november 14 and 15

Here a few pics of the otter, the white pelicans, and the sunset in Sequoyah NWR in Oklahoma;

 

en een paar canyon plaatjes van Palo Duro in Texas.

 



Monday: Albuquerque, NM to Winslow, AZ; Tuesday, Winslow, AZ to Lake Havasu, on the Arizona side. Mostly all on rte 40.
From Albuquerque west, the landscape has more variety. Thank goodness! The first part seemed flat, but full of ridges - gentle up-and-down ridges, maybe 30’ tall and wide, with mini-canyons and dry creek beds. After a while mesas started to show up. First brick red mesas, then mesas with white lines, then light red, greenish, creamy, deep red, grey, white… Many of the layers were visible in Palo Duro too. Past Albuquerque there are also layers of volcanic ash in it, and lava on top. Also, scattered about, small lava fingers with grand basalt blocks breaking off. We had heard of the Painted Desert, seen it from the sky, but never from ground level… it’s really cool. Wow. And really large.

Just over the Arizona border is Petrified Forest N.P., where the Painted Desert is at its most beautiful. Of course we stopped, had lunch on the parking lot, and peeked in at the visitors center. We drove at ease down the park road and stopped at every overlook.

At one of them, it’s called newspaper rock (rocks?), you look down on large blocks of stone with petroglyphs on them. Extra cool. Double wow.

 
What is of course the most cool, triple wow thing about the park is that one of the layers of the Painted Desert is full of the petrified wood. Apparently a primeval forest fell over, ended up in water and got covered with layers of all sorts of sediment, which leached into the wood over the millennia, so it’s now all minerals and almost as hard as diamonds. The stone layer that the wood is in is much softer, and as it erodes, the petrified wood chunks roll down the slope, or they’re exposed as they are on top. Sometimes the entire tree just lies there.

After the Petrified Forest N.P. tour we got back on route 40 and continued to Winslow, AZ. We took it easy, and our own wheels didn’t drive us crazy. There were a lot of trucks at Winslow’s WalMart, so we took the opposite end of the parking lot. It was just below freezing, the heater ran all night, and the RV house batteries went dead a little after 5. The fridge’s warning beep worked like an alarmclock and got us up about half an hour before we had planned. So we had breakfast at Denny’s nice ‘n early and were on the road again at 6:30. Thanks to the solar panel and the generator the batteries were all charged again before lunch.
West from Winslow via Flagstaff it gets a good bit higher, but gradually enough, the road was easy as we climbed over the tail end of the Rockies. In about two hours the landscape went from arid/desert, to pleasantly wooded with conifers and junipers, and back to arid/desert. But suddenly much warmer than in Albuquerque and Winslow! We arrived at Cattail Cove State Park on Lake Havasu around lunchtime. Very few people on the campground, so we got a lovely spot close to the water. We paid up for three nights right away.
Lake Havasu is a lake because of a dam in the Colorado river, and it’s an oasis in the desert. So, as well as lots of retirees there are also a lot of animals, especially water birds, and there are wildlife refuges at both ends of the lake. Our state park is near the refuge at the south end. And as soon as we were settled, a threesome of ducks came to check us out, a herd of quails trotted by behind the RV, and a bunny settled underneath. *happy sigh*…