Petrified Forest National Park

We left Grants New Mexico on our way west. We made a scheduled stop at the Petrified Forest National Park. It's a road 26 miles long that sarts with a view of the painted desert an then cross the the 40 with a marker to the old road 66 and then passes trough a desert littered with petrified logs.

The Painted Desert

A tribute to road 66

The Park road near the Teepee Formation

Here is an explanation of the process that I copied from Wikipedia :
The Petrified Forest is known for its fossils, especially fallen trees that lived in the late triasic, about 225 million years ago. The sediments containing the fossil logs are part of the widespread and colorful Chinle Formation, from which the Painted Desert gets its name. Beginning about 60 million years ago, the Colorado Plateau, of which the park is part, was pushed upward by tectonic forces and exposed to increased erosion. All of the park's rock layers above the Chinle, except geologically recent ones found in parts of the park, have been removed by wind and water.

Petrified Logs at Blue Water Mesa

During this period, the region that is now the park was near the equator on the southwestern edge of the supercontinent Pangaea, and its climate was humid and sub-tropical. What later became northeastern Arizona was a low plain flanked by mountains to the south and southeast and a sea to the west. Streams flowing across the plain from the highlands deposited inorganic sediment and organic matter, including trees as well as other plants and animals that had entered or fallen into the water. Although most organic matter decays rapidly or is eaten by other organisms, some is buried so quickly that it remains intact and may become fossilized.

Detail of the mineralisation of the petrified wood

At Crystal Forest

We left and headed west, as we approached Flagstaff we could see that the big mountains were smoking, we later learned after driving trough the mountain pass in the smoke that they were doing a control burn. My wife started to have difficulties with her ashma so we kept on going west. We finally stopped for the night in Seligman on road 66.