Exploring The Painted Desert was one of my stops on my Rt. 66 trip. The Painted Desert is part of the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. I drove the 17 mile loop and saw some incredible landscapes. It was a surreal experience for sure. Here are a few of my images from my visit.
The Petrified Forest National Park is located in the greater Painted Desert—they are not two separate parks. While the Painted Desert encompasses about 1500 square miles, the park is over 200,000 acres—and not a desert! The environment is short-grass prairie or semi-arid grassland. The climate is dry but it does snow, as you will see and it also rains. It was chilly and windy the day I visited. Driving is limited to the 17 mile loop which I drove around. The park offers both easy and longer hikes into the colored hills. The Painted Desert continues north into the Navajo Nation, where off-road travel is allowed only by permit.
The Painted Desert, which is part of Petrified Forest National Park, is millions of years old and made up of several geological layers. Over the ages, it was home to all sorts of lush plant life and animals.
A lot of the terrain is made up fluvial deposits — stuff left behind by ancient seas and rivers. Most of those deposits are sandstone, which can come in many colors, depending on their age, erosion and the climate at the time in which they were laid down.
Some of the Painted Desert’s rocks contain iron and manganese, which can oxidize into reddish colors. However, when the water table is high there is less oxygen in the ground and that turns those deposits blue or green.
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