Wilderness Wandering

October 22-23

Sunday

Petrified Forest is an interesting park! 

It is colorful badlands, forests of fallen trees turned to stone, fossils of prehistoric animals and plants, ruins and petroglyphs of ancient people, plus the nostalgia of Route 66!

That’s a lot for 1 park!

We arrived early afternoon. As you enter, the Ranger tells you that it is a federal offense to remove anything from the park. 

We stopped at the Painted Desert visitor center after we took our picture with the sign. It is an interesting VC. They had gas for sale and a restaurant along with the normal information and gift shop features. It was lunch time, so we ordered Navajo Fry Bread Tacos and ate while we watched the park movie. The fry bread was like a yummy cloud!

We decided our next order of business would be the 24 mile scenic drive. The north end of the park is the Painted Desert, which looks very similar to the Badlands.

We stopped at the historic landmark Painted Desert Inn. 

It was a rest stop along route 66. It is beautifully preserved. The furniture in the dining room was crafted by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

They had several Native people showing and selling their jewelry and rugs. Tim feel in love with a beautiful rug. The artist’s daughter showed us how her mother crafts them. They raise the sheep, card the wool,  dye the wool, spin the yarn, and weave the rugs. She said a rug like we were looking at (maybe 3’ x 5’) can take 3 months to weave!

Next we came to the point where Route 66 used to cross the National park. It is commemorated by an old Studebaker. 

The middle third of the drive is Puerto Puerco and Newspaper Rock to see ruins and petroglyphs. The ruins weren’t very remarkable in comparison to Mesa Verde and Hovenweep.

The southern third of the park is the petrified wood. I really couldn’t imagine what the petrified wood would be like. It is literally everywhere!

The story of petrified wood is remarkable. Approximately 225 million years ago, when the continents were still in Pangea form, this area was near the equator and was a subtropical climate. The trees were washed away by ancient rivers, and then buried by soil, and ash. Over all that time, their organic matter was mineralized and preserved. The type of minerals accounts for the variety of colors.

At the very southern tip of the park is the Rainbow Forest Museum. It was one of our favorite parts of the park. They have casts of many of the fossils found in the park. Some of them are huge scary dinosaurs and some are beautiful plants. They also had a display of letters from people who had taken petrified wood from the park and later had remorse about it. One of the best was from a young boy.

As you leave the park, you have to stop so they can search your car for stolen petrified wood. But, no one was manning the booth as we left. 

We exited the park and adjacent to the park on private land are two stops to buy petrified wood items. Both allow camping. So we pulled into one and spent the night.

Monday

We reentered the park at 8:00 AM and parked at The Rainbow Forest Museum to do the 2.4 mile combined Long Logs and Agate House Trail. As we set out, the trail was black top. It had a yellow line on the right side. I thought it was a bike lane, but there was a No Bikes sign. I realized it liked just like the yellow line alongside a highway. I think they turned the old route 66 pavement into the trail! The long logs were cool. The highlight was the Agate House. It’s an ancient house that was constructed from petrified wood. Very cool!

Our last stop was the 1 mile Blue Mesa hike.

That was it for Petrified Forest National Park.