Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert

From our New Mexico campground to the Petrified Forest National Park in Navajo and Apache counties in northeastern Arizona is about a six-hour drive (mostly in New Mexico), and the park was the next thing on our list.  Although we did not think we would be driving the entire way in one day, the road just kept going on and on – very few cars, town names that appeared on the map – but we think just so the map would not look so empty, as we were through them before we even knew we were there.  The only feature we could see of one town was a junk yard.

Almost the entire way:  No Waze (back to paper maps).  No internet reception.  No phone calls.

We turned off the road, finally, at the Petrified Forest, which we visited for a few hours.  After viewing an introductory film, we took a 1/2 mile walk, the Giant Logs loop walk, which features some of the largest and most colorful logs in the park.  They are truly stunning in their various colors.

How does wood become petrified?  Over time (a long time) trees died or were knocked down, and the logs were buried beneath layers of silt, mud, sand, and volcanic ash which protected them from decay.  Water laden with minerals percolated through the layers, carrying silica (and other minerals).  The silica bonded with the cells of the tree, replicating the organic material in perfect detail.  Eventually, the silica replaced the wood material – and the tree has now become stone.  In the picture it looks as though the logs had been sawed into smooth-edged pieces, but we learned from a ranger talk that they broke off that way – on their own, like a piece of chalk.

As it was near closing time, we left the park for a free campground (actually a parking lot next to a gift shop) just outside the park entrance.  No hookups, just a dark and quiet night, us and one other RV.

Petrified Forest-Painted Desert Day 2

After a very good night’s sleep, we sat outside the RV and enjoyed the surroundings of flat desert scrub land as far as the eye could see in any direction.  The gates opened electronically at exactly 8:00 am, as did the gift shop we camped next to – guess which one we went to first.

There is only one road which goes through the Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert.  Just off the road are some fairly short hikes and lots of lookouts.  We took a few of the walks, stopped at some of the lookouts, and took many photos.

The Petrified Forest is not just petrified wood, although the trees-turned-into-stone is certainly the highlight.  But what was unusually inspiring (and not expected) is the badlands-type terrain which takes up a good portion of the park (not as large as in South Dakota, but very, very pretty).

We chose a few trails; the first was Crystal Forest, a .7- mile loop trail through a badlands landscape with many petrified trees.  Further down the road, we stopped at the Agate Bridge, a 110-foot long petrified log bridge.  It has been shored-up by a concrete column, but it is said that eventually, water will do its work and the bridge will collapse.

At 3.5 miles off the main road was the Blue Mesa trail head, a one-mile trail through vibrant badlands (blue, pink, grey) and colorful petrified wood.  The beginning was a very narrow and steep path at the side of a hill and, of course, what goes down.… The views were spectacular.

Next was a stop at Newspaper Rock (someone in the National Park Service has a sense of humor because over and over, we were fascinated by the names given to things we saw at the various parks), where we saw rocks that display more than 650 petroglyphs – picture carvings or etchings in the rock surface.  Many have yet to be interpreted and some are over 2,000 years old.

As we continued on, we drove through the Painted Desert (a section of the Petrified Forest National Park), where there are multiple viewing stops showing spectacular views of multi-hued landscapes.

In addition to the beautiful landscapes and petrified trees, the park is also known for many fossils of plants and dinosaurs of the late Triassic period.

We said goodbye to a wonderful experience and headed to one of our favorite hangouts, Walmart, to restock our supplies.  We bet you thought we were going to stay overnight in the parking lot, but no, avid reader; for us, more desirable than free accommodations with the hustle and bustle of city traffic all around, is the quiet of a good campground, and we were able to find it in Homolovi State Park of Arizona.  Again, we were in the peace and quiet of nature, with plains vistas as far as the eye can see.  A beautiful sunset, a full moon.

On to the Grand Canyon

A four-hour drive and we arrived at Kaibab Camper Village, one of the closest private campgrounds to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon; unlike campgrounds within the Grand Canyon, this has water and electric hookups.

The ride to the campground was absolutely stunning, and one which folks who go to the more popular South Rim (the part of the park with all the amenities and crowded with tourists) miss.  We drove past the multi-colored Echo and Vermilion Cliffs and through Marble Canyon, which had cliffs on both sides.  We also drove through a good part of the Navajo Nation Reservation (photo below is of the Colorado River near the Navajo Center) and the Kaibab National Forest – our campground was actually in the forest, nestled between trees.

We took an hour walk through the forest, enjoying the surrounding tall trees and trying to find Jacob Lake, a place so significant a small town was named after it.  Without being successful, we returned to the campground and inquired at the office as to the lake’s where-a-bouts.  It turned out it was just outside the opposite end of the campground and had barely enough water to float a boat.

A short hike from Jacob Lake is a small cabin – built in 1910 by the Forest Service – which served as a ranger station for the entire area.  The cabin, together with six other cabins built soon after, provided rangers with strategic locations to manage their programs and as a way to transfer supplies along the area of the North Rim, especially in winter.  The 1910 cabin, refurbished to its original look in 2014, is the only one still standing.

Our campground was about 45 miles from the entrance to the North Rim, and then another 12 miles to the Visitors Center.  The entire route is through the Kaibab National Forest (the word “kaibab” is derived from a Paiute term meaning “mountain lying down,” their name for the Grand Canyon), an hour of very, very pretty driving on a not-crowded road.  This is early in the season, so there was plenty of parking in the park and it was not crowded.

The Grand Canyon

There is so much beauty in the Grand Canyon that descriptions do not do it justice.  It is that big, and that beautiful.  What can one say about the world’s most famous hole in the ground?

To get a feeling of the scope of the Canyon: As the crow files, the North Rim and South Rim are about 10 miles apart (can be more – up to 18 miles, can be less).  It is also 277 miles long, and has depths of over one mile.

We spent most of the day in the Canyon and took two hikes.

Our first hike was a combination of two trails: The Transept Trail (about two miles) and the Bridal Path (a little less than two miles).  The Transept Trail goes along the edge of Transept Canyon, an inner canyon (between the north and south rims) and, as we walked along, we saw the canyon below and soaring ridges above.  The colors were gorgeous.

While on the path, we connected to the Bridal Path, a maintained path that was relatively easy and flat, (which together made a loop) – and was a good way to get back to the Visitors Center.

The second walk was Bright Angel Path – a short (1/4 mile), paved, steep, and narrow trail, which had a drop on each side – and which gave us a spectacular view of the canyon from three directions, south, west, and east.

Grand Canyon Day 2

We returned to the canyon for another hike but first indulged ourselves with coffee we made in the RV.  The day before, we had bought coffee from the coffee shop in the park but it left a lot to be desired; this time, we brought our own and it was far superior.  (One of the advantages of traveling in an RV and having your kitchen go wherever you go.)  We took our coffee to the patio of the Grand Lodge, which has Adirondack chairs overlooking the canyon, and soaked up the view.

Two pictures that we were hoping to get – and which we did get – were of rare sights in nature.  At the entrance to the park we came across a herd of bison with new born calves.  Spring is usually the time when calves are born and we were lucky enough to be there at the right time to see them.

Also, unique to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (in all the world) is the Kaibab squirrel with its long ears and white tail.  We were about to give up finding this rare animal until, while sitting outside our RV on Friday afternoon, a man ran past asking, “Did you see which way it went?” When asked what, he replied, ‘’a squirrel with a white tail.’’  Bill ran for the camera and was able to capture it on picture; they are so fast that the shots are not great, but we got it.

We had no reception in our campground and there was none at the park, no matter how often we went to the edge of the canyon and held the phone up in the air.  A very kind person suggested we could get sketchy Wi-Fi in front of the general store at the North Rim campground, and we were thus able to get a few messages out to the kids to let them know we were ok.  [It seems that no one we spoke to could get internet.  A few did get phone reception (not always good) with Verizon.]

Shabbat was restful, and the way the campground is situated, we were able to take short walks into the forest.  We finished the cold cuts we bought in Houston and had fresh challah made in our bread machine.  Salmon patties for dinner and corned beef and turkey for lunch with salad, rice, Claussen pickles – a feast in the middle of the forest near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  Did we emphasize enough where we are?  Because even though we’ve been here for four days, it’s still hard to believe.

The Grand Canyon is truly inspirational.  Its immense size overwhelms the senses.