Road Trip Quilt Along Day 46, Painted Desert and Petrified Forest - West Wind Block

 It's nice to have my blocks be caught up with the travel!  Today's block is West Wind.  

This block is much easier - one big triangle and 5 small ones!

Today's drive would take us to Flagstaff, AZ with a stop at the Petrified Forest National Park, a place I have wanted to visit for many years!  

We saw more pretty scenery on our way to the park.  If we didn't have an agenda, I might have been tempted to stop at some of the interesting roadside stores!

If we hadn't seen Mammoth caves and Carlsbad Caverns we might have tried the Bigfoot Cave tour!  After a bit we crossed border into Arizona!  Then onwards to the Petrified Forest.

This was our first stop at the park, and the spot I chose to photograph my quilt for last year's Island Batik September challenge,  It was such a beautiful spot!

I took a lot of pictures, all of them gorgeous!

There was a cute lodge/gift shop where we stopped and had an ice cream cone!  It was hot and sunny at this point in our visit!

We followed the road and stopped at many viewpoints, seeing lots of different rock formations, petroglyphs, and petrified wood!

It was a challenge to see the petroglyphs, but once you see one, you start seeing more!

The sun disappeared and we could see rain in the distance.  We weren't sure if it was going to hit us or not!

We figured that we'd keep sightseeing as long as we could!

So many beautiful views!

We got out for a short hike, but it started raining on us!  

We were a little concerned, so tried to walk a bit faster!  I got nervous when the lightning started and was very happy to get back to our truck!  We ended up skipping the last few viewpoints and got on the road to Flagstaff.

There were some flash flood warnings as we drove to Flagstaff, but we weren't affected as we finished our drive, and by the time we got to Flagstaff it was sunny and nice.

Love this blue in the 3 inch block!

Here is the six inch version.

And the nine inch block.  If you are running short of background and can't cut the large triangle, you can sew this as a nine patch grid, and use a 3 1/2 inch square of background and medium light fabric and cut an additional 4 inch square of each to make 2 more half square triangles.