Thursday morning we woke up bright eye-ed and bushy tailed. After having a nice breakfast at the motel's restaurant "Junction Restaurant" we headed to Canyon de Chelly. First on the itinerary was to hike down to the base of the canyon via the White House Ruins trail. It was a beautiful hike that took us along ledges, stairs carved in the cliff face, through a couple of tunnels and by the occasional cave or crevice in the canyon wall. Upon reaching the bottom of the canyon, the trail takes you along the edge of a dry stream bed until you come upon an impressive view of the "White House" pueblo. At the bottom of the canyon there were a couple of people selling their arts and crafts. Additionally some of the land at the base of the canyon is still occupied by the Navajo people. We walked by a farm and a hogan or two at the base. In the shadows of this canyon you occasionally could see some snow that was impervious to the suns rays. Despite the snow, we had a great day for the hike, and we were probably over dressed. I'm certain that it was probably 70 degrees Fahrenheit at a minimum. 
The above picture is Spider Rock. The Navajo legend says that the "Spider Woman" lives atop the rock where she keeps the bones of her victims. I think I'd rather encounter the web slinger in the red tights.
Looking up a canyon wall from part way down the White House Ruin trail.
If I had a day that I could give you
After bidding Canyon de Chelly goodbye, we had another long haul on the road. Before embarking on our journey I had the need for something to hold me over. We stopped at Burger King, and I split a BK slider meal with Kate. It seemed like a really good idea at the time, 6 tiny burgers and fries accompanied by a colossal soda. Where can you go wrong... am right? Well, lets just say the burgers were even well done by Burger King standards, and who ever made them decided to pile two burgers on one of the rows of two, leaving two roles with no meat and only condiments. The fries were tasty however, and regardless, it still filled us up for under 7 dollars, so how can I really complain? 
Before we knew it we came to the turn off for the Petrified Forest National Park. Upon our arrival Kate was immediately pouring over some information we got from the visitor's center. We only had a few hours to spend there before the park closed, and we were trying to maximize our time. At one of the first stops we made in Petrified Forest National Park was at the Puerco Pueblo Trail where there were some pueblo ruins as well as quite a bit of drawings on rocks. My favorite was the one of the giant bird that appears to be holding a person in its mouth. I have no idea of the significance, and it probably represents something very sacred to the ancient people, but I can't help but see some weird humor in it. 
More drawings can be seen below on "Newspaper Rock" which apparently had the highest concentration of drawings of any place in the park. Kate and I were glad to have our binoculars to see things in better detail. A guide was at this stop of to help the tourists locate drawings and provide information and answers to questions.
Some of our first Petrified log sitings in this valley.
These next few pictures are along the Crystal forest trail. We were literally running through this at times because the sun was beginning to set, and there was more that we wanted to see. We decided to cut this one short and head back to the car so we could get in a couple more attractions.
Unfortunately I don't have pictures of our last trail. Kate did take several however and I'll try and post some of the things that I missed along this trip in an ad on post at the end as soon as I get copies of the photos. We were really running short on the last trail, and I was concerned we would raise the Ranger's ire, but Kate kept insisting that we go on. We hiked out to the Agate house, which was spectacular to behold in the setting sun. It is a reconstructed pueblo made out of petrified wood.
After checking this out we raced back to a Visitor's center near by that has the "Giant Logs" trail out back of it. A large piece of petrified wood called "Old Faithful" can be seen there.
I kept commenting to Kate about the sweet smell in the air. It kind of reminded me of pipe tobacco. I think there was a forest or field fire off in the distance, and initially I thought this had to be the culprit.
When we left the park we came upon several Antelope in the road. Again, Kate got pictures of these.
Lastly, just past the exit of the park was a tacky pair of tourist trap stores, one on either side of the road like fast food rest stops on a highway. Rt. 66 style classics. I'm not sure this is the exact place, but "Stewarts" looks a lot like these locations, complete with dinosaurs as advertised. They were filled with various pieces of petrified wood and minerals for sale, alongside the usual silly tourist items. Kate went in and bought herself a couple of small souvenir petrified wood rocks. Later I realized that it was the petrified wood itself that has the sweet smell I mentioned earlier.
From here we headed into Holbrook where we had a room booked at a Days Inn. It was a great motel, complete with pool and spa which we took advantage of. Holbrook is a great town. It has that vintage 1950s/60s Americana nostalgia feel. Store fronts, old theaters, and pawn shops with neon lites, a motel where the cabins are shaped like tepees, and a scattering of greasy spoon diners. We ate at Joe and Aggie's cafe which I had actually researched ahead of time. This was probably one of my favorite places to eat during the trip. A tacky official Rt. 66 dive with orange vinyl seats and salsa in an old-school ketchup bottle on each table. The food was delicious, I had some tacos with the region's famous "green chili" on top. Afterwards Kate and I hit up a very old fashion Dairy Queen and split an ice cream. Another great day in the southwest came to pass.
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