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Painted Desert

When you look at the results it is clear that Jack Frost had a western cousin who went to work in Northern Arizona on the sands and shales. Jaqueline Desert, as we imagine she was called, must have been an inspiration for Jackson Pollock or Lucian Freud. By our taste the teacher was superior to the students. Maybe this comparison to these painters is not apt because the colors are too muted and too separated. It cerainly wouldn't be right to compare the results to that of a Paul Klee or another restrained abstractionist.The painted desert is so named because the strata of rocks exposed by the work mostly of wind and water are in various shades of pink, brown, and purple. The colors change with the movement of the sun, being most apparent in the early morning and late evening. We have to say that we were a bit underwhelmed by the sites marked in the national park for viewing, although we agreed that we would have loved to hike down into some of the desert terrain had it been the right time of year and so forth.

Painted Desert

The part of the Painted Desert that we saw makes up a small corner of the northern part of Petrified Forest National Park. In fact, the complete Painted Desert extends over a vast strip of northern Arizona, steteching hundreds of miles from the Grand Canyon and Glen Canyon in the west to past the middle of the state in the east.

Painted Desert

Today the viewpoints we saw are easily accessible as Interstate 10 passes just a few miles to their south. Back 40 years ago (yes, it is more than that long ago) when Gerry used to make a trip once a year from Illinois to California, he and his companions took Route 66, another 20 miles south. There was no Interstate 10 then; that didn't stop them from covering the desert miles faster than todays Interstate speed limits allow.

Painted Desert