We woke up on this morning in the cold April desert darkness after spending the night car camping in the Tonto National Forest. There was a three hour drive ahead to Petrified Forest so we started early. We picked up delicious breakfast at Bosa Donuts, somehow drove through super cold temps with some snow (???), and made our way.

I had relatively low expectations for Petrified Forest because of how everyone downplays it and talks about how it’s “not really a forest” and “just” flat desert land. That perception is totally hilarious to me now that we’ve learned so much about the history of the place and explored each main site there.

I think most people don’t spend that much time actually reading the interpretive signs along trails or checking out the exhibits in visitor centers, so they don’t get the chance to consider all of the details of what makes the places what they are.

People lived on this land for 13,000 years. The “logs” at Petrified Forest are over 200 MILLION years old. They made me feel so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Just imagine, those people 13,000 years ago and forward thought these logs were just as beautiful as we do.

We entered the park from the south and our first stop was at the Rainbow Forest Museum. Here’s where you park to go inside, go to the Giant Logs trail, and go to the Long Logs/Agate House trail.

We started by getting our National Parks passport stamp and some stickers, then walked over to the Long Logs trailhead via side walk. It looks like there used to be a designated parking area here with it’s own driveway but that’s long gone.

The trail is a little over 2.5 miles and is a loop (my favorite).

You walk a while on a flat asphalt-paved trail and admire an insane collection of different petrified stumps and logs, eventually make it to an area that looks like the Blue Mesa, and then make it to the star of the show: Agate House.

What is also amazing is that none of these “logs” are wood. 200+ million years ago they were.

They were trees that had fallen in a huge forest. A massive flood took these fallen trees and washed them away into this area. In all of that, the trees were covered with a thick layer of sediment.

The sediment gradually crushed the trees and prevented oxygen flow, and over millions of years, underground, silica replaced every bit of wood that eventually rotted away organically, mixed with other minerals that were also in the sediment, and waited until wind and rain degraded the layers sediment extremely slowly over millions of years. They gradually became unburied and revealed what are now essentially rainbow gemstones.

How is that not the coolest thing you’ve ever heard?

The scale of everything in Arizona and Utah is crazy for someone who lives on the East Coast like us. You can see everything from SO far away. These pictures were taken around 10am and we watched this storm roll in all day, with it finally hitting us around 2/3pm.

It looked ominous from our view then, but it’s even more fun to see the storm clouds from a different perspective in these photos.

I could have spent forever looking at all of the color differences and intricacies in every piece. They’re all so different from each other, even the tiny little fragments that totally cover the ground. There are no “rock” pebbles here, if you look closely you’ll see that they’re just varying sizes of beautiful petrified wood.

The petrified logs here really are super long, they definitely aren’t lying about that…

Isn’t it crazy to think about how unlikely it is for them to have remained this intact for hundreds of millions of years? Good job, guys.

Blue Mesa is another really beautiful part of Petrified Forest that I can’t wait to blabber about, but if for some reason you go to this park and don’t have enough time to see it, this could be a good substitute.

The grey/purple/blue/white hills here give you the tiniest taste of what it’s like, but on a much smaller scale. They’re so pretty and you can walk right up to them.

At this point in the walk, the 360 degree views of the desert are insaaane. Photos do not do justice. I feel like it’s worth mentioning that since there are no actual trees in this “forest,” it can get HOT. The sun is unrelenting here and made us sweat and turn pink even though it was actually only in the 50F’s.

Agate House finally appeared in the distance and when we realized we were going to have it all to ourselves, we basically started trail running haha.

Ta-daaaa!

Here’s what that sign says:

“Living here, how would you find the essentials you need to survive? With all the colorful petrified wood, at least you would have a seemingly endless supply of construction material for your home.

Originally built with agatized wood blocks and mortar, Agate House likely housed a single family sometime between 1050 and 1300, during the Late Pueblo 11-Pueblo III Periods. The scarcity of artifacts suggests a relatively brief occupation. Due to its relatively large size, Agate House may have served as a central meeting place.

Indeed, Agate House was part of a much larger community. When first recorded by archeologists in the 1930’s, the petrified wood construction of Agate House was thought to be unique. Since then, hundreds of similar petrified wood structure sites have been found in the park, indicating a history of humanity as colorful and divers as the building blocks of Agate House.”

Also, “Eight rooms made Agate House a large structure for its time. Entry into the rooms was on ladders through the ceiling. The larger rooms were likely used for dwelling and the smaller rooms for storage. Their arrangement around a central plaza is typical.”

They also mention that Agate House was partially reconstructed in 1934 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and now they don’t think having a window there is actually correct. But nonetheless, it gives a really interesting view into the house itself that you wouldn’t otherwise get.

As soon as other people joined us, we left in order to give them the same experience we had.

From the ruins, it’s a relatively quick walk to finish the loop and return to the trailhead. We walked back to the parking lot to shed some layers, buy some more stuff at the gift shop that wasn’t open when we arrived, and then traded Long Logs for Giant Logs.

I have so much more to talk about about this place, I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface.

Long Logs & Agate House loop via AllTrails:
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/arizona/long-logs-and-agate-house-loop-trail

More about Petrified Forest via the National Park Service:
https://www.nps.gov/pefo/index.htm