Nico Nico in Coconino!

Okay, we’re going to put the Talking Heads song titles away for a post here, because we enjoyed the word play around Nico and our current location. Credit to Kristen for coming up with the post title. I was trying to think of a way to change up “Copa Cabana” to “Coconino”, but to no avail.

So I kind of already jumped the gun but if you’re asking “where’s Nico?”, the answer is:

Coconino National Forest!

Yes, dear reader, since we last spoke, our little party has moved on to Arizona. It started out with a bit of adventure – as we were just a bit past the state line on our way to Petrified Forest National Park, we blew a tire on the trailer as we headed down Interstate 40. It felt a bit sketchy to be on the side of the interstate as the trailer swayed as semi trucks passed us while we pulled the tire and put on a spare, but it went really well and we both felt good about learning how to handle the situation. I didn’t take a picture of the busted tire, but it was totally shredded!

Anyway, an hour or so later, we arrived at a KOA in Holbrook, Arizona where we stayed for one night while we got a replacement tire on the wheel, did our laundry, and got our groceries. The next morning, we headed out to some open land to boondock as we spent two days exploring Petrified Forest National Park. To give you a sense of how much space we had to ourselves where we boondocked:

Anyway, on to Petrified Forest:

One very cool thing about Petrified Forest is that, unlike most National Parks, they are extremely pet friendly. A lot of folks may find this surprising, but unlike most National Forests, National Monuments, National Seashores, National Refuges, etc., the National Parks often don’t allow dogs on the trails. It’s kind of a pet peeve of mine – several will allow horses on the trails, but not dogs, and I guarantee dog owners are a lot better about cleaning up after their animal that horse owners are!

But anyway, Petrified Forest not only allows dogs on all trails, but they’ll even recognize your pooch as an official “Bark Ranger”. Nico was quite excited to earn this honored distinction (check out that snazzy badge he’s sporting!).

Petrified Forest isn’t a huge park, and really could be easily visited in a day, but I’m really glad we spent a bit more time there. The main highlight of the park is, as you may have guessed, a TON of petrified wood to see. It really is spectacular, and there are several great trails to see the wood. Our favorite of these trails by far for seeing the petrified wood was near the south Visitor’s Center – the Long Logs and Agate House loop trail. But beyond the petrified wood, there’s also some great Pueblo ruins (a short walk at the Puerco Pueblo Trail is very worthwhile) and many petroglyphs – especially at a pullover called Newspaper Rock. The other aspect of the park that I’d point out is the painted desert area, highlighted on a trail called the Blue Mesa Trail.

We did one other trail that I don’t necessarily recommend – the Onyx Bridge Trail hike. It starts out quite nicely as you hike down into a canyon with some spectacular views, but once you’re at the bottom, you may be better off just hiking right back up, as the rest of the trail wasn’t very interesting and was not too well marked. But one thing we saw on that trail is that Nico, who can climb over any obstacle and doesn’t seem to mind steep climbs or altitude, is somewhat prone to overheating in some conditions. We saw this last summer too on one hike – the Chimney Rock trail at Ghost Ranch. The poor guy is just so close to the ground that when the ground is well over 100 degrees, it really heats up his body. That happened for the first time this trip as we did the areas at the bottom of the canyon on the Onyx Bridge Trail. Nico was fine, but we ended up carrying him for a decent stretch of the trail to give him a break.

We carry three liters of water with us as we hike, and a small bowl to put water into for Nico, and we often rub water on his body or drench a handkerchief in water and put it on him to help him regulate his temperature. That sometimes leaves him looking a bit like Peter O’Toole from Lawrence of Arabia:

After a few days at Petrified Forest, we headed over to Coconino, where we’ve been the past few days. The hikes here are beautiful. We have a new favorite hike of the trip, after doing the Oak Creek Trail. The trail is about a six and a half mile out-and-back trail that involves a bunch of creek crossings with spectacular views of the canyon walls around you, but when you hit the far point of the trail, you can continue down the creek and I highly recommend that you do! The water is a bit cold at first, and after the first bend, you’ll get to a point where the water is two or three feet high, but once you push past that short run, you’ll have a beautiful hike with very few other people running up along the water. We ended up making just over a nine mile trip out of the excursion, and with all the stream crossings and the shade, Nico absolutely loved it and didn’t overheat at all.

We also really enjoyed a hike in the area to the Seven Sacred Pools via the Cibola Pass. I will say, the “sacred pools” could probably be more accurately named the seven puddles, but the trail was really lovely. We hit a few other trails, including Cathedral Rock and the Hog Wash Loop, but the Oak Creek and Seven Sacred Pools trails were definitely our favorites. Definitely a beautiful part of the world!