Although I have lived in Arizona for over a decade I have never visited Petrified Forest National Park even though it is only a two hour drive from Flagstaff. We usually drive by the Park entrance while heading somewhere else and promise ourselves that we will visit it someday.
A petrified tree in the Crystal Forest area.
Finally — we visited the Park. And it’s truly amazing. But not just for the petrified remains of 225 million year old trees from the Late Triassic. The colors that can be found here are simply beautiful. Within Petrified Forest National Park, the layers of the colorful Chinle Formation — from which the Painted Desert gets its name — include the Blue Mesa Member, the Sonsela Member, the Petrified Forest Member, and the Owl Rock Member.
Multi-colored vistas of the Blue Mesa Badlands.
The Blue Mesa Member consists of thick deposits of grey, blue, purple, and green mudstones and minor sandstone beds.
The Petrified Forest Member consists of thick sequences of reddish mudstones and brown sandstone layers and the Owl Rock Member consists of pinkish-orange mudstones mixed with hard, thin layers of limestone.
Detail of a petrified tree. Petrified wood at Petrified Forest National Park is almost solid quartz.
The Sonsela Member contains brown, cross-bedded sandstone; blue, grey, and purple mudstones and numerous small grey and white sandstone beds; and white cross-bedded sandstone and conglomerate of rounded pebbles and cobbles which contains the logs of the Rainbow Forest.
Petroglyphs at the Puerco Pueblo site in Petrified Forest National Park.
And there are also archeological sites including old pueblos and petroglyphs.
