Arizona

We spent the night at a hotel in Albuquerque and had dinner at some chain called Boston's Pizza that the monkeys declared the best restaurant ever. (I attribute the love to the fact that they were starved.) After a good night's sleep, we hit the road again.


We had a very long drive through Arizona spanning two days. The highlight, until Jiro nearly fell off a cliff, was the Petrified Forest National Park.


Petrified wood results from wood being buried then gradually being replaced by minerals so that it becomes stone. It was pretty cool to see the different colors and amazing landscapes.

It also turns out that the original Route 66 ran through the Petrified Forest. We had fun imagining what led to the demise of this car.



We stopped for dinner at a diner in Flagstaff, then decided to camp out rather than get another hotel room. We went to a site about 50 miles from the Grand Canyon. The monkeys were SO excited to sleep in a tent, and I was happy to have a trial run for our impending backpacking trip.


I really hoped we'd have time to do at least a Griswald-esque quickie trip to the Grand Canyon, but it just wasn't in the cards. Warren wanted us to get to Dinky Creek by sundown and it was about 500 hundred miles away!