Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona - September 10, 2023
Petrified Forest National Park has a high concentration of petrified wood. However, the park has a whole lot more to offer than just petrified wood. You can spend a whole day, or perhaps two, exploring the unusual landscapes, pueblo ruins, historic sites, and yes, lots of beautiful petrified wood.
We spent Sunday in Petrified Forest National Park. It was about a 45 minute drive from our camp site in Homolovi State Park. There is one main road through the national park, which is on a slight angle from the northeast down to the southwest. The north entrance is off of I-40 and the south entrance is on US 180. The angles of all three of those roads make a nice triangle. So they recommend if you are traveling east to west on I-40, that you enter the park at the north, then take US 180 at the south end to get back to I-40 at Holbrook. If you are traveling from west to east, they recommend you take US 180 from Holbrook to the south entrance. Then exit the park in the north to get back on I-40. Since we were coming from the west, but also going back west, it didn’t really matter whether we entered at the north or south entrance. We decided to enter at the north and exit at the south entrance.
We’ve been to Petrified Forest before, but we can’t remember whether we visited once or twice. It has been quite a few years since we’ve been there, hence the fuzzy memory (that and we’re getting old). What we do remember is that we didn’t allow enough time to thoroughly enjoy the park and felt rushed to see what we did. This time we set aside the full day, which made for a much more relaxing time.
We started at the Painted Desert Visitor Center. We picked up a map, then walked around to the Museum Demonstration Lab. At the window, we chatted with the paleontologist. She explained the dinosaur fossil she was working on. It was very interesting. We recommend checking it out.
The park movie was playing inside the restaurant and not the actual visitor center. That meant we could enjoy a drink while we watched the movie. Not a bad arrangement.
As we started our drive along the park road, we stopped at a couple of overlooks with views of the Painted Desert. Then we spent some time at the historic Painted Desert Inn. You can longer spend the night there, as it closed its doors in 1963. However, it is now a museum and gift shop. Walking through the building is well worth your time to take in a little history and imagine what it was like to stay there.
Behind the inn is the Petrified Forest National Wilderness Access Trail. It goes down onto the Painted Desert below. We weren’t interested in taking a long hike out into the wilderness, but we thought venturing down into the badlands would give us a different perspective than just viewing them from above. We ventured about three quarters of a mile round trip, with an elevation gain of 230 feet in about 25 minutes. In addition to the bright red sandstone mounds surrounding us, the valleys were dotted with chunks of petrified logs.
By the time we finished our short hike, it was lunch time. We grabbed a picnic lunch out of Red Tail and sat at a table just outside the Painted Desert Inn. It was a lovely view out over the Painted Desert while we ate our meal. The gift shop inside served hand-dipped ice cream. So naturally we had ice cream for dessert. Ann had a scoop of huckleberry while Keith had a scoop of chocolate. He would have preferred vanilla, but the vanilla was sugar-free. No thanks!
The next point of interest was the Route 66 Alignment. There is a rusty old 1932 Studebaker sitting where the historic Route 66 used to cut through the park. The car makes for a nice photo op.
Next up was the Puerto Pueblo. A short trail with interpretative signs loops around the remains of ancestral pueblo homes and petroglyphs.
Just a little further down the road is Newspaper Rock, with a much higher concentration of petroglyphs. However, they are much further away, so you need binoculars or a strong telephoto camera lens to see them clearly.
At Blue Mesa, we took the trail for another short hike. Blue Mesa Trail was one mile with an elevation gain of 115 feet which we completed in 33 minutes. The trail takes you among the sandstone badland formations, which have a blue coloration to them. They are also strewn with plenty of petrified logs.
We were not as impressed with the next two stops, the Agate Bridge and the Jasper Forest. The Agate Bridge is a 110 foot long petrified log spanning a gully, but it is propped up with a concrete support that was added in 1917. We found that a little underwhelming. The Jasper Forest is an overlook with a view of petrified logs densely scattered in the valley below. However, you are quite a distance, up high, from the logs. There are better views of petrified logs.
Our favorite view of petrified logs was the Crystal Forest. The trail through the Crystal Forest is 0.9 miles long with only an elevation gain of 36 feet, but it took us over half an hour to complete it. Why? Because Ann was taking so many pictures. The logs along the trail have such a variety of color to them. Vibrant reds, greens, blues, oranges, and yellows. The variety and mixture of colors was amazing. You can see why so many people in the past wanted to take a souvenir home with them. They are beautiful. Remember, you are not allowed to remove anything from the park. Don’t worry, there are many gift shops surrounding the park who are more than willing to sell you some petrified wood.
At this point during our visit, we were starting to get tired. We headed to the gift shop at the Rainbow Forest Visitor Center complex for cold drinks to revive us. In addition to cold drinks, they also had bags of popcorn. We sat down with our goodies and watched the park movie. It was the same movie that was showing at the north entrance, but it was a comfortable place to sit while we consumed our refreshments. The movie was the perfect length for us to eat our snacks.
It was getting close to 4 pm. We were getting close to our saturation point. We decided to walk the trail out to the Agate House and skip the side loop to Long Logs and the short Giant Logs Trail. The Agate House was originally built using petrified wood some time between 1050 and 1300. It was reconstructed in 1934, but inaccurately, as it is now believed that there would not have been a window in the building. It is still interesting to see.
Our total hiking for the day was 4.6 miles with an elevation gain of 460 feet which took us two hours and ten minutes to complete. We counted the combination of trails as hike number 36 of our 52 Hike Challenge, National Park Series.
As we drove back to Winslow, we didn’t feel like cooking dinner and Keith had a craving for wings. So we headed to Captain Tony’s Pizza and Pasta in Winslow. Ann had a pizza while Keith had wings. Well, we didn’t really care for the pizza or the wings, but it was better than cooking dinner ourselves.
By the end of the day, we were exhausted. We thought spending a whole day inside Petrified Forest National Park would give us plenty of time to explore the whole park. We could have easily spread it over two days or more without running out of things to do. And we could have slowed down our pace a little more.
Check out our related video: Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona
(Ann)