Petrified Forest National Park, AZ

The Painted Desert National Monument and the Petrified Forest National Park are actually co-joined, with one road running through both.

Our first stop in the park was Newspaper Rock, which is apparently a thousand year "newspaper", covered in hundreds of petroglyph etchings.

Several huge boulders have faces covered in graffiti over the millennia.

These reminded Kim and I of some similar etchings we saw thousands of miles away in Hawaii.

Kim's favorite was the snail on the right. I think Picasso may have been a reincarnated Native American.

The erosive process seems to be slightly faster here than we saw at the Grand Canyon.

And the vibrant colors of the Painted Desert continue well into this park too.

But suddenly, giant, ancient logs of petrified wood start appearing in the silty landscape.

Wind and water erode their sandy cocoons, and the petrified logs tumble down a hill into the flattened landscape below. Vast fields are littered with countless specimens.

Although arid today, this landscape was once a lush rain forest, as evidenced by the petrified redwoods and conifers. Trees are petrified only under the most perfect of conditions. The tree must fall into an odd mixture of mud and volcanic ash. Silicon fills the organic gaps and crystallizes into a unique series of quartz and other semi-precious materials.

What results is positively breathtaking in its color, randomness, and order. It really looks like a tree. Some even have petrified bark, rings, branches, etc. But what stands before you looks like it belongs in the ice palace of the White Witch of Narnia.

Ponder these colors.

And these.

And this multi-ton log.

And this one. Check out the break.

If I rendered this one in black and white, you probably couldn't tell that it's petrified. The bark is amazing. It looks just like the California redwoods we saw thousands of miles away on the Pacific Coast.

A few more detailed shots...

How many hues can you count in here?

Signs all around the park speak of a day before the National Park's existence where these fields were raided for their petrified curiosities. We are left to imagine how magnificent the park must have been in its initial glory, completely covered in petrified wood.

That's about it from the Petrified Forest. Kim and I took a couple of hikes. This was a Monday, but I took the day off. It was quite nice to move through the park at our own slow pace. The weather was ideal, and we basically had the park to ourselves. Definitely worth a stop if you're rolling through Arizona on I-40 / Route 66!

:-Dustin