Red Basin/Clam Beds

We returned to Petrified Forest National Park this morning to hike out to  the Red Basin/Clam Beds area. This is an "off the beaten path" hike, meaning the park provides a suggested route (paper includes photos), there are no maintained trails. Our route was 8 miles in mostly a loop, with minimal elevation change. We enjoyed the scenery, wildflowers and lots of petrified wood.

From the parking area, we had to walk back down the road for about 0.4 mile. Along this road, we saw some rock formations and wildflowers. Yucca

Asters and pincushions

Lovely rock formations as we started hiking up the 2+ mile closed dirt road portion of the route.

Most of the 2 miles was out in the open plain.

Then we reached the beginning of the badlands. At the base of this red mesa (to the right) are the fossil clam beds.

We found the fossil fresh water clam beds on large sandstone blocks.

close up of a fossil clam bed

Our route took us counter clockwise around the badlands. Love the detail in the rock formations.

There are some huge boulders along the way.

Gorgeous colors

Here the washes looked like huge crevasses as the cut through the rocks into Red Basin

Toadstools

another wash cutting down into the rocky layers 

large feature called a sand castle

Looking into Red Basin

We dropped down into a wash to make our way to the deep wash in Red Basin

Looking over the wash in Red Basin to the badlands

more toadstools

I thought this was a very large petrified log, it is about 3 ft high,

and then we found this giant petrified log.

I loved the colors in this next area of the badlands we were circumventing.

so beautiful!

We then followed our 2 miles back, not on the dirt road, but closer to the blue mesa.

more very large petrified logs

some of the wildflowers and petrified wood we saw along the way today: