Petrified Forest & Painted Desert

Day 29 Photo Album

October 1, 2009

Time to move on, I started out from Williams, Arizona, at 7:00 a.m. The route was across Arizona and New Mexico on I-40. Tooling along with cruise control I came to the spectacular vista of the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest near the edge of Arizona.

They call these red and white mounds badlands because they deteriorate so easily. I found this very amusing since I had wanted to go through the Badlands of South Dakota but decided against it because, well, I had to make some choices.

It was only about 10 a.m., so I decided to detour and explore the Petrified Forest. What a great choice! The Painted Desert is so subtly beautiful with soft greens and yellows giving off a feathery feeling. As the temperature was only in the low 60’s, it probably added to the tender vista that gently rolls out in all directions, a few mesas lifting off in the distance.

The road winds a bit around some of the red badlands then straight south about 10 miles to where the petrified wood is. Again, I’m visiting ancient history where forests once stood tall and thick, then went under water, and eventually dried up. I learned that the wood breaks down and minerals find their way in to transform trees to rock.

I had now traveled from magnificent redwood forests to forests turned into rocks. The full circle of transmutation.

Just past the border into New Mexico deep black rocks were surging up from the ground in large swaths. At first glance it looked like soil that had been freshly unearthed, but as I saw more, closer to the highway, I realized they were huge black rocks.

The road north of Albuquerque to Cuba (my brother's home) is a pathway into pleasantly spaced canyons, mesas, and buttes that were highlighted with the brilliant sunset.