Skip to main content

Day 41: Petrified Forest National Park

Today is the second last day of my road trip. The goal today is to visit the Petrified Forest National Park in the morning and then drive as far as I can in the afternoon, so that I have a short drive tomorrow to get home in Los Gatos. It has been exciting to see a new national park every day for the past week, but I am so looking forward to reaching home tomorrow!

As I entered the Petrified Forest National Park, one of the first vista points was a Route 66 memorial. Even though I have not fully driven all of the historic Route 66 during my road trip, it was good to touch it again. 

I got information from the visitor center about the various places to see in the park and a brochure about my primary hike for the day, to the Historic Blue Forest Trail.
 

 

The trailhead for this trail started from the lovely Tepees viewpoint. The beautiful colors of the Painted Desert got better and better as I hiked down the Blue Forest trail. 

In some places, the trail was very narrow, lots of gravel, slippery with steep drops. Had to make my way slowly through these spots.




On the Historic Blue Forest Trail I got a glimpse of the highlight of the park, the petrified trees that are strewn all around. I continued down the Petrified Forest Road to do two more hikes on the Crystal Forest Trail and Giant Logs Trail to see them in full glory.  It is amazing to see these fallen trees from over 200 million years ago, that are solid rock - quartz, manganese oxide, iron oxide. How these were formed is very interesting reading.



After leaving Petrified Forest, it was a long driving day, the second highest of the trip at over 550 miles. Made my way through Arizona from east to west, past Holbrook, Flagstaff and Kingman.  Then took a small detour to briefly visit the bustling city of Laughlin, Nevada which is on the banks of the Colorado river.

 Finally made my way into California late evening and drove all the way to Boron for the last night stay of the road trip. In a first for the past 6 weeks, tonight's stay was in a large RV/Camper parked next to my AirBnb host's house. It was a very nice, spacious and fully equipped RV, a comfortable experience. It would be great to take this along on a road trip, but I don't think I could take it too far at 6 miles per gallon.

The raw numbers for the day:

  • 556 miles driving, 11700 steps walking
  • 4 Tesla supercharger stops
  • 3 states - Arizona, Nevada, California

Next:   Day 42:  Back Home (Oct 15, 2022)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

USA48 Road Trip: The Whole Story

  The whole story of my road trip across USA in a Tesla, captured in a series of blog posts below. My six-week adventure was from Sept 4, 2022 to Oct 15, 2022.  The links to the blog posts below are in chronological order. Best viewed on a larger screen  of a computer, not on a phone. Click on the photographs in the blog posts to see larger images.   Road trip across USA - Why? What? (July 10, 2022) Road trip in a Tesla - will it work? (Aug 11, 2022)  Day -2: Road Trip Delayed (Aug 27, 2022)  Day 0: Starting Road Trip Tomorrow (Sept 3, 2022)  Day 1: The Adventure Begins (Sept 4, 2022)   Day 2: A drive through Oregon (Sept 5, 2022) Day 3: Mount Rainier National Park (Sept 6, 2022)   Day 4: Reminiscing in Seattle (Sept 7, 2022) Day 5: KOA Cabin in Glacier National Park (Sept 8, 2022) Day 6: Hiking galore in Glacier National Park (Sept 9, 2022) Day 7: Drive from Glacier to Yellowstone (Sept 10, 2022)  Day 8: Yellowstone and G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 5: KOA Cabin in Glacier National Park

  A long drive today from Spokane to the West Glacier KOA Resort, which is close to the Glacier National Park entrance. I had to slow down or stop many times during the drive due to road construction underway at multiple places. There was also a traffic jam to deal with at one place. Lastly, I had go past the most direct route for about 15 miles to get to a supercharger in Superior, MT and then retrace back.  I reached my destination for the day, a cute looking KOA log cabin in a beautiful KOA resort surrounded by mountains. The cabin has electricity, heater, refrigerator and a microwave. Not too shabby, changed my perception of what a KOA kampground is like.  The nearest supercharger from Glacier National Park is over 120 miles away. The primary reason I chose to book at KOA is because they provide access to a NEMA 14-50 220V charger. A timeslot for the single outlet they have needs to be  reserved ahead of time. I was very relieved when all of this worked and my...
3 comments
Read more

Kashmir Great Lakes Trek, 2024

Kashmir Great Lakes Trek (KGL) has been on my bucket list for many years. It is known as the most beautiful trek in India, definitely one of the most popular. After lots of research and prep work, finally did the trek from July 29 - August 4 this year, along with four of my hiking buddies from the Bay Area. It was a dream come true - spectacular hiking with wonderful friends! The trailhead for the KGL trek is near Sonmarg. We carried only small daypacks during the 7-day trek. All supplies and luggage are carried by mules/horses. We had a support staff of 6 (guides, cook, etc.) for our private group of 5 hikers. Under overcast skies and the fog rolling in, we hiked past these shepherd huts at 9000 ft. These huts are used only in the summer months by the Kashmiri Gujjars (gypsies). A few hours into the hiking on the first day, we had a heavy downpour and the raingear came out. The locals were happy to see the first decent rainfall after a dry spell of 2 months. An auspicious start to our...
Post a Comment
Read more