Petrified Forest National Park: Painted Desert

I spent many of my early years in and around the "Painted Desert." The painted desert is not just one location, but a series of bentonite clay hills that stretch across much of Northern Arizona. Similar landscapes are often referred to as "Bad Lands" but they are anything but bad, they are just not suited for agriculture; the main and sometimes only criteria by which the early settlers viewed the value of this country. Now great stretches of the painted desert are "preserved" in National Parks and Monuments. The land is rich in ancient fossils and the color and form of the land is remarkable. It is desert, but it is far from bad or useless.