Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park are in northern Arizona and a great place to visit when traveling between Canyon de Chelly and Winslow. Interstate 40 and the old Route 66 run through the area. Winslow, Arizona and the Meteor Crater are also a must see.
Painted Desert
Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park were established as a National Monument in 1906 and then as a National Park in 1962.
At an elevation of 5,436 feet, it is part of the Colorado Plateau and has a semi desert shrub grassland. There were pronghorn grazing.
It was October so not much was blooming, but there were a few yellow flowers.
Painted Desert or the Arizona Badlands are stunning in themselves. There are plenty of trails to get up close to them.
Cake layers of claystone, siltstone and mudstone with deposits of iron, aluminum, hematite and manganese give the hills its unique banding and color.
The area is beautiful.
Petrified forest is composed of fossilized logs that fell approximately 225 million years ago.
Originally the region was near the equator, but over time, the land mass migrated north.
The logs soaked up ground water and silica in addition to other minerals to replace the wood with quartz in a multitude of colors.
It is also called the “Crystal Forest”. It is truly remarkable to see so many fossilized trees. Too often we have hiked in other parks to see a rock that was called a petrified rock, but just looked like a rock.
Many of these look just like tree trunks but are actually solid rock.
Gorgeous colorful quartz.
Over time, the Colorado Plateau lifted. Erosion exposed the logs and a National Park was created.
A couple of the great things about this National Park is that all trails are dog friendly and there aren’t a lot of visitors. There is plenty of parking and numerous photo opportunities.
Ancestral Puebloan People lived here. They left Petroglyphs.
Holbrook, Arizona
We stayed at the OK RV Park in Holbrook. They had 50 amp electric, good water pressure, sewer but poor internet. It was difficult to walk without getting goat head stickers in our shoes or Jake stepping on one. Their sites were extremely tight and I’m not sure we would stay here again other than for a night if passing through. We didn’t even get a photo of our site, so we posted one from Painted Deserted, a stop honoring Route 66. Established in 1926, Route 66 stretched from Chicago to Los Angeles and through here.
