Friday, 3rd May - Kayenta to Flagstaff

With 1,000 miles already under our belt we clocked up another couple of hundred today travelling south back to Route 66. We enjoyed three attractions along the way.

Firstly we dropped in at the Tuba City Dinosaur Track Site. An incongruous looking pull-in off the main highway but well worth it as our guide, Joe, showed us round the fossilised dinosaur tracks and remains including eggs (all believed to have been victims of the huge Meteor strike and resulting dust cloud that hit Arizona 70 odd miles south - a site we will visit tomorrow).

After lunch at the Cameron Trading Post we moved on to the Sunset Crater that is a huge volcanic field created after an eruption approximately 1,000 years ago. It has left a huge crater, or perhaps more accurately cinder cone and impressively chunky lava flows.

Interestingly, all the US astronauts that walked on the Moon trained for their missions here as it was considered to be as close as they could get to conditions on the surface of the Moon.

Having completed the 18 mile drive through Sunset Crater National Park we visited the adjacent Wupatki National Monument and the ruins of Native American dwellings within.

There is also a blow hole here where air rushes in or out of a huge network of underground fissures spreading over 24 miles.

Our overnight accommodation, the Best Western Pony Soldier Inn and Suites on Route 66, was less than a mile from the local Texas Roadhouse restaurant. Steak for dinner!! 

We lost another hour today (leaving us 8 hours behind the UK) as we left behind the vast Navajo reservation and continued west.