"Timber!!!" a Petrified Forest National Park Travel Page by jujub

I've never thought much about petrified wood, aside from watching Woody Woodpecker trying to poke a hole at it and damaging his bill, while the tree remained unscathed.

I thought petrified wood meant it was just some really REALLY hard wood. So, as we drove towards the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert (they're both in the same area), I imagined a forest of eerie dried up, really hard wooded trees, standing up at attention. I had no idea.

We arrived, and started to drive through the park. The landscape was fascinatingly strange, but, where are the petrified trees?? We drove some more, and there was no forest in sight. No tree branches poking out of the horizon. Hmmm, did we miss a turn somewhere?

Then, we saw some logs by the roadside. We arrived at what seemed to be the highest concentration of petrified trees, but, to my surprise, there were none standing up! All of the trees were horizontal, on the ground. Hmm. Intriguing. There is a trail to follow and look at the logs. Some were extremely colorful, that it almost looked fake. I couldn't resist it, and had to touch those logs. Holy sh!t (no pun intended)!!! It's stone! It's not really REALLY hard wood! They were, literally, hard as a rock. Extremely interesting and exciting -- now I wanted to touch all the different colored logs. =)

For the Painted Desert, please check out the Travelogue.

Well, I hope you enjoy this page -- for the explanation of the petrification, just check out the other pages under 'Must See Activities."

Cheers!~

As I wandered through the trails, I couldn't help but think that some parts of the park seemed "staged." Some logs didn't seem like they belonged, while others were so perfectly chopped in an un-natural way, that it had created a bunch of unanswered questions in my head. All the most interesting, since I do admit having a thing for strange sites and things. ;)