My visit to the Petrified Forest National Park was certainly the highlight of my road trip, but not the only high point. After Puerco Pueblo, I continued through the park, winding through the strange and foreign landscape. Much as when I visited Yellowstone Park, I was struck by how many unusual geological anomalies could occur in such a small area. Coming down in altitude from the Painted Desert Canyon, the road winds under I-40, past the old Route 66, marked by a car from years gone by and telephone poles with wires leading to nowhere. Despite the age of those items, they are modern compared to the history they sit among. The Pueblo is modern in comparison to the other places I saw that day. I passed by fields of blackened ash, rock formations known as the TeePees - conical shaped rocks formed in layers of sediment, from when the desert was once a flood basin. Those conical formations were striped in blues, greys, reds and whites. Rounding a corner, I came to the Crystal Forest, an area rich in colorful petrified logs. The logs lay haphazardly around the hillside, undisturbed by time, and now undisturbed by humanity, as enforced by vehicle searches at each exit. The petrified logs lie about where the ancient flood waters left them lying, back in the Triassic.
Hiking a mile at 7400 feet is more than my lungs are used to these days. I had to sit down and rest. Apparently the park rangers don't mind if you rest on the petrified trees, as long as you don't try to take one. Considering they weigh somewhere around 200 pounds per cubic foot, I don't think there was any danger. Sitting there, it was a little like seeing what that area of the country would have been like a few million years ago. Everything looked strange and foreign to me. I was waiting for a dinosaur to come around one of the hills.
Leaving the park, I felt lighter and better than I had in a while, finally feeling the vacation kicking in. I had driven 1200 miles all by myself, visited places I'd wanted to see for ages, and in the Arizona desert, my allergies were a thing of memory. I sat in my car contemplating at the turn off for Interstate 40 - only 170 more miles to the Grand Canyon. I decided to save that trip for another day, and instead take my time heading back to Texas, thinking I might wind my way down the Turquoise Trail and into Las Cruces for the night. Well...best laid plans and all of that. At Gallup, I headed south on a small local highway, seeing by the map that there was a short cut that would take me through some great trading post areas. It was the Fourth of July, but I figured not everything would be closed. Hmmm....never assume.
I wandered through the hills of New Mexico, along this small highway, enjoying the scenery, but becoming increasingly concerned due to lack of traffic, lack of habitation, and lack of gas stations. My gas tank was down to nearly a quarter of a tank, and no civilization in sight. I had driven onto the Zuni Reservation and was mentally calculating gas mileage and whether or not I could make it back to Gallup. I found a small business looming in the distance, which turned out to be a convenience store/restaurant/bar/hang out because it's a rainy fourth of July place. I walked in to find all of four people leaning on the counter. A very nice young man put down his beer and picked up a napkin to draw a map for me when I owned up to being lost. The lady stocking shelves offered me a bottle of water. And a somewhat elderly gentleman with long white hair and the fanciest cowboy boots I've ever seen asked me to dance. Well, I could barely hear the music on the radio, but when an elderly gentleman anywhere asks you politely to dance, you dance with him. It's just the right thing to do.
So, if I felt like I was on another planet and that things were a little surreal while I was in the Crystal Forest, dancing in that convenience store/restaurant/bar/place to hang out on a rainy Fourth of July, well, that was in another universe. The song ended, the gentleman said thank you with quite a good laugh, and I collected my map. I offered to pay for my bottle of water, but was waved off, so I left some money in the tip jar on the counter instead. Indeed, I had been wandering parallel to a much better populated highway, and their directions led me directly to a Phillips 66 station. So, I didn't run out of gas on the reservation, just before a thunderstorm, and I managed to find my way back go Grants, New Mexico. I would say I had wasted a good part of my afternoon in the process, but I don't think that anything was wasted. Life is certainly more interesting off the highway.
It turns out that life is also safer off the highway. I had already lost a fender on I-40, so it wasn't my favorite road. That afternoon, just outside Moriarity, the thunderstorm that had been chasing me caught up, and I found out what happens when winds sheer in off the mountains. I also found out that the fender on a car does serve some aerodynamic function of sorts - my car shuddered with every gust of wind. The rain came slamming in while I was on a mountain, with large trucks to the left, fore, and rear of me. I rediscovered the fact that you are never too scared to pray. I drove on for several miles while gripping the steering wheel as tightly as possible, because, of course, my brain thought THAT would keep my car on the road. Must have worked, as I drove out of the rain and sailed on through Tucumcari again, getting off the interstate long enough to enjoy that stretch of Route 66 one more time. I had hoped the neon signs would be on, as the sky was so dark, but alas, they must have been set to a timer.
I spent the night near the New Mexico/Texas border and woke up ready to ride. Knowing I was nearly home, I popped in some good CD's, and sang off-key all the way back to Houston. It was a long drive, but I knew that home, a shower, and my kitty were waiting for me. With apologies to those who live in and love Fort Worth, who the hell designed those freeways? Traffic jam at 3:00 in the afternoon, had to quickly cross three lanes of traffic to get to my very steep, very curved overpass, only to find that at the top the road split in three directions. Really? Felt no small sense of accomplishment at making it through Fort Worth and gliding into Corsicana, to turn south. I-45 might as well be home, I've driven it so many times. I cranked up the Madonna I was rocking at the time and the time flew by.
2400 miles, several wrong turns, walked in on a drug sale, spray painted a Cadillac, ate breakfast with some German bikers, danced with a very nice gentleman in a very strange store/bar/restaurant, hiked through the painted desert, sat on a petrified tree that saw the birth of baby dinosaurs, followed the Mother Road through parts of American history, and safely back home. So much of that trip was dependent on leaving the interstate. The interstates of America are safe. They are well constructed, so you hardly feel a bump or know that you're traveling through mountains or canyons, in deserts or swamps. Every interstate feels very much the same to me. But without leaving them, you never get any variety, you never get a feel for what our country feels like. If I had stayed on the interstate, I would have saved a lot of time. I certainly could have flown straight on down to the Grand Canyon and back, but I would have missed all the milestones along the way. It would have felt like just a trip and not a journey, and certainly not a vacation. Vacations are meant to be times to leave our daily lives behind. That's what I did when I left the interstate, and instead decided to explore without agenda, without preconceptions, and often without a map. To find yourself, you have to embrace the journey as well.
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