Petrified Forest NP July 20

 

We rounded out our Mesa Verde and Rio Chama trips with a brief stop at Petrified Forest NP. I had not been through the main park drive since 2008 so I did not mind a visit to break up our drive home. We entered the north entrance a few minutes after they opened then checked out the historic Painted Desert Inn, which had some interesting time period specific displays including the 1950s dining room and soda fountain bar (banana split 30¢, milk shake 20¢, etc.). This is where Heather and I started our day hike into the Painted Desert wilderness on our last visit.

Historic Painted Desert Inn (and below)

Painted Desert wilderness off to the north

After crossing the wash (with water and fresh signs of a flash flood the previous night), we stopped briefly at Puerco Pueblo. Though not much to see compared to Mesa Verde, it was nonetheless interesting to imagine how life must have been different between the two sites and the monumental effort in trading across the 200 miles between them. Along the south escarpment next to the pueblo ruins were several boulders with nicely constructed petroglyphs including a neat mazelike motif (below). Back at the car and a short distance further we detoured for the Newspaper Rock viewpoint. Unfortunately we could get nowhere near it and had to admire the hundreds of glyphs as best we could at a distance.

Newspaper Rock (one of them at least)

Next we turned off to do a short (but warm!) hike from the Blue Mesa trailhead. We started along the the paved loop trail as it followed the rim of the mesa and then dropped down into the colorful badlands. We then turned off these to follow the remnants of the old CCC-built Blue Forest Trail to some views of more striped badlands with petrified logs interspersed. Returning, we finished the Blue Mesa loop trail and I quickly downed the cold gatorade I had waiting in the cooler. The views were delightfully varied for such a short hike.

We made brief stops at Agate Bridge and Jasper Forest overlooks, then on to the very popular Crystal Forest Trail. Though not the largest or necessarily densest, this is undoubtedly the most colorful collection of petrified wood anywhere in the wild. I enjoyed photographing close-up textures, ringed rounds, and logs in various states of disaggregation. The frontispiece log reminiscent of a chopped vegetable being the most classic example of an eroding petrified log that I remembered from my previous visit. We exited the south entrance and then drove on to Flagstaff (hard to pass by Fratelli's without a slice!) and then home for unpacking and in short order packing again for our next trip. Thanks to Heather.