arrival

finally getting where you're going is awesome, especially because that means whatever madness you came for can begin.

road problems

Things were fine through the national park, and then I realized I'd left my phone on silent, and I had a bazillion messages. The power was out at my house, my roommate had no AC. So, with little to no signal, I pulled off the road to try to connect and check the bill, with no luck. I stopped in a little town, to try to find some wifi, and after a bit of wandering, I found a mcdonalds that I'd missed on the first pass. Sure enough, I was past due. So I paid the bill, and then spent the next couple hours worrying that the A/C was still off in the house (it wasn't). Anyway, that was a wasted couple hours all told, between the stopping twice and wardriving looking for wifi. It was totally worth it, though, when I saw that mountain off in the distance. Really amazing sunset for me, and a truly quaint motel in Williams AZ. Right out of the 50s, and although the town is one of those places that seems on the edge of collapse due to tourism. When a place has discount souvenir stores, it's in some kind of trouble. I think the steady stream of people coming through keeps it in the black, though.

petrified forest national park

PFNP, for short, is just off of I-40, and I figured since I had some time to kill, I might as well drive the short loop and see the sights. It's a lovely stretch of desert, but like most of this trip, it was ungodly hot, so I didn't care to stick around too long. Very pretty, and worth the hour that I spent on it. Luckily, I got some other tourists to take my photo, even. Thanks random family from Florida! Hope the hydrating for altitude sickness worked out. That's a lens in my left hand, in case you're wondering.

day 2: more driving

This was day 2 of driving. It really was a pretty spectacular day, shot through with beautiful vistas and interesting stops. I had a green chili breakfast burrito to start it off, and it was just smooth sailing from there until after Petrified forest NP. Since those photos are in the next post, I'll save that half of the day for later.