Trevor Huxham

What’s the national park you’ve visited the most in the U.S.? Maybe Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains, or Yosemite? I have family in Indiana, went to college in Arkansas, and now live in Phoenix, so you might think the park I’ve been to the most is Indiana Dunes, Hot Springs, or Saguaro—and yet I’ve only been to one of those parks (Hot Springs) a single time! Instead, I’ve passed through Petrified Forest National Park in northern Arizona no fewer than four times in my life, and I’m itching to get back there soon. Blue Mesa Trail Although it could be dismissed as just another drive-through experience along historic Route 66 from Chicago to L.A., Petrified Forest is so much more. Yes, this national park guards an amazing collection of petrified wood from millions of years ago, but it also contains stunning badlands, hiking opportunities, and ways to encounter recent (and not-s...

What remains of a multi-room complex “Is this it?” I thought while walking back to my car. Compared to the Ancestral Puebloan dwellings I had visited the day before at nearby Wupatki National Monument , the low stone walls at Homolovi State Park didn’t do much to convince me that a complex of more than a thousand rooms once stood on this patch of northern Arizona. High Desert Housing But unlike Wupatki, it was clear that this lonely grassland once teemed with the residents of those thousand-plus rooms. Potsherds were everywhere!