Nov 08, 2017 — The NPS has a series of fun backcountry adventures in Petrified Forest National Park. I followed their recommended route for some of this one, but deviated quite a bit. You can find their recommended route online. From the Blue Mesa Road, follow a dirt road past an "Authorized Vehicles Only" barrier for a bit until you want to enter open desert. I found a way up to a mesa rim. You can see people on Blue Mesa from here. Try to ignore them, you'll be the backcountry soon enough. After I found a way down off the rim, I explored some of the nooks of the mesa before heading cross-country to the Clam Beds. These are fossilized clams in sandstone. There's a bunch of rocks to see the fossils. Hard to miss them (see map). From here, it was more corss-country to the much more interesting Red Basin. This area of red mounds is super pretty and for me was the highlight. I continued farther east and found something I'm dubbing "Ruby Field" because of the bright red rocks on pedestals a vast white ground. I continued deeper and got into a maze of black mounds with scary-looking sink holes. Would I step in a weak spot and trigger a new one? I found my way out eventually and continued around a mesa in open desert and returned back to my car. A nice little Petrified Forest backcountry adventure.
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