Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona was our last planned national park on our Southwest trip, and the one I knew the least about. This park is laid out really nicely – if you were short on time, or not into hiking, you can see the majority of it from your car. We like to get right up in each park, though, so I’ll share what we did in case it helps.
We stopped at the Painted Desert Visitors Center first, and this was the first visitors center that we actually were permitted to enter! There was a ranger that greeted everyone and kind of gave us the rundown of the whole park – highlights and spots to definitely stop at. After we got our Junior Ranger stuff, we were off to explore.
Our first stop was to view the Painted Desert Inn Historic Landmark, along with a great view of the Painted Desert. This stop is really nice for parking the car, hopping out, getting some pictures, and hopping back in.
We continued driving the loop to more views of the Painted Desert, stopping at some of the many pull offs and exploring the views.
As we left the Painted Desert area, we crossed where the Route 66 used to travel. It was marked with an old 1932 Studebaker sits, and you can see the freeway that replaced Route 66 right behind it.
You then cross underneath I-40 and enter a different feel to the park. There are roughly 26 more miles to travel on the road that goes through the whole park, and the view gets very different. The first stop to see in this section is Puerco Pueblo, which shows an example of an old Pueblo home. We just drove by this one to see it from the outside.
The next stop we made was to Newspaper Rock, which is a collection of petroglyphs. This was the biggest collection of petroglyphs (the brochure boasts over 650 from over 2000 years ago!) I had seen on our trip so far, and the park had many binoculars present for people to look through to view the petroglyphs closer. My camera has a nice zoom, so we used that to look at, as well.
Next up in the park was a section called the Teepees, because the rock formations look like teepees. There are several pull offs along the road to view them, or you can see them as you drive.
The next part of our trip was my favorite – the ranger at the visitors center recommended the Blue Mesa Trail, and I had read about this before coming as well. It is a 1.0 mile loop trail that takes you down into these beautiful blue-ish rock formations. To get to this trail, you have to take one of the only roads off of the main park road to get to the parking lot, and it is a 3.5 mile loop road to get there, but it does not take long before you have arrived. When you get out of your car, you can tell from the view that it is going to be pretty epic. You have to hike down into the formations (while reminding yourself that each time you go down, you must come up at some point….), but it wasn’t a horrible descent (or ascent later). The views were definitely worth it! All four of us loved this hike, and highly recommend it!
There are many samples of petrified logs along the trail, and even a really big one that Wormy and Squid had fun looking at. However, the best petrified log viewing was still to come.
Wormy and I hopped out at the Agate Bridge stop farther down the main park road, and this was definitely another hop out and back in stop. There’s a petrified log serving as a bridge, along with some nice views of the area.
Our next stop was the Crystal Forest – this was another really neat hike. There are so many pieces of petrified wood hanging out with no trees in sight – it really makes you wonder what life was like in this exact location thousands of years ago. Luckily, there are plenty of signs to tell you the answer to that question! Crystal Forest is a paved 3/4 mile trail. I don’t think we did all of it – we kind of looked at logs that interested us, checked out a nice overlook of the whole area, and wandered around as much as we wanted.
Our final fun stop in the park was all the way at the end of the park road near the Rainbow Visitors Center. It was the Giant Logs Trail – this 0.4 mile loop trail is filled with the park’s biggest petrified log (named “Old Faithful”), along with the most colorful logs of the park. They were so gorgeous to look at. When I planned this trip, I have to be honest – I did not know very much at all about petrified logs. I imagined moldy chunks of wood littering a forest area. I had no idea how pretty petrified logs are or how they formed.
As you leave the park, there is a checkpoint to make sure no one is stealing the petrified wood. I am saddened to think people would be that self-centered, but glad that they check so that there are plenty of beautiful things for everyone to see!
Car Full of Harmony 
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