The Painted Desert

Nils holding a beautiful (heavy) hunk of petrified wood.  Don't worry, he put it back exactly where he found it.

Saturday, 9/8

The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Parks are contiguous--the official entrance to the Petrified Forest (PF) is at the south end and the Painted Desert (PD) entrance is 40 miles to the north.   The old Route 66 passed through the PD and one can buy lots of Route 66 memorabilia in addition to all manner of PW (petrified wood) curios at both of the visitor center/gift shops.  We hiked down into the canyon behind the old PD Inn, and had it all to ourselves.  The colors are subtle and striped---pinks, reds, greens---and they go on for what seems like ever, and the sky was bright blue with wispy white clouds stretched across pretty much the whole thing.    Oh, and there was PW lying around everywhere.  A lot of the time you're walking on gravel-sized pieces of it.  That cracked us up.

Painted desert in the background

There were ruins and petroglyphs in the painted desert as well.

Almost 1000 years old, the remains of a pre-historic (by North American standards) village

A small section of the petroglyphs on "Newspaper Rock", where traveling Indians could get all the latest news

Both of the competing gifts shops (which looked as though they'd been designed and built by the same people at the same time) had competing dinosaur sculptures in front, a mother with a baby.  They were pretty beat up, but this one was my favorite.

Fierce triceratops mommy guarding all that petrified wood lying around in the parking lot!!