3 Days and 8 States Later...

After 3 days, 8 states, and 1,792 miles, I've made it to Arizona! Yippee!! I pulled into town early Friday evening, safe and sound with absolutely no problems whatsoever on the entire trip! Praise the Lord!

I've spent today, Saturday, getting settled into my apartment and hanging out with RONDA, a cousin who is also a kindred-spirit friend. What a blessing! I'll tell you more about that, and show you pictures of my apartment, but it'll have to wait for now...

First I want to tell you about "our" last day on the road trip!

I woke up in Albuquerque, and after finding a grocery store to get something healthy for breakfast, finally hit the road. One of my favorite things about Albuquerque is driving west out of it, as you go up a huge hill and can see the entire city in your mirrors. I especially recommend doing it at night, when you can see the city lights. It's pretty spectacular! (And this picture doesn't really do it justice.)

After leaving Albuquerque, I drove through the rest of New Mexico thinking "Oh yeah, I almost forgot, it's all desert from here on out!" I was glad that I had seen so much greenery the day before!


After crossing into Arizona (nope, no video! I've crossed into this state many, many times before!) I remembered that there's a National Park not too far away, and that it's right off the interstate. Being that I'm a HUGE fan of our National Parks, I decided to stop!


Petrified Forest National Park is a park that has a visitors center one mile off I-40, and has 52,000 acres to explore. Since I was on a timeline, I only explored the one acre around the visitors center! Here's a little video to show you what "we" learned while we were there!


Petrified Forest National Park from Kari Swanson on Vimeo.

If you have the chance to visit a National Park (and EVERYONE should make use of these wonderful national resources!) I recommend picking up a National Park Passport. A friend of mine got me hooked a few years ago, and it's been pretty fun!


On the inside, you can see a listing of ALL the national parks, so no matter where you're traveling, you can see what's nearby. It's also gives inspiration for which park you might want to visit next. Then, like any good passport, you can get stamps to show where you've been! The book is divided into regions, so it was fun to turn the page again in the region I've spent quite a bit of time!


Another reason I didn't take the time to drive along this park's one road, is that the park ranger reminded me I would see much of the park from the interstate. She also explained that the national park was named Petrified Forest National Park, but that the geological term for what we can see is the Painted Desert. Here's the view of that painted desert.


After leaving that area, the rest of northern Arizona is on the slightly boring side, until you come close to a random town that has dinosaur fossils. To advertise, there are a few of these along the road:


Coming up towards Flagstaff, there's a little respite from the desert view, and there was still snow on Humphreys Peak, the highest point in Arizona.


After stopping for gas in Flagstaff, I was able to turn south again. I chose to go on one of my favorite drives anywhere in the country, through Oak Creek Canyon and Sedona. It ends up being about the same distance versus taking the interstate, but I had forgotten that Friday afternoon traffic might be slow, and it was. But, with the beautiful scenery, it was COMPLETELY worth it!

Here we are heading towards Oak Creek Canyon. I really enjoy this road, surrounded by all the tall Ponderosa Pine. It's quite beautiful! I love tall pine trees! I opened my windows and breathed in that fresh pine smell.


You'll have to imagine a better picture, but here we are at the top of the canyon, and next we drove down to the very bottom where Oak Creek is located. The rest of that drive down is "two-hands-on-the-wheel"!


Here you can see Oak Creek. When I've gone on this drive numerous times in the past, it seems like the creek was more like a river. The water level must be down this spring so far, or my memory is fading...!


I saw quite a few of these trees, which looked like Albino trees to me! All of the bark is gone, and I'm wondering if anyone has an explanation for it?


At the end of the canyon drive, you pull into Sedona. Sedona is known world-wide for its red rock formations. There are actually many New Age beliefs as to what happened to form the rock formations, but we can just all know that God did a great job decorating this part of the country! Here's a small taste of what you can see. I'll head back to Sedona again sometime while I'm here, and give better explanations then.








After getting back on the interstate, it's time to start heading to lower elevation, into the Valley of the Sun (the nickname for the Phoenix metropolitan area). I love the different shades you can see from all the mountain tops!


Along that drive is also the first place you typically start seeing the Saguaro cactus in it's native spot. These plants are very slow-growing, and can take as long as 75 years just to grow one of their side-arms. They might live for twice that long. There are many transplanted to areas in Phoenix, but it's always fun to see them in their natural home.


Shortly after that "we" made it all the way into Phoenix, drove through evening rush hour traffic, but got to experience an entire new freeway since I moved away. I hope you enjoyed "our" last day on the trip!