2009 summer vacation: get your kicks on I-40
by HML
After a relatively quiet weekend, we left Albuquerque to drive to the Grand Canyon. We would spend nearly the entire day driving on Interstate 40, which has largely replaced the historic Route 66 through New Mexico and Arizona. We could see remnants of 66 as a frontage road along the interstate, disappearing as the two roads merged, then reappearing again.
The billboards advertising roadside attractions helped keep the drive interesting. Sometimes it seemed like the smaller the town or souvenir stand, more and larger billboards announced its impending appearance. (Who wouldn’t want to visit Jackrabbit, Arizona with its promised photo opportunity astride a giant jackrabbit?)
It started to rain as we entered Arizona, and by the time we reached the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Parks, we were in the middle of another desert thunderstorm. The vast panoramas of the Painted Desert were punctuated with continuous lightning strikes.
The rain and wind were too much to stand for anything but short dashes out of the car for photos, but we managed a few, including this Route 66 memorial, appropriately supervised by the scruffiest looking ravens we saw on the entire trip.
By the time we reached the Rainbow Forest Museum at the other end of the park, the rain had let up just enough for The Gimlet and Thing Two to walk the Giant Logs loop. You may remember from the Philmont Nature Trail that Thing Two is very fond of trails with numbered markers, and The Gimlet had learned his lesson from that experience, so they moved from point to point at Thing Two’s pace, and the walk was a success. The forest of petrified wood in the national park is of course not a standing forest any more, but the size of the logs and amount of timber scattered along the drive is nonetheless impressive, and erosion has polished the wood into beautiful colors.
Collecting petrified wood within the national park boundaries is forbidden but not only do the souvenir shops in the park offer polished wood and other fossils, but the gift shops along the highway outside the park are mini-museums in their own right. There’s really no reason to take wood from the park, because so much is available in the surrounding area. Many of the gift shops include souvenir penny machines, so we made a few stops along the way back to I-40. I like to collect designs that commemorate their location or an event or attraction for which the area is famous. The Petrified Forest Gift Shop just outside the national park boundaries had a nice set of petrified forest-themed designs. But we hit the motherlode of roadside attractions and rock shops a little further up the road at Jim Gray’s Petrified Wood Company. Their lumberyard of petrified wood and mountains of other kinds of rocks is incredible, and then the fossils and other items inside are even more impressive. If you want to make a countertop out of petrified wood, or perhaps an entire table, this is the place to shop. Fossils and polished wood and stones are available in a wide size, quality and price range depending on whether you are looking for a piece of art or a souvenir; Thing One searched through a grab basket of small Michelinoceras nautaloid fossils and found a nice specimen for under $5.
It was getting late and we still had a long way to go, so we left Holbrook (home of the Cozy Cones from Cars) and rejoined I-40/Route 66.
Pouring rain. 65 degrees. So this is Arizona in July? We were beginning to wonder if we would be able to see any of the canyon the following day, or if we would be rained out. Luckily the rain finally stopped with the sunset, just before Tusayan, the tiny but bustling gateway to the Grand Canyon.
More about Historic Route 66:
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Tags: arizona, new mexico, penny machines
July 28th, 2009 17:50
We lived in Tusayan for a summer when I was 10—-my uncle had a rental car thing at Grand Canyon airport. I have been to Jackrabbit, Painted Desert, and the Petrified Forest a billion times. You were only a few miles from the wellspring of all Hatches (Taylor AZ). It has a wild beauty out there, but I am really used to my rolling green hills.
July 28th, 2009 20:22
Did you ever get your picture taken with the jackrabbit?
I hear you on the scenery. Pretty much everywhere we traveled was beautiful — always something interesting to see along the way, and so different from what most of us (except for The Gimlet) are used to. But as we approached Snoqualmie Pass last Saturday, I was so happy to see my mountains and my trees again. (Although right now I could do without my humidity … 100 degrees of dry heat wasn’t bad compared to this week’s heat wave.)
PS: If you’re from Taylor, then who are those people in Hatch, UT?
July 29th, 2009 19:47
I bet if I dig through the family archives there’s a picture of me at Jackrabbit. Several pics of me at Petrified Forest.
As I drove through our tiny downtown tonight, I thought how quaint it would look to others, and how much I take it for granted. There is no place like home!
Hatch UT is probably another branch of the same line. There were 2 Vermont brothers who came out, and we can almost all trace back to the original fountainhead of all Hatch. My Great-great grandfather (one brother) had 3 surviving wives, one in Idaho, one in UT, and one in AZ. Just north of Logan (Preston) is the Idaho wife’s homestead, which is some national historical place,etc.
Should you ever desire to come to the other coast, we await the chance to show you the other humid haven. (Rain right now, about 80 degrees, I am dying.)