Holbrook

We were on the road reasonably early today as we knew we had a fairly long drive ahead of us (around 4 hours or so). Turns out that most of Route 66 along here is one side of the Interstate or the other, rather than being actual separate roads.
Our first stop was Gallup. Again lots of Native American influence here and it turns out that Gallup was originally a coal mining town, though they no longer mine there.
I finally got myself a nice little pair of earrings with some turquoise on them here.
From Gallup it was on into Arizona where we found the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. Craig wasn't overly thrilled about taking this detour at first but even he admitted at the end that it was good we did. Stunning scenery through here. The petrified forest is amazing, all these chunks of what looks to be wood and logs but when you see them a little closer, it's rock. On leaving the park, we discovered that it is EVERYWHERE around here. They were strict about not taking it from the park, but as soon as you get out of the park there are so many businesses selling all sized pieces of it.
It was a short drive into Holbrook

where we were staying the night. Boys super excited to be staying in the old Wigwam Motel. It was pretty cool to pull up and see all the old cars parked there and then to open the door and walk into our own wigwam was fun too. Lots of photos here.
We had skipped a couple of view points in the Petrified Forest as we were worried time was getting away from us. Turns out we crossed another time zone and gained an hour so nowhere near as late as we thought we were.
Had heard on the news this morning that Austin and Houston in Texas had had major flooding overnight with some dead and many missing. Scary to think it wasn't that long ago we were there.
Met a guy staying in the wigwam next to us at the hotel. Really nice guy. He was also travelling Route 66 and left us a note to send him a picture waving from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon as he was headed to the South Rim.