Skip to main content

Day 41: Petrified Forest National Park

 Friday, Oct 14, 2022 

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

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 Grand Teton (Sept 11, 2022) Day 9: Long drive in high
Post a Comment
Read more

Road trip across USA - What, Why?

Long distance trips by car or train have always fascinated me. Experiencing new places and landscapes in quick succession is an adrenaline rush, overwhelming the senses. I've done many such wonderful trips, but they have all been less than two weeks long. I finally have an opportunity to do a trip that is much longer and intense. I can't wait to go for it! The extensive road network in the US is perfect for a grand road trip across the vast country. It seems like the best way for me to experience the beautiful landscapes and meet people across all the states, through rural and urban America. To give the trip more purpose and challenge, I decided to do the trip in an electric car, cover all 48 states and hike over half a million steps. I plan to head out on this adventure end of August, 2022. Goals for the trip: Visit all 48 contiguous states in US. Visit as many national parks as possible Walk/hike a total of half a million steps in the trip Meet friends and family en route D
Post a Comment
Read more