It was time to get out and see some of the countryside. We drove sixteen miles to the Petrified Forest.
The Petrified Forest National Park is really two parks in one, the Painted Desert at the North end and the Rainbow Forest at the South end. The park covers over 93,533 acres and consists of six separate "forests" .
Wind and running water cut these features from the Chinle Formation deposited over 200 million years ago.
I wish these could pictures could show the colors as clearly as we saw them when we stopped at the overlooks throughout the park. The colors in the desert result from the minerals in the soil. The red color is due to iron oxides.
On clear days, visitors may be able to see 100 miles from the rim of the Painted Desert.
This old car found in the desert.
In this picture below you can see the telephone poles that were planted when Route 66 was first built.
The Puerco River....or should that be river bed?
More than 650 images are etched into the boulders in the pictures below. These boulders are known as Newspaper Rock. The people who farmed the Puerco River Valled anywhere from 650 to 2000 years ago etched these petroglyphs leaving their legacy.
One of the most striking areas in the park is the Blue Mesa. This area features other worldly, almost lunar landscapes with sculpted hills and rocks.
We were all too soon through the Painted Desert and started the tour of the Petrified Forest.
Now to be perfectly honest with you, I expected to see a forest...you know with trees standing upright and green leaves and all. I've never given much thought to a petrified forest before but in my minds eye that is what we were going to see. WRONG!
The name of the park, and its major reason for creation, is the rich collection of petrified wood found mainly in the south portion of the park. It is the most spectacular collection of petrified wood ever found. In many areas large logs, stumps, and chunks of crystal may be found lying freely around the ground.
The petrified wood found in the park began its existence as large trees from an ancient forest many, many years ago. After falling, the trees were washed downstream from as far as 50 miles away onto a flood plain which lay on the current area of the park. The logs were covered by volcanic sand and silt sometimes to a depth of 1100 feet.
Over time, as water seeped toward the buried logs waterborne silica slowly replaced the wood, creating the petrified logs.
Here's Bob standing amongst the petrified logs.
A close up where you can see the logs have turned to stone.
A field of petrified tress that have made their way to the surface.
In the picture below two logs (the black circles) that are working their way to the surface.
We had toured the park and our time here was done. On the way home we had to stop at the grocery store and across from the Safeway was this unusual motel. The Wigwam Motel, where your "room" is a teepee!
After dinner we settled in for yet another non-TV night. We played computer games,,,if solitaire can be considered a computer game and I read for awhile.
I did call Bobby and Shelly, our RV'ing friends from Delaware, to check in with them to find out where they were as I knew they had left their winter perch. What a surprise to find out that they too were in the Petrified Forest all day. We were probably one overlook apart and we didn't know it!
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