Petrified Forest Natl Park

Newspaper Rock

Painted Desert Inn - Route 66 Historic Site

 We safely made it down to Holbrook, AZ from Colorado Springs with stops in Las Vegas, NM and Grants, NM.  Today was visit Petrified Forest National Park day. While the park service notes that most people visit it in one to four hours, we spent close to six.  We walked four of the seven total trails getting just over 3 miles of walking in. 

I remember my first trip here with my parents, and I was disappointed as I expected a large stand of rock trees - none of this laying on the ground stuff.

CCC painted glass in the Painted Desert Inn ceiling

Today was a much more pleasant visit as we knew what to expect and were able to plan somewhat ahead the stops we wanted to make.  For those of you not familiar with this park, it's another part of the "Badlands" of the west.  Unique to this park is the Painted Desert that runs from the Grand Canyon to south of I-40.  Now add to this one of the greatest concentrations of petrified wood in the world. 

Crystal Forest walk

Then mix in some Pueblo ruins plus a significant amount of petroglyphs and you get Petrified Forest National Park.  Hopefully the pictures give you a good feel for what we saw.

We had planned to move to Williams, AZ tomorrow, but we've got some weather coming in.  So we're gonna spend an extra day here in Holbrook as the front passes through.  Freezing precipitation and 50 mph winds in and around Flagstaff being predicted for

Crystal Forest walk

tomorrow just didn't seem to be an ideal traveling day.  Other than dirty truck and trailer, we'd probably been OK, but why do that if you don't have to?  Anyway, the hardest part was changing the reservations at Williams, AZ.  Seems there's another set of Drivers there next week, and they kept mixing us up.  Then add in that android smart phones are, apparently, poor cell phones and it got a little frustrating.  For example, dial a number with my smart phone and

Blue Mesa walk

I get a phone message that it's a bad phone number.  Use Donna's cell phone and the call goes through.  Yes, that builds a lot of confidence in your cell phone provider!

Anyway, here we sit in Holbrook, AZ until Saturday.  Then we move over to Williams, AZ for a week.   As always, that's the plan until it changes.  Later, David

Blue Mesa walk

Crystal Forest walk

Crystal Forest walk