Epic Trip Out West, Day Fifty-Three, Part Two: Trees of Stone

May 28th

Amanda and I were off to Albuquerque: her to a farm to WWOOF, and me to some form of transit that would take me to Oklahoma City to see my friends. It was only 10:30am, but already Amanda had been driving for almost five hours when we found the entrance to our detour along the way: the Petrified National Forest. We had driven through a barren desert landscape of scrub and open sky and swirling dust, caught glimpses of a small herd of antelope with triplet fawns, and seen a strip of classic Route 66 and its collection of dead and dying tourist attractions. But at last we were here, in a landscape much like the one we had seen on the rest of the trip. Amanda used her National Parks pass to get us in, and then we drove along a winding road between gray hills that much resembled the manmade sand heaps that line the rural highways in Missouri and Illinois. We drove several miles, and just when Amanda said, “Y’know, I’m just not that impressed with this…” we saw a turn-off, and we saw the fallen trees.

I had seen petrified wood before, but I had never imagined how amazing it would be to stand next to a fallen log with a diameter as tall as my torso: a log that appeared to be wood but was shelled in stone and filled with crystal, a log as old as the dinosaurs, a log that came from a tree that had once grown on the edge of a floodplain in a swampy forest on Pangea. 

The park was filled with several scenic places as well. We jumped out of the RV to take pictures of the Blue Mesa, an undulating plain marked with salt flats and alien rock formations; Painted Desert, a series of stone dunes in unbelievable shades of red and pink; and the Teepees, a collection of conical hills striped with different-colored sediment. We spent a couple of hours wandering around the park before we hit the road, both of us enjoying the ride, but ready to get on to our next destination, and the place where we would part ways.

~Lisa Shafter

Budget notes: That night, when we got in to an RV park just inside New Mexico, I had to make a decision. I had an offer for a rideshare from Albuquerque to Oklahoma City, but it would place me arriving there on Tuesday night rather than Monday morning, allowing me only one full day with my friends the Magruders, rather than two and a half full days. I had a choice: completely blow my budget and see them more, or stick to my budget and not spend much time with my friends. I have no regrets about my final decision. At the end of the trip, I’ll run the complete stats to show how close to $10 a day I got.

Money spent on 5/28: $134.75 (Greyhound ticket, supper [Amanda wouldn’t let me pay any more gas money, so I started taking her out to eat])

Deficit: $143.09