Sunrise this Wednesday, with a side order of small clouds, was seen through the kitchen window as John and I gathered our gear for a long hike in the wilderness area of the Painted Desert.

By 6:30 we were at the entry point right across the street, left of the Painted Desert Inn. Just below the adobe patios the trail begins in several steep switchbacks which brought us between white castles and red domes with seams full of broken trunks of petrified trees tumbling down to the desert floor.

 

 

We walked through jumbled rock and badlands mounds out to the grasslands, where Evening Primrose and Saltbush seedlings sprung unexpectedly from the cracked mud and made an elegant contrast to the scrubby dry grasses.

We didn't really have a plan for this hike, we were just heading for whatever looked interesting, and figured we would go until our water was half gone, then we would turn around and head back. The Painted Desert Inn (PDI) sits on a high ridge and is visible from almost anywhere in the Painted Desert below, so there was no worry about getting lost.

Other landmarks are Pilot Rock far out in the wilderness and the highest point, and Lithodendron Wash, which cuts through the grasslands like a four lane highway and is both a good navigation point and easy walking. John and I followed it for awhile before heading to the end of a long ridge, where we decided to take advantage of its quickly vanishing shade and rest for awhile. 

I did a quick study in gouache of a sunlit formation across the way.  Then we walked past a hoodoo topped formation to a wide flat area, empty except for two slices of petrified tree trunk perfect for sitting on while we ate our early morning "lunch".

We then headed for a gray and white formation that John had seen from Kachina Point. From a distance it looked too high to climb, or, at least too high to climb down. Like the Badlands, in South Dakota, climbing up the formations is deceptively easy and once you start, the urge to climb higher is almost irresistible. The problem is in climbing down, with your momentum and gravity hurrying your feet to find a solid foothold in the loose mudstone which breaks apart in marble sized pieces underfoot.  But when we reached the foot of the formation,  it was not as much of a climb as we had thought. We would find time and time again that our sense of scale and distance could not be trusted.

We left our packs and started up to find that the summit looked snow covered, topped with a crust of purple and red crumbling rock and dozens of larger rocks that looked like they had taken on the impression of the cracked mud.



I immediately regretted leaving my camera below but John obligingly offered to fetch it, as I shouted to him to take my picture at the top.

The formation was capped by a couple of strange pure-white round domes that looked like spaceships.  We spent some time exploring this moonscape then decided to turn our steps back in the direction of the PDI.

 

 We walked down into an area of large "Black Forest" logs, named for their black, almost iridescent quality. Some of the logs had so much detail they looked as if they had fallen only a few years ago, instead of 225 million years. The only clue to their glass-like quality was  the fact that most were sliced cleanly into segments, due to the settling of the mudstone underneath them and their inability to bend. That and the "clink" pieces made when kicked aside or examined and tossed back for the next hiker to discover.

At the end of the ridge welooked for a way down to the wash below. My knee, the one that didn't have surgery, was beginning to bother me so I went for the easiest route. This was it.

 But I was rewarded with flowers all the way back until we slowly climbed the switchbacks at the PDI, 6 hours after we hiked down.

Bulbous Spring Parsley

Golden Mariposa Lily

After a shower and resting a bit, there was still plenty of daylight, so I decide to try my first oil painting with my homemade pochade box. I head back down the wilderness trail and find surprising stop and go traffic. A group of 4 Italian tourists seem to take no notice of me as I catch up to them and tromp behind them with my painting paraphernalia.

I take the first opportunity to slip off into the formations and find a great spot to paint. After painting for 1/2 hour or so I begin to realize that although this drainage feels hidden I am in full view from the most popular lookout  in the park, Kachina Point. I try not too look up too often, because I am really too busy to wave back as the viewers discover the "artist", but as the light begins to fade, it look up to see a wave that looks familiar. John has come out to look for me, and waits as I pack up and make my way up the switchbacks for the second time that day.