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Day 82

We poked around Gallup in the morning before getting on Historic Route 66 for the first part of our drive, crossing into Arizona and on to Petrified Forest National Park. We started our visit in the Painted Desert, taking in the stunning vistas and visiting the Painted Desert Inn, before making our way to the Petrified Forest proper. We then descended into Phoenix via Tonto National Forest, wrapping up 275 miles of driving.

Painted Desert
The Painted Desert Inn
The crows were enormous and utterly bored with humans
A 1936 Studebaker marks where Route 66 used to cross through the park
Badlands
Petroglyphs
The wood in the Petrified Forest turned to stone over millions of years. Fallen logs were eventually covered by silt, silica enriched groundwater percolated through the logs replacing the organic material slowly, and creating a replica in quartz. Eventually, erosion re-exposed the petrified wood and the weight of the stone caused the trunks to naturally break into segments.
The size, wight, and colors of the stones (formerly logs) are amazing.