Apache to Navajo - Day 30

For those of you who don't like the verbose descriptions of beautiful, scenic places I road trip to, you can skip to the last paragraph for the food update portion. You can check out the pictures; they're worth 4K words. Today was all about the scenery.

After the Loff's decided they needed a married-couple-away-from-their-kids night, the possible trip to Vegas was scrapped. This opened up a chance for a solo road trip to some of the picturesque regions of Arizona.

From my base in Phoenix, I headed east past Scottsdale and the sprawl. Globe, AZ was the start of ride on Rte. 60 that traversed two Apache Reservations. They have beautiful land that traverses the Colorado Plateau and plunges to the Salt River Canyon. It's so beautiful it is hard to remember to watch the road...and mistakes could mean flying off a cliff. When I see canyons like this and the Rio Grande, it makes me want to delay touring the Grand Canyon. I'd want to save the best for last so it won't spoil my appreciation of all these. (Tomorrow may be the best yet.)

As the canyons ended in Show Low, I continued on a route that led across a mesa. The crossword puzzle clue for mesa is: A flat-topped tableland. With planes that you see all the way to the horizon without a hill in sight, and this at an elevation of 7000 ft., the clue doesn't do the word justice. Breathtaking, in-the-clouds, endless, panoramic tableland would be a better clue.


The mesa was rimmed by Ansel Adams Pines. The ones you can see endlessly through.


Then came the Petrified Forest. Since you've all seen pictures of it, even if you didn't know it was this petrified forest, I won't need to go into the beauty it contains. But there were so many varied stopping points in such a short distance, that the $10 fee was meaningless. If you pass by this area, you MUST do this route. Towards the end of it there was an historical marker for Route 66...this is just the first of it I have seen, but there should be plenty more as the trip continues.

I pulled into Chinle, a town with 3 hotels, and not much else. Verizon is off the grid here, so no phone or internet (I am piggy -backing off someones weak signal.) But this town should be a great place to kick off another day of adventurous sightseeing...location.

I ate at A&W Root Beer, the food was awful.