Road Trip: Part 3

Our master plan was to make it home to Texas by early evening. Another 900 miles remained from Holbrook. No problem....

We left the WigWam in the rear view mirror and headed east.

We couldn't drive across northern Arizona and not see either the Grand Canyon or The Petrified Forest / Painted Desert. We voted on the the latter since we had both seen the Grand Canyon before. Growing up in Arizona I had been there a bunch of times and had even hiked to the bottom and camped there once in high school.

The Petrified Forest is only about 20 miles east of Holbrook. At 7 AM we were the only ones there. It was nice not being stuck behind a long line of cars full of tourists.


Additionally, the colors at sunrise were awesome. The southern end of the park has most of the petrified wood and the northern end has the great views of the Painted Desert.


I got this shot of the Amtrak "Southwest Chief" headed for Albuquerque and points east.

We ended up spending a lot more time in the park than planned but that was OK. The views were worth it.

After the park it was back on I-40 and soon we crossed in to New Mexico.


Lunch was in Albuquerque at Rudys. I highly recommend it.....great BBQ.

Back on I-40 and in a few more hours we hit the Texas state line. You'd think we were almost home right? Nope...Texas is huge. We had six hours to go.

Just before reaching Amarillo we stopped at the Cadillac Ranch. It's right off of I-40. It belongs to a millionaire that has planted 10 old Cadillacs in his field.

They're all planted at the same angle. They range in age from 1949-1963. There's graffiti all over them...I think it's helping keep the rust at bay.



After this it was back in the Yukon and all that remained was the 5 hour home stretch to the DFW area. The sunset was pretty good as we passed Amarillo.

We pulled in to the driveway just before midnight. It would have been earlier but the last 25 miles was in a rare snowfall that kept our speed way down.

1800 miles in two days, a couple of In-N-Out burgers, some nice scenery, and a stay in a WigWam! What more could you ask for in a road trip?

Thanks for reading....I should be back soon with more of that aviation stuff again.



For a look at some more of my photos, please aviate over to Plane & Simple