It has rained nearly every day of our trip. And when it doesn't rain, there's always at least one thunderstorm to watch on the horizon. Usually, they come up fast and surround us. Normally, vacationers pray for sun. But, when you're driving through the desert during the summer in a car with no air-conditioning, with a heater stuck in the ON position, rain is a welcome blessing. It was only as we drove through Kansas that we really felt the heat. Since then, the overcast sky, cool breezes, and rain falling through the car windows has painted a picture unlike any desert I've ever heard of. It's actually cold as we drive through Arizona!

View from our hotel in Gallup, NM	The whole drive looked like this	Rock cliffs everywhere	Some have holes and caves in them
And then the landscape changes again rapidly

I know it's early to make judgements like this, but I think Arizona is by far the most beautiful place I've ever been. We'd planned on getting all the way to the Grand Canyon tonight to camp nearby, but there are just too many things a traveller HAS to see here. Our first stop was the Petrified Forest National Park, a 28 mile long detour with stunning views of the Painted Desert and Triassic trees:

Tiponi Point Panoramic 1	Tiponi Point Panoramic 2	Tiponi Point Panoramic 3	No Joke
Chinde Point	Some petroglyphs at Puerco Pueblo	Native Americans must have had BIG ears, and BIG birds!	More indian graffitti
Ancient pueblo ruins	This one's called "Newspaper Rock"	And another nearby...	The Tepees
Tepees Panoramic 1	Tepees Panoramic 2	Tepees Panoramic 3	Tepees Panoramic 4
Balancing rocks near Blue Mesa	Giant petrified logs roll down the hills	Looks just like wood!	Ravens guarding the Blue Mesa
The landscape looks so alien!	Like driving on the moon	Balancing rocks	Purple striped hills
Petrified stumps	End grain close up	Logs in Crystal Forrest	Why do they break cross grain like that?
This one's HUGE!	More petrified wood

I couldn't resist seeing those big paper-mache dinosaurs from that Pee-wee Herman movie... But I don't think this was it. They really look silly... I mean, I expect them to look a little disproportionate and absurd, but this one looks constipated!

This looks interesting...

Not quite what I expected!

This T-Rex needs more fiber in his diet...

We didn't plan on seeing the meteor crater, but everyone we spoke to insisted we did. There was a power outage, so they took $3.00 off of the admission fee, since all of the museum exhibits, gift shops, and restrooms would be in complete darkness. Luckily, the lights came on while we were already inside, and we got to see everything anyway.

Right outside the entrance to the Meteor Crater park is this rather long, rather straight, and rather unkempt dirt road, void of warnings and littered with "No Trespassing" signs. To Matt, this was a dream come true. To me it was an unnecessary risk to the car. Matt went speeding down the road trying to pull up a plume of dust behind us, narrowly avoiding bowling ball size rocks and shopping-cart size potholes. In all fairness it was fun, but it would have been a terrible end to the trip to be stranded in the middle of nowhere on a road that no one ever travels on. You can see the rim of the crater rise above the horizon in the dirt road panoramic pictures:

Meteor Crater Panoramic 1	Meteor Crater Panoramic 2	Meteor Crater Panoramic 3	Meteor Crater Panoramic 4
Moon Mountain panoramic 1	Moon Mountain panoramic 2	Moon Mountain panoramic 3	"That's a pretty big hole..."
Dirt road Panoramic 1	Dirt road Panoramic 2	Dirt road Panoramic 3	Dirt road Panoramic 4
Matt leaves me stranded

By the time we got on our way towards the Grand Canyon, it was getting too dark to set up a tent, and was raining too hard to enjoy it even if it wasn't. Passing tiny traffic-light-free towns without any motels, we began getting worried we'd have to sleep in the car. The closest inhabitable name-on-the-map to the Grand Canyon is an odd place called Tuba City, deep in the heart of the Navajo Nation. This place obviously just scraped by the requirements for classification as "city," with only two traffic lights, and unmarked, unlit potholes worse than that dirt road! And wouldn't you believe it? Both of thier motels were completely booked. Matt managed to find a place, however, in a converted high-school dormatory, looking more like a youth hostel than a place to stay the night. To be fair, however, having a kitchen with cooking utensils somewhat made up for the group showers and public toilet arrangement.

In the shadow of something big

The bridge at Cameron

Sunset over the Painted Desert