Day 6

Starting Point: Bernalillo, NM

Destination: Winslow, AZ

Miles Driven: 312

I’ll try to keep this one short and sweet. Today was a fun and easy day. Only a 4-hour drive between where I started and where I’m staying. The bulk of my day was spent at Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park.

From what I’ve gathered online, Petrified Forest is considered one of the more overlooked gems of the American National Park scene. That felt intuitively accurate; I visited on a Saturday during Memorial Day weekend and yet the park still wasn’t really that crowded. But while it may not be as majestic or grandiose as something like the Grand Canyon, it’s still an incredibly gorgeous place featuring a geological oddity almost miraculous in its strangeness.

The centerpiece of the park is its so-called “petrified” wood. These are basically a bunch of fossils that formed over 200 million years ago when trees and logs were submerged in rivers and buried in silt. Over time the mineral deposits from this silt infiltrated and replaced the organic material of the wood, which basically turned them into log-sharped crystals. It’s simply incredible.

But the petrified wood is only one feature of this park. There are also a number of hiking trails and scenic overlooks that capture a breathtaking slice of the Arizona badlands.

Perhaps most intriguing of all are the numerous Native American artifacts preserved in the park, including various petroglyphs etched in rock and the remains of a pueblo village circa 1200-1300 C.E.

It’s also just a very convenient park to visit. All the attractions exist off of one main road and you can easily visit everything in a single day. Through the park goes to great length to discourage you from sneaking off with any petrified wood, you can technically buy some at the gift shop (all of the petrified wood for sale comes from private land outside the park).

Unfortunately most of these wood fossil slabs are ungodly expensive, with some of the heavier pieces running as high as $12,000 and beyond (!). However it’s these pieces are so uniquely dazzling that it’s worth a stop just to check them out. I don’t think I’ve ever recommended anyone visit a museum gift shop but I suppose there’s a first time for everything.

That’s all I’ve got. Check out Petrified Forest if you ever get the chance. It’s easily my favorite thing that I’ve visited on this trip so far.

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