Spending A Day In Petrified Forest National Park

All you need is a day to see all the highlights in Petrified Forest National Park. And all you need to do is pick up a park map at the visitor's office before you head out on your adventure in the park.

Read this post Healthier Food And Snack Choices For Our Road Trips for snack ideas to take along as there is only one diner in the park.

2022 Cross-Country Road Trip Stop 20

The first thing on our list to do when we arrived in Arizona was to restock our supplies at Walmart. The 
Walmart we stopped at was in Winslow, Arizona so for the rest of day we had Take It Easy by the Eagles stuck in our heads!

Then we headed to Holbrook, Arizona where we would be spending the next 3 nights.

On Day 2 in Arizona, we spent the day at Petrified Forest National Park. Our first stop in the park was the visitor's center to pick up the information we needed to explore the petrified forest.We found a trip planner that listed 12 stops to make that brought us from the visitor's center on Interstate 40, Stop 1, to the entrance/exit on Highway 180. 

From the visitor's center, we made our way to Stop 2, Painted Desert Inn.

This historic inn is now a museum. Inside we saw, among other things, where people staying at the inn came to have a bite to eat.

The prices of the snacks offered here seemed very reasonable, at least to us as we looked at it in 2022. Not sure what they thought of it 100 years ago.

The gorgeous view hotel guests had from their rooms was probably worth the price of their rooms though. 

Stop 3 on our park map was Painted Desert Overlooks. We stopped at this one to enjoy a spectacular view of the Painted Desert.

Part of  Route 66 once cut through the park. Stop 4 is the Route 66 Alignment where you can find this 1932 Studebaker.

We found the ruins of puebloan homes at Stop 5, Puerco Pueblo.

We saw some cool petroglyphs, some of which were 2000 years old at Stop 6, Newspaper Rock.

We really enjoyed the colorful 1 mile trail at Stop 7, Blue Mesa.

We were happy to see this picnic bench here. We were getting hungry and was ready to take a break.

Stop 8 is Agate Bridge which is a 110 ft. petrified long spanning a gully.

We saw the highest concentration of petrified wood at Jasper Forest, Stop 9.

We saw lots of logs glimmering with quartz crystals on a 0.75 mile loop trail at Stop 10, Crystal Forest.

After taking a quick look around the Rainbow Forest Museum we headed out to do the very short 0.4 Giant Logs Trail at Stop 11, the second to last stop on our journey through the Petrified Forest.

We completely missed the last stop, Stop 12, Long Logs & Agate House. JT was willing to go back into the park to find it but me and Sandie were ready to do some souvenir shopping. We ended up buying pieces of petrified wood that had magnets affixed to the back of them. They were a lot cheaper than the tables and other beautiful furniture we would have loved to have but we didn't have the thousands of dollars for!

We spent our last day in Arizona on Route 66. We had a list with a couple of stops we knew we wanted to make on this iconic highway and we also stopped at a couple of sights that just caught our eye. One sight we pulled over to get a closer look at was this abandoned hay and feed store. Even with a closer view we still didn't know what to make of it. Was that a horse on top of a teepee?!

We had to take a picture of this really nice Route 66 mural that listed the other states we could find the Mother Road in.

We stopped in a couple of souvenir stores we saw as we drove down the highway.

The back room of one of the stores we stopped in was filled with Route 66 memorabilia.

Then we were off to one of the stops we wanted to make on our tour of Route 66, Wigwam Motel. The motel is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The teepees are furnished with the original hand-made hickory furniture.

And we really had to make this stop to Jack Rabbit Trading Post to see the sign that inspired the sign in the Cars movie, one of our grandson's favorite! In the movie you'll see a car in the place of the rabbit.

I asked Soko to take this picture so I could send it to the grandkids!

After our self-guided tour of Route 66 it was time to relax at our campsite and watch some football before packing up for our drive to our next destination.

Next stop, Colorado! Stay tuned!!

In the meantime, read about our visit to Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks

Bryce Canyon And Zion National Parks

Tell us about your day in Petrified Forest National Park. Have you been to any of the other petrified forests? We would really like to hear about your visits!