Arizona to New Mexico

My girlfriend Laura hadn't seen a lot of my home state of Arizona, so I decided to remedy this. With the great weather of fall upon us, there was no better time to hit the open road and enjoy the sixty degree daytime weather. I figured a Nevada-to-Arizona-to-New-Mexico-and-back trip would take about three to four days to do right, and there was lot of stuff I wanted to hit. I cranked open my Desktop wiki, and started jotting down an itinerary, which I have made available below for anyone interested in mimicking our travels.

We're big on hitting the road first thing in the morning, and I love to drive. Laura is a vegan, so she packed a veritable trunkload of food since on-the-road food options tend to be fewer for her. This is fine by me, because it generally means fewer food stops, and therefore better arrival times. We split out of the Las Vegas area around 05:45, which put us at our first stop earlier than I had planned: the Grand Canyon Caverns.

The Grand Canyon Caverns

This place is definitely worth visiting, and is one of my favorite stops in Arizona. It's about an hour-and-a-half detour off of Eastbound Interstate 40 if your headed from Kingman along Historic Route 66. They give tours of some of the largest underground dry caverns in the United States daily from 10am-4pm at $15 bucks per person.

200 feet under the ground, the caverns hover at about 50 degrees year round, which actually made them a tick warmer than the November morning air above ground. We were about thirty minutes early for the first tour, so we hung around the gift shop and got pictures by the giant T-Rex outside, a relic from the Cavern's days as 'Dinosaur Caverns' -- an attempt to attract tourists to the site even though no dinosaur bones have ever been found there!

The tour is guided, very informative, is about 45 minutes long, and actually involves some pretty strenous walking up steep, though, well-maintained slopes. The lighting is okay, and they encourage pictures. Our inexpensive Polaroid was able to take some halfway-decent shots.

Walnut Canyon

Walnut Canyon is just a few minutes east of Flagstaff, AZ, and was our next destination for the day. There are several trails of varying degrees of difficulty, all providing great views of the beautiful scenery of the forested canyon walls, which contain the remnants of cliff dwellings that are over 700 years old. The best, and most strenuous, of the trails takes you right up to some of the dwellings that you can actually walk into.

After spending several hours hiking around the canyon, we headed back to Flagstaff, checked into our hotel, and hit the downtown area for some pizza, beer, and relaxation.

Petrified Forest

Laura and I both enjoyed this part of the trip the most. We got up and out of the hotel by 06:30 and went to our favorite Coffee Shop in the Flagstaff area, Macy's, which has good, strong coffee and many vegan-friendly breakfast items. We were on the road by 07:30, and it took just under two hours to get to the south entrance of the Petrified Forest (via I-40 to Holbrook, AZ). We spent the better part of the day walking trails, checking out visitor's centers, and gawking at the amazing sights of the park, which also includes the Painted Desert. We made our way north for about 28 miles along the Petrified Forest Road until we reached the I-40 via the Northern entrance to the park. There is a ton of stuff to do, and one should spend at least an entire day there, if not two or more. Look closely at last few pictures of the rocks, and you might see some petroglyphs!

Gallup, New Mexico

After leaving the Petrified Forest, Laura and I headed east on the I-40 for about two hours for her first trip to New Mexico. We spent the night in Gallup, got some terrible Mexican food at a dive called Virgie's, spent the night in a decent Best Western, got up the next morning bright and early, had an awesome (free) buffet style breakfast at the motel, and headed downtown to check out the Native American Jewelry shops and all this other great stuff I read about on the Chamber of Commerce web page.

From my pre-trip research online, it seemed as though a lot of people had a great time in the shops downtown. After twenty minutes, Laura and I had decided that we'd seen enough and split out. We headed back to Arizona, bought some New Mexico trinkets at the border, and vowed to never go back to Gallup again. It's a depressed town full of drunks, and there really is no reason to go there. Sorry Gallup, nothing personal. The only pictures we have in Gallup are of us at some airport where I saw an old Air Force Fighter Plane (F-??) on a stand by the side of the road.

Meteor Crater

Since we ditched out of Gallup early, we caught Meteor Crater on the way back to Flagstaff, which ultimately gave us more time to lounge around on our last day. I hadn't been to Meteor Crater since I was about ten years old, when my dad and I were doing the Arizona sightseeing tour. It's a big giant hole in the ground, about 2.4 miles in circumference and 550 feet deep, that was created by an asteroid collision around 50,000 years ago. You really have to see it to appreciate it. There is a great visitor's center on site, complete with gift shop, information galleries, a short movie, interactive displays, and a Subway sandwich shop! A couple of paths lead down over the lip of the crater onto some impressive lookout decks. There are tours available for those interested in walking around the crater's edges.

Itinerary, Notes, Links

Below is a rough outline of my original plans, most of which we did a pretty good job of sticking to. The only exceptions I can figure are that we spent less time in Gallup, NM than anticipated, and we skipped Sunset Crater in Arizona to make more time for Meteor Crater. I allowed for more time to drive than was really necessary (thanks Google), but a family requiring pit stops, food breaks, etc. might want to allow a bit more. All times are AZ/NM time which MST. Some of the notes were excerpted from various chamber of commerce websites, and credit is noted where I can remember.

Monday Nov 9th

Tuesday Nov 10th

Wednesday Nov 11th -- Veterans Day

Thursday Nov 12th

Additional Notes, Links, etc.

Grand Canyon Caverns

Walnut Canyon

Petrified Forest

Meteor Crater

Gallup

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