July 29th, Petrified Forest

  

  

  

  




  


Saturday, July 29th, 2006
Day 34
Drive through Petrified Forest National Park

These photos are in "reverse" order too. The bottom one is before we left the RV park at Meteor Crater. The top one is Old Route 66 within the Petrified Forest boundaries. You can see the now defunct old electric poles that don't have any wires. I-40 is in the background.

Today was a beautiful day of driving and observing. We had a nice cool morning in Arizona, and after a morning of reading, coffee, and a little laundry, we packed up and drove across the parking lot to Old Route 66. Yes, historic Route 66 was right across the street from the RV park. This particular section is no longer in use, but we were able to drive down it maybe ¼ mile. Pretty neat! Rod even took a piece of roadway home with him!

Then we hooked up and drove to the Petrified Forest about an hour away. This park is one that is designed to drive through, even if you are towing an RV. That was nice. We started on the South end of the park at the Visitor’s Center. It was incredible to see all the HUGE petrified trees everywhere. If you don’t know what petrified wood is, it is wood that was buried quickly in silt and muck underwater, and since there was little oxygen it didn’t decompose, but the silica in some of the layers of sediment above the wood slowly seeps into the wood and replaces the cellulose with silica. Later other minerals and crystals form, such as quartz, etc. So, the wood turns to stone and may have beautiful crystals in it. You can still tell it was a tree, because of the shape and texture.

We had some awesome views of the Painted Desert while inside the park. We bought some souvenirs and had lunch at the North end of the park. The kids completed their Junior Ranger booklets very quickly, since this parks’ was easy! So, they got yet another badge. They really have quite a collection going. I also bought them each a little booklet to keep those pennies that you “create” in those penny souvenir machines. They have been collecting them, so now they have someplace to keep them.

The Painted Desert really looks like someone painted it! There are so many colors, and the way they blend is incredible. I haven’t looked at the photos from here yet, so hopefully I’ll have some good ones to post.

After lunch I drove the rest of the 100 or so miles to Grants, New Mexico. We are back on Mountain Time (Daylight Savings Time) and only 2 hours behind the folks at home. Tomorrow we plan on going to El Malpais (el mal pie is) to see some unique sights including lava tubes and other volcanic stuff, and a natural arch. We might go see an “ice cave” which is really an old lava tube that is 31 degrees all year round and has a lot of ice in it. We also have to go to Wal-Mart to get groceries. We’re down to the nitty-gritty and had soup for dinner. At least it is cool here at the moment. It seems we are really missing a hazy hot and humid summer back in NY. (Glad to be missing it…)

I have to mention that out here, the weather and storms and clouds are much more interesting and dramatic than at home. And the rain only seems to last moments and it may be raining in one place and not raining 400 feet from there. It’s pretty wicked to see the clouds and storms forming miles away. Today we saw a huge cloud rising up over an 11,000+ foot mountain as we were driving on I-40. It was very interesting. If one had been up on the mountain there would have been fog and probably rain. You could actually see the cloud slanting up over the top and witness the vertical development occurring. COOL! OK, bye for now!