The Painted Desert & Petrified Forest National Park

Plenty of iron and manganese compounds account

 for the colors you'll find of the Painted Desert.

The Painted Desert, like so much out west, reminds me of 

art of the gods.  It is massive and unified, rugged and beautiful, impenetrable and ethereal.

We stopped by the Painted Desert as we moved our home base from Mountainair, NM, to St. George, Utah.

This trip was a mission.  I was integrating more work over several days, traveling through remote regions without cell phone coverage, back and forth across time zones, with calls scattered through the days.

I was fortunate to have Manuel ably look into details of cell phone coverage across our route in advance, integrating time zone changes into our itinerary (Arizona does not participate with daylight savings so we from Mountain to Pacific to Mountain.), and blocking out our travel time to ensure we'd be in a covered area in time for my next work call.

The Painted Desert was our first stop.   With our time constraints, we opted for a stop at the visitor center and a scenic drive that would encompass the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest National Park.

Blue Mesa

The Painted Desert is a brilliant display of stratified sedimentary rock of the Chinle Formation.  Over time, wind and rain eroded the Formation to carve the badlands you see here today.  In fact, the day we visited, the wind was so strong, it felt like it could hold you up if you laid into it.

The boys experimenting with the wind.

The difference in colors represents the difference in the rate in which the sediments are laid down.  When sediments are laid down more slowly, there is a concentration of iron oxide creating the pinks and reds.  When sediments are deposited more quickly, oxygen is removed from the soil making the blues, grays, and purples.

The Petrified Forest National Park is inside Apache and Navajo counties and encompasses with the Painted Desert.

The land is littered with crystalized wood.  Each piece is almost solid quartz.  

The petrified wood can be hard to pick out in the photos.  Basically, if it looks like a rock log, it is.

A word to the wise, like every other National Park, what you find in the park stays in the park.   Each piece is protected, and there are hefty fines for damaging or defacing in any way.  Sparkly things attract in a way that a common leaf or twig may not, and it is worth a reminder.

The trees you see here lived in the late Triassic Period, about 225 million years ago.  As the trees fell, they were buried under mud.  There they were deprived of oxygen so normal decomposition couldn't take place, and the tree was initially preserved.  Mineral-laden water deposited minerals in the plant's cells over time.  As the plant tissue decomposes, the minerals deposited there harden into petrified wood.

This was a drive through for us, and the stops were fairly short, because I had to be in cell phone range by 3pm.  If you have the time, I strongly recommend taking a trail.  As always, the more you engage in the experience, the more you get out of it.