Madrid, NM to Winslow, AZ
We have spent the last few days debating on where we go next. Do we go north to Colorado? Or west to Arizona? Today we are heading west.
Our hope was to get to Flagstaff or Sedona but we weren’t sure what the day would bring so we just took our time heading out because at the end of the day, neither of us really wanted to leave our campsite here in Madrid.
We were hooked up and ready to go by 8 so we took the pups for one last morning canyon walk. J the owner had told us there was a turquoise vein somewhere on the property and if we found it we could keep some. I was on the look out! Mostly we found cool cacti, but Jason also found an arrowhead! Awesome.
Back to the car by 9 we texted the owner to say we had a lovely time and were heading on the road. This is certainly a place to remember!
I forgot to mention that Jason even helped me drive up the mountain the night before! I really wanted to try to do it and it was so much easier from the first time we went up! I’m going to miss this place.
We tried to find a dump station because we obviously used the toilet in the camper while we were in NM and we didn’t want to carry all that with us all the way to our next location. We kept swinging and missing though at 3 different locations. Arg!
While Jason drove, I tried to find a place to stay in AZ. More swinging and missing. We switched positions and Jason made some attempts but we just kept failing. We had one stop today and when we arrived at the Petrified Forest we still had no where to sleep that night.
Now it goes without saying that I am not the most flexible person. I get pretty anxious and quiet when I’m nervous or upset. After almost 13 years together Jason knows the signs and knew there wasn’t much we could do at this point besides keep trying. I wasn’t in the best frame of mind while being here so Jason took over with picture taking.
We arrived at the Petrified Forest and immediately you’re taken aback by the landscape. It changes constantly throughout the Painted Desert. We stopped at every outlook because they seriously all looked so different from each other. Jason went wild with pictures here.
There were petroglyphs in one section too. Another bucket list item checked off! We wondered about how important these were to societies that lived here and what information they gleaned from the pictures.
A raven was far too friendly searching for food so we took some pictures with him. He didn’t seem to mind. No feeding the wildlife though!
The last part of this National Park is the Petrified Forest. These are the oddest things you’ll ever see. They look just like wood, but they are as hard as stone. Some are crystallized and very psychedelic. One groovy Forest that’s for sure. Nature gave us more of a show as well with a lightning storm on both sides of us. Oh yeah, my anxiety was not doing well. No place to stay and having to set up in a storm? Come on.
Jason went into the gift shop at the end and I did one last search, closer to where we were in Arizona. Found one! Made the call. Phew! We had a site. We were staying at the Meteor Crater RV Park in Winslow, AZ. Such a fine sight to see!
We weren’t too far away and we were tired and on auto pilot. Follow the directions and go forward. We weren’t paying attention to the one thing we should’ve been….the gas tank.
Check in was by 7:00, which we were sort of rudely reminded of with a 6:15pm phone call seeing where we were. Arizona is on its own time zone essentially as they do not observe daylight savings time (smart!). So we gained an hour today and were still behind schedule. Whoops.
There was a restaurant in town I had wanted to stop at but time wouldn’t allow. I was having a day where I felt like nothing was going right and then I ask Jason “when do we need gas?” And his response was not what I wanted to hear.
You guys might remember that during our last road trip we did run out of gas. And we got to meet a very handsome police officer with the most beautiful eyes who brought Jason in the cruiser to go buy gas. Sigh. Memories. Well tonight we watched as the miles on the GPS and the miles on the gas tank sunk lower and lower. The next gas station was ahead of us right where the campsite was. The others would require us to turn around and there was no exit to do that at. We were at the whims of the gas tank once again.
To say Jason and the 4Runner haven’t gotten along might be an understatement but it’s definitely a story for another time. Today, we needed this car to get us to the gas station. We had 5 miles to go per the GPS and the tank said 1 mile left. We were screwed. Jason just kept going. We put good vibes out there. We needed it. And we…. MADE IT! Woo!!!
At 6:48pm we pulled in, on time and before the storm. Jason got gas while I got us checked in. Phew. That was way too damn close again. We had been filling up at 1/4 of a tank. We discussed later on that the 4Runner had earned a name- Winslow.
This campsite was pretty empty actually. She told us we could stay as many days as we’d like. There was a laundry and a shower and I was more than happy to just partake in those activities right away. But my parents always told me you can’t shower in a lightning storm, so I would have to wait til morning.
We talked about how today sucked with not having a plan and we can’t do that the day of again. We set a plan for tomorrow- we had 4 sites that we could stay at but none took reservations so it was first come first serve. We knew which ones we would hit in which order.
Because we had electricity, we could cook using the microwave. I originally heated up some rice to have with the Chile BBQ I made the night before but Jason wanted pasta. He started making it, cut up some onions for it, added some vegan sausage, and added what he thought was pizza sauce because we didn’t bring glass spaghetti sauce with us. I didn’t want to clean that if it broke. But this pizza sauce was in a hot sauce container….because it was actually pizza flavored hot sauce. And it was HOT.
I told Jason I could salvage it but he didn’t even want that attempt. He took some out and washed it completely, then ate it. Not to waste anything, I went to work. Cashew Queso? Yup. Follow Your Heart Parm? Yup. All the other cheeses I had in the fridge that I don’t remember? Yup yup yup!
The end result was still hot but actually not terrible. We’ve established that I have a high tolerance for heat in food so it was in a good range for me. Hot food on a hot night was harder actually.
We knew we could take our time in the morning with a noon check out so we just soaked the pans and went to sleep. I am so very very much looking forward to waking up and taking a long shower.
Vegan On the Rhode 