The Painted Desert is an area of 50,000 acres of colorful mesa buttes, and badlands. Beyond the boundaries of the park, the Painted Desert runs west and north in a great arc, extending to the edges of the Grand Canyon. It forms the north side of the Little Colorado and Puerco River valleys and rises into the flat tablelands of Moenkopi Plateau and the Hopi Mesas.
The colors that "paint" the desert come from the chemical composition of the sediments that formed the rock. Generally, iron oxides create red and pink tones, manganese produces blue and purple, and various carbons produce grey, black and white.
Badlands
Geologists call eroded landscapes such as the Painted Desert "badlands". Summer thunderstorms and winter snowmelt carve the shale and sandstone into mazes of sharp ridges, steep hillsides, and deep V-shaped gullies. Practically waterless, badlands support few plants.
Badlands exist only in dry regions with sparse vegetation. Soft badland sediment, unprotected by plants or by overlying harder caprock, are easily stripped away by infrequent rains. The remaining many-colored hills - with colors derived from chemicals that formed their rock - almost appear to be melting.
In the US, some popular examples of badlands are Bryce Canyon (Utah), Death Valley (California) or Painted Desert (Arizona).
Directions
If you enter the park from the north, several overlooks and rim trails are directly ahead of you - Tiponi Point, Tawa Point, Kachina Point, Pintado Point, Nizhoni Point, Whipple Point, and Lacey Point. The distance between the entrance and the last overlook is about 5 miles.
Selected Pictures
Those pictures have been taken during multiple visits of the park, therefore the brightness and quality varies due to different weather conditions and advances in digital camera technology.
