Painted Desert and Petrified Forrest

I love all of these pictures. Every single one of them begins to tell you of the amazing day we had. The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest are absolutely incredible. We got lucky on the day and a half that we were there because the clouds were PERFECT! More than half the time we just stood back and stared at the sky in pure amazement.  We arrived at the National Park only a couple of hours before it was closing, so we decided to go in to the Visitor's Center and figure out a plan for tomorrow so we could see all of it. We found a free campsite (http://freecampsites.net/crystal-forest-gift-shop-campground-3/) at the south gate of the Petrified Forrest. So we decided to drive through the whole thing and then stay the night down at the gift shop, then in the morning drive through the whole thing again and make our stops. The place we camped was awesome. I almost felt bad it was free! There were picnic tables, flat areas to park, it was clean and safe!

It is awesome having the Inter-agency annual pass for all the National Parks and National Reserves because we don't have to do everything on the first day we get there. We can enter and exit the parks as we please and never get charged. At Carlsbad Caverns we even got a $12 tour for free with our pass. You can find more info here: http://www.fs.fed.us/passespermits/annual.shtml

The second day we slept in, took our time and had a great morning. The weather was perfect, sunny with a little wind. We stopped at nearly every place we could, hiked around, snapped some pictures and stared at the petrified wood for a long time. It doesn't make sense really.... it LOOKS exactly like a tree but then you touch it and it's a ROCK! The colors were beautiful, intricate and detailed on every piece of tree. We found real true neons in nature in some of them. I guess you can find a lot of gems in the petrified wood as well. The wind allowed the tall prairie grasses to dance across the plains. The clouds were perfectly placed across the vast sky. And the sun set just right across that painted desert.......

It was an awesome day! And now we are off to Show Low, AZ to stay the night before we head back to Tucson.