About 2 hours out of Flagstaff is the Petrified National Forest and the Painted Desert. Our drive took us along Historic Route 66 a good part of the way and past the Wigwam Hotel in Holbrook, AZ. The rooms are actual tepees and I had planned to take a picture of it on the way back from the park. Alas, not to be - as we made our way through the park, we exited on the Painted Desert end and we would have had to backtrack quite a bit. So, you only get a web link of it - it's very unique.
We spent about 3 hours at the park and what a fascinating place this is. Walking around the Petrified Forest, you see logs and pieces strewn about as if thrown there, but they occur there naturally. We watched a movie about how the trees became petrified and it all started about 225 million years ago when the area was tropical. It amazes me how they figure all this out. The downside is that they lose about a ton of petrified pieces each month due to people taking them - shame on them. Petrification has occurred in most of our states so it's not unique to Arizona, but I think this is the largest area. This area was also inhabited by quite a few different dinosaur species.
The drive is 28 miles through the park (actually two parks in one) beginning at the Petrified Forest and ending at the Painted Desert. There are many scenic areas and the landscape is incredible. Once you start entering the Painted Desert, you see how it got its name. The colors are layered as if they were painted.
Along the way we stopped at Newspaper Rock where these rocks had petroglyphs on them - they were hard to see after many, many years of exposure to wind and weather. Another stop was at the Tepees - these are rock formations in tepee shapes. Our last stop was at the Painted Desert Inn - quite interesting with its Indian murals and beautifully painted skylights.
As we left the park, we gassed up at the local Chevron and they had old style gas pumps - anyone old enough to remember these? At about 4:00 pm, we were on our way to Albuquerque - a 3 hour drive. The topography was constantly changing and totally fascinated us. As we crossed into New Mexico, we saw the welcome sign but going too fast to get a picture of it - I tried.
Tomorrow the car gets a bath - we zapped more bugs in NM than we have since we started out. We've also encountered rain along the way but not enough to clean the car off. Then we head to Santa Fe and to Sandia Peak - stay tuned and definitely check out our photo album for more pictures of the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert.
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