Over the holidays, we decided to head south to catch some sun and knock a few more parks off our list. Yet again, a Park About Big Trees surprised us with how much we loved it!
These photos are in reverse order, so...at the end of the day we hiked around the Crystal Forest trail, which was very very cool. Soooo many logs in such a small space, and it was cool to see how some retained the patterns of the bark.
Most were split into chunks from the petrification process, but a few trees stayed where they had fallen and gave us an idea of how HUGE they were.
I did not realize that the trees actually turn to quartz. The cross-sections were SO beautiful.
And really varied!
Earlier in the day we hiked out to the Blue Mesa/Blue Forest area. I had read that this was a great way to get away from the crowds, but AllTrails reviews noted that the trail was pretty sketchy in some parts, since the NPS notes its existence but doesn't maintain it.
We've hiked a lot so I feel confident in saying this: this trail is SKETCHY. It's basically eroding under your feet and we ended up not going nearly as far as we'd planned because we were legitimately worried about plunging to our deaths (even with caution and turning around early we still had some pretty good falls and slides!).
So we basically just hiked out until we had a good view.
And we clambered up to this giant log and spent forever just checking it out and clinking the pieces of "tree" together to hear them make a rock sound.
I can understand why so many people sneak a piece home with them (which you should NOT do and park lore has it that you'll be cursed. Tons of people mail their chunks back in hopes of the "curse" abating, but the park just has to pile all those chunks somewhere since they can't be returned to their original locations). There are slabs for sale in the gift shops that were taken from outside the park (I would like to know where one can pick up an outside-the-park piece because I don't want to pay $$ for the gift shop ones. Also if they dropped the prices I think they'd see less people taking pieces, but that's beside the point).
Some more sketchy trail...
Walking along the ridges felt MUCH safer than ascending or descending!
All of the erosion was just exposing chunks of trees, which was pretty cool visually.
And the requisite photo for our location along Route 66! We also checked out some cool ruins from the native peoples who originally lived in the area (lots of pictographs and pictograms too). All in all, a really fun place to spend a day. We closed out with sunset at the Giant Logs trail (first photo).
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