Heading east on I 40 (Route 66) past the small northern AZ town of Halbrook is the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. Both are a part of the National Parks and span a 27 mile long road starting on the north side of I 40 extending back south towards Halbrook. The park is home to one of the worlds best examples of fossils from the late Triassic period. Today we see a badlands but at one time this was a prehistoric forest where dinosaurs roamed and great forests were toppled. We made a day of it today which ended with me buying a few petrified pieces back at our base camp near Halbrook. With this first blog entry, I'll share what we learned on the north side of the road, the Painted Desert.
If We venture this way again, and we probably will, we will take the ranger tour from Lacey point, people told us that it was very informative, but on this trip, we did not. A quick stop at the visitor center and we were on our way to the 8 lookouts that view the multicolored landscape. The colors seen in the soft sedimentary rocks are due to hematite (red), limonite (yellow) and gypsum (white). We took a short hike from the top of the blue Mesa down to the valley floor passing petrified trees along the way. Many lie partially buried in the clay, where erosion gradually and continuously exposes more with time.
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