The easternmost 60 miles of I-40 across Arizona are little more than one long speedway, since any sign of the old road has been lost beneath the four-lane interstate. One place that’s worth a stop here is Petrified Forest National Park (daily dawn–dusk; $10 per car; 928/524-6228). The polished petrified wood on display in the visitors center is gorgeous to look at, but seeing the stuff in its raw natural state is not particularly thrilling. The story of how the wood got petrified is interesting, though: About 225 million years ago, a forest was buried in volcanic ash, then slowly embalmed with silica and effectively turned to stone. You can take a look at 93,000 acres of the stuff outside the visitors center, and at the entrance to the park there’s a handy restaurant and gas station.
While the park contains a vast array of prehistoric fossils and pictographs as well as the petrified wood, one of the more interesting sights is the old Painted Desert Inn, a Route 66 landmark during the 1920s and 1930s that was converted into a museum and bookstore after the Park Service took it over in the 1960s. The pueblo-style building is perched on a plateau, overlooking the spectacularly colored “Painted Desert” that stretches off toward the northern horizon.
East of the park, right along the New Mexico border, Arizona welcomes westbound travelers with an overwhelming display of trading-post tackiness—huge concrete tepees stand at the foot of brilliant red-rock mesas, while gift shops styled after everything from TV’s F Troop to Dances with Wolves hawk their souvenirs to passing travelers. The gift shops themselves may not be all that attractive, but the old Route 66 frontage road along here and east into New Mexico is truly spectacular, running at the foot of red-rock cliffs.
