Today's leg took us through some very interesting places... We saw the East Rim of the Grand Canyon, Sunset Crater (Volcano) from its base, Meteor Crater, Winslow Arizona, Holbrook, the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert. Lets just say that the East Rim was as beautiful as the South Rim... the Grand Canyon is amazing. Sunset Crater however is not that special from the vantage point that we saw it from. Unfortunately a Volcano Crater just looks like a mountain from the bottom. It was over a Mile hike up hill and lets just say we were in a hurry to push on ! Meteor Crater on the other hand was very cool... A 150 foot in diameter iron rock hit the Northern Arizona Desert floor at a thousands miles an hour around 50,000 years ago and made a bloody huge impact ! The picture of Annmarie leaning against the rail shows the Crater in the background.

Winslow Arizona... what can be said about Winslow Arizona... well I'm at a complete loss as to what the Eagles saw in Winslow Arizona in their song "Take it Easy". I stood on the corner of Hicks and Hilview... I couldn't see any Hills... but there were Hicks everywhere. Next up was the town of Holbrook, we had planed on bedding down for the night in Holbrook, but... well, the town is aptly named... if you take off the "Brook". We decided to push on a little further... actually about 200 miles further to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Right now that's where we are... and so far so good... Albuquerque is quite pretty, at night at any rate... we'll see what it has to offer tomorrow during the day. Before we got here we did drive through the Petrified Forest... this is an interesting description for a National Park... True enough there was once a forest where there is now Desert, and those trees are now petrified, but there was only one standing tree that I saw... it was a real live tree, about 10 feet tall and actually I though looked pretty petrified... I know I would have been if i was the only tree there ! The actual stone "petrified" trees were few and far between, on route to the Park there was a shop selling petrified wood, and I think I saw about twice as much there as in the Park itself.

Today's trip was approximately 450 Miles and took around 8 hours... along the way we went through alot of Indian Land, or reservation land. It was primarily Navajo Country and the thing that really struck me was the number of road side stalls selling Indian crafts and Jewelry. I wouldn't be far off if I said that realistically we drove past over a thousand road side shops, shacks and stalls between the Grand Canyon and Albuquerque. additionally we passed a lot of very poor residential areas... for miles we drove passed stunning geographic beauty ruined by shanty towns and run down residential trailers. Its sad to see these otherwise incredible vistas marked with tatty road signs beckoning travelers to come and visit Chief Yellow Horse. But as Annmarie commented, He was having a sale... so it wasn't all bad.

Tomorrow plan of action is currently undecided... we may stick around these parts for a while and see Old Town, Albuquerque. If it doesn't hold our undivided attention we'll hit the road for
Tucumcari , New Mexico or if Tucumcari turns out to be another Holbrook we'll push on to Texacutioner Country.... that's Mr Bush for those unfamiliar with who the Texacutioner is. Amarillo, Texas is roughly 465 miles away from our present "home" so we'll play that one by beer.

Keep posted, we'll see what happens come sunrise !