Pettrified Forest & Painted Desert!

The Petrified Forest National Park is really two parks in one, the Painted Desert at the North end and the Rainbow Forest at the South end. The park covers over 93,533 acres and consists of six separate "forests" That took over 200 million years to form.

On first impression, the Petrified Forest may not sound very appealing as it comprises stone log fragments scattered over a rather remote and otherwise featureless section of Arizona desert. Apparently it comes as a disappointment to some who expect the trees still to be standing in thick rocky groves instead of lying flat in sections as they are. But the petrified logs are extremely beautiful with most unexpectedly bright colors, and the park contains a section of the scenic Painted Desert so it is well worth a visit especially as the site is quite easily reached, being close to the main east-west route interstate 40.

The North - the Painted Desert: A 27 mile road runs through Petrified Forest National Park. The surroundings are for the most part empty grasslands, and the closest town is Holbrook,AZ, 26 miles to the west. In the north, the first few miles of the road wind along the rim of a mesa overlooking the Painted Desert, past 8 viewpoints of the rolling multicolored landscape with one short trail along the cliff edge. The patterns visible in the eroded soft sedimentary rocks are due mainly to hematite (red), limonite (yellow) and gypsum (white), and the colors are especially striking at sunset. The park boundaries have been extended twice, in 1932 and 1970, to include a large area of the desert to the north; one destination is the Black Forest, which has significant amounts of petrified wood. Several other sections of northeast Arizona with similar geology are also known as the Painted Desert.