Toured so much today… I feel “Petrified”…

The weather was so much better today than yesterday thankfully!  We only got up to 65 or so, but it warmed up in the afternoon, with no snow… yes, we are still over 5,000 feet up there!

We hit the road at 8:45 this morning, after enjoying breakfast and a bit of internet… headed out to the Petrified Forest! 

This is another National Park, and is just as good as the others we have visited!  What a spot… We got to drive right in with our annual Access Pass in our hands… it was well worth the $80.00 fee on this one… we are way ahead!

Being the good tourists, we stopped to say hello at the Visitor’s Centre… the Park Ranger set up our whole day for us, and then we started with a 20 minute video on the Park.  There are two main aspects to this park… the Painted Desert, and the Petrified Forest.  We started on the north loop of the park, so we saw the Painted Desert first.

this area is a large plateau, and flat as a pancake in general… there are a few ridges about 300 feet high… back over 2 million years ago, a huge river came through here…

I cannot describe the colours to you of the painted desert, and the camera does not really show it all that well… it is incredible, and make sure to put this place on your bucket list!  It is a good one.  The colours are formed from different minerals in the ground.  The sun changes the colours all the time!

We came across the Painted Desert Inn National Historic Landmark at Kachina Point.  This was a respite for travelers along historic Route 66 at one time!  Built in the early 1900… is in excellent shape, and a Ranger gave us a tour.  It is built of petrified wood, what else!

We actually had a fair size group, and it was a bit cool this morning, as the coats won out!

A local Native Indian completed these neat murals inside the Pueblo.

We packed our lunch, and this is the view we had at lunch today!  You could see for miles and miles… ( I think there is a song there somewhere…)

There is lots of Vista Points, to get these great photo’s from… you have to come here!

Route 66 came right through this park… most people know the Route 66 runs from Chicago to L.A., about a 2,000 mile run.  You could see the old roadbed for the route here… there a still a lot of places you can drive the road.

This old car sits on the roadbed… I don’t know what it is… but my Brother in Law Howard would sure set me straight in a hurry!  Any guesses anybody as to what it is???  It still had the motor, but I don’t know where the wheels went… it was part of the Route 66 display in the Park.

While we were checking out Route 66, Judy came across this big Raven, who was trying to drink from a little wee puddle on the road.   Judy poured some water out of her bottle for him, and he just came right over, made himself at home, and drank the water! 

The park crosses over Hwy 40, and then you also get to cross over the RR tracks… these are very busy tracks, with loooong trains ever 5 to 10 minutes it seems.  This guy waved at me and gave me a big 4 blast of the horns!  He was having a ball, or was mad as I was taking his picture, and he did not want to be on the blog…

Next we came across some old Indian ruins, from what they called a mall.  About 18 families lived here, about 2,000 years ago!  They also left some pictographs on the rocks… they did not have blogs then to record history!

Check it out!  You could not get near these rocks of course, so had to us a bit of a zoom on it!

This was 1/2 of our tour today, but I will cut it short here… it is difficult to post the blog on the internet here, and I did not bother to put up my internet satellite as we are out of here tomorrow morning. 

We had a great day and enjoyed it a lot, and yes, more to see of this Park tomorrow night…

The blog should come out of New Mexico tomorrow!

Till tomorrow…