Petrified Forest

Location

Excited to get out of the heat. Mesa was hot, Olive was baking in the sun. The temperature sensors reported a high of 123.4F.
Anything that could melt was taken out of Olive. We left the fridge and freezer running. The solar mostly kept up with the load, I plugged the batteries in twice over a week and a half.

Olive almost got hit by a tree I won’t let that happen again.

Getting to Holbrook was easy via the Beeline to Payson then 260 to Heber. We left Mesa around 2100 MST arriving at the Holbrook KOA at 0006 MST, 3 hour trek was pretty easy. KOAs I feel are super easy to use as late night arrivals. We were scheduled to land at the KOA(Journey) so a nice spot with patio was available to us.

This was my first time visiting and reading about the petrified forest. The petrified wood has been underground, brought to the surface by erosion. The petrified logs are saturated with quartz along with other minerals. The logs cleave under pressure from gravity as they are unearthed. When erosion makes large logs available to the surface, gravity splits them in arrangements that appear as if they were cut with a saw.

The petrified forest when alive was close to the Equator, tectonic movements have pushed the land up to its current location. Another interesting point is that all the aggregate material on the ground and in the cliffs is petrified wood. It truly is amazing to see the impact of erosion in this park. Large stable sandstone dunes exists, unstable dunes are forming, large piles of petrified wood that appear as gravel are abundant. I was reminded of Bryce’s Hoodoos when hiking the Blue Mesa Trailhead, not actual hoodoos, but the appearance is close.

We took a guided tour supplied by the Petrified Forest Institute We took the birds and bees/Insider’s tour. Dan Carrol was our tour guide. We enjoyed our time together and highly recommend the institute’s tours. When we go again we will inquiry for another tour.

Starlink

Starlink worked great, no obstructions.

Hookups

Full Hookups at the KOA. We really liked our site(58). Nice patio, large shade tree, privacy walls between sites.

Gallery

Share with others