Here is another day of traveling east. We left Holbrook, AZ this morning at 8:15 a.m. and arrived at Tucumcari, NM at 4:15 p.m. We drove about 400 miles today.

Seen a lot of nice mountains in Arizona and the beginning of New Mexico. Then they turned into hills. We have never been west of Williams, Arizona before on I-40. Williams is where we drove to Grand Canyon area.

Bob's comment was: We just got to the top of the hill and now we go down so we can climb another hill. This is our first time coming or going this way. I enjoyed the drive, lots of mountains and hills. Bob would rather go down to I-10 (southern Arizona) and come home that way.

We chose this way because we wanted to do Petrified Forest & Painted Desert. If we are leaving Bullhead City I think it would be longer to go south. But maybe easier on the fuel pocketbook.

This is a little blurry, but the only picture I could get of the Rio Grande and I-40. They don't give you much warning that it is at this location. There is a lot of growth in the area of the river too.

A mountain where we got off tonight for the campground.

We are at this town and the next picture is because of route 66 going down their street. Remember the show in the 60's (I think) called Route 66 with Kookie and combing his hair a lot. Oops dating myself.

This sign is in the same town as the last pictures. You see these in many places because route 66 crosses I-40 a lot. I do remember when I came out west with my girl friend, Annette, and her parents that we drove on route 66.

Neither one of us can imagine eating this size of a steak. I wonder what the price would be when you didn't eat it.

The morning started early today. We were up and around at 6:30 a.m. Left the park at 7:40 to head east. It is still a long drive home, but headed in that direction.

We arrived in Holbrook, Arizona at 12:30. That way we could see the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. It is really something how those trees turned into rock.

We started the day at an elevation of 600. At Flagstaff we reached an elevation of 7335. Told "red" (our truck) he was doing very well. We are at 5085 now.

Tomorrow we will get into New Mexico. While in Arizona we have stayed on Mountain Standard Time (they don't change to daylight time). When we reach New Mexico we will then go on Mountain Daylight Time. So we will change time tomorrow. So we will only be 2 hours different.

Very nice drive thru the National Petrified Forest and The Painted Desert. This was a 28 mile drive. Very interesting.

Petrified wood. The change is amazing.

These petrified wood was actually found like this and in the exact same place they are now. This was a tree and was broken from being under ground.

The inside of one of the Petrified Wood (also known as rock).

This and the next pictures are from the painted desert. (more to come). We started this driving tour in the beautiful sunshine, but it clouded up. We seen more color here than it is showing on the pictures.

This is writings (pictures) from many many years ago (a lot of years ago). They drew pictures instead of writing.

The utility poles you see are the ones that ran along side route 66 years ago. Now you have I-40 running in some of the areas that was route 66. The campground we are in tonight is on the original route 66.

A map of Route 66. Different times during this trip we were either on or seen the original route 66.

This and the next two pictures are more from the Painted Desert. It was so pretty

Monday, March 28, 2011

We took Jr & Luanne back to Las Vegas Airport. We all had a very nice time seeing the sights around the area. Their airplane was to take off at 4:35 p.m., before they left home it was changed to 5:05 p.m., and today she received a phone call it was changed to 6:00 p.m. I checked later and seen it was at 6:09 that it actually took off. They were suppose to land in Detroit at 12:49 a.m. Should hear from them when they arrive home. They couldn't use Luanne's cell phone after landing becuase it was in the back seat of our truck. Such a shame she won't have it until we get home.

We have enjoyed seeing different wild animals. Today on our way to the airport Luanne said she sees dahl sheep. Sure enough we pulled off the road and backed up to observe six dahl sheep. The next two pictures shows those sheep.

Tomorrow morning we will be leaving Bullhead City and heading east to Holbrook, Arizona. Stopping there to see Petrified Forest and Painted Desert.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

We drove to Oatman, AZ today. Had a real nice time. It is about 40 minutes from Bullhead City, AZ

This was an old mining town. They have all kinds of stores, ranging from arts & craft, clothing, knives, and old antique stores. Just kind of fun walking around town. They do a comedy gun fight in the center of town too.

The "wild" burros that wander into town are decendences of the burros that the miner left here when they gave up the mining business. These burros that come to town knows that they will probably get carrots to eat. There is places that sell carrots for feeding them. No one takes care of these burros, they just kind of come and goes as they please.

We left there and drove out the long way back to Bullhead City. We seen some very curvy roads and the wild burros out there. Beautiful area of mountains and valleys.

This is just one area of the town.

Such a cute little burro.

We ate lunch at the same bar in Oatman that Bob & I ate lunch in last year. This has dollar bills all over the walls. Goes back to the mining years. During the mining years, a miner would give the bartender a dollar to hold and when he'd come in his drinks would be subtracted from the dollar he left. There is some very old looking dollars on the wall. In fact, Jr noticed some that were just a little bigger in size than ours are now.

Bob seen this sign at the bar and just had to take a picture of it.

This and the next picture is the young ones. There was probably six young ones and we had never seen young ones there before. We were there much earlier last year. We've been to Oatman three times now.

I think he was so tired he just had to take a nap out along side the road.

After leaving Oatman we seen these burros in the desert. Bob estimated we were 10 miles outside of Oatman.

We came back to the trailer after traveling to Oatman. There is a hill behind our trailer with cactus plants. So Bob stayed at the trailer and the three of us went up to take the following pictures of the cactus. He said someone had to stay here to call 911 if any of us fell.

Jr was taking a picture of the cactus, so I took a picture of him.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

We had a great day today. Enjoyed seeing the sights with Jr. & Luanne.

We went to Hoover Dam. As you will see they have completed the new bridge and it is quite a sight to see the Hoover Dam from up there. So neat they made a walkway for people to be able to walk out and look at the Dam from way up high.

We then went to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Seen some two toned mountain. Really a nice drive thru the this area. How rocks end up looking like this is interesting.

Ended the evening with a card game back at the trailer. We played three games yesterday and three games tonight. Luanne & I won two games yesterday and tonight Bob & Jr won two games. I guess we are tied now.

The new bridge overlooking the Hoover Dam is dedicated to these two men.

This is the walkway at the new bridge overlooking the Hoover Dam.

Taken from the new bridge over the Hoover Dam. What a view from way up here. This bridge is to help take traffic off the actually Hoover Dam bridge. In fact, this year we were screened before driving near the bridge. Only people driving down by the dam bridge were screened.

This picture of Jr & Luanne is taken while standing at the Hoover Dam.

This is the picture of the high bridge that overlooks the Hoover Dam. Last year when we were here with Sheri & Mark they hadn't connected the bridge.

This is outside of the High Scaler Cafe. Some of the people working on the mountains to build the Hoover Dam were called High Scalers.

We had never been to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. The rocks are really different. These are very different from Sedona, but very interesting. This place is about 20 miles west Las Vegas. The next four pictures are just different pictures of the rock. As you will see some are with two toned colors.

There was different areas of these rocks that had mountain climbers. This was one area.

This was taken Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. As we were at the end of our 13 mile drive around the canyon road. These are wild burros. There was two of them. They also had signs that there are wild horses in this area. We didn't see any of them.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

We had a great day. We took Jr & Luanne to see the Grand Canyon. We all enjoyed the day. Bob & I have been to the Grand Canyon three times and it never gets old to see this awesome site.

As we were heading out of the Grand Canyon National Park there were vehicles parked along the road. We drove up there and pulled off too. To our surprise we were seeing a herd of Elk. What a great site. There was probably 12-15 Elk in the group. After leaving the National Park we seen about 8-10 antelope along the road. It is a long drive to Grand Canyon from Bullhead City, but well worth the trip. It is a 3.5 hr trip to drive there. Adding the wildlife sightings along with the canyon it was great.

Here we are at Grand Canyon. Do we look cold. We were cold, I guess we aren't use to the cold weather anymore. The temperature was around 46 degrees, sun really nice, but the wind made it feel colder than 46.