Petrified Forest National Park

We loved going through the Petrifed Forest.  Its right off of I-40 before you get to Holbrooke.  The Painted desert is on the north side of the freeway and the Petrified Forest is on the south side of the freeway.   Everywhere you look you see beautiful giant pieces of colorful "wood".  It was a whole forest of trees that were buried by a flood and over the eons the wood was replaced by minerals.  All kinds of colorful minerals are in these specimens.  The wood looks like someone came with a chainsaw and cut it up into smaller pieces but it actually broke up naturally and just looks like its been sawed.
We stopped at DoBell Ranch which is next door to the park.  The ranch is privately owned and is full of petrified wood that you can buy for 30 cents a pound.  The national park doesn't allow any collecting so your only choices are to buy it from sellars in town or out at this ranch.  You are welcome at the ranch to go out and pick your own or pick from their piles.  They have a great museum and the granddaughter of the original ranch owner showed us around and was very nice.  There were small pieces of petrified wood everywhere you walked and she kept saying to fill our pockets.  We found a very nice piece (not too big) that we kept as well as a small dinosaur bone and some other free samples of beautiful rocks. 

We left Prescott Valley and stayed in Quartzsite a few days and are now at the refuge for the winter.