Whole Triassic conifer trunks turned to quartz and scattered across the Painted Desert, some of them a metre thick and shot through with amethyst and citrine. It is also a serious Triassic vertebrate site. Every year visitors take pieces and every year some mail them back with letters saying it brought them bad luck; the park keeps a file of them. LOOK ONLY, and the fine is real. Commercial petrified wood from private land outside the park is sold legally at the gates.
Petrified logs, Triassic reptiles · Late Triassic, ~225 mya
See it on the map
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
