We took it easy this morning. We went to the Daily Pie Café intending to get breakfast, and they're only open on weekends in the winter. :( So, we went down the road a little to the Pie O Neer Café, and they're only open from Friday through Monday in the winter. :( J had been looking forward to getting some pie for breakfast, so we'll have to come back through when these places are open. Instead of supporting the local economy, we had breakfast in the RV, and J finished the Pepperidge Farm Coconut 3-Layer Cake — more cake in Pie Town. We got underway around 10:15.

I listened to an episode of Car Talk. We reached Arizona around 11:25. We got onto US-180/191 north of Springerville.

We went to the City Park in St. Johns around 12:20 to go online through our Verizon Wireless USB sticks, to have lunch, and to shower. I finished a blog entry, then researched photographic opportunities in Sedona. We got underway again at 2:30.

We reached the Crystal Forest Gift Shop Campground on the south side of Petrified Forest National Park at 3:20. This isn't your typical campground — you can stay for free if you don't use any hookups. :) There was one other RV when we arrived and a second pulled in later. We parked about as far away from the road as we could get, and the RV sank into the soft ground. There was no way we could get it up on some Lynx Levelers to level it, so we moved to another spot that didn't require as much leveling. We left in the Jeep around 4:15 and ...

Headed into Petrified Forest National Park. (You may view a map of Petrified Forest National Park in PDF format.) I was shocked that they have a gate and that it's only open now from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm because sunrise is around 7:15 am and sunset is around 5:58 — so much for good phogotraphy. :( (The gate hours change throughout the year, and are better for photography in December, but still not good.)

We went up to Newspaper Rock. The trail that used to lead down to the petroglyphs is closed, so the petroglyphs must be viewed from the top of the rim — terrible for photography. A ranger-like guy there said we should be south of Blue Mesa before 5:00 or they'd make us exit the park through the north gate. :( We quickly left and headed south.

We stopped to photograph an eroded hill with some petrified wood in the foreground, and the sun went behind a thick cloud bank shortly after I took the image to the left. If we weren't forced to leave the park, I would have loved to stick around until the sun reached the bottom of the cloud bank.

We returned to the RV around 5:35. I downloaded the few images I took this afternoon, downselected them, and processed one for the blog.

We had dinner around 6:35 of chicken w/BBQ sauce for J and chicken with mole sauce for me. The La Cosnteña Mole sauce was awesome! The chicken was much better this time around than in its first incarnation as white wine chicken on February 5, 2010.

After doing the dishes, I worked up a blog entry while having some Asbach Uralt. Then we watched an episode of Desperate Housewives on DVD.