Petrified Forest National Park

Old is a relative term. You might look at an antique piece of furniture, for example, built over a hundred years ago and consider that old. Or in the case of Petrified National Forest, where you can touch a tree that lived 200 to 250 million years ago, “old” is vastly redefined. To put this into further context, these trees lived within the Triassic period when reptiles and the first dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Petrified Forest National Park, located within the Painted Desert of northern Arizona, has the largest collection of petrified wood in the world. These trees of stone are an amazing site to see, mineralized in quarts, iron and other elements creating a rainbow of colors while still retaining their natural tree structure. Walking among these prehistoric trees is like taking a step back in time. You might just see a Lystrosaurus or a Tanystropheus while walking about!

Petrified Forest National Park is a small park that you can fully cover in just a couple of days, but within 30 minutes to an hour from the park are several other attractions that should be seriously considered when visiting the area. We stayed in the town of Holbrook Arizona at the OK RV Park. The park was sufficient for our needs and put us in a central location for everything on our list. The town of Holbrook is nothing special, in fact it’s quite run down.

The park consists of one main road with a north and south entrance. If you’re doing any hiking there’s too much to see in one day, but you can certainly cover it in two days, which is exactly what we did. The first day we entered from the north and mostly covered the roadside attractions and viewpoints along with some short hikes. On the second day we entered from the south and added a couple longer hikes and covered some of the spots we missed on the first day. For simplicity, I’ll cover the highlights of our two-day visit going from north to south.

Petrified Forest National Park

Tiponi Point

Right down from the Visitor Center is the Tiponi Point viewpoint. This is a magnificent view of the vast painted desert below.

Painted Desert Rim Trail

For a little closure and more expansive view of the painted desert, consider the short Rim Trail. This up and back trail is only 1.2 miles and an easy stroll. If you take the trail to the end you will arrive at the Painted Desert Inn.

Painted Desert Inn

This historic building was originally built as a stop for those traveling Route 66 across the country. Travelers could get a bite to eat, something to drink or even rent a room for the night. It’s now a historical landmark and museum. The Inn can be accessed right off the park road.

Route 66

Petrified Forest is the only national park in the country with a segment of the Mother Road within its boundaries. At this roadside site you can see the telephone poles that lined the old Route 66. There’s also an old rusted 1932 Studebaker there which makes for a great photo op.

Puerco Pueblo

A very short trail will take you through ancestral Puebloan homes and petroglyphs. There’s even an ancient solar calendar that marks the summer solstice with the angle of the sun shining over a rock and petroglyph.

Newspaper Rock

This viewpoint provides more opportunities to see some of the petroglyphs in the park from an overlook. You can’t get as close to the petroglyphs here as you could at Puerco Pueblo, but the view is pretty impressive.

The Tepees

As you travel further down the road you get to one of the most colorful parts of the parks. This zebra striped badlands area is gorgeous and offers a couple of places to pull over and take some pictures.

Historic Blue Forest Trail

As you might know, I try to find “that” hiking trail at any national park we visit. The Blue Forest Trail is “that” trail at Petrified Forest. It’s flat gravel road start is deceiving and not representative of the rest of the trail which climbs over the Blue Mesa badlands area. It’s not an easy trail but a great adventure hiking along the ridges and through some steep and narrow sections within some of the most beautiful parts of the park. There are several spots of petrified trees along the way as well. You can take this as an up and back hike or connect to the Blue Mesa trail if you have someone to pick you up at the other end. About the only thing lacking on this trail is people.

Blue Mesa Scenic Road

The only artery road off of the main park road offers an easier way to explore the Blue Mesa without a strenuous hike. There are several amazing pull-outs along the road to stop at and admire the views. There is also a 1-mile Blue Mesa Trail that loops through the flat area between the hills, although there is a fairly steep descent to the bottom.

Agate Bridge

This is a quick stop to see an intact petrified tree that has created a bridge over a chasm. Although it has been secured with a concrete support, it is still something special to see.

Jasper Forest

A magnificent viewpoint provides, the first major gathering of petrified trees which can be seen in a very impressive overlook. It’s not only one of the largest collection of petrified wood in the park, but also one of the largest accumulations of petrified wood in the world. The viewpoint gives you a good sense of how this all might have evolved.

Crystal Forest

This short trail was one of our favorite places in the park to see petrified logs. There’s a tremendous amount of unique petrified wood to see right up close.

Rainbow Forest Museum and Visitor Center

At the far south end of the park is another Visitor Center and museum and a separate building where you can watch a short informative film about the park, which I highly recommend.

Giant Logs Trail

Right behind the Visitor Center is the short Giant Logs trail, where you can see some of the largest logs in the park. Be sure to make this stop before you leave the park.

Petrified Forest National Park isn’t the only place to visit in this part of Arizona. Be sure to allocate some additional time for some of the other sites such as the following.

Winslow, Arizona

“Well, I’m a standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. Such a fine sight to see. It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford. Slowin’ down to take a look at me.” Those words from the third verse of the Eagles Take it Easy song put this small Route 66 town on the map for eternity. We don’t spend too much time visiting the touristy spots in our travels but this one is an exception. In fact, I’ve wanted to “stand on the corner” for a long time, and I finally got the opportunity to do so.

Winslow used to be a thriving town along Route 66 until Interstate 40 was built. Like so many other small towns that the interstate bypassed, tourism and business dried up as new big box chains opened up along the highway and Route 66 simply became a nostalgic thoroughfare.

Taking advantage of the notoriety the song provided to the town, a Standin’ on the Corner Foundation was established to bring tourism and business back to the town. In 1999 Standin’ on the Corner Park was established on the corner of Route 66 and North Kinsley Avenue right in the center of Winslow.

The corner now memorializes “Standing on the Corner in Winslow Arizona”. A facade wall is the background with murals painted on the windows with a reflection of “the girl in a flatbed Ford”. That flatbed Ford also sits on the corner along with a statue of Jackson Browne who co-wrote the song with Glenn Frey. A Glenn Frey statue was later added after his passing in 2016.

This is so much more than just a corner with some statues and a memorial of a popular band and song, especially for those of us who grew up in the 70’s. One might argue that the Eagles were one of the best bands of our time and Take it Easy one of their most iconic songs. The “corner”, with Eagles music playing, a huge Route 66 emblem painted in the intersection and an older gentleman strumming his guitar across the street seems to memorialize the 70’s. Everyone is truly just taking it easy, enjoying the moment and maybe for a moment stepping back in time and reminiscing about their own lives.

Whether you credit Glenn Frey and Jackson Browne, the town’s foundation or the renewed awareness that the 2006 animated film Cars brought to lost small towns along Route 66, this small town is once again thriving.

Meteor Crater

50,000 years ago, over a stretch of land in the vast Arizona desert, a pinpoint of light appeared and rapidly grew from the northeastern sky. A meteor, probably broken from the core of an asteroid during an ancient collision in the main asteroid belt some half billion years ago, came hurtling towards Earth at about 26,000 miles per hour. In seconds it passed through our atmosphere with almost no loss of velocity or mass.

In a blinding flash a huge iron-nickel meteorite, or dense cluster of meteorites, estimated to have been about 150 feet across and weighing several hundred tons, struck the rocky plain with an explosive force greater than 20 million tons of TNT. The results of the explosion created a crater 700 feet deep and over 4,000 feet across, now called The Barringer Crater.

The Meteor Crater Museum, located on the north rim of the crater and just a short distance from Winslow, is an amazing place to learn about this incredible phenomenon and get a close up look at the crater. There are several observation decks to gawk at the magnificence of the crater, which is now 550 feet deep, and 4,000 feet across. That’s big enough for twenty football fields and 2 million spectators!

In addition to the observation decks and guided tours of the crater, the museum offers a lot to learn more about the most intact and studied meteor crater on the planet. Included in the museum and admission fee is a great film and a very fun 4D experience where you fly into the crater.

It’s interesting to learn how NASA used this site in training for the Apollo missions. Also interesting is that this is on private land, so it’s not owned by the National Park Service. Excessive entry fees represent this private status but don’t let that deter you from going, it is certainly a once in a lifetime experience.

Honorable Mentions

When visiting Winslow be sure to stop at the historic La Posada Hotel, which is just a short walk from “the corner”. The lavish hotel was built in the late 1920’s for an estimated 2 million dollars. It was a spot that many famous people stayed at such as Albert Einstein, Amelia Earhart, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Betty Grable and John Wayne to mention a few. After operating for 27 years, it closed its doors and laid vacant for years. In 1994 it was purchased from the railroad and opened again in 1997 fully restored.

The hotel, with its amazing architecture, still operates today and includes a museum and art gallery open to the public. The hotel and gardens are a joy to walk through so be sure to stop at this historic hotel while in Winslow to walk about or enjoy a meal in their restaurant. The La Posada hotel also owns the Amtrak depot right out the back door of the hotel which is part of the original hotel compound. The train stops here twice a day on the Los Angeles-Chicago line so it can make for a great stop if traveling by train.

For a little Route 66 nostalgia, when traveling between Winslow and Holbrook to the east, take a detour off the interstate and stop at the Jack Rabbit Trading Post. This roadside souvenir shop along the Mother Road dates back to the 1940’s and is still owned by the same family. You might recall it from the many jack rabbit signs that used to line the road or from being featured in Cars. There’s not much to the place but there are some interesting artifacts to be seen. It was also nice talking to one of the extended family members that owns it now who was working there that day.

So for now, we’re just runnin’ down the road tryin’ to loosen our load and keep the sound of our own wheels from making us crazy. See you down the road a piece and be sure to check out our pictures from this memorable stop in our travels.