Arizona Adventure - Part 1: Petrified Forest and Painted Desert

Last October a photo buddy (Alan Postelnek) and I took a road trip to Arizona.  Our primary purpose was to photograph a remote geological feature called White Pocket, which I had visited in 2014.  (More about that later.)  

But we decided that since we were making the trip we would visit a number of other (and better known) Arizona landscapes along the way.  In this post, and in a few more to come, I'll share stories and images from the places we explored.

First up:  Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert.

This area in east central Arizona -- about 200 miles west of Albuquerque -- covers about 230 square miles of semi-desert steppe (treeless grassland) and multi-colored badlands where very little vegetation exists.

We spent most of our time in the southern section of the park, which consists of vast fields of petrified trees . . .

. . . as well as geological features of soft sedimentary rock (mud, silt, and sand) deposited by rivers, lakes, and wetlands about 225 million years ago and uncovered by erosion that began about 60 million years ago.

Much of the park's petrified wood is from extinct species of conifer trees.  Fallen trees accumulating in rivers and wetlands were buried in water-saturated sediment or volcanic ash.  Over time, the organic material in the plant (tree) was replaced by minerals in the water, resulting in a quartz chalcedony, multi-colored depending on what elements are present (such as cobalt, copper, manganese, silicon, and iron), while preserving the original plant structure and general appearance.

The process yields beautiful textures and colors.

You probably noticed that there are no unbroken tree trunks . . . they all look like they have been cut into sections.

The breaks are caused by cracks formed in the heavy quartz logs when the ground beneath them erodes and settles.  The shortest distance for a crack to grow is perpendicular to the long dimension of the log.  The log breaks like a piece of brittle chalk.


In addition to the petrified trees, the other iconic elements of the park are the colorful and interestingly-textured topographical features of soft sedimentary rock . . . which in many cases are basically dried multi-colored mud.

The most dramatic location in the park for these features is a badland area eponymously named Blue Mesa.

The features have emerged by the erosion of a layer of younger geological material on top of them.

You'll notice that, in addition to their color, the features all share the same wrinkled, elephant-skin surface texture.

The texture is created by the presence of Bentonite, an absorbent aluminium phyllosilicate clay, which swells up with rainwater, then shrinks and cracks as it dries.  It's very crumbly to the touch, so we stayed on the paved pathways to avoid damaging it.

The wrinkled features make for great visual interest, both from below and above:

If you would like to see these images (and more) in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!