This Thursday we went to the Painted Desert side of Petrified Forest. The pic above is a gorgeous view from one of the overlooks there. This overlook was also the relative location of a geocache which I had to walk a lot further into the desert than I expected to find. It turns out that the Geocache was located on the now overgrown roadbed of the historic Route 66.
On our way to the painted desert we stopped and did the half mile trail loop at Crystal Forest. This was a very worthwhile stop, because though we had seen petrified wood the day before, the logs here were much larger and more colorful than the ones we had already seen. While there, I completed my Junior Ranger booklet by measuring this large log!
Our next stop was Newspaper Rock, a rock covered in Native American Petroglyphs. As we approached the overlook, my mom was surprised because when she had visited in 1980 she had been able to get very close to the rock. Now the only way to view it was from the telescopes at the overlook above it. We asked a ranger about this and he said that in 1985, a huge slab of rock had detached from a cliff and fallen on the steps leading down to the rock!
the amazing grace 