Petrified Forest NP

Another #smallparkday!

We finally left Sedona after 5 nights there, our longest stay in one place on the trip. Sedona is an international dark sky community so I was able to get some more astro pics- the clouds made it tricky though.

On our way to Sante Fe, we decided to make a pit stop at Petrified Forest National Park.

This is one of the largest deposits of petrified wood in the world. All of the wood is solid quartz which was created through a centuries-long process of decay. This petrified wood is from the Triassic Era, 200 million years ago, so it's older than the dinosaurs of the Jurassic Period! The rainbow colors are caused by impurities in the quartz.

The landscape here is crazy- and there were 20mph wind gusts today. The Painted Desert, which looks painted due to layers of sediment, was beautiful to drive through. This park can easily been done in 2-3 hours if you drive the 28 mile road between the 2 visitor centers and make minimum stops along the way.

We had time to do the Blue Mesa loop (3 mile drive), the Tepees, the Crystal Forest (.75 miles), and Big Logs (.4 miles). There was plenty more to explore and you could easily spend a full day there and do longer hikes- the wind was insane, and we had another 5ish hours to drive. Easy stop right off of i-40 though, and you get to see beautiful wood from 200 million years ago.