High Plains and Deserts

May, 2021

Painted Desert, Petrified Forest Nat’l Park

We continued to work our way west and south, from Cheyenne, Wyoming, down poorly maintained I-25 in Colorado (NOT a fun drive!) to northern New Mexico and eastern Arizona.

We stopped at Curt Gowdy State Park west of Cheyenne. We really liked this beautiful state park, as we had a nice view of the lake from our campsite, and it had a fun hike around big boulders. We came a day later than planned, because there had been a May snowfall, with very cold temperatures, and we didn’t want to deal with bad weather. By the time we got there, the roads were totally clear, and the temps had moderated. The only issue we had was that the campsite was difficult to turn into, as the road in the campground was tight and twisty.

Snow still on the hillsides in May at Curt Gowdy State Park

In eastern Colorado, we visited Paint Mines Interpretive Park. It is in the middle of nowhere hidden below the plains. I heard about this free county park through the Roadtrippers app. We could walk right up to the rocks that were bright yellow and pink. It was fun to wander all around.

From there, we traveled to New Mexico. We drove “The Enchanted Circle” scenic highway. While our car climbed in elevation up the mountain, we saw a bighorn sheep. Then we drove through Cimarron Canyon State Park, where we saw some steller’s jays, which we had never seen before. I had to take pictures of them through the windshield, and couldn’t zoom in close enough, so the pictures weren’t good.

Cimarron Canyon State Park

We stopped briefly in Taos and Santa Fe. In Taos, we saw an old adobe church. I had wanted to see Taos Pueblo, a centuries-old continuously inhabited Native-American dwelling, but it was closed due to Covid. In Santa Fe, we visited the square, where some Native-American young men played drums and danced and sang stories about their history. We visited Loretto Chapel, which has a wonderful legend: the nuns had prayed for a solution to the problem of needing a way to get to the choir loft from a tiny space where a typical staircase wouldn’t fit. A man appeared who built a spiral staircase with hand tools and wooden pegs, and then apparently left without asking for or receiving payment. The spiral staircase was miraculously built with no center support. The banister rails were added later.

We stayed in Holbrook, Arizona, while we visited Petrified Forest Nat’l Park. The original Route 66 passed through this area, so I had to see the Wigwam Motel, (which actually has concrete teepees, not wigwams).

Petrified Forest N.P. has two visitor centers. The north one is right off I-40. It is next to the Painted Desert portion. It was extremely windy when we were there, so much so that it was hard to stand still and take pictures at the overlooks. Finally the wind died down the morning of the day we had to leave, so we squeezed in a hike before we hit the road.

Most of the petrified logs are in the southern portion of the park. There was a big area filled with them behind the second visitor center. We could walk right up to the logs and touch them. They had many different colors.

We hiked on the Blue Mesa trail, going down blue bentonite clay hills, where more petrified logs lay.

We also saw a big rock filled with petroglyphs called Newspaper Rock.

We really enjoyed this park because it was not as crowded as the more popular parks, thankfully, and it was beautiful and interesting.

Petrified logs on Blue Mesa trail