Looking Out Over Blue Mesa Trail

Looking over Blue Mesa Trail, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

I spent the day in the park, yesterday. It was a dry heat (grin). This place is pretty amazing. Oh, there are no mountains or rivers or streams, and I saw very little wildlife (a dear, a bunny, and a raven). The the geology is really cool. I mean, think about it a moment: this place, once a swampy area with tall, thick trees and dinosaurs, is now a semi-arid (felt totally arid, to me) land with the petrified (agatized) remains of fallen trees. The conditions at the time had to be just right in order to petrify the swaths of logs you can see from your car window and from the hiking trails.

This image was captured at a view area overlooking the Blue Mesa trail and surrounding scenery. The rocks really *are* blue (and purple, mauve, beige and buff), with fallen logs, many longer than I am tall with a girth of 2-4 ft.

If you ever have the chance to visit this national park, you can see it in a day, although I always advocate maybe 1-1/2 to 2 days exploring. The first thing you should do when the park opens up at 7am is to hightail it out to the Blue Mesa Trail to hike it when it’s coolest and when the sunlight is angled just right.

Now, it’s on to the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.