Petrified Forest NP

Near the southern entrance to Petrified Forest National Park, we took a two-mile hike on the Long Logs trail past scenes like this of Triassic-era fossilized logs. Hard to picture this dry landscape as a tropical rainforest, but that’s why there are so many trees preserved here.

The southern half of the park is covered with chunks of petrified wood from the forest that covered this landscape over 200 million years ago. Soaking up groundwater with silica, over time they fossilized into quartz, with the vivid colors created by different minerals.

Several of these colorfully banded pyramids in Petrified Forest NP are called The Teepees. The park was established as a national monument by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. After adding more acreage over the years, it was upgraded to a national park in 1962.

Halfway through Petrified Forest NP is an overlook where you can see Newspaper Rock, covered with over 650 petroglyphs carved into the rock by native residents and visitors, some over 2,000 years ago!

Another view of the “Painted Desert” worth contemplating is this one from Nizhoni Point on the road through Petrified Forest NP. Nizhoni is the Navajo word for beautiful, and these rock formations certainly live up to their name.

Our first weekend at Rehoboth, we drove an hour west to explore Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. The first view you get of the park is this panorama out over the “Painted Desert” – a 200 million-year old wilderness of sedimentary rocks full of colorful hues and tones.