Day 9 - Petrified Forest National Park

Painted Desert

"Nature is the art of God"

Dante Alighieri - Italian Poet 

Part two of our 1200 miles trek towards Grand Canyon started early this morning in Roswell.  We survived the night without an close encounters, other than an obscene number of flies.  We enjoyed our last continental breakfast of the trip and headed north towards Albuquerque.  This was actually one of the prettiest routes I’ve ever driven.  The foreground is a mix of green shrubs and yellow dirt with pink, red, white mountains in the distant on a backdrop of the bluest sky and puffiest white clouds.  There are no people, no businesses.  Every once in a while we came upon a town, either already a ghost town or on its way towards one with abandoned shacks and motels certainly not on Hotels.com.  Occasionally in the distance we’d come across impossibly long trains that seemed to be a mile long.

After 6 hours we finally arrived at Petrified Forest National Park to observe some really old wood.  At least that’s what the expectation was.  The park is a 28 mile drive, and we only planned to spend about an hour at it, however there was much more here than wood.  The first stop was a bunch of overlooks that gave us views of the Painted Desert below.  Along the way was the historic Painted Desert Inn built in the 1937 that served as a restaurant for those stopping by the park, which happens to be the only National Park that was on Route 66.  The drive continued with a stop at the grassy remains of old Route 66, which was decommissioned in 1987.  The only way to see the remains of a road is through the old telephone poles still in position as they were during Route 66’s heyday.

Antique car commemorating old Route 66 

Further down the drive we traveled back further in time to take a look at the foundation of a 600 year old pueblo and petroglyps created by Navajo and Hopi tribes.  Now after being there for almost an hour we had yet to see any petrified wood.  As we made our way to the areas where the wood was promised, a few menacing storms that were once in the distance had now moved much closer.   We did not let this deter us.  Finally we came upon the 225 million year old lumber that lay strewn about the desert as if someone had just chopped down a ton of trees and left them there.  Random cool fact, back when these were living trees the area was actually below the equator as part of the super continent Pangea.

Andy and I posing with some really old tree remains.

As we left the park the storm came just to the edge of the highway and sent its winds towards the Element.  She stayed strong against the barrage of dust and tumble weed (singular).  With daylight dwindling we head to our final destination for the next two days, the Grand Canyon.  

Storm in the distance

Stats:
Miles Driven: 3210
States: PA, MD, WV, VA, TN, NC, AL, MS, LA, TX, NM, AZ
Tumbleweeds encountered: 1
Number of days before losing my sunglasses:  321 (a new record for me)

NOTE: In order to send this we had to eat dinner at a Denny's that happened to advertise free Wifi.  So please appreciate this installment knowing I'll likely poop myself tonight.