Petrified Forrest
The Petrified Forest National Park was a surprise to us. Traveling from Tijeras, Arizona to Southeast Utah we needed a place to stop. This was on the way. It is a National Park so we were happy to check it out. We were in for a pleasant surprise. This park has many different geological formations, every time you drive a little further you are looking at a entire different landscape, one more beautiful than the other. There have been many fossils found here. The petrified trees are millions of years old. At one time Arizona was located approximately where Costa Rica is today, so it was a rain forest. Then the continental plates shifted moving all the continents. These trees grew at that time, gradually falling into rivers and than being covered by the earth, they absorbed the silica and became stone or crystals. There are places here where you can see petrified wood laying in a dry river bed. Our day started out as cloudy, but the sun finally came out at around 3 PM. We had made it through the park by then, so we decided to go back and look at some areas we were afraid to walk around in for fear of getting wet. Slippery rocks are not good for your health. That turned out to be a great decision, as we were able to spend a couple of hours walking the path down to the bottom of the Blue Mesa. It was extraordinarily beautiful, as well as a great work out.
A field of petrified trees. The wood is quiet heavy and very beautiful
This was found it in the quartz section of the park. In each area, the wood is different colors, all of them beautiful.
This is one long log
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| The Painted Dessert |
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| Crystal Forrest |
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| Trail to the bottom of Blue Mesa |
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| He's thinking the Tundra has 6 gears to climb this. |
This is us, relieved to make it down safely
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| Yikes, this is a long steep trail to bottom, and we still got to climb out. |
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| Yes, this is the trail down. |
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| Parts of this park were on Historic Rte 66, This Studebaker is a reminder of that. |
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| That is petrified wood behind us. |
