Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

Just the idea of a petrified forest is enough to spark my imagination all on its own. It makes me think of ghost trees frozen in time, bearing witness to history.

I was even more inspired once I learned how petrified wood is created. It's a multi-step process that requires a confluence of natural forces and hundreds of thousands of years. What remains provides a mineral and historical record as rich in detail as it is in beauty. First, the wood has to be completely and rapidly buried, sealing it from oxygen to prevent natural decay. It usually takes an avalanche or volcanic event to make step one possible. Then, minerals enter the buried wood through via groundwater that preserves the structure of the wood while slowly turning its organic matter to stone. Rainbow colors can appear depending on which minerals the water delivers. Iron, carbon, copper, cobalt, and manganese create red, orange, yellow, brown, black, blue, and purple. Crystals form as silica, quartz, chalcedony, or agate. The unique combination of all of these factors gives each piece of petrified wood its final form.

So, back to the national park we're talking about here ... its petrified wood is more than 200-million years old, so you have the chance to see and touch fossils of plants that lived when dinosaurs roamed the earth. It's the largest trove of petrified wood in the world. And we're not just talking bits and pieces here. There are giant stumps and trunks and logs that allow you to imagine just how wide and tall these trees where back when they were alive.

Then there's the park's dramatic painted desert with color-banded cliffs of red, gold, maroon, and even blue. It's a place of unexpected color and beauty in an otherwise harsh landscape.

We started our day exploring the area behind the Painted Desert Inn, a beautifully preserved adobe palace in the middle of nowhere.

As we walked through white and red hills, we started noticing chips and chunks of petrified wood that grew in number and size as we walked along the wash and into the hills.

As a rock lover, it took everything I had not to collect even the tiniest piece. But we believe in ourselves as good people, so we didn't, even though there were so many I would have loved to keep. It was just as much fun to pick it up, examine it closely, compare our finds, and put it back where we found it, knowing that the next people who visited would be able to do the same.

We arrived early in the morning and had the hillsides to ourselves, where we climbed higher and higher among the glittering landscape of petrified logs, stumps, and shards from so long ago. It was like being in another world.

We also hiked around Blue Mesa, where the white cliffs feature blue and maroon stripes in odd and striking patterns.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this park, but I loved the sound of it. And, we were close enough to add it to our itinerary. We were so glad we did! While it may not compare to the grand landscapes of Yosemite or Glacier, we learned a ton and spent the day immersed in science, history, and fascinating geology.