Winslow Arizona - Little Painted Desert and Homolovi State Park - Nov 13 &14

 Yeah! On the Road Again ... finally.

Monday morning even though we only had a 2.25 hour drive, we're too excited and ended up on our way shortly after 9am. Feels good to be on the move again. Our destination is the Lupton Painted Cliffs. When we got there, yes the Cliffs were pretty, but the sign said the Rest Area is closed where we had planned to stay. Once we drove by, we realized that it's open. Oh well, pretty tight for parking anyway.

As we left so early, we decided to carry on to Winslow Arizona's Visitor Centre and overnight in their parking lot.

We decided to stop for lunch at Indian City, where signs well in advance advertised Frybread tacos.... yummm. They were delicious. This is coming down from 6000 to 5000 on the Arizona side of I-40. Beautiful Rock Formations.

Indian City, AZ

After a delicious lunch and a walk about inside the stores, we were back on the road to Winslow. When we arrived at the Visitor's Centre, the big gravel lot beside their building is where we intended to park.  However, it's closed off and digging is happening. Ray went in to talk to them and they gave us permission to park in their much smaller lot for tonight. Apparently the town is starting construction on a new library. We were all set up by 3pm and spent the afternoon relaxing. At 5pm Ray headed out for some pictures.

First Street Pathway Park, a walk from the Visitor's Centre to the Standing on a Corner Park.

World's smallest church.

We actually slept pretty good inspite of the trains going back and forth through the night. Our view out our front window. Not the best view lol

Yup close to those trains.

Ray's out the door at sunrise to get some pictures, but the sun went behind some clouds.

We were on the road by 8:00 am and moved the MH to the Walmart parking lot to free up space at the Visitor's Centre. Once we dropped Kastle off. we went "Standing on a Corner" to have breakfast at the Sipp Shoppe on the corner. Ray ate a delicious crepe and I a croissant stuffed with scrambled egg and bacon. They sure had great coffee. A few more pictures of "Standin' on the Corner".

She said "more than maybe" lol

The Sipp Shoppe

Once fed, we headed to Homolovi State Park to see if our site's empty or not, it is, so back to pick up the coach. When I checked in at the Visitor Centre, I was told we couldn't go to our site until 12 'oclock... very strict rules she said. Ray'd already backed the MH into our site, but we moved it to the RV spots at the Visitor Center. We then took off north west on Hwy 87 to the Little Painted Desert. All I can say is Wow Wow Wow!

The old stairs you used to be able to go down for access.

Here's a short video I did to show the expanse.

After spending an hour there with Ray taking pictures, we headed back, picked up the coach and picked up our $7 daypass for the ruins. Soon we were parked in our spot. After a quick setup and lunch, we headed back out first to the Homolovi II Ruin Site to walk around. We saw these burros on the way to the parking area. I'd been wondering where all the "poop" came from on the roads.

Unfortunately most of these ruins have been vandalized years ago, from treasure hunters, so mostly piles of rubble. There are tons of pottery sherds that are illegal to take. Seems a lot of people pull them out of the gravel and place them on rocks to display them.

There used to be 1000 to 1200 rooms like those above.

All these multi-coloured rocks were once walls.

Expansive views around the site.

After another hour of wandering around, Ray dropped me off at the MH to finish setting up and he headed to the Homolovi I Ruin Site.

So many sherds.

Back at the MH. We met Ann and JP from Toronto, Ontario and sat outside with them for an hour or so. They picked our brains of places to go and things to see in the direction they're heading.

Ann and JP

We were treated to a spectacular Sunset.

Tonight's dinner is prawns and pasta, in advance of Ray's birthday tomorrow. As we're driving tomorrow to Prescott, we will go out for dinner for his birthday.

Wednesday morning we woke to a beautiful sunrise. Clouds coming in for some much needed rain moving into Arizona tomorrow. They haven't had any rain since mid-September.