A Very, Very, Very Windy Day at the Painted Desert

We pack up our rig and head to the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park. It’s a short drive. Of course our first stop is the visitor center with its museum and film. Then we start our drive through the park.

The wind is unbelievable today. Sustained winds of 30-40 mph and gusts of 50-60 mph! We make many stops in the park to see the scenery and read the roadside signs, but at every stop we make sure only one person opens their truck door at a time (otherwise everything blows out of the truck). And sometimes it’s hard to get the door open against the wind.

One of my favorite stops is at the historic Painted Desert Inn. It's a 1930 refurbished rest stop that is near the beginning of the park road:

Painted glass ceiling:

Dining room mural in the inn (one of many murals):

We also crossover the remains of historic Route 66. Grown over, with only telephone poles to mark the location:

The park is more scenic than I expected and we enjoy the drive and take lots of pictures. We take one short hike behind the desert museum at the south end of the park—it is just too windy to take any other hikes.

After leaving the park we stop at a petrified wood gift shop to look around and get our free piece of petrified wood.

Our other interesting stop today is in Winslow, Arizona, made famous by the 1970s Eagles song (Take it Easy). We stop and take some pics of the statue they have commemorating the song (lyrics “standing on the corner of Winslow, Arizona”). Fun but windy stop.

We had planned to drive to Flagstaff or even the Grand Canyon today, but the wind is making for tough driving for Jere so we stop at Meteor Crater RV park.