Petrified Forest NP

#131 (December 9, 2022): As much as we wish we could stay longer for more skiing and snowboarding fun, it is time for us to continue east on I-40 so we will be home in time for Christmas! There are so many fun adventures in Arizona that we will have to save for another time—Sedona, Phoenix, Saguaro National Park, Meteor Crater, among others! Oh, and we passed a sign today for something we didn’t know about, the historic London Bridge (the one that was “falling down” in the beloved nursery rhyme) is in Lake Havasu City! It was purchased from London and rebuilt in Lake Havasu City in 1971! Who knew?! So many reasons to come back to Arizona some day!

Alas, we are headed 5 hours east to Albuquerque, New Mexico, but thankfully for us, we get to squeeze in one last Arizona adventure en route (since I-40 goes right by its entrance)—Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona’s Painted Desert. For easier travel throughout the park, we detached our rig in the Painted Desert Visitor Center’s parking lot. We gathered park info, maps, and stamps inside the visitor center. Evidently, today is Petrified Forest’s 61st anniversary as a national park. Cool! (Prior to that, it had been a national monument since 1906.)

From there, we drove the park’s 28-mile road first admiring the gray and red tepee-shaped badland hills of the Painted Desert in the north end of the park. We took our picture with an old, rusted vehicle where the historic Route 66 once crossed inside the park. We then hiked the short Puerco Pueblo trail to petroglyphs and ruins of ancestral Puebloan homes. At the south end of the park, we visited the Rainbow Forest Visitor Center before hiking the short Giant Logs Trail behind it, where we took our picture with the largest and most famous of the colorful petrified logs, Old Faithful (named in honor of the park system’s original and most famous Old Faithful in Yellowstone).

The most surprising and most memorable thing about the Petrified Forest is how colorful the petrified logs are! We were expecting gray-colored wood-looking rocks; I guess as if they were petrified or heavy, hardened driftwood. But no, that’s not what they are at all. The term Rainbow Forest is a great clue and description actually. The petrified logs look like the sun melted a box of broken crayons over and throughout the entire log, each and every one similar yet different in its own way. A piece of art really! (Yet again, our Master Artist has not disappointed in his display of his infinite creativity.) They were super cool to see in person! Too bad it’s illegal to take a small piece home! We’ll admit, it was quite tempting. They’re just so cool!

On the drive back through the park, we conveniently watched the park’s film on our iPhone. We soon reattached our RV and continued our drive through the desert to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we parked at Route 66 RV Resort. For dinner, we went to the adjacent Route 66 Casino for some delicious Laguna Burgers. These Hatch green chile burgers were massive with one-half pound patties! Huge! (Some of us opted for the smaller yet still big, one-third patty “Laguna Wimp.” Ha!)

#132 (December 10, 2022): Today we rested! Yay! Chris and Emily worked on work and projects while the kids enjoyed some down time practicing the One Wheel and working a national park puzzle, playing pool, watching TV, and drinking hot chocolate in the campground’s activity center.