Petrified Forest

2025-09-20
Petrified Forest, AZ

After resting my ankle for a couple days, I decided to move on to a couple of places that don't have uneven ground, giving it some additional time to improve. So the first stop today was a crater. Avid readers will expect this to be a volcanic crater, if for no other reason than they are cool or because it's always a volcanic crater. However, today it was a meteorite crater near Winslow, Arizona (go ahead, sing it; I'll wait).

This is the best preserved impact crater in the world, for two main reasons: It's relatively recent at 50,000 years ago, and it's in a dry desert with little water erosion. So this is the crater where they determined what meteorite craters looked liked, and it's where they bring astronauts to get them familiar with what craters on the moon look like.

Today it's just a big hole in the ground, with the bottom being a mile across. The squares at the bottom are actually mine shafts; a hundred years ago they attempted to mine what they thought was a huge asteroid for the material. It was an iron-nickel asteroid rather than stony so they were right about mineable minerals; however, it was much smaller than they thought at 150 feet long, and most of it was vaporized during the impact so the mining efforts came to naught.

They say you can take this if you like. They also say it weighs more than a Volkswagen Beetle.

After viewing and taking the tour, it was time to move on to the Petrified Forrest National Park. There are a number of interesting things to see. There are some viewpoints in the north edge of the park that are stunning. Then there is what used to be an inn, but is now a gift shop and they sell ice cream. Then there was the place where Route 66 used to go through the park. For some reason there's an old Studebaker there. I'm sure there are millions of pictures of this rusted body, but far be it from me to not add one more.

We all have to take this picture, but it looks like one tourist had to take the door panel

Further up was the Blue Mesa, where I started to see some of the forest. The mesa was actually blue, which was odd where everything is red, yellow, and brown. Then I stopped to see the Agate Bridge, which is a petrified tree where the water had washed out under it. They added a concrete support around 1920 to try to keep it in place. Water created this, and water will some day destroy it as well.

The Blue Mesa. Southwest colors are supposed to be red, yellow, orange, brown.

I took this at a pull-out. Normally anything that looks like this is called "painted", so maybe Painted Humps?

Then I continued south to the Crystal Forest. Apparently the amount of color in the wood? rocks? depends on how long it continued to petrify. Stuff that stopped early looks like wood, just a different brown. But as more layers piled on and different minerals percolated down the colors came with them for wood that continued to petrify. There is indeed a forest here to see and it is well worth it.

There is a lot of it, each prettier than the last

This is from the middle of the tree; it goes the same distance behind the camera. These are some big trees that were petrified.

Afterwards I stopped by the visitor center and museum and talked to an entertaining ranger who educated me. Apparently they have cameras and car searches to mostly prevent people from taking souvenirs.

I headed 200 miles East after that. The roads were sparsely traveled, although I did see a heard of Pronghorn Antelope by the side of the road. I didn't get a picture at 70 MPH. I also had to wonder why the Roadrunner crossed the road in front of me. I mean, they can fly, but they prefer a brisk jog apparently.