Petrified Forest National Park is an unreal landscape full of incredible scenery and fascinating science! Containing one of the World’s Largest (and Most Colorful) Concentrations of Petrified Wood, this park is truly an incredible site to see! And in the northern portion, you’ll discover part of Arizona’s Beautifully Colored Painted Desert!
Petrified Forest National Park
What You Need to Know Before You Go
Where is Petrified Forest & the Painted Desert Located?
Petrified Forest National Park is located in the northeastern portion of Arizona, near the town of Holbrook. It is about 1hr 45 minutes east of Flagstaff, AZ. And the park lies between Interstate 40 and Highway 180.
The Painted Desert is a broad region of rocky landscape that stretches across northern Arizona from Grand Canyon National Park eastward through the Navajo Nation and over to Petrified Forest National Park. The reason the Painted Desert is included with Petrified Forest many times is because it is most easily accessed through the northern portion of Petrified Forest National Park.
Where to Enter Petrified Forest National Park?
Petrified Forest National Park has 2 entrances, one on the south side and one on the north. The south side has the largest concentration of petrified wood. This entrance is found off Highway 180. The north entrance is off Interstate 40 and begins in the Painted Desert section first. Whichever entrance you pick, you will exit at the opposite entrance if you are looking to see the entire park.
Important!
Know that there are Specific Opening and Closing Hours!
Unlike many other National Parks, Petrified Forest has specific opening and closing hours. You’ll need to be off the trails and driving out before they lock up the gate. For up to date hours click here.
Travel Note: Arizona does not observe daylight savings time, and remains on Mountain Standard Time year-round.
How Long to Visit?
Petrified Forest Road is 28 miles and takes approximately 1 hour just to drive from one end to the other.
If you only have one hour: It is recommended to concentrate your time to just one side of the park.
If you have several hours: You will have time to drive the entire Main Park Rd (28 miles), visit the 2 visitor centers, walk a few trails and stop at the many vistas.
How to Visit Petrified Forest?
Starting at the South Entrance:
Rainbow Forest Museum & Visitor Center
Located near the southern entrance, off US-180, the Rainbow Forest Museum & Visitor Center is a great place to begin your adventure. Watch the free 18 min orientation video, view the paleontologist exhibit of prehistoric animals and walk Giant Logs Loop trail.
Giant Logs Loop
After visiting the visitor center, then just step outside to walk the really cool 0.4 mile loop called Giant Logs Loop. This short trail begins directly behind the visitor center and contains some of the largest and most colorful logs in the park! And don’t miss, at the top of the trail, “Old Faithful.” This petrified tree is almost 10′ wide at the base!
We really enjoyed walking this short trail. Beautifully colored petrified logs lay scattered everywhere! It’s unlike any “forest” you’ve probably ever seen! It’s crazy how all of this wood became petrified and how it still lies here today!
Traveler Tip: Be prepared that this trail can be very hot, sunny and windy.
Please, Please don’t remove any petrified wood from the park. Not only is this against the law, but we want to make sure that generations to come will be able to enjoy this incredible land. Just stop by the gift shop and you can find that perfect souvenir to take home.
Crystal Forest Loop
Approximately 6 miles past the Rainbow Forest Museum & Visitor Center is a 0.75 mile loop trail called Crystal Forest Loop. This loop begins at the Crystal Forest parking area and takes you on a journey past numerous petrified logs filled with beautiful quartz crystals.
Crystal Forest Loop is a really fun trail that gets you out among the vast amount of scattered petrified wood. And the crystals in the petrified wood here are especially beautiful.
The landscape around Crystal Forest Loop was simply unreal! It’s hard to imagine that there was once a flourishing forest with lush vegetation here!
How Did This Area Become a Petrified Forest?
More than 200 million years ago, trees and vegetation filled this northeastern section of Arizona. Volcanic lava then came through and destroyed this forest and embedded those trees into a layer of sediment. Erosion, over millions of years, slowly wore away the volcanic sediment and eventually revealed the petrified wood that we see today!
Your Next Stop (Heading North) through Petrified Forest National Park:
Blue Mesa Trail
Blue Mesa Trail was our family’s favorite trail in Petrified Forest National Park! Don’t get me wrong, seeing all of the petrified wood is really, really cool and definitely a unique experience that we are sure not to forget, but Blue Mesa Trail was like entering into an entirely different world! And we loved it!
About Blue Mesa Trail
Less than 8 miles (heading north) down the road from Crystal Forest Loop, is Blue Mesa Trail. This 1 mile loop begins at the Blue Mesa sun shelter. Here, at the top of the mesa you may find it really windy, but the trail immediately and steeply descends below the mesa, leaving the wind behind. Suddenly you will find yourself immersed into this fantastic badlands landscape of bluish bentonite clay. This hills are enormous (in this otherwise flat Arizona landscape) and the colors are simply unreal!
Traveler Tip: Please note that this trail is very exposed and can get quite hot on a sunny day so make sure you bring plenty of water and even a sun hat. (But hold onto your hat at the top where it’s really windy.)
What You Need to Know Before Hiking Blue Mesa Trail
If at all possible, we recommend walking Blue Mesa Trail in the later afternoon or in the morning hours for the best lighting on the rocks. This is when the colors really pop! (Also, it won’t be so hot.) Unfortunately this is hard to do since Petrified Forest has specific opening and closing hours. You physically can’t be here when the sun sets or rises. And Blue Mesa Trail is almost at the mid point between the two entrances so it takes some time to drive to it as well.
To help you get a better idea, the pictures above are at ~5:30pm in June. (Sunset was at 7:33pm.) And the colors were already wowing us! For us, the park didn’t close until 7:30pm so this gave us plenty of time to visit the Painted Desert on the way out. It also gave us the best possible lighting we could get, while seeing everything else we wanted to see, before the park’s gates shut. So make sure you check the current park hours for when you will be visiting, and then time Blue Mesa Trail and the Painted Desert to be viewed early or later in the day for the best experience possible.
Blue Mesa Trail Fun
Also, by going later in the day, we had the Entire 1 mile Loop to Ourselves! My boys quickly took advantage of this and asked if they could run for a little in this incredible landscape! Can you find him in the picture above?
Family Tip: The majority of Blue Mesa Trail is paved and smooth (with only a small portion of it being gravel). If no one else is on the trail, I think this makes a great place for kids to run off some of their extra energy (assuming they are old enough to not have to stay right by your side). Just make sure you give them a stopping point where they can wait for you and admire their surroundings while you catch up.
The Painted Desert
The Painted Desert is a beautiful rocky landscape, lying across northeastern Arizona. Beautiful reds, oranges, yellows, pinks, grays and lavenders dance upon this land and simply burst out of these rocks in the afternoon to evening light. The landscape is unearthly, stunning and left us completely in awe.
Chinde Point Overlook
From Blue Mesa Trail it is almost a 30 minute drive to get to Chinde Point in the Painted Desert Portion of Petrified Forest National Park. Although the are several other viewpoints before this one, our family chose to concentrate on the three viewpoints in the Painted Desert that I felt our family would enjoy the most. This was primarily because I wanted to make the most out of the evening light with the limited time we had before needing to be out of the park before its closing time.
The first point I chose for us to stop at was Chinde Point. First, here you can find restrooms, in case anyone is needing one. Second, you get a really cool look at the “Devils Playground.”
Kachina Point Overlook
Only 2 minutes down the road from Chinde Point is Kachina Point Overlook. This point is located right by the Painted Desert Inn and I thought it was beautiful!
Unfortunately, when we visited the Painted Desert Inn was closed and as of January 2021, the Painted Desert Inn is still closed temporary due to Covid. Please check the website for up to date information.
Tiponi Point Overlook
Tiponi Point Overlook was probably my favorite overlook in the Painted Desert! The colors here were spectacular!
This overlook is only 4 minutes down the road from Kachina Point Overlook and it’s only a 4 minute drive from here to the exit. So if you are like us, and are trying to travel during the best lighting hours then this would be your last stop before you exit. I thought this was a great overlook to enjoy the evening light and the rocks bursting with color before heading out.
And even if your kids are too hot and tired to get out at “one more overlook,” they still will have a great view from your car! What a fantastic view to end our incredible trip through Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert.
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I hope this Petrified Forest/ Painted Desert guide was helpful to you in planning your upcoming trip. Please let me know in the comments section if you have any questions about visiting or if you have a favorite spot in this national park that I missed. I’d love to hear from you!
Have a Great Trip in Petrified Forest National Park with Your “Traveling Feet!”
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2 comments
Thanks for your post. We are heading to the Petrified forest and your guide is one of the most informative I have come across!
Thank you! I’m glad I could help. Have a great trip! Jenny