It was still raining lightly when we left Tucumcari.
We stopped in Albuquerque for lunch (charger was in an Applebee's parking lot) and discussed our plan for the day. Originally I'd planned on stopping in Holbrook, which is a small town just across the border to Arizona that has a charger. The problem was it is basically just a truck stop, there were no AirBnbs there and we'd have to stay in a motel. So we decided to push a bit harder and continue an extra 95 miles to Flagstaff, Arizona where we could get a hotel room with a kitchenette.
We crossed the rest of New Mexico without incident. I kept thinking we'd get past the edge of the storm clouds, but we never did, in fact it seemed to get more threatening, although other than a few scattered drops it didn't rain after the morning.
We crossed over the border to Arizona and soon came to one of the places I've been looking forward to the entire trip: the Petrified Forest National Park.
We saw a few other people, but for the most part it was like we had the park to ourselves. Awesome giant desert vistas dotted with mesas.
Other than the mesas there is a petrified forest, which was really cool. It is from 230 million years ago, the trees fell over and were buried by sand and mud from a river, therefore they didn't rot. Over the millennia silica penetrated the wood and eventually they became solid quartz. Then the river washed away the mud and exposed the rock trees.
After the park, we arrived at Holbrook and charged up before continuing to Flagstaff. Normally we've avoided driving at night because it's more stressful and you can't see any scenery, but this time we did, and we were lucky because we drove right into a great sunset as the clouds finally started to break.
-David
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