Hózhó Point

Hózhó Point is a roadside overlook and picnic area on the north side of Petrified Forest, in the Painted Desert country. If you're driving the park road, it's an easy place to stop for lunch and look across the badlands. The view is layered and close rather than one clean, uninterrupted horizon, so it suits a relaxed picnic and a look around more than a hunt for the park's biggest panorama.

Red, gray, and cream bands fold across the basin, with rounded badland ridges in front and a flat-topped mesa farther out. Let the striped foreground stay in your photo and keep the mesa beyond it; that gives the view depth and shows how far the country runs. A tighter frame brings the ridge patterns forward.

Older maps and photos call this Chinde Point. They mean the same overlook and picnic area now called Hózhó Point, so don't treat them as two separate stops. The place is also associated with the 1984 discovery of Chindesaurus, one of the park's dinosaur finds; the exact fossil site isn't identified as this overlook.

Picnic shelters, tables, benches, and an interpretive panel make this more than a quick pullout. Parking is listed for cars and larger vehicles, and some picnic sites and a restroom are accessible; that doesn't establish that every part of the area is accessible. No food service is listed here, and park-road stops have no drinking water, so bring both lunch and water.