Petrified Forest

We met Collins and Marilyn's British friends this morning, Marilyn fixed breakfast for the 6 of us, and we visited for a while, then prepared to leave.  Collins had to do some more warranty work for us, on a support post he had given us a few years ago to put under the step.  The weld did not hold, in fact it broke into two pieces.  Of course, Joe did not harass him or anything about that.

So we pulled out just before 11:00 a.m.  It was 68 degrees, and our temperature stayed in the 60s all day until evening, when it quickly dropped.  We didn't get off the road until after 7:00 p.m., and it was a chilly 54 then.  But we did make it out of Arizona, 5 days after we left home.  We drove 294 miles today, a little longer day than we had planned.  No wildlife today, except that we saw about 6 horses that could have been wild mustangs, near the Arizona/New Mexico border.  As we drove through the Flagstaff area, we could see close-up the snow on top of San Francisco Peaks, which we could see in the distance from the Brundiges.

Joe came up with the brilliant idea of taking a side trip through the Petrified Forest National Park, so when we got to Holbrook, we gladly left I-40 with its heavy truck traffic.  Holbrook has lots of shops selling petrified wood, all of which supposedly was found outside the Park.  This one shop had quite an inventory, and was right at the turnoff to the road leading to the Park.

We stopped at the gift shop right outside the park and picked up a map.  They had absolutely beautiful rocks in there, not just petrified wood but agates and lots of bookends, some table tops of petrified wood, etc., none of which was in our budget. 

The park is open from 7:00 to 7:00, and it was about 4:00 when we headed in.  When Joe started to hand over his America the Beautiful pass, which lets us senior citizens into national parks for free, the attendant told us she didn't need anything because this is National Parks Week. 

We didn't make any of the hikes because we didn't think we had time, but we did make several of the loop drives.  We had only been through here once before, when we were driving out from Indiana on our move to Arizona.  John was 8 and thought he had to inspect every piece of petrified wood in the park.  We took a more cursory drive this time, but it is a very unique place and well worth the time it took.

There are lots of scattered pieces of the petrified wood, some as whole logs, some look like they have been cut for firewood with a saw.  Here's a little information from the map/brochure.

"The high, dry grassland was once a vast floodplain crossed by many streams.  Tall, stately conifer trees grew along on the banks. ...  The trees fell, and swollen streams washed them into adjacent floodplains.  A mix of silt, mud, and volcanic ash buried the logs. This sediment cut off oxygen and slowed the logs' decay. Silica-laden groundwater seeped through the logs and replaced the original wood tissues with silica deposits.  Eventually the silica crystallized into quartz, and the logs were preserved as petrified wood. ... Over the 225 million years since the trees lived, the continents moved to their present positions, and this region was uplifted.  As a result the climate changed, and the tropical environment became today's grassland.  Over time, wind and water wore away the rock layers and exposed fossilized ancient plants and animals.  The hills will yield more fossils as weathering sculpts the Painted Desert's soft sedimentary rock."

We could see many logs just being uncovered by erosion, with the tops just becoming visible.  The petrified wood in the first picture is lying at the base of some boulders, and in the third picture the pieces are just scattered down in the valley.

There are also lots of beautiful colors in the sand formations as well, reminded us a lot of Death Valley.

The 28-mile Park road crosses over I-40, and there's a sign here about historic Route 66 which was replaced in many places by I-40.  There are also the remains of an old rusty car here, and the front fender from an old Cadillac on the back of a bench.

We are now in the Painted Desert area, which we have seen parts of many times on our way to Colorado.  The sun was at a good angle as we drove through here, and we saw some beautiful colors.

By now it's 6:00 p.m., and time to get off the road.  But there were no campgrounds in this area, so when we got to Gallup we just pulled off in the lot next to a truck stop and spent the night there.  I fixed dinner, we watched a little TV, and called it a day.  A Good Day!