Petrified Forest National Park

Sue and I recently completed a 2700-mile road trip in the Subie.   The idea was to drive a grand circle through the Southwest, with the apex of our trip being a visit with Joe Gresh at the Tinfiny Ranch in New Mexico.  I asked Joe what to see on the way out and back, and wow, did he have a great list.  Old Arjiu had a number of outstanding recommendations, one of which was the Petrified Forest in Arizona.  Petrified Forest National Park straddles I-40 (which was mostly built over old Route 66) and it was easy to get to.

The place sounded cool.  I’d never seen a petrified forest (or even a tree, for that matter).  I remembered being fascinated by dinosaurs and all things prehistoric when I was kid, and the concept of a petrified forest sure fit in that slot.

The Petrified Forest…wow.  As soon as Gresh mentioned the place, it became a bucket list item.  I had to see it.  We had to stop.

Like I mentioned above, I-40 is mostly built over what used to be old US Route 66, and when you travel through Arizona, you see a lot of kitsch pertaining to The Mother Road.    The sun was in just the perfect location to bring out the best of my polarizer on the 16-35 Nikon lens when we stopped by an old abandoned automobile you see in the photo above.  There was a preserved stretch of Route 66 immediately behind it.   In that photo above, it looks like it was a deserted area.  Trust me on this: It was anything but.  There were tourists taking photos at that spot from Germany, Turkey, Portugal, Brazil, and more, and I can tell you from reading the body language they were all having a good time.  So were we.   We all took turns getting out of each other’s way as we took pictures.  It was fun.

We drove a little further down the road and came upon the area you see below.  This part of the National Park is called the Painted Desert, for obvious reasons…

I was struck by just how beautiful the Petrified Forest National Park was, and then it hit me…I had driven this stretch if I-40 on many motorcycle rides several times before, and it never occurred to me to stop.   Folks, take it from me:   Don’t make that mistake.  Although not as well known as other flagship US National Parks (Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, etc.), the Petrified Forest is a real gem.

There’s only one road that meanders through the Petrified Forest National Park, with numerous strategically-located viewing stops along its length.   We hit nearly every one.

One such stop was Newspaper Rock.  We thought it would be a rock formation that looked like a newspaper, but it wasn’t that at all.  It was a collection of petroglyphs deep in a canyon.  The newspaper moniker was related to the idea that early Native Americans communicated with and left messages for each other here.   Fortunately, I had my 70-300 lens, and that allowed the reach I needed to get good images…

While we were admiring the petroglyphs, a couple of crows landed nearby.  By that time I had already put the wide angle lens back on the Nikon, and I wanted to see just how close I could get before the crows flew away.  The big black birds were cool until Sue and I were about 4 feet away, and then they took off.  They were huge.  We actually heard the wind they created flapping their wings.

The scenery and the roads were stark and colorful.  We stopped and I grabbed this photo of Sue and the Subie…

You might be wondering…what about the petrified trees?  Where were they?

Well, we saw those, too…

This was a great destination.  We exited I-40 on the eastern edge of the Petrified Forest and followed the road through the Park all the way to the western edge.   From there, you pick up an Arizona country road and follow it west for roughly 20 miles to Holbrooke, where you can get back on I-40.  Good times and a great destination.  You might want to add it to your list of places to see.  It’s worth a trip to Arizona all by itself, and it’s certainly worth a stop if you are passing through Arizona on Interstate 40.