After church I headed north from Show Low to the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert National Monument. BTW, when I was in Big Bend National Park I purchased a Senior Pass for $10. It gets me in free in any National Site where there is an entrance fee. Most National Parks and Monuments have like a per vehicle/per person fee structure. I’ve already saved probably about $200. It does pay to get old sometimes. 🙂

It’s hard to do justice to this landscape with anything but the naked eye and morning or evening light with a camera. That said, this area presents another set of circumstances that stretch my ability to understand the geological and physical sciences that over time produce these extraordinary visual treasures.

Over time, what was once underwater became tropical, became buried, became arid and what was preserved and petrified forests were forced to the surface once again for us to marvel at. That’s the best I can do. 🙂

I just can’t get over the breadth of the things I’ve seen and experienced on this trip. And the people and friends. Really? Each day just makes the pile bigger.

The whole of the Monument area is scattered with fields of petrified logs and remnants. You can stop or not, and take endless pictures or not.

This Monument area is the lower reaches of a large area called the Painted Desert. It starts up east of the Grand Canyon and swipes a long arc to the south and east. A lot of it is on the Navajo Reservation. While some of it is beautiful in any light conditions, the naked eye is the only way to let the Painted Desert speak to you.

I took this photo to show a portion of a large field of rock that has numerous flat surfaces on them. It’s called  Newspaper Rock because of the numerous petroglyphs that adorn these flat surfaces. Petroglyphs are scratched into the rock as opposed to pictographs which were painted. These “stories” have many contributors over a period of about 1300 years.

You can’t get close. If you could these things would be ruined by idiots in no time. I managed to hold the camera still enough on zoom to give you a taste.