Painted Desert, Petrified Forest and Petroglyphs (mostly pictures)

Location: Homolovi State Park (el 5,000 ft); Winslow, Arizona

Pictures taken with Nokia Lumia Icon 929 cell phone AND Nikon D5100 (see if you can tell the difference)
Click pictures to enlarge.

If it seems like a gap in posting, you're correct. The last place I stopped was at Sun Valley RV Park which had no WiFi and my Verizon Data connection kept cycling between nothing and 4LTE. It was so unreliable I couldn't stay connected long enough to make a post. That is now only the third place where I couldn't get online through my Verizon. Those other two were Seminole Canyon State Park in West Texas and the town of Junction in Central Texas. All in all, pretty good odds since I've stayed in about 170 or so campgrounds (I need to count those up again) in the last three years. Anyway, I left Albuquerque with the intention of writing up the Albuquerque post in Sun Valley. 

I passed over the Continental Divide
(elevation 7,200 feet) between 
Albuquerque and Sun Valley.

Typical countryside between
along I-40 near Arizona/New Mexico

My campsite at Sun Valley RV Park.
The road in front of Freedom is a portion
of old U.S. Route 66

Campsite at Homolovi State Park near
Winslow, Arizona

But as with the "best laid plans of mice and men", that didn't work out. It doesn't matter now since there were more interesting sights at the Petrified Forest National Park. 
It is called the Petrified Forest National Park but should be called the Painted Desert National Park since it has more to see than the petrified trees. The park is a 28 mile scenic drive with several pull outs for picture taking and stuff. I saw RV's and U-haul Trucks on the road. I spent about a half a day in the park and saw many things. It was a good day.

Entrance to the park. Notice the clock
on the wall in the far left, center.
It was an old style clock and was
needed to let everyone know Arizona
is on Pacific Time.

Painted Desert. The different minerals
cause the different colors. I have seen
this in Oregon, Michigan and South
Dakota. 

More Painted Desert

More

More Desert

Observation Point but no bench :(

Almost to the end of the Painted Desert

More

Mountains in the distant

Getting close to the end. Remember
click the picture to enlarge them.

The sky helped with show during the
last part of the drive

It looked like snow in places.

Nice one

The tree added some contrast

Some Petroglyphs

More glyphs

No one knows what they mean,
but some do look like aliens.

This is the Puerco Pueblo ruins. 

They date back to about the year 1300.
As a point of reference it would have been
at the end of the last crusade and about
100 after the Magna Carta.

There were about 100 rooms like the
ones in this picture. The Pueblo housed
200 to 300 people.

Bench Mark found from 1934

Finally some petrified logs. The logs sank in a shallow sea about 200 million years ago and were buried in sediments.

The organic material of the tree was replaced
with silica from volcanic ash and over time became
like quartz.

Just as with the Painted Desert, different
minerals mixed in the groundwater caused
different colors.

This private entrepreneur is located just outside
of the park limits. He leases land adjacent to
the park and digs up trees to sell. A guy in town
told me he does a lot of business. 

Ya'll take care of each other. I'll Cya down the road.