Camp Verde, AZ to Holbrook, AZ

Thursday, after a week of exploring around the Camp Verde area, we departed to gradually start our way back North and East. 

As we neared Flagstaff, the highest peak in Arizona, Humphrey’s Peak, elevation 12633, dominated the vista, offset by a forest of green ponderosa pines, with some remnants of snow.

 

 

 

Having had a white-tail deer total my car before, I can only imagine the damage an elk could cause!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once again, we were surprised by what a difference an hour’s drive can make in the landscape of the Southwest.

Now, while we are in these long expanses of openness, let me mention that, yes, dear Reader,  Ken and I do eat out a lot.  So long as we are blessed with a budget that can handle it, trying out the local restaurants is one of our favorite parts of travelling.  That said, one of the reasons we really like having a motorhome is that I have access to the kitchen while Ken is driving.

 

 

  And yes, eating out so much is not great on the waistline either so I’m trying to focus on low carb when not in restaurants.  This was the chef salad I organized on our road-trip.  Just have to be really careful with that big chopping knife while the rig is moving!

 

 

 

 

There was some discussion about whether we wanted to do the Petrified Forest in the RV and then just continue on down the road.  There were two reasons for this. One, we didn’t find an RV park that sounded great in the area, and, two, it didn’t seem like there was much to see and do in the area but the drive through the Petrified Forest.

As it turns out, we are glad we did make an overnight stop at the Root 66 RV Park just off I-40 between Holbrook and the Petrified Forest entrance.  While this is a pretty dilapidated mess of buildings with the sites being nothing more than gravel parking lot with hookups, it served our purpose.  The owners were extremely nice and with Passport America, the $18 for 50 amp full hookup service was well worth it.

After a quick setup and dog walk, Ken and I ventured in to the town of Holbrook.

  This is a neat, quirky little town that was in its hey-day when Route 66 was heavily travelled. 

The sign below is the largest map of Route 66 in the world.

 

 

Because of the link between dinosaurs and the Triassic period that resulted in the Petrified Forest, there are all these dinosaur statues everywhere you look, along with endless numbers of Rock Shops where you can get your own personal piece of petrified wood.  If that’s your thing, you’d best stop at one of these shops that get their rocks outside of the national park since if you pick up a rock in the park you go to jail.

I was really excited that we happened upon this piece of Route 66 folklore, the famous Wigwam Motel.  It’s really cool how they scatter the old vintage automobiles around the lot.

For Oprah fans, you may recall that during Oprah and Gayle’s Roadtrip, they spent the night in Wigwam #1 here, the farthest to the right.

Then, guess what…time to eat!!  Once again, we decided to depend on TripAdvisor and Urbanspoon to find the best place to get a ‘taste’ of Holbrook.

Based on our luck with ‘hole in the walls’, our pick was Joe and Aggie’s, a small family restaurant now in its third generation.

 

 

They are famous here for their green chili so that what my choice.

 

 

 

Ken went with the combination platter with both green and red sauce.

We decided at this point that this place might just squeak to the top as our favorite Mexican restaurant.  While the chips and salsa, which they bring to the table immediately, were not our favorite, chips a bit hard and salsa a little too hot for Ken’s taste, the green chili was awesome and the rest of the food, hand-made and as good as we’d had anywhere.  The added touch of bringing warm sopapillas with honey to the table with the entrees, is a definite plus.

The other plus was our waiter, Chris.  He was talkative, fun, attentive and helpful, even though he had to split his time between us and a group of dads who’d brought in a tribe of 10 rambunctious little boys.

Now what we didn’t picture here is the dessert and that is what put this restaurant to the top of our Mexican favorites.  On the restaurant website they offered with coupon a free apple burrito dessert with purchase of 2 entrees.   Even though we didn’t print the coupon, I showed it to Chris from my Droid and he was more than happy to give us the freebie and even added a generous scoop of ice cream.  Ken and I  didn’t think to take pictures because we were two busy fighting over every delicious morsel.   The owner came by the table  and told us that these dessert burritos where a specialty made from scratch by his sister.

Once again, we stopped in to a town we didn’t know much about and ended up having a really great time!

Hugs, C