Homolovi State Park, Winslow, Arizona
In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has. ~ Proverbs 21:20
Did you think Big Bend in Texas was majestic? Did you love Sedona? Well, what we discovered today was equally eye-popping, if not more so!
During research for the area, I came across a little-known county park that looked like a great place to check out. It’s called Little Painted Desert County Park. I didn’t do much research, mostly just saw a picture and looked up the address. It turned out to be only a hop, skip and a jump down the road!
From the road, the entrance looked really run down and the restroom was covered with graffiti. And we learned that the actual Park has pretty much been abandoned and lost funding, so it hasn’t been kept up. Driving in, we just kinda looked at each other and raised our eyebrows.
Until we parked and got out of the Jeep.
You can’t see this gem from the parking lot, or from your car, or from the road. But once you’re out . . . Well, it’s kinda like those old cartoons where the wolf’s eyes pop out of his head! We’d seen a picture or two, but we were both stunned by the awesome beauty contained in this relatively small area!
And again, the pictures, while they turned out fairly nice, won’t convey the beauty of this place! We looked from the overlook, then we drove down what they call a scenic road, that takes you about a half mile along the canyon wall and provides pull-outs so you can get out and gape anytime you want.
We were there for about 20 minutes, but figured we’d stop back later. There were plans in place for a scenic drive.
About 50 miles away is a town called “Second Mesa”. Of course, there’s nothing open in the town right now, but it provided a good turn-around spot. We’d expected more scenery on our drive, and while it was nice, it also got a bit boring just looking mostly at wide open space on either side of the Jeep for so long.
The road, Rt 87, was just a long, mostly pencil straight route that took us into the Navajo Nation, into the Hopi Nation (which is actually an area within the boundaries of the Navajos), through Hopi and back into Navajo. And since there were no signs to delineate the changes, we didn’t know where we were at any given time.
Up there’s our destination – Second Mesa
Navajo or Hopi, we’re not sure.
Maybe it’s a used car lot now? We didn’t see any people.
Once we got closer to town, we started noticing signs up about the Nation being closed and stay-at-home. You can drive through, but neighborhoods especially are actually closed to traffic with guards posted. We weren’t sure who the guards were, but we’re assuming they’re tribal appointed. They were sitting in cars/trucks at locked or blocked off streets. But there were still opportunities to see how the people live around here. Pretty sad. I can tell you that when I was growing up, my family (extended too) lived on a pretty slim income, but my wonderful, single-parent Mom never allowed our home to look like many of these places.
And after we returned from our drive, Blaine stopped at the County Park once again. We just wanted to check out the changing colors because of the different position of the sun, but Blaine found the closed trail! And off we went! Yes!!
It’s immediately obvious why the trail’s closed, but it didn’t deter us. We ended up walking about 5 miles down in amongst the colors – greens, purples, reds, white, gray, yellow – all shades from the Creator’s palette! However, our phones didn’t pick up the colors the way we saw them. The pictures sort of turned out looking like watercolor paintings, and most of the colors aren’t right. And that certainly wasn’t the way we saw it. Our eyes are soooo perfectly designed by our Maker! And as the abundance of pictures will attest, we were in awe of this place. And we never saw another soul.
Most of the deposits here are sandstone, which can come in many colors, depending on their age, erosion and the climate at the time in which they were laid down. Some of the Painted Desert’s rocks contain iron and manganese, which can oxidize into reddish colors.
And no. I didn’t know all that. I just know they’re really pretty!
That’s the trail, too.
It’s the dry Arizona air . . .
Seems an awfully long way, and I don’t know how I’m gonna get there,
but somehow, I will!
and as far as we can tell, we’re now off any trail.
We’re strictly on our own. : )
But that’s ‘my mound’ out there in the center!
I should’ve drawn an arrow . . .
Curvy, but at least it provided a place to walk. : )
It was Blaine who pointed out that it was petrified wood!!
How cool is that?!?!?
Of course, it didn’t come out in the picture, but all that white stuff was the glitter. : )
I’m working on it . . .
See where they tore up the bank?
Guess those cows really are heavy because we didn’t sink inat all. : )
Hope they eventually found their way home!
He said it was all slipping out from under his feet.
“Cows Wandering In The Desert”
Think I can make some money from it?? : )
It hasn’t been here long, because it wasn’t dehydrated yet.
They say it looks best at sunset. We’ll have to come back to test that theory!
We still hadn’t had enough today, so we drove over to Homolovi II. It was essentially the same as #I, but different. And it was a real shame to see what vandals had destroyed at some point. The signs didn’t say when.
Going up would be difficult, but going down? Wheeeeeee!!!!!
Go figure . . .
This part looked to be pretty old.
We ended up spotting an entire herd off in the distance.
And that’s it for this busy, beautiful, somewhat educational day!