This is the curious Petrified Forest of Arizona: how to visit it

(This article details a stage of a coast-to-coast trip through the United States)

Today, finally, we enter Arizona, and the first thing we have done was visit the Arizona Visitor Center. In this new state we plan to visit Phoenix, Navajo Nation, Monument Valley and Grand Canyon.

And in Phoenix we will meet with Pains y Miquel, great friends of ours from Cardedeu (Barcelona), who will join us on the trip for about two weeks, and whom we already want to see.

Arizona is, along with New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, one of the so-called Four Corner States, the only point of United States where four states form a vertex.

It is a notable tourist attraction, although we did not visit it as it was off our itinerary.

How to Visit Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

The first thing we do in our route through Arizona is to visit for about four hours the Petrified Forest National Park.

Located in the northern part of the state, it is close to Interstate 40 and also to Indian communities Holbrook y Navajo.

What is the “petrified forest” like?

In this curious park is the largest and most colorful concentration of petrified wood.

Millions of years ago there was water and forests, but now it is completely arid.

The geological evolution of the Earth has been creating sedimentary strata for centuries, which we now appreciate for their different colors and a great sensation of immensity.

Un petrified forest is a type of fossil made of wood in which all the organic material has been replaced by minerals (most often quartz), although it retains the original structure of the wood.

Originally, millions of years ago, the trees in the large forest area died of natural causes and were buried under layers of sediment.

The silica-rich water slowly penetrated them until turning the wood in the trunks into stone.

Whole petrification process It happens underground, after the wood has been buried under sediments, so that it is preserved thanks to the absence of oxygen.

La varied range of colors of these stone logs are due to the fact that contaminants have been added to the quartz during this process, which gives them yellow, red or other tones.

La petrified wood It can preserve its original structure in detail, down to the microscopic level.

Structures such as growth rings and various tissues can often be observed. Petrified wood has a hardness similar to that of quartz.

What to see in Petrified Forest National Park

El Petrified Forest National Park It is actually composed of six forests, where we can mostly see extinct species of redwoods Triassic.

The route through the interior of the park is about 28 kilometers.

This park has greatly impacted us because of its beauty and also because of its geological aspects. The wood has petrified! and the trunks of those trees are now stone!

And they have also been found dinosaur fossils that we could see in an exhibition.

This is our second night in Arizona.

Petrified Forest National Park schedules

The Petrified Forest National Park Visiting Hours In Arizona they are, every day of the year, from 8 a.m. to 17 p.m.

El price of admission It is $25 per vehicle, $20 per motorcycle, and $15 per cyclist or pedestrian.

Map: how to get to Petrified Forest National Park

El Petrified Forest National Park is east of Arizona, three and a half hours northeast of Phoenix and five hours east of Las Vegas.