Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert

We've noticed the temperatures cooling as we make our way west. When we started our trip, we were running the air-conditioner at most locations. As time passes, we're moving into fall's furnace weather. Our plan for the day was to do some sight-seeing at Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert. Thanks to the kitties (as always), we got an early start. I'd forgotten that Arizona doesn't recognize daylight savings time, and so I was up an hour earlier than I thought at 4:20 a.m., which gave me plenty of time to finish up the 7th of Grandma's Thimbles.

When Mike got up, Sadie was ready for a nap. She'd been running back and forth through the camper for the past hour. Now that she had everyone awake, she could rest.

Even Smitty was ready for some shut-eye.

When we had our morning routine completed, we headed out to the national park. We've both visited this park before, separately, and when we were teenagers. Even though I was something like 16 when I was here, I had almost no memory of it.

This is one of our few national parks that can be seen adequately by simply driving through. Even better is taking the two one-mile loop hikes. There are entrance gates at both the north and south ends of the road through the park. We entered from the south, which mean our first hike was the Crystal Forest Trail. Here's a little about that. When you see these pictures, you'll be amazed to know how it all began.

Mind your manners, please. We noted when we left the park at the end of our tour, there were signs about vehicle inspections. Our vehicle wasn't inspected, but clearly, they're not kidding around with this.

We noticed right away that petrified "logs" were scattered over the landscape, as if just recently clear-cut.

The colors in the "wood" were something to behold. 

Some of it appears to be rotting, just as it would if you were to see it in a living forest.

And it looked for all the world as if someone has just recently taken a chainsaw and sawed it into rounds to be split into firewood.

Visible rings are still present. 

Some of it appears charred, as if it only just recently were burned by a wildfire.

When the forest was living, some of the conifers were as much as 180 feet tall. Here's one that appears to be lying where it fell. It is lighter in color than some of what we saw. Tapping on it, it was still somewhat "wood-like," in that it was more porous, as if the petrification process hadn't quite finished before it was uncovered by erosion.

The petrified wood wasn't the only thing to see here either. The landscape was hauntingly beautiful.

So what causes wood to petrify? Here are some signs that explain what you're seeing here.

Mike was skeptical about whether everything we were seeing was natural. It was hard to believe the trees were just cut apart, so perfectly, and that it happened by natural forces. It did, though, and here's how it happens.

Moving on, we came to the Agate Bridge. To see the bridge, we first walked through this structure:

Here's some information about the structure.

Beyond was the Agate Bridge, a petrified log that fell across a river. It was shored up in 1917 to keep it from disintegrating completely.

Here's some information about it.

From there, we reached the second hike of the day, the Blue Mesa Trail, which is another one-mile loop. This was the highlight of the day for me. Here's some information about what you're going to see.

Standing at the overlook, the landscape was amazing. I had to take it in pano to capture the size, and still, I couldn't get it all in one shot.

Behind us, the landscape was an undulating flat land.

Colorful cliffs bordered the southern edge.

Ahead of us was the trail, which starts out easy enough.

Early on, it descends steeply into the canyon, where it flattens out again into an easy loop. (You're going to have to walk *up* that steep hill to get out again, so gird up your loins if you're coming with us.)

Standing below with these colorful towering bluffs all around was breath-taking.

Notice the petrified logs lining the wash in the image below.

Here's a final pano of the area before we had to walk back up the steep hill we'd come from.

Our next stop was "Newspaper Rock," where something on the order of 600 petroglyphs can be seen. At least one of them interacts with the sun in the way Stonehenge does, and so it is thought this rock passed on messages, but also had seasonal significance. This whole area is 223 million years in the making...when dinosaurs ruled the planet, and humanity had yet to make an appearance. One wonders what the indigenous people must have thought about the petrified logs littering the landscape.

The two huge rocks were fenced off and protected from vandals, but the park service had provided these binoculars so that visitors could have a clear view.

I've marked with red arrows which faces of the rocks contain petroglyphs. These were the ones we could see with naked eyes.

Zooming in, the rock on the right had petroglyphs on two faces.

Here are some close-up shots.

Moving on, our final stop was at the "Painted Desert" end of the park at the north entrance. As you've seen, all of the landscape is colorfully "painted," but our map called this area the actual "Painted Desert" portion of the park. There were incredible views here.

In the image below, you can see the Painted Desert Inn on the left, which is closed temporarily. The large hill beyond is known as Chinde Point, which means "evil spirit." Beyond, a volunteer told me the mountains you see are located in Flagstaff, nearly 150 miles away.

Here's a little information about the area.

Looking east, this is what we saw.

From there, we left the park. It was lunch time, and we were hungry and tired. We had our lunch, took naps, and then spent the rest of the day lazing around. 

When I planned this trip, I allowed us two days to see the national park, and we were able to git 'er done in one day. That means we have a free day today. As I've mentioned before, we're planning a trip to Alaska next summer. We've taken a month-long trip in this camper in the past. This trip will be six weeks, and we're looking on it as a practice trip for our 3-month trip next summer. So far, so good. We've talked about it along the way, and we've both agreed that so far, we're up for a longer trip. At least one thing we've learned, however, is that these sight-seeing trips are busy. There are things to see along every stop, and it can get tiring to always be on the move. We've agreed that a free day every 3-4 days is a requirement. As I plan our trip for next summer, I'll be keeping that in mind.

So that's all I have for you today. It looks as if I'll be able to blog here as long as I do it in the morning. Waiting until later in the afternoon, the "network" is too busy, and I'm not able to upload pictures. We'll be moving on tomorrow to Oracle, Arizona. We'll be riding our ATV's again when we get there, and so there will be much more to tell, assuming we have internet access. I'm interested to see our next stopping point, where we'll spend five nights. It's an equine campground, and so there should be lots of horsey people around. We checked ahead to see if mechanical horses were enough to get us in, and they were. I'm hoping I'll be able to tell you about it in real time. If not, there's always time traveling.