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Passport Stamp: Petrified Forest National Park Leave a comment

We visited the Petrified Forest National Park on May 3, 2022. We entered through the South entrance, after spending the previous night in Winslow, AZ (on Historic Route 66) and enjoying the downtown homage to that signature tune by The Eagles.

After driving through the closest town, Holbrook, AZ, and driving right by the largest private seller of petrified wood and buying nothing … we arrived at the turn off to the park entrance, and went to the apparently smaller retailer of petrified wood that has a very impressive store right by the entrance. After buying nothing, again, we proceeded on to the main event.

The southern entrance of the park is close to the park museum and gift shop … worth a stop. Then we took a hike to the adjacent Long Logs area of the park to see one of the greatest collections of petrified wood you can walk to in the park: we walked about a mile and a half on a largely paved path. Most of the pix below are from that hike.

After getting blown by 20 MPH winds, gusting to 30 MPH, we proceeded on the drive through the park which took about 4 hours. We stopped at most of the recommended places, though we became discouraged by the 30 MPH winds that were gusting to 40 MPH at this point and did not do a significant hike again. In spite of the wind, we had a great visit and transitioned into the northern section of the park, AKA the Painted Desert. Our timing in May was good with some of the vegetation in it’s growth/flowering cycle.

Please note that our drive through the park was guided by the app “Just Ahead” which is highly recommended. This GPS-triggered app guided us through the park with both driving directions and interesting trivia just as you approached the relevant sections of the park. Highly recommended as the way to visit our national parks … though you may need to download maps while on the hotel’s wifi the night before!

Here is what we saw.

More

National Park Service: Petrified Forest National Park

MowryJournal.com 2014: Petrified Forest National Park

The Eagles 1977: Take It Easy

Nat King Cole: Route 66

Passport Stamp: Arches National Park 3 comments

We visited Arches on May 14, 2021. The Lady had signed up to get their tweets, so she knew that park capacity was being surpassed daily. They were closing the park to additional visitors at 11am. Or earlier. The park was re-opening in the late afternoon when more visitors could be accommodated in this “small” park.

Plus, we knew that popular spots would run out of parking fast. So we spent the night in Moab, and then got up at 6a to arrive at the park at 7:30a.

We had to wait in line for 15 minutes to get into the park; they had both lanes open to get the paying visitors into the park. We, of course, had our Golden Eagle passports, so we were in without paying the $30 per car. We elected to drive straight to the iconic Delicate Arch first … and we got there with plenty of parking available. After that picture was captured, we proceeded to drive through the rest of the park at our leisure, stopping at every designated wide spot in the road to take pictures.

The park’s website said we could spend 10 minutes at every Viewpoint, and finish the park’s paved roads in 4-1/2 hours. We beat that time, and felt that we had been there, done that.

Here is what we saw.