We took a drive through the country south of the Grand Canyon. Whilst the canyon looks like a desert, the land surrounding it is not, being forested in places with pines. We drove through areas covered in trees some showing their autumn colours. We were aiming for an unsealed road to take us east across to another highway. Ken was keeping an eye on the odometer, and Rob was looking for a sign, and we were all looking at a map low on details. We eventually came across a road that looked like it went roughly east, and headed off road. The compass in our car showed we were not heading in the direction the map showed, but Ken, with a keen eye for adventure, took us along the track. At one point we pulled out Jo's laptop computer to look at a map program, and it didn't really help. So Ken headed along what we all decided was the most likely track, and we came across another vehicle coming in the opposite direction, the occupants of which were very encouraging and said we were on the right track. Well, later that day we found a better map in the car (which we then used nearly exclusively) which showed we had taken the wrong, and considerably longer route, but it had been fun anyhow.

Once on the highway again, we visited the Sunset Crater National Monument, where we stopped for lunch. None of us had seen such interesting geological formations before. Sunset Crater Volcano erupted around 1064AD, and over the next thirty or so years built up a cinder cone seen in the photograph.

Sometime around 1150AD lava flowed from the base of the volcano and when cooled formed amazing shapes which looked like they only cooled yesterday. It reminded us of some amazing crushed and distorted road works - the cooled lava looking like road asphalt.

After lunch we went for a walk around the lava flow and were intruiged by the plants growing in some places and not in others, and the huge area the lava covered. Sunset Crater gets its name from the redish colour of the cinders, which are said to look like a sunset.

We drove a couple of hours east to the Petrified Forest National Park. We didn't realise that they closed the park at 5pm, and arrived around 4.30pm. We were told that at 5pm we should get in our cars and drive to the nearest exit. Well, we started through the park, and saw the area known as the Painted Desert, due to the amazing colours in the hills. The rock in the hills was different colours at different levels, striped, and were purple, through to green. The setting sun seemed to set off some of the colours.

We then headed into the centre of the park to see some Native American building ruins which were intruiging - a building or group of buildings with over 100 rooms, and built before 1400AD.

We also stopped to see Newspaper Rock, which was covered in pictographs - just heaps of them. Fortunately there were binoculars mounted on the viewing platform as the rocks were a long way from the platform.

Time ran out to see the Petrified Forest park of the park - the only part we saw was the Agate Bridge, which is a petrified tree from which the ground had eroded under, leaving it suspended as a bridge. Unfortunately it has had to be supported with a concrete beam underneath.

As we left the park as the sun was setting, and the colours in the desert were amazing!