The Petrified Forect National Park is a large park in the northeast section of Arizona. It has a north entrance off I-40 at exit 311 and a south entrance off highway 180 southeast of the town of Holbrook.

On the drive both getting to the south entrance and leaving it to go to the town of Pinetop I had the highways pretty much to myself. It was a beautiful cloudless day with temperature in the mid 60's. Howwever, I noticed that at higher elevations (7000-plus feet) that the sun feels warmer than a comparable weather day in Kansas City.

The recent federal goverment shutdown (Congress had not passed a budget for the new fiscal year that started October 01) caused me to wonder if this park would re-open. Fortunately, the matter was resolved just three days prior to my arrival.

It is a BIG deal about having people not take pieces of petrified wood from the park. They ask you coming in if you currently have any and will randomly inspect vehicles on the way out. I did the preferred visitation rule of "take only pictures and leave only footprints" since i have a tremendous love of our national parks (thus the goal of visiting 100 of the 400 during my lifetime).

Actually, what the park has to offer was really not that interesting, especially after I had seen very similar terrain in other parks and places. The petrified wood was the only unique feature worth seeing so I drove to the Rainbow Forest area near the south entrance. My original plan was to enter the park at the north entrance and drive the entire 28 miles through the park, north to south. But due to time limitations (including a long delay on I-40 for construction) I went right to the south entrance.