Petrified forests and painted deserts.

A full day of sightseeing today.  From a little after sunup to just before sundown we were winding our way through 56 miles of national park.  The Petrified Forest and Painted Desert share a common, long, winding road that get you up to or on top of some amazing geological wonders.  But while we were filling the cooler with ice and snacks and a picnic lunch we had a visitor.

I never knew hummingbirds were everywhere.  Or at least they seem to be as they show up at the feeder everywhere we have been for the last four thousand miles.

I took over a 150 pictures today, narrowing it down to just a few for this post was tough but there were a few that stood out.  We took I-40 back to the east from our campground in Homolovi Ruins for about 15 miles until we got to Holbrook, AZ.  The route once again got us on a preserved section of Route 66 and as soon as we hit town it looked as though we had stepped back in time 60 or 70 years.  I had seen pictures of some of the old motels and how some of them had done some over-the-top things to set themselves apart from the crowd.  One that always seemed to make the travel guides and books were the ones that had rooms built to look like teepees.  Today we saw one live, and it was not just preserved for looking at, it was an active motel with paying customers.

The Wigwam Motel, complete with cars from the 40's, 50's and whatever last nights customer's drove.

Another ten miles down a remote state highway and we were at the entrance to our first objective of the day, The Petrified Forest.

It does not look like much at first, just a lot of wide open country.  But in just a little ways down the park road the first developed "museum garden" comes into view.  We park and walk into the garden and are immediately struck by the color and beauty of innumerable petrified trees.  But the claim to fame of this museum is that they have the single largest fossilized tree in its natural state.  They call it Old Faithful.

This bad boy just looks like an old tree that has fallen over.  But in reality it is 212 million years old and pure crystallized minerals.

Cyndee threw me in the shot to give a little sense of scale.

The garden had plenty of other specimens.  Check out those cliffs in the background; mounds of blue volcanic ash topped with a layer of sandstone.

 

As we drove further into the park there were so many sights to look at that our heads were spinning on our shoulders.  But there was a butte made of ash, and it was layers of varying hues of blue, that gave us reason to stop and get out and explore.

 



Opposite the butte was another petrified forest garden.  Actually there are huge amounts of petrified trees all over tens of thousands of acres that this park encompasses.  We took a walk in this one too and while out in the desert I turned and looked back towards the parking area.  Big Gulp was standing there looking to get his picture taken.  I obliged him.

Back at the parking lot we noticed an onlooker.  It was a large (very large) raven and he was very tolerant of being close to people.  He let me walk within just a few feet and get his portrait.  I got the feeling that he was expecting a little something in return.

The next turn-out was a three and a half mile drive across to and up onto a mesa.  It's name was Blue Mesa.  And once we got there it was easy to see how it got its name.

I think the local ravens have a racket running.  Again we were approached by a pair that hopped up really close and just looked you right in the eye.  And again they hung in there while both Cyndee and I had cameras pointed at them.

This time there was a payoff.  They both got a half of a Newton's Fruit Thin cookie.  And let me tell you, we did not have to break the cookie into pieces for them to eat it.  These guys are as big as some red-tail hawks I have seen.  They each picked up their half and tossed it back in one gulp.

Next stop, Painted Desert.  About twenty six miles after entering the park on the south end and following the single road north you come to the Painted Desert.  It is amazing the almost instant change in color from the blue and white ash capped with marbled-brown sandstone to the reds of The Painted Desert.

We also had the added bonus that we are here during the monsoon season and recent rains had water in the river and the vegetation greened up.  There were no driving roads that put you down in the desert, just a few walking trails.  It was mid-day by now and too hot to start off on a walkabout.  We would have to be satisfied with seeing the painted desert from overlooks.

One of those overlooks is the Painted Desert Inn, an Historic National Landmark.  This is a relatively small pueblo style hotel that is built on the edge of a cliff overlooking The Painted Desert.  It was originally an even smaller, privately owned hotel.  Actually one of the many Harvey Houses built in the 20's and 30's.  It was later acquired by the government and the Conservation Corp enlarged the hotel and added amenities like running water.

The CCC added another level to the hotel that included these hand painted skylights.

This patio that looks out over The Painted Desert was originally the main entrance to the hotel.  Visitors had to walk down a path around the hotel from the road to enter.  Note the thunderhead in the distance.

I've said it before, two dimensional media just cannot do justice to the grandeur of nature.

The Painted Desert Inn, July 2013

We returned the same way we came.  We could have exited the park at The Painted Desert and jumped on I-40, straight to Homolovi Ruins but we wanted to visit a couple of commercial petrified wood operations that were just outside the entrance of the park on the south end.  Cyndee was hoping to score a pair of ear rings crafted from petrified wood and to see what other things were being done with these ancient oddities.

This impressively large and polished piece of petrified wood has been fashioned into a table-top.  It can be yours for just $24,000.

We made our way to a final stop that was what we believed to be the largest petrified wood operation in existence.  Jim Gray's Petrified Wood Co. was a place you could spend days going through in order to see everything they had to offer.  When I stepped through the door I stopped momentarily to get over the sensory overload of all the stuff before me.  Cyndee found the ear rings she wanted and we collected a two pound piece of petrified wood.  It was in a four foot tall pile of similar sized pieces from the lot out back, where there had to be millions of pounds more of all kinds of decorative stone.  We were torn about adding weight to the rig, but desire won out over practicality and we are now toting around a rock.

It had been a long day and the clouds I made note of in the distance over The Painted Desert had swelled to consume what seemed like all of the desert southwest.  The wind was howling and the rain was falling sideways.  It was time to get home and hunker down for the night.