Petrified Forest National Park

Park Number: 1 of 59

Number 1! What an exciting number to see. The start of a new adventure and a new chapter of life. While we are not completely on the road full time yet we take trips as often as we can. We have been living in our fifth wheel just over 6 months now.

Whao! Where did the time go. It is crazy to think we have been living in our tiny home for that long. We have gone on so many fun adventures in our home but this trip was our first National Park adventure since living in our RV. 🙂 What took us so long? haha.

Our home base has been Socorro, NM. So we took off from there and headed toward Springerville, AZ. We spent a day there so Adam could catch up on some work and do some coaching calls for our business. While he was working the girls and I took off to stroll the town (which has a population of almost 2,000, just to give you an idea of how much we had to stroll).

Our first stop was the visitors center/museum. Which we really enjoyed. They had a lot of really neat things, Emery particularly loved the butterfly collection, and volcano display. There was a really fun park just behind the building, where we spent a couple hrs enjoying the sun.

While in Springerville I learned a valuable lesson that I will be putting to good use as we continue on our adventuring. Check when things are open before you plan. I had created great plans for the day but soon found out that everything I had planned was going to be closed.

We had planned to go to the White Mountain Dinosaur Exploration Center, Casa Malpais Archaeological Park & Museum, and a cute looking thrift store. Sounds like fun right? I thought so too, so before you get your plans shattered make sure they will work for the day, time, and season you decide to go. 😉 We still had a great time, we just had to do some adjusting. After the park we made a store run for some BBQ necessities and enjoyed a nice sunset as we finished up the day.

The next morning we packed up and headed towards Petrified Forest National Park. I wish we would have had more time, but then again it was a super windy day so we were all ready to be done by the time we finished. This was a really neat park, there was so much I wish we could have seen.

This park spans 28 miles and has so many amazing views and stops along the way. We started on the south side of the park at the gift shop on the out skirts. We had lunch and let the girls play around.

There were some fun tepees that Emery loved! And the girls had a hayday in the gift shop, so we didn’t stay long in there haha. This gift shop allows free parking but has no hookups. We would have loved to stay but we haven’t gotten boon docking down pat yet, and needed electricity that night.

This is her don’t mess with me, I’m pooping face.;)

Once we were done with lunch we headed into the park, we first stopped at the Rainbow Forest Museum/Visitors Center. This is where we learned how the petrified wood is formed, and the girls got to pretend to dig up fossils. We got the scoop on what we needed to do and see and headed out.

Right out of the back door we started on the Giant Logs trail. It was a fun little loop to get us started and introduced to the petrified wood. At the top was “Old Faithful” One of the largest logs in the park.

They love the wind…NOT!

We got back in the truck and headed to Jasper Forest overlook. We where almost blown away here. It was a beautiful overlook but the girls hated how strong the wind was. So we jumped right back in the truck and did a drive by the Agate Bridge.

Next on our list was Blue Mesa. We just drove the loop but there is a steep 1.0 mile hike that will take you from the top of the mesa down into the badlands. The views on this drive were amazing! We attempted a family picture but the girls weren’t going to do it. The wind was really that bad!!

We debated stopping at the newspaper rock but continued on to Puerco Pueblo. This was a short 0.5 mile loop leading from the parking lot to some Indian ruins and petroglyphs.

As we crossed over the interstate into the painted desert the views were spectacular! There are several lookout points you can stop at, we chose to stop at Pintado Point. What a breathtaking view! It was just about sunset too so it was gorgeous to see the sun light up the whole area.

We attempted going to the Painted Desert Inn but just missed it not realizing that is closed at 4:oo PM. Our last stop was at the Painted Deseret Visitors Center. Here we got a Passport booklet and got our stamp. And of course we had to pick up a few souvenirs at the gift shop. 😉

After our long adventurous day it was time to head to Holbrook, AZ. It was nice that we could just hop right back on the interstate and be on our way. From the North end of the Petrified Forest National Park it is about 25ish miles to Holbrook, from the South end it is about 19 miles.

There are two options for RV parks that we found in Holbrook. The KOA and OK RV park. There is also a Normans RV park not to far down the road in Joseph City but it does not have Wifi. We chose the OK RV park because it was a little cheaper and still had everything we needed.

It got pretty cold at night. So we just had to make sure to turn the water off so things wouldn’t freeze. It was an amazing trip and we are so excited for this journey and hope you will be able to make it to this beautiful place. Here is a link if you would like to learn more about Petrified Forest National Park.

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