Vivid bands of color on "teepee" shaped buttes. [click to enlarge] The Painted Desert in Arizona is a vivid display of colorful rock formations that stretch from the Grand Canyon State Park to just North of the Little Colorado River. This desert environment is surreal; especially with the clouds giving it a very "Salvador Dali like" feel. Much of this region is located within the Navajo Nation in Northern Arizona. The Navajo and the Hopi have lived here for approximately 1500 years. The... Read Full Story
Vivid bands of color on "teepee" shaped buttes. [click to enlarge] The Painted Desert in Arizona is a vivid display of colorful rock formations that stretch from the Grand Canyon State Park to just North of the Little Colorado River. This desert environment is surreal; especially with the clouds giving it a very "Salvador Dali like" feel. Much of this region is located within the Navajo Nation in Northern Arizona. The Navajo and the Hopi have lived here for approximately 1500 years. The... Read Full Story
Our master plan was to make it home to Texas by early evening. Another 900 miles remained from Holbrook. No problem.... We left the WigWam in the rear view mirror and headed east. We couldn't drive across northern Arizona and not see either the Grand Canyon or The Petrified Forest / Painted Desert. We voted on the the latter since we had both seen the Grand Canyon before. Growing up in Arizona I had been there a bunch of times and had even hiked to the bottom and camped there once in... Read Full Story
Today was beautiful as we woke up in Albuquerque, NM. After a decent continental breakfast, we set off for Interstate 40. We stopped off to fill up the car (at $3.13/gal.) and were treated to an amazing sight. There were approximately 20-30 hot air balloons taking off in the Albuquerque morning. Apparently, the still, cool weather in Albuquerque makes it a perfect launching spot for hot air balloons. The sky was filled with color and strips from the balloons. They were awesome to see... Read Full Story
At the south end of the Petrified Forest Park is the Long Logs trail with the Agate House spur trail. These trails are about two miles round trip. The story is that 230 million years ago, in a lush tropical conifer forest, some of the trees fell into a river and sunk to the bottom where they were eventually covered with layers of silt and volcanic ash. Gradually, the silica in the covering layers replaced the wood. The whole region drifted from the tropics to its present location and was... Read Full Story
