November 24, 2005—Pretty n’ Petrified

Sometime back on a beautifully warm sunny day in August we managed time to spend the day in the Petrified National Forest, which is just about 50 miles away. This is one of the country’s smaller national parks with one main road 28 miles long. Along its serpentine path are numerous turnouts, walks through ancient rock “forests” and grand vistas of millions of year old painted hills. Although this park does not allow formal camping, it surprising does allow wilderness backpack camping with a free permit.

Petrified wood as most know, is actually mineralized stone (iron, carbon, manganese, cobalt, and chromium), producing vivid hues and is also quite heavy, weighing nearly 200 pounds per cubic foot, with a hardness of 7 on a 10 point scale.

We headed out early and entered the north entrance (there is a north and a south entrance and most will advise that you drive the route south to north) of the park which starts out with rolling vistas of the Painted Desert. Our routing proved fortuitous; it turned out we saw only one other tourist traveling our direction and we ended up having the entire north end of the park all to ourselves for nearly three hours before we encountered the heavier traffic which had started at the other end of the park.

Once you’ve left the Painted Desert and crossed under the freeway on the 45 mph park road, the next point of interest is Puerco Pueblo, a partially stabilized 100-room pueblo built about 1250 which may have housed nearly 1200 ancients. There is not a lot left here—adobe after all, does tend to eventually melt away from the elements and this pueblo is not located in a place where it gets any shelter from overhanging cliffs. It does get one to thinking of ancient life however and imagining how these people must have been pretty small—the rooms are very tiny.

A little further on, a spur road leads to the first real sight of petrified logs on the Blue Mesa Trail. The road is a loop which sits at a higher elevation, so it is not necessary to walk the one mile strenuous trail to get good glimpses of the garishly painted hills.

Our next stop was Agate Bridge, a perfect example of an entire log, stretched for eternity across a chasm. Well, maybe not for eternity; the park service thought enough of its fragility to support its entire length with concrete to keep it from collapsing to the canyon floor. There is an old photograph taken in the 1930’s of what this log originally looked like, which makes an interesting juxtaposition.

By now it’s late morning and we are encountering other tourists as we make our next stop the Crystal Forest Trail. This contains the largest array of petrified stumps in the park and makes for an easy .8 mile loop trail around some dazzling pieces with colors of the rainbow. The pictures will speak better than any words I can come up with.

It’s worth noting that some of the large specimens in this section were badly looted at points in the park’s past. Here’s a good example: a majestic log which used to hold glassy amethyst and quartz crystals until someone felt they needed it as a souvenir. Today of course, it is highly illegal to take any piece of rock from the park, regardless of size. There are commercial outlets in nearby Holbrook which harvest rock from private property and can provide many fascinating pieces molded into bookends and even $14,000 highly polished coffee tables if one feels the need for a souvenir! Petrified wood sells for approximately $2/lb in its raw state and you can even buy stumps just like you see in these pictures if your pocketbook is deep enough!

By now it is only a hop, skip, and a jump to the southern end of the park with the Rainbow Forest Museum (which we skip), a picnic grounds and the ranger station. We have picnic lunch beneath some large cottonwood trees with begging small birds watching our every move before we head out on the Agate House trail. This trail has a couple different loops so was longer than we wanted to attempt on Marc’s bad knee but we did walk approximately a mile round trip to view the Agate House. This is a reconstruction of what they think the ancients would have made out of the petrified wood and is fascinating in its colored intensity. Plus, it sits on a rolling, high hill with an excellent 360 degree view of the countryside so is well worth the walk. You might even be lucky enough to spot a curious desert denizen like this one.

The Petrified National Forest is very easy to find, with the south entrance off state Highway 180 east of Holbrook or the north entrance directly off Interstate 40 also east of Holbrook. This is high desert above 5000 feet, so be careful of the elevation if you’re hiking and are not acclimated. The park is open year round and although not a destination park since there are no accommodations available within its boundaries, it is definitely a worthwhile stop if you are near the area.