After safely emerging from the Superstition Mountains, I headed further north in Arizona to the Petrified Forest National Park. A 28 mile road passes from the southern entrance of the park close to lots of petrified wood to the northern one, close to the painted desert. There are numerous places to stop and park the car and take a walk around the landscape.
The car parks have been situated near locations in which a lot of petrified wood has been found. One of the first stops is aptly named Long Logs.
At the Crystal Forest stop these pieces are scattered across the landscape.
The Agate Bridge formed when centuries after the fallen tree had petrified, a waterway washed away the ground underneath it. In the 1970s there was concern that the stone may crumble and a cement support was put in place to keep it in place.
With the name Petrified Forest National Park I had imagined a forest turned to stone. Upright. Trees which had turned to stone while standing up. I was a bit disappointed to learn at the visitors centre that the petrification is due to high mineral water depositing the mineral in trees which had fallen in what was a swamp. That would explain why from a distance the landscape looked so flat, when I was expecting a stone copse.
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