Day 5: Contaminated NJ Gravel Piles or the Painted Desert?

We started out our drive from Cameron to Monument Valley early the next morning and a few things occurred to us during our trip on the way there.

1) A large majority of the roads in Arizona are single lane with very few solid yellow lines separating each lane. While you're driving, there's a good chance that any type of car will pass you at anytime no matter if there's a decent line of sight or not. There's no speed limit for large sections of road, so if you're not going at least 85, you're guaranteed to get passed by another car or truck.

2) During this section of the trip, I would be driving (and not able to write) and I would tell my wife "Write that down" (for the blog). The first time I said this to her she immediately said "No" and it pretty much became a religious quote on our trip. You had to be there. There's a good chance that my loyal readers are missing out on "That's Gold Jerry!" thoughts because my wife refused to be my secretary on the trip.

3) The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest are not as impressive as you might think. When I was young, we learned about both locations. Of course, I didn't retained any of either lesson, but I remember that I always wanted to go there. So I was excited when we got the chance. Needless to say, my excitement didn't last very long.

I'll get to the Pertified Forest in a future blog, but we definitely were not impressed like we thought we would be with the Painted Desert. Depending on the time of day that you pass through the desert, you are likely to have either a great experience or sucky one. We passed through part of the Painted Desert on our Day 4 trek near sunset and it was decent. I neglected to mention in the last blog that this trek took place after the 6 mile Grand Canyon hike when we decided to drive 25 miles to eat at the nearest McDonalds in TUBA CITY. My wife loves that city.

On Day 5 when we passed through a large part of the Painted Desert we just thought it was blah. It looked to me like they were just big gravel piles that could be confused by some people as gravel piles that you see while driving up the NJ Turnpike.

After a long trip of seeing nothing but nothing, we reached Monument Valley. We stopped for a Oscar Meyer Processed Bologna and Provolone sandwich - Only the best for me and my wife - and then made our way to a horse stable on the grounds that we heard about from my wife's parents.

When we arrived, we were greeted - in a mumbling fashion - by a Navajo indian boy who took care of the horses at the stables. We stood there for 10 minutes before the kid told us that the horses had to finish eating before we took them out with a guide. When my wife asked him what he did all day at the stable, his response was "I just fucking sit here and watch them eat."


After the horses were done fucking eating, other people who owned the stable showed up and we got the opportunity to go on a horse ride throughout the park with an authentic Navajo Indian tour guide; who was wearing an Emmitt Smith Arizona Cardinals Jersey. The tour was definitely exciting as we got to ride beginner horses who pretty much followed all of our commands. We got to trot and gallop on the horses and it was an excellent experience. When we got off the horses though, it was a different experience altogether. I'll leave it at that....


Overall, the horse ride through Monument Valley was definitely a Top 3 Experience on our trip and I'm happy that we were able to experience it.


Tune in tomorrow (or whenever I get the chance to write the next blog...get off my back already loyal readers) for the chance to experience what's it's like to actually stand on the corner of Winslow, Arizona.