Hike Devil's Playground Petrified Forest National Park, AZ

Oct 24, 2020 — The Devil's Playground is a fun region within Petrified Forest National Park that takes a fairly long walk to reach. Exploring the rock features and hoodoos of the area consists of a more choose-your-own-adventure sort of hike, since there's no official trail once you get to the heart of the Playground. The route Austin and I took was just a nice loop to see some of the features, and we headed back after we felt we got a sense of the area. After obtaining the required permit from the Petrified Forest National Park Vistor Center, we started out from the parking area (2WD likely would not have trouble making it here if the road isn't muddy and moving slowly). The guide the NPS provides for locating the Devil's Playground area required us to park here, and then hike back along the dirt road on foot. The road passed a gate, and we found ourselves crossing Lithodendron Wash, the major wash flowing through much of the park. We headed northwest up an unnamed wash. While there is an "official" trail that is marked with brown stakes that follows the left bank of this wash, it's probably easier just to walk within the wash since it's less sandy. Eventually, we bisected the "trail" and followed it along an eroded and barely recognizable road. The road led up to a mesatop, where an obvious trail continued to the north for a mile or so. The trail then droppded down off the mesa, through a meadow, and then to a fence. A key spot along the fence has a human-sized opening.

We continued north, enjoying the colors and rock formations that began to start appearing. Our route headed counter-clockwise as appears on the attached map, but you can really do whatever. Just don't touch/destroy any of the rock formations. We found a feature the NPS calls "Three Witches" and used this as a good halfway point. Just enjoy the area without relying too heavily on a predetermined route. There's no correct way to check it out, since there's a lot you can see.