The Petrified Forest

Miles Tuesday: 97

Hours in the saddle: 4:49

Totally awesome day today. Started with a yummy breakfast at our hotel, and then a convo with the Polish bikers as we were getting ready to leave. We decided to start on the south end of the Petrified Forest and work our way north as most of what we were interested in was on the south side. 

These are from Crystal Forest, and you can see the large amounts of quartz. 

This is Blue Mesa, because of the grayish blueish layer. This was possibly my favorite view of the whole park. The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest are sort of combined in to the one park. 

This was Jaron being bad and sitting on the wall with his legs in the danger zone. This overlook was the "money shot".  

There were some cantankerous old people at this overlook. Someone asked if we were hot in all our gear. Jaron said not really, and I shrugged and said it was better than a skin graft. A cantankerous old man then gave a typical BS comment which indicates that he doesn’t ride often or adventurously enough for anything bad to happen. 🙄 We both decided to save our energy. 

We decided to drive thru the whole park again back to the south side for the hell of it. Otherwise it was 20 min of interstate to get to our hotel. We stopped at a huuuge souvenir shop in town. Apparently it’s legal to sell petrified wood as long as it wasn’t collected in national park land. Julie needed some petrified wood for her rock collection. We briefly entertained the idea of getting a small stump for our yard, but the shop didn’t have any idea about shipping and made you agree to pay pending shipping charges with zero guidelines. 

We went back to the hotel to cool off and then out to dinner at the most highly rated restaurant in town in the shittiest neighborhood. It’s our way. We parked next to a condemned house with caution tape around it, and when we went to leave a cop had someone pulled over right behind our bikes. The food was delicious. Bikes were still standing up tho, so, it was a win. 

I don’t think I’ve properly expressed how cool the Globetrotter Lodge. It’s hard to describe. It’s owned by an Austrian family, everything was decorated adorably, and there is an outdoor lounge. The family staff were awesome. The breakfast was awesome. They changed your seating assignments every morning to force you to meet new people. The table marker included some kind of memento about where you were from. There were books in all kinds of languages in our room. Jaron couldn’t get over the Danielle Steel book in German. It was just cool and now we are looking for non-corporate places to stay. The Holiday Inn Express was reminding Julie of being on a business trip. Usually we don’t take risks on lodging. Food, yes. Lodging-- no. So we’ll see what we find. 

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Miles Wednesday: 126

Hours in the saddle: 3:32

Drops: 0

Today we just went from Holbrook to Flagstaff via the boring interstate. After a failed attempt at seeing an overpriced crater, we checked in to a ski cabin north of town after a quick lunch downtown. We settled in and talked strategy for the Grand Canyon. After realizing that we were planning our entire lives around being able to do our laundry at our next stop (the current lodging does not have guest laundry), Jaron decided we would just go do laundry this afternoon, and that we could figure out the rest of our strategy while it was running. I know this looks suspiciously like planning, but planning isn’t allowed on this trip, soooo...

The total time it took to do laundry was 1.5 hours instead of the 3 hours it took at our hotel last time with only 2 sets of machines. Ijs. 

We are going to ride in the morning and be at the hotel after lunch from now on. The heat is just kicking our asses. (Who knew it would be so hot in the desert in July?) So this requires some adjustment in what we can do in a day. We are staying here two nights with a day trip to the Grand Canyon tomorrow and then will head north on Friday. 

Dinner was at a yummy modern latin american restaurant. We each ended up getting our own desserts, and Julie asked for a spoon for her chocolate sauce and a glass of milk. It was a pretty good day. 

In other news, Julie’s trusty travel pillow died. I noticed it had lost a lot of air after camping, and then it totally couldn’t hold air at all 2 nights ago. Fortunately we were headed to a town with an REI and they had it in stock. I got this pillow after my accident caused me neck problems and it enabled me to go on business travel, and I sleep on it every night I am away from home. It lasted me 4.33 years, so it certainly put in its time in service, but I was still sad to see it go. RIP, pillow.