Continental Divide and West

Hello to all of you....

We had another busy day yesterday! Left Albuquerque this morning and drove west through miles and miles and miles of nothing but desert. It's beautiful, but there was very little usable land or birds or animals The ranches out here have to have lots of acreage to support their cattle and sheep.

This picture of the Continental Divide states that rain falling to the west of the sign drains to the Pacific Ocean and rain falling to the east of the sign drains to the Atlantic Ocean.

The picture above left is the Painted Desert. The picture above right and below are the Petrified Forest. The petrified wood was formed 225 million years ago during the age of the dinosaurs. They are still finding fossils many creatures. It was fascinating to see the logs and pieces of logs strewn about the desert looking just like they must have when they fell.

We saw lots of trains. Really long trains. One of them had 5 engines and I counted 125 double decker cars. I might have missed some.

Here's a math problem: Neal was driving at 70mph going west and a train was going east. Neal set his odometer and we travelled 1 mile before we got to the end of the train. How many train cars do you think there were??

When we got about to Flagstaff we began to see trees again and now we are in Williams AZ which is about 30 miles from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

On Sunday we have reservations to ride in the Observation Dome of the train that travels into the Canyon.

Later.....