Petrified Forest National Park

As we traveled across New Mexico on Hwy 40, we began to see colorful rock formations.  We knew that visiting the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert in Arizona was going to be amazing.  We have found that the national parks showcase the most outstanding areas of our country.  We weren't disappointed at this park.

It felt like we were looking at a postcard when we viewed the Painted Desert.  The soft and varied colors were incredible on the sandstone hills.

The Painted Desert Inn then.  The Inn is a lodge in Petrified Forest National Park.  It was built in 1937-1940, on the site of an earlier lodge, the Stone Tree House.  Construction was carried out by Civilian Conservation Corps labor. Demolition was proposed in the mid-1970s, but after public protests the building was reopened for limited use in 1976. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987. The old Inn buildings were extensively rehabilitated, and reopened as a museum and bookstore in 2006.

The Painted Desert Inn now - 2011.

These views are from Chinde Point near the Painted Desert Inn.  The peaks in the distant are about 120 miles away.  What's the saying - it seems like you can see forever.

Old Route 66 ran through an area of the park and this old automobile is on display where the park road crossed Route 66.

Puerco Pueblo was a 100 room house that was built in about 1250 and may have housed about 1,200 people.  A path with exhibits nearby leads through the ruins.

There are several places in the park where you can see petroglyphs.  The ones in these photos are near the  Puerco Pueblo ruins.

The purple, blue and gray layers are created by different minerals.  These cone-shaped formations are called the Tepees.

The Blue Mesa has awesome views of the badlands, log falls and pedestal rocks.

As we walked the 0.8 mile loop at the Crystal Forest area, we were impressed with the huge expanse of petrified wood in this park.

Some of the petrified wood was close enough to the trail for us to see the beautiful colors of the logs.  There were many different colors and shapes.  On one log you could see the petrified bark.  This was an amazing scene.  The Crystal Forest is named for the amethyst and quartz crystals that are part of the the petrified logs.

There were many different scenes that gave us an idea of how erosion has affected the covering up ad uncovering of the logs.  You could also see long logs broken into almost symmetrical pieces.  It was all a little mystical.

The largest log in the park is located near the Rainbow Forest Museum in the southern part of the park.  It was named "Old Faithful" by the wife of the park's first superintendent.  If you look at the large end of the log, you can see the base of the main root.  The remaining part of this log is 35 feet long and weighs approximately 44 tons.

Inside the Rainbow Forest Museum, a polished section of petrified wood was on display.  Most lapidary shops are not equipped to cut and polish wood of this size. This section was sent to Denver, CO, in 1925 to be cut and polished.  Cutting this section with a diamond cut circle saw took about 3 days.  There was no artificial luster added to this section and it took about 3 weeks to polish.  Also, on display at the museum was a large United States map that had a sample of petried wood from each state in the United States.  All states have some petrified wood but this park has an outstanding and vast display of petrified wood.  We really enjoyed exploring this park.