Petrified Forest National Park

29Apr18

A 28-mile road traverses the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. And while the park road is one continuous stretch, the Petrified Forest National Park can be split down the middle.

The split separates the namesake portion of the park from the Painted Desert and its unique coloring of the Arizona desert.

While I drove the length of the park in a few hours, for the purpose of this blog I am splitting my travels into two entries. Next week I’ll discuss the Painted Desert, while today I highlight my travels in the petrified forest portion of the park.

Petrified wood dot the landscape and remnants of a prehistoric forest form the national park. There are colorful specimens, from small shards to massive trunks. They are strewn across the landscape and over the thousands of years, have crystallized into quartz.

There are eight stops in this section. My goal during this visit was to spend more time at places I neglected on my previous tour six years ago.

I came into the park from the west with my first stop at the Rainbow Forest Museum.

At the museum I skipped the Giant Logs Trail in favor of the Long Logs Trail that I missed out before. This was a wise choice. The Long Logs Trail is a 1.6-mile loop that has the logs all over the place.

Some of the logs are over 180 feet long and the adjacent small hills provide a scenic background to the petrified wood. Just a mile further on the Long Logs Trail is Agate House, a pueblo that has been constructed of petrified wood. I didn’t hike to Agate House, preferring to save this for a future visit.

Of the remaining stops, I bypassed four saving time to revisit the Crystal Forest, a paved ¾-mile loop trail in a badlands landscape. The trail runs past countlessly exquisite and colorful petrified logs. This was definitely worth a revisit.

Before heading into the Painted Desert I stopped by Blue Mesa and its 3.5-mile loop road. On this visit I only stopped at the overlooks that looked down on the sweeping and vibrant badlands. There is a mile long trail that takes you from the overlook into the colorful badlands and more petrified wood.

I hiked that trail last time, but decided to skip it in order to spend the rest of my day in the Painted Desert.

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