Petrified Forest surprised me. I know all National Parks are beautiful, or else why make that land a National Park? But after seeing Yosemite and Sequoia in the week before we hit Petrified Forest, I kind of expected it to be underwhelming. It wasn't. It was actually kind of a perfect park to wind our trip to an end. When we started our trip to California, we weren't even planning on stopping at Petrified Forest. But when we were calculating which route we should take home at the end of our trip, we realized we couldn't not stop there. We would be driving right through it. Since we added it to our itinerary rather spontaneously, we didn't even have a full day to see the park. Just a couple hours. Once I was there, I was disappointed that we didn't have more time to spend, because it seemed like if you had a whole day to dedicate to it, you could see the whole park. We didn't get to stop at every trail and landmark, but we hit a few of the big ones. We entered from the South end of the park, so the first place we went was the Rainbow Forest Museum, which had the Giant Logs trail essentially in its backyard. I'd seen petrified wood before when I was traveling through South Dakota, but either I had forgotten just how colorful it can be, or the petrified wood I'd seen then just wasn't as vibrant as what was in Petrified Forest. Basically, these fallen trees are full of color because of the petrifying process, which, believe it or not, is very different than what Hermione experienced in Chamber of Secrets. There's no Basilisk involved, rather these trees get trapped underwater and over the course of millions of years, the wood is replaced by minerals like silica and quartz. So even though the "trees" we were seeing looked just like normal fallen trees from a distance, they are actually no longer made of wood at all.
![]() Our next stop was the Puerco Pueblo. Going into this park, I thought it was just going to be a bunch of petrified wood, but the Puerco Pueblo is actually a former home of the ancestral Puebloan people. People lived in this settlement between A.D. 1250 and A.D. 1380. The structures that we were looking at used to have over 100 rooms, which was pretty cool to imagine when we were seeing only a fraction of it. What impressed me most, though, was a specific petroglyph. There was a marking on one if the rocks that marked the summer solstice exactly. It was painted on a rock in front of another rock formation that had a crack in the middle. Ever summer solstice, the sunlight beams through the crack and hits the mark exactly. Pretty impressive. The last place we went was the Painted Desert Inn National Historic Landmark. It was a beautiful building with stunning views, and when we were in there, a few demonstrators were giving a pretty cool presentation about weaving blankets and rugs. They even showed us how yarn is made from wool for that specific art form. The Painted Desert Inn was a beautiful place to end our time in Petrified Forest and to end our California trip.
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![]() I'm not sure whether it's cliche or cool to listen to U2 while driving through Joshua Tree National Park, but that's exactly what we were doing as we headed into this park. It was actually relatively full of people, which I was not expecting, but made sense given its proximity to Los Angeles. Visiting this park for the first time, I realized something. I'm used to hiking-parks. Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Arches, and parks like them usually have trails to reach the good stuff. At Joshua Tree, there isn't "good stuff" in the sense that I'm used to. There was no long trail to reach a cool sight, like Delicate Arch or Yosemite Falls. Yes, there were trails, and yes, we hiked them, but the landscape was pretty consistent throughout the park. There were a lot of joshua trees and a lot of rocks. This was a rock climbing park. And I don't mean that in the sense that there is nothing to do but rock climb. That's not the case at all. What I mean is that going to Joshua Tree made me really wish I knew anything about rock climbing. I wanted to have the full park experience, as is my goal at all the parks I visit, and at this one, rock climbing seemed to be a big part of that. I am not a rock climber. I have never geared up and climbed an actual cliff, ever. I've climbed one of those fake walls, but even then, it was kind of an activity for kids, which I was at the time. It wasn't a legitimate practice wall. That being said, we found plenty of things to do in this park for non-rock climbers. Hidden Valley and Barker Dam To be honest, these two trails were not too different. They were each great, don't get me wrong, but if you're on a limited time frame, I would say just pick one of them, then see something else in the park. The main difference was Barker Dam had water, which was kind of flabbergasting given the environment we were in. Just looking around Joshua Tree, the land is dusty and almost barren. There is definitely a beauty to that, but it was just a weird mix of images to see this pond in the middle of the desert. Other than that, these trails were beautiful for the same reasons: cool rock formations and interesting desert plants. It doesn't sound as cool as it was when I write it out like that, but it is cool. I definitely do recommend these trails.
![]() Cholla Cactus Garden My family was kind of tired and ready to be done by the time I insisted that we see the Cholla Cactus Garden. I had read about it in my research, and I wanted to see what all the hype was about. But, it was kind of far away from the rest of the sights we had seen that day. (It wasn't actually that far away. It was just far for a group who was tired and running out of patience.) So every time we saw some cacti with a parking cut-out on the side of the road, someone in the car would go "is that it?" thinking that surely it couldn't be any farther down the road. It actually was pretty amusing that we had been distracted by these other stops, because when we got to the Cholla Cactus Garden, we knew it was it. There were beautiful cacti everywhere. It was way more impressive than any of the other stops we had mistakenly made. This trail is only a quarter-mile loop, but I still highly recommend it. By the time you reach this part of the park, the joshua trees are gone and the cacti have take over. You can see mountains in the background, and it is just a lovely walk. I found myself pointing at cacti and saying "Ooooh, look at this one!" probably a few times too many. At the very least, this park was a stunning drive. It's such an interesting landscape to see all these crazy trees that look like they came straight out of a Dr Seuss book and rock formations that make you feel like you're on a foreign planet from Galaxy Quest. If you're a fan of exploring, I think you'll like this park.
Sequoia was a park that I was really looking forward to seeing on my trip to California. I was as excited about this park as I was about Yosemite. Something about trees that big just boggled my mind when I saw them in photos. I knew I wanted to see them in person, stand next to them, and be blown away by their size. So I did. We only stopped at a few different destinations in this park, because they were so captivating to me. I could have spent even more time at the places we did stop. And we didn't even see close to the whole park.
The Giant Forest is the real show. Yes, there is a whole park to explore, but I had too much fun in Giant Forest to explore much else. The trees are huge. I know I already said that, but it's hard to explain how big they are and feel like you're doing these giant sequoias any justice. There was a stop along the trail, that had an outline on the pavement that was a to-size replica of the base of General Sherman, but at the time I went, the path was so muddy I couldn't really see it that well. I can tell you, though, that probably at least twenty people could have stood in that circle. And had enough room to do a little dance, if they so desired. General Sherman is nearly 103 feet around at its base. And it was among its peers in this forest. I could rattle off facts about all the trees I saw in this forest in an attempt to impress you as much as these trees impressed me, but I think I would fail at that task. They're that impressive. I recommend going to this park yourself and standing next to one (or several) of these giants. Something about them just made me want to walk around this forest for hours. Hopefully these photos will make you want to go see them too. |
About the blog.I started this blog in 2017 with the goal of seeing all the U.S. National Parks and writing about them. But as I kept writing and posting, I realized there's so much more I want to document in my life. So, the blog grew into something much broader and even more special to my heart. Archives.
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