Painted Desert, & Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

9/22: leaving the Yavapai Lodge in the morning we drove to yet another area of unique and striking beauty, which is basically two national parks in one.  We entered at the North end, so the Painted Desert was first.

The Painted Desert Inn (1937) is a National Historic Landmark.

Petroglyph found near the site of the inn.

Murals at the inn by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie (1948), commissioned by Mary Colter.

Tribute to the fabled Route 66: this is the only section of the highway preserved in a national park.  It runs along the line of old telephone poles.

As we moved South, petrified wood began to appear.

Agate Bridge, reinforced by concrete to prevent a collapse.

The logs became more and more numerous as we moved South, and how strange to contemplate that these trees lived over 200 million years ago in the Late Triassic Period when some of the early dinosaurs were evolving.

The beauty and variety of patterns was striking.

Eventually the entire landscape was scattered with the rock logs.

"Old Faithful," the biggest of them all, almost 10 feet wide and estimated to weight about 88,000 pounds.