Petrified and Painted

Day 17:
We woke up today in the great, mystical red mountains of Sedona... While being surrounded by clouds and flood watches in the Coconino area we decided to skip finding another vortex. Instead we drove about an hour or to the Petrified Forest National Park, right outside the Painted Desert of northeast Arizona. We saw an amazing array of crystal hard rocks that were once trees, during the Triassic period about 225 million years ago, when Pangea was still around. An entire forest was buried beneath the sea and when the rockies were formed by volcanic activity, the sea floor rose up and the forest was preserved but had turned to stone!!! We got some landscape shots, saw many hieroglyphics, and my sister got another shot at a jr. park ranger badge for the Painted Desert. I was the one to do all of the work though, she owes me BIG time. We continued to drive until we got to New Mexico, where we once again made a Taco Bell & Wendy's sighting, and saw a couple rainbows from the hurricane we drove through and made our way to Santa Fe. Once there, we went to this restaurant called the "Cowgirl Hall of Fame," which did not actually have a Hall of Fame for Cowgirls, but instead pretty good live music, and socially active people. We hope to be somewhere in Texas, but neither the reader or the author know. Cliffhanger??