Road Trip Mysteries : The Arizona Adventure

A mystery, a road trip, and over 55 real Arizona facts, all in one epic adventure story! A lost package. A seventy-two-year-old mystery. A race against time before the bulldozers erase the last clue forever. Stan Silverman never asked to solve mysteries. But when his parents buy a used RV, launch a travel vlog, and pull him out of school for a year-long road trip of "learning in real life," mysteries have a way of finding him anyway. At an old Route 66 gas station, Stan discovers a package that slipped behind a soda machine in 1954. Inside are three strange, beautiful pieces of petrified wood and a letter begging whoever finds them to return them to the Petrified Forest before the bad luck gets even worse. With bulldozers closing in, Stan and his family race across northern Arizona, following clues along historic Route 66, from the Painted Desert, Petrified Forest National Park, Meteor Crater, the famous corner in Winslow, the pines of Flagstaff, and finally the edge of the Grand Canyon itself. Every fact in the story is true, and they're all collected in Stan's Fact Notes at the back of the book, making this a perfect companion for state studies units. Teachers and homeschool families love using the Fact Notes for read-alouds, fact scavenger hunts, and Arizona research projects. Each Road Trip Mystery follows one wild adventure across part of the state, because no single road trip can see it all. Perfect for readers ages 7–12 who love mysteries, travel, and books that make learning feel like an adventure.