Petrified Forest National Park

[resqgeek]

Today's primary destination was the Petrified Forest National Park. We entered the park from the north entrance off of I-40 and drove through and out the south gate to US-180. The north portion of the park skirts the edges of the Painted Desert, a gorgeous badland region carved by the Little Colorado River. The colorful canyons and formations almost look like more like a painting than reality. It was tempting to stop at every pull-out and take pictures, but we needed to move on to the main attraction. About halfway through the park, we started encountering the petrified wood samples. By the end of the drive, the fossilized wood was almost literally everywhere, in whole logs and in smaller pieces. The colors, which reflect the mineral content, make these fossils some of the most attractive I've ever seen. The petrified wood lay scattered over huge portions of desert floor, where they fell after being exposed during the erosion of the sandstone that it had been embedded in. These fossils are the remains of trees that lived aprox. 225 million years ago, just as the dinosaurs were starting to arrive on the scene.

After we finished our visit here, we continued west towards our evening accommodations in Williams, Arizona. Along the way, we pulled off for a brief detour to the Sunset Crater National Monument, located north of Flagstarr. The Sunset Crater is a cinder cone volcano that formed about 800-1000 years ago. The landscape around the volcano is covered with volcanic cinder and lava flows, still visible in this arid region some 800 years after the last eruption. This was our daughters' first encounter with a volcano and they loved hiking on the lava flow trail, and seeing the lava flows up close. I wanted to get a late evening photo of the mountain, but a huge cloud moved over the sun just before I got into position, stealing most of the dramatic impact of the photo.

We're now settling in for the night in Williams, Arizona, before heading north to battle the traffic congestion along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Comments

[elhamisabel.livejournal.com]

I haven't replied earlier to you travel posts but just wanted to say that I read them with interest.
A very interesting way of having holidays. Far better than sitting on the beach. :-)