I travel, I love driving on the two land highways of the United States. I find it much more relaxing then speeding from place to place on the expressways. This also affords the chance to explore some of the quirky and historic roadside attractions that have been built over the past 100 years. There is no better place to explore these sights than on the old Route-66, which I did back in 2014. Fork in the Road - Pasadena CA The Fork in the Road My trip took several days, driving from Pasadena, CA to Albuquerque, NM. It was in Pasadena that I found my first roadside attraction, A Fork in the Road . In 2009, Bob Stone woke up a couple of days after his 75th birthday. He walked outside, and on crossing a usually unimpressive train island near his house he found an unusual sight, an 18-foot tall fork had been planted into the ground. The fork was a “gift,” created by his friend, artist Ken Marshall, based on a conversation they had had years earlier, when Stone had described the t...