Petrified Forest National Park

After our visit to the petroglyphs, our next stop was the Petrified Forest National Park. Lots of billboards for places to buy petrified wood were along the road, but none of them outdid what Rob and I have nicknamed “Tacky Town”, found at exit 303 off of I40. Not only will they give you a free piece of petrified wood, you can also spend hundreds of dollars for polished bookends or dinosaur fossils, you can also pay to feed ostriches, buy ostrich eggs, or spend $20 for the blown out shell of an ostrich egg. And if you’re in the market, this fine establishment is for sale!

There is definitely a lot to see as you drive through the park itself. We did several of the hikes that were available and they were definitely worth it, in spite of the 100 degree heat of the day. The petrified trees are gorgeous and you eventually come to the Painted Desert, which I’m making a separate post about since those pictures deserve their own.

Once living trees, the ones found here in the Petrified Forest have all been turned completely to stone. This group of pieces shows some of the colors found inside these amazing items.

What isn’t obvious from this picture is that this tree goes on off the left edge of the photo. It was *huge*. Most of the trees, when they fell, broke into somewhat even segments.

This beautiful fellow is a collared lizard. We saw several of these, perched on the edges of petrified tree, along different hiking trails. We didn’t seem to faze them much at all.

A fellow hiker was nice enough to take this picture of all three of us. The tree that we’re standing in front of was absolutely huge.

Behind Rob and Matt, you can see the stabilized remains of an ancient pueblo ruin. You can find more pictures of it and from our petrified forest adventure at http://picasaweb.google.com/debdistante/PetrifiedForestNationalPark.