Horrible Travel Planner

We began our trip on July 11th. As we left Erie for Flagstaff, we had only one stop planned. I wanted to see the Arch in St. Louis. Everything else was going to be if we drove by and wanted to stop we would.

Well, we really didn't see anything! We did stop at an Ikea to have Swedish meatballs. Jack was rather taken with some of the rooms in the gallery. Such a touristy thing to do!

 The arch in St. Louis was everything I had imagined it to be since I first learned about it in 10th grade algebra class. The history of the area and the history of the building of the arch were equally fascinating. However, the Mississippi River in that location was underwhelming. The Allegheny and the Susquehanna are equally as impressive if not what I imagine as deep as the Mississippi.

We had no other plans after this. So we just kept driving.

We saw something called Uranus Fudge and the clerk at the hotel said it was a wonderfully irreverent place to go. We went the next morning. It was certainly irreverent, but not really much more than a bar and a tourist stop.

As we entered Oklahoma, I realized that most of my facebook memories from the last few days involved a COS classmate who had a church in OK. I looked her up and realized that if we stopped early on Saturday evening, her church was only fifteen minutes south of our route. (see next post)

Lamarla and Benjy took us out to lunch after worship and though Jack would have preferred to just get on the road, he and Benjy had a two hour conversation over lunch on many, many topics.

Texas didn't look much different than OK and so far all of the terrain was familiar. Rolling hills and trees abounded. Jack wondered when we would see something different. Western OK was slightly different, but still not what we were expecting from the south west. It wasn't until we hit New Mexico that we saw real changes. Jack was still disappointed that there were no cactuses, but was in awe of the mesas and buttes. He took so many pictures of the ridges and the sharp points. He noted that he wished he knew more about geology and the formation of what we were seeing.

We started to see signs for petroglyphs and decided to go see them. These ones were on black volcanic rock and lined a very steep mountain trail. I wasn't impressed and I don't think Jack was either.

As he continued to research, he said we had to stop at the Petrified Forest. We didn't know that the Petrified Forest was twenty six miles from the start of the National Park and that there were many, many other items of interest.

We spent four hours seeing some beautiful landscapes and history of the area. I pray the rest of the National Parks give us the same joy as this one did.

Though the walk down and back up was strenuous, I enjoyed seeing the blue landscape. The petrified logs themselves seemed to be the work of someone chopping wood for the fireplace. It was strange seeing the calcified wood broken cleanly as any chainsaw cut into logs and some of the logs had fractured into cord wood.

Today, I expect to go to historic Flagstaff for lunch and walking around enjoying the sights.

Just a small note about my hotel. I failed to deep dive the accommodations.  There is no seating area as I had imagined. There is no pool, which I really don't mind, but it would have been an outdoor seating area. There is no breakfast. There is no hairdryer or coffee pot. I would need to purchase a microwave safe cup to make tea as there is a microwave and fridge. Since I booked a single room, I do not have a desk. Instead there is a dresser! If I would not have booked ahead, I probably would have stayed at the hotel Jack and I stayed at before dropping him at camp. But I will stay the four nights I prebooked and just deal with what I have.