Hello friends and family! After almost exactly two months of talking about it and at basically the halfway point of my trip the urge to blog has finally fallen upon me (much like an ancient petrified tree, logged by one of the logger dinosaurs). That is because today was so unbelievably funny - in a way that in will absolutely impossible to communicate to anybody else via the medium of written language. Ah well, not really doing this for any of you anyways 🤷🏻‍♂️

The day opened with a rather great workday—the buffoonery began rapidly with me "shooting my shot" as it were. Last week, I hosted a paid work Q&A event with a famous author. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take (+ other assorted cliches), so afterwards I emailed him personally, asking if he would be interested in having a 1:1 with me to discuss what it actually looks like to be a writer (etc). The whole time I'm thinking to myself... "How funny would it be if MissionWired is what landed me a writing mentor". Alas, no response Friday, and none this weekend. So, a subtle bump this morning—responding to his thank you email he sent on Friday via my work email and... HUZZAH! We have a meeting coming up next month. I know, I know, hold your applause. A man can only be so cool. Traveling the country, chatting with NYT best selling authors... All in a day's work for yours truly 😎

Can you tell I'm in a silly mood? I digress.

After work, we made it to the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest visitor center, where we met a LOVELY ranger who told us about the site & sent us on our merry way (after a truly meh vegan chicken sandwich). At this point I must say, my expectations for the park were remarkably low.

The picture above is of Ashley and I squinting due to DESERT RAIN! There was a veritable sand + rain storm, it was quite intense! Look at these clouds:

So hairlike! The photo doesn't do it justice, it was quite stunning.

Then, I saw a massive hawk fly across the road and I needed to ID species #60 in my list so I pulled just into an "authorized vehicles only" road and dismounted to chase the hawk. Alas, the road was not straight and I am a somewhat law abiding citizen so I merely watched mournfully as the hawk winged into the distance. A veritable shame.

When I returned to the car, a park ranger promptly arrived and questioned our precarious parking spot. I assured him it was a brief pit stop (Ashley later complemented my suave demeanor) and off we went once more.

Our next stop was at an ancient puebloan building, approximately 1200-800 years old (people have lived in this area for millennia and in this exact spot for many centuries). While we were there, the desert rain opened into a rainbow!

Peep the Amazon Prime train framing the ancient ruins. Really makes you think...

Ashley was taking pictures of these petroglyphs and got an ADORABLE picture of this dad pointing out some others to his daughters by accident. We attempted to Airdrop the photo to who we thought was the grandma of the family, but she was like "oh, fun! no I'm good" and then speed walked away. It was only after the family came by that we realized that she was not in fact traveling with them, but for whatever reason did not deign to mention that to us. One of the more bizarre interactions I've had this trip. That said, Mom & Dad were really happy with the photo.

At this point, this park was a sleeper hit for me. Here's a picture of a painted desert "dune" in one of Rocko's mirrors.

This area is the Blue Mesa. Really, really beautiful. At this point, I decided that Petrified Forest is a sleeper hit for me, and ranked as one of my favorite parks I'd been to yet. So, so gorgeous, and what a wonderful, varied experience.

During our car rides, Ashley and I got truly, truly silly and sang some absolutely ridiculous renditions of ABBA. Always great that we can tap so easily back into our middle school selves.

This fine gentleman (yes, I'm gender essentialist) was a Rock Wren - 63rd unique species identified and the final of the day.

I don't have any sort of good ending here haha - not really sure how often I'll post in the future. I want to go & backdate posts for the rest of my trip, but I think this is enough for now!

The tone I took on this was a bit sillier/more character-y than I anticipated, but I quite enjoyed it. Ashley & I have been listening to Gone Girl and I suspect that has influenced me. Anyway - if you want to get notified when these posts come out, just hit that subscribe button in the bottom right hand corner. Otherwise, shoot me a message and I'll subscribe you myself! I also might send out subsequent messages about this - I'm not sure if I want this to reach a broad audience or not at this point.

Toodle-oo!
Harold Archibald