Here is the most aptly named area that we visited so far on this trip. Mother Nature brought her complete palette to the canvas when she put this part of the world together. Petrified Forest National Park is the best way to visit the most spectacular highlights of this vast area. It’s also the most accessible park we visited on this trip so far. You travel through the park on an auto road that drops you off at a number of spectacular viewpoints and short hikes into the landscape.

And dogs are welcome everywhere here! This is not typical for the National Parks, and we understand why. But this park lends itself well to visits with your dogs. So bring them along and let’s go!

.The Painted Desert Inn offers a restaurant, gift shop, gourmet ice cream, and parking for a short hike to the first viewpoint and back.

Later viewpoints offer expanding vistas of the Painted Desert and the distant views. If the weather is very clear you can see the high peaks of the San Francisco range in Flagstaff, over 125 miles away.

Petroglyphs are found at several locations in the park. One of the best examples is at Newspaper Rock, so named for the extensive display of petroglyphs covering two of its faces.

A later viewpoint shows petroglyphs spread across numerous rocks along a cliff edge.

This viewpoint also has excavated foundations of an ancient Anasazi Pueblo.

The iconic road trip Route 66 is celebrated in the park too.

The Route 66 pathway is now occupied by Interstate 40 in the area of the park. The Santa Fe Railroad runs parallel to I-40 for much of its length. The extremely long trains are mesmerizing to watch as they go by.

Petrified wood can be found throughout the later sections of the drive through the park. It is an amazing combination of wood shapes and stone composition.

My favorite part of the park was Blue Mesa, an area composed primarily of layers of rock in varying shades of blue, violet and gray. The layers of color are especially vivid, and the patterns worn in the surfaces of the rocks make them look like they’re melting.

This park is a favorite memory of our trip, and would be on my list for another visit if we go through the area again! If you travel along I-40 between Albuquerque and Holbrook, Arizona, I highly recommend planning a day to visit this park.

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