6 AM. Winslow, AZ. It’s dark. We exit the train. We are seemingly the only ones around so we start walking to the fairly famous hotel connected to the train station, called La Posada, where we are to meet our fellow travelers and our tour director, Dino Auger. Sure enough, out of the darkness Dino approaches us and and with a definite French accent, introduces himself and takes our luggage into the hotel where we will have breakfast before boarding our bus for the next leg of the trip. We meet several more travelers and learn that there will only be 10 of us on this trip ( 4 people had to cancel at last minute), a pleasant surprise. Also, the president of Uncommon Journeys, Christopher Kyte, and a colleague were also joining us.

After a leisurely complimentary breakfast we were escorted to a brand new 40 passenger bus (driven by what turned out to be, a marvelous driver, Joe) that would be our transportation for the remainder of the trip.. So in total there were only 14 people on the bus; everyone could have a row (or two) for themselves! Nice. The seats were comfortable with foot rests, and there were power outlets at each seat for our electronics. Surprisingly although there was no on-board wireless we were able to get fairly strong cellular signals most of the time.

Our destination for the day was Williams , AZ which was only 91 miles away but  we would be making a series of stops to see some of the sights as we made our way. The first stop was at the Petrified Forest National Park. During the Triassic Period (225 million years ago) this area was hot, humid and populated with prehistoric rain forests. Trees growing  the area ended up buried in sediment where they soaked up silica from volcanic ash and in time turned into quartz. Those trees, turned into stone,  is what we see today. An amazing sight was seeing what appeared to be perfectly sawn sections of trees that, in reality were not sectioned by sawing, but fractured perfectly over time into the sections now laying in the area.

Adjacent to Petrified Forest is an area called “Painted Desert” consisting of rocks and mesas that look like someone had painted them. Their color actually comes from minerals deposited over time. It does make for some dramatic pictures. It was a bit chilly and windy so our visit was short!

Having the president of Uncommon Journals traveling with us resulted in some unexpected perks like stopping at a local attraction called meteor crater. This crater was formed by a meteor landing here about 50,000 years ago. The actual meteor is estimated to have been about 150 ft in diameter, but its impact created a crater that is almost a mile in diameter and 550 feet deep. Its energy is estimated to have been 150 times greater than an atomic bomb. We watched a video about the crater and viewed the immense hole in the ground. Oh, to have a time machine to go back in time to see what happened when it hit.

Lunch, compliments of the president, was at a local Mexican restaurant. Frankly I was a bit disappointed, having expected it to be excellent because of where we were. Our local Washington Mexican restaurants offer better fare.

We arrived late in the afternoon to our stop for the night in Williams, AZ where tomorrow we will be catching a famous train that takes people to the rim of the Grand Canyon.