Tim Smith
On the way from Albuquerque to the place we had booked near the Grand Canyon, we decided to break the drive about in half and spend a week in Holbrook, Arizona. Holbrook is near the Petrified National Forest and Painted Desert. It’s also only a 30 minute drive or so from Winslow, Arizona. And who can resist the opportunity to go stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona? 🙂
I decided to not take any time off work and just go explore after work in the late afternoon. I basically worked “Dallas hours” that week so I was able to knock off work at 3pm. That gave us 3 1/2 to 4 hours to explore before dark.
The first day we went to the park we swung by the visitor center where we talked to an extremely nice gentleman who showed us on the map all the interesting points we would want to see and also the ones to skip if we thought we were running short on time. He also told us that it cost $25 to get in the park for the day but we should consider buying the yearly pass at $80 as it would get us in to Grand Canyon National Park as well. We took his advice and went for the yearly pass. It’s a good thing we did because over the next couple of weeks we spent 8 days in National parks, so it paid for itself and then some.
After we left the visitor center, we started our tour of the park. There is basically one road that takes you all the way through the park and past all of the points of interest. There are pull-outs along the way to stop and take pictures and some of the points of interest have hiking trails ranging from 1/2 a mile round trip to trails that take 3 or 4 hours to complete. The “Painted Desert” is basically the whole park and even extends beyond the park. If you start on the Visitor Center end of the drive, the Painted Desert is mostly reds, oranges, and browns. Also on this end of the drive there aren’t many petrified trees. The first scenic turnout revealed a fascinating landscape. But to be honest, it was nothing compared to what we would see later in the drive.
As we drove through the park we stopped at several of the scenic turnouts and all of the points of interest on the map that the ranger mentioned to us. Lots of interesting rock formations and rocks with petroglyphs (images carved or branded into the rock’s surface). Newspaper rock was probably the most interesting because it supposedly has around 650 petroglyphs. It was also the most difficult to get a picture of. I tried to take a picture through a pair of binoculars that was available to use. It turned out ok, I guess. You can kind of get the idea but really doesn’t do it justice. Here are some pictures from that part of the drive.
We didn’t make it through the whole park the first day. We were at the point of interest called Blue Mesa just as the sun was starting to set. This is on the side of the park where the painted desert is mostly purples, blues, and grays. We believe seeing it at sunset is the perfect time. The hike takes you down among all the formations and takes about 45 minutes to an hour depending on how much you stop to soak in the beauty and take pictures. So I would allot the maximum amount of time because we took some of our favorite pictures we’ve ever taken here. This gallery is a bit of a photo overload, but it was just breathtakingly beautiful. There are several pages of pictures. Click through them, it’s worth it, I think. As always, click on the thumbnail for the full image.
By the time we finished the hike at Blue Mesa the sun had set so we had to finish our tour the next day. We entered the park at the opposite end of the drive from where we started the day before and drove to the next point of interest after Blue Mesa. This is where we started to see more of the petrified trees. There are a few scattered all throughout the other end of the drive, but on this end there were just a lot more. The ranger we spoke with the day before told us we could pick up all the pieces of petrified tree we wanted to, as long as we put it back exactly where we got it. You’re not allowed to take pieces out of the park.
On Friday night for date night, we drove in to Winslow, Arizona. We could not in good faith be that close and not go stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona. They have a whole store dedicated to that song and a statue on the other side of the street with a mural behind it with the flat bed ford, among other references from the song. Pretty dang cool. We had dinner and a couple of beers at a brewery right across the street and we arrived just on time for their annual classic car show.
There is a gallery on our main Gallery page with all the pictures we took in the Petrified Forest. It seemed like overkill to include them all in this post.
That was the end of a pretty busy week for us! Leave us a comment and tell us what you think!!
Very Cool!!
Thank you, Chris! Glad you enjoyed the read!
I love it! I’m gonna have to go back to both places and of course I’ve never stood on the corner in Winslow so I will go do that too!
The park was absolutely beautiful! And Winslow was a neat little town. And who doesn’t want to be able to say they stood on the corner in Winslow, Arizona?? LOL!!