Day 3 started much the same as Day 2, but with less stress than Day 1.
We stayed in Tucomcari, NM - much futher than planned- on night three. By mutual agreement, we decided that the marathon pace would give way to more sight-seeing these later days and our first stop of the day was Albuquerque, NM. We drove down the route 66 into town (construction on I-40) and drove through a poor hispanic district, a trendy town by the University of New Mexico, and finally Old town. Old town is a quiet green square surrounded by tourism and arts. Many of the shops are junk shops, but the feeling of the town is more than that. All of the other shops are local artists selling their wares. I really enjoyed Albuquerque and the 1 hour we alloted to this stopover became 2 hours. We saw the church of San Felipe de Neri and I bought a pretty cross at their gift shop.
To be honest, it reminded me of my Zorro movies. My opinion may be skewed, but I liked Albuquerque, NM.
Our next two stops were to be Petrified Forrest, AZ and Meteorite, AZ with possibly a sunset visit to the Grand Canyon.
Petrified Forrest stopped us in our tracks and completely ruined the itinerary. We estimated 30 minutes to see a bunch of petrified wood, but ended up spending almost 3 hours in the park. It was a beautiful drive- and we ended up doing a small hike around the Crystal forrest as well as spending quite some time taking pictures of both landscape and still life of the wood. I'm not sure what held our interest for so long, but we were held and the rest of the day didn't happen.
We arrived in Williams, AZ far after sunset and well into the night. It was 11 pm before we were in bed. We decided that life is short, and tomorrow we would see the sunrise over the Grand Canyon-despite the hour drive to the rim and the lateness of the hour. We set the alarm for 4 am.
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