Patti and I woke up in the tepee hotel early in the morning. Taking a shower in the oddly shaped shower was as weird as showering in a tepee can be. All I can say about it and the toilet is they worked. It’s good to do so we can say we did it, but the reality outweighs the uniqueness. When you stay in a historic place today, you’re not staying in its heyday. Its heyday was years ago. It’s now just a novelty. We wanted experiences on this Route 66 trip and we’re having them.
We went to breakfast at a local diner. Like most of the diners in these small towns, it was mostly empty. Most of the patrons are travelers like us. I had regular coffee with cream and fake sugar. The breakfast was my now regular vacation breakfast. Everyone else’s normal breakfast replaced my normal breakfast. There was a group of older people Patti didn’t care for. I only found out she didn’t like them when we saw them later in the day at the place we were going. When you think about it, the odds were with us we were going to the same place. There are only so many places to go in the middle of the desert.
Our next destination was the Petrified Forest National Park. It costs $25 to get in. The first stop is the Rainbow Forest Museum and visitor center. We didn’t know this was the first place to stop and passed it by. As we were driving, we realized we should have stopped there. I turned around, which was difficult on the narrow two-lane road. Inside the museum were ancient bones of dinosaurs and other ancient animals. There were examples of petrified trees inside and a trail behind the museum to see other petrified trees. We walked up the trail a little bit and realized it went much further than we wanted to walk, especially in the heavy winds that were happening. Patti took out a donkey rubber duck she got in Oatman and posed it on a petrified stump. Turning around, we walked back through the museum. I looked in the gift shop and saw a finger puppet squirrel I wanted as my own sidekick photo friend. Patti didn’t think I was serious about the squirrel and was walking out of the museum. I caught up with her and told her I was getting the squirrel. There was a fun exchange with the young cashier in which we both agreed that you’d have to be a monster not to like squirrels.
We went into another building nearby that had more merchandise. Patti bought things for other people and some things for us. Now that we had proof that we were here, it was time to drive down the road and see the desert in all its colorful petrified glory. Our first pictorial location was the Crystal Forest. Don’t worry. I will not describe the locations individually. Most were super windy, and we didn’t stay at them long. Patti didn’t even get out of the car in some places. I usually got out, took a few general photos, and then took a panoramic view of the landscape. One place we stopped was called Newspaper Rock. The rock had images that told several stories. They had telescopes set up to see them way down in the valley.
A stop that didn’t have any other people at it was an old truck that was just the shell. You could walk up to the truck and pretend you were driving it. There was also a stone bench with Route 66 etched into it with what looked like the fender of a car in the back. We got a picture of our donkey and squirrel sidekicks on it. Patti had to hold the squirrel’s tail, so it didn’t blow away. We finally reached the second to last location on our petrified journey. It was a building. I hoped there was a restroom inside. There were several displays of the land and the people who inhabited it, but no restrooms. We reached the Painted Desert Visitor Center, which had a restroom. I took pictures of the urinals because they had pictures on the wall. Patti said they had the same thing in the women’s restroom.
We made our way back to the highway and stopped at a Crackle Barrel to eat. A “magical” broom greeted us that was sweeping the floor. I think it was a Roomba with a broom on it. I was going to have fried chicken because … well, vacation. Mistaking the chicken-fried chicken for fried chicken, I ordered it. When I got it, I realized it had gravy on top of it like on chicken-fried steak. I never ordered steak, so I didn’t realize what it was. I really wanted the cornbread, so I mentioned it to the server. She sounded annoyed and said something like, “I’ll get to that later. What sides do you want?” An entire conversation took place in my head before I answered her. I felt like my first-grade teacher just chastised me. Patti can tell you I said nothing for several seconds. At one point, I pictured getting up from the table and telling Patti we weren’t eating here. Eventually, I remembered what sides I wanted and said them. No other incident happened with the server, but I felt shaken the rest of the meal.
We left the Crackle Barrel at about 7:30 pm. This becomes important to know because we didn’t realize how far we were to our next hotel. Because of this and the fact that our next destination was an hour ahead of the time zone we were in, we didn’t get to the hotel until 12:30 am. It was almost perfect for our next location, which was Roswell, New Mexico. Patti went inside the hotel and checked us in. She came out, gave me a key for the room, and we put all our stuff on a baggage carrier. She took it inside and I parked the car. As I parked, I saw a cat on the side of the parking lot. I took my phone from my pocket and took a picture of it so I could show Patti. She was by the elevator to go up to our room on the third floor. At the door of the room, I realized I didn’t have my key for the room. I went down to the first floor and checked around the car. The key was sitting right beside it. When I took the phone out to take a picture of the cat, I also took the key out and dropped it by the car door. I set up a show for Patti to “watch” on the TV and we went to sleep.
Thoughts from Life 
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