Brown Family Vacation - Day 18 and 19

From Petrified ForestPainted Desert

Day 18

Holbrook, AZ to Amarillo, TX

A nice little breakfast started out our day and we made our way first to this large store outside of Petrified Forest National Park called Jim Gray’s Petrified Wood Co.  Great store that gave you a ½ pound of free petrified wood.  I bought a couple of samples to show my students but the store had a wonderful variety of wood and gemstones to see. 

We mainly just drove through the Petrified Forest and also made our way through the Painted Desert which you really have to in order to get back onto the Interstate.  It was all interesting enough with some crazy landscapes.  I would have like to get out and walk around a little, but it was just a drive through sort of thing.

From here on out, it will be driving time.  We probably won’t stop to see too much.  We have to be back by the 27^th so we can clean up the van and get it back by the 28^th.

We ate lunch in Sky City, NM at a McDonald’s.  Sky City has a city on top of a mesa that is the oldest continuously occupied city in North America, or so they say.  We didn’t stop to see it though and moved on to Amarillo, TX for the night where we stayed at a Day’s Inn.  We ate dinner at Outback Steakhouse to celebrate Samantha’s 15^th birthday.

Day 19

Amarillo, TX to Ft. Smith, AK

Driving day again today.  We left Amarillo and drove through the panhandle of Texas and into Oklahoma. We were around Oklahoma City for lunch and drove past the bomb site memorial.  It was threatening rain and parking and driving downtown was a disaster, so we didn’t stop and fully explore. 

We ate lunch out of the box and moved down the road finally stopping at Ft. Smith, Arkansas.  We stayed a wonderful hotel called the Guesthouse Inn and ate a mediocre dinner at TGIFridays.