Painted Desert: The Painted Desert offers a variety of colors and formations depending on your location in the park. The north end of the park is primarily shades of red as seen here. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
Paint It Red: A couple of miles south of the first image one can see the color scheme changing from all reds to more yellow tones as well as layers of white mixed into the landscape. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
Up Close: As the sun lights the end of a log the brilliant and rich colors of the petrified wood are revealed. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
By GARY WARREN
Photographer
Formerly of Los Alamos
While we are all staying at home during the pandemic, the next few Post From the Road will be from previous travels during the last couple of years.
The Petrified Forest National Park is located in northern Arizona about 25 miles east of the town of Holbrook and the park entrance is just off of Interstate 40. The Petrified Forest was designated as a National Monument in 1906 and became a National Park in 1962.
The northern end of the park includes a portion of Arizona’s Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest is located a few miles to the south. The photos of the painted desert included here are all within the boundaries of the Petrified Forest National Park.
The road through the park is 28 miles long and offers visitors a variety of landscapes and geological formations.
Editor’s note: Longtime Los Alamos photographer Gary Warren and his wife Marilyn are traveling around the country and he shares his photographs, which appear in the ‘Posts from the Road’ series published in the Sunday edition of the Los Alamos Daily Post.
A Walk In the Desert: The farther south one travels in the park, the more the colors of the landscape really begin to shift from the red hues just a few miles to the north. The walkway shown in this photo takes the visitors into oranges, yellows, grays and lavender colors that are most prevalent in this area of the park. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
Layers of Color: The yellows and oranges are almost gone and the formations are now violets, lavenders, and blue shades layered nicely and mixed with the off-whites. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
Petrified: The landscape has very little color and will continue to transition to desert grass lands as you move south. The massive collection of petrified wood can now be seen every where. Shown is a row of petrified logs which may have been from the same tree originally as they lay end to end in a fairly straight row. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
Scattered: A short walk from the previous photo is an area of similar size petrified logs but scattered randomly across the barren landscape. The Petrified Forest National Park has one of the largest assemblies of petrified wood in the world. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com