The Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest... Stubble

Our next stop, which was one that we made on the fly, was to the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. We entered the park, and at our first opportunity to take pictures, my camera died. I needed new batteries, and I didn't have any more. So we had to promptly turn around, leave the park (much to the surprise of the park attendant), and buy some batteries. Luckily, there was little shop at the park that sold batteries. So a few minutes later, we reentered the park and took in the sights, this time with working camera in hand.

The trail we went on is approximately 26 miles long, and it starts in the painted desert. Don't worry, this was all by car. We were not walking this. We're not crazy!
This was the very first picture we took once we got there. Pretty colorful, huh?

More color from the painted desert.

We had to throw ourselves in some pictures, too, so here's Christina.

And Jacob acting goofy.

The next stop on the trail was part of historic Route 66. The road itself wasn't there, but there were some telephone polls that followed were the road used to be. This is also where our picture for the top of the blog was taken.

The telephone poles.

Next up was some ruins of an old settlement. The ruins weren't much, but there was some hieroglyphs.
This is the barely remains of an building of some sort, probably a home.


The pictures were pretty entertaining. This one has a bird that seems to be either eating a man on a frog. Not sure which.

This one shows some neat patterns, and there's a cross to the right as well.

This one is pretty fun. That face just cracked us up.

We did see one bit of wildlife.
This was as far as our camera could zoom in, so you probably can't see it too well. But Jacob thought they had funny noses.

And finally, we made it to the Petrified Forest. But Christina was pretty disappointed cause it was no forest at all. It was more like a collection of stubble. See for yourself.
That doesn't look like a forest to us.

Here's an up close view of a petrified log.

Christina trying to look happy with a piece of old wood.

Jacob and a pile of it.

A particularly colorful piece of wood.

By the time we got to the petrified forest part of the trail, we were ready to leave. It was quite a long way, and it took a long time to look at everything. And since we had a tight schedule, we did not look at everything the park had to offer. But the hieroglyphs were really cool. There was a part that had a whole bunch of them, but our camera is simply not good enough to be able to get a picture of it.

All in all, though, it was an interesting experience; one for the checklist.