On the Route 180 in the northeastern part of Arizona, just south of the Navajo Nation, stands the Petrified Forest. The quartz-filled massive wooden logs stand in the hot desert among blue and indigo mesas. We started our hike there at the Rainbow Forest Museum, which used to be the old park headquarters in the 1960's. The main trail there was the Long Logs trail.
And of course, the famous and largest log...Old Faithful. How is petrified wood formed? Volcanic ash + ancient wood = oxygen cannot get in. Water+ Volcanic Ash + Wood= dissolved silica, calcite replaces the organic tissue of the plant.
One of the trails that was my favorite was the Blue Mesa Trail, which was covered in logs and displayed the strata of dirt long forgotten. It's interesting seeing that all of the logs are often found in a specific strata of dirt along the mesa...perhaps geologists can explain this to me.
The northern part of the park empties into a basin of red, pink, and orange known as the famous Painted Desert. I would recommend pulling out an overlook to get a view of the cliffside:
