Petrified Forest and Painted Desert

Yesterday we doubled back about 20 miles to hit the Petrified Forest National Park.  There's a 28 miles loop road through the park with numerous turnouts and stopping points and the trip was well worth the 4 hours or so that we spent traversing it.  I shot lots of pics and it even has me thinking about trying my hand at painting when we get back to Michigan.  I've always admired people who can create art, and I've watched Bob Ross enough times...he makes it look so easy, right?
I've also rediscovered my love of Southwestern architecture.  The stuccoed buildings with rounded corners and matching privacy walls in place of fences are pretty cool.  The weird thing is seeing immaculately kept places right next door to other places that are on the verge of falling down and whose properties are covered with years worth of accumulated junk.  Evidently there are no blight laws here or they aren't enforced very uniformly.
We stopped for a photo op in Winslow, AZ, where a girl in a flatbed Ford slowed down to take a look at me...evidently they don't do eye tests here for driver's licenses either!  Seriously, the town from the Eagles song made a big deal of this, and it draws a lot of people in.  Check out the mural on the building, including the couple in the window and the bird on the window ledge-both nice touches to add to the "reflection" of the truck in the window.   If only 10-20% of the tourists who stop like we did spend money there, it's got to be a huge windfall for the town.  Obviously not every town gets mentioned in a hit song, but these folks really figured out how to capitalize on it!

It's likely that we'll hit the California border today, but a lot of our route is going to be 2 lane roads again, so we'll see how it goes.  And there's always photo ops and other attractions to stop and check out, so this whole unplanned, stop wherever we feel like it means of travel is working out pretty well.  I'm not missing the goal oriented road warrior mentality at all!  I hope you like the pics,