Today we are going to the Petrified Forest!
I have to say that this was the only day that we had bad weather (see those dark clouds?). It was cold, very windy, and occasionally raining. But it was still a really fun day.
Every time I think of a petrified forest, I always envision in my own mind a big forest of trees that are still standing, except the trees are made of wood. I don't know why I always think that, but because of that, this was not what I was expecting. So I guess this was very educational for me.
This is a self-guided driving/walking tour. The sights are beautiful and interesting to see, but you miss out on a lot if you don't get out of your car and walk down some of the trails. I know, I know......"the weather outside is frightful", and when you get out of the car, you can't wait to get back in the car again, but trust me, you don't wanna miss out on these goodies.
So you drive on this road, and every now and then you come to a trailhead, inviting you to see what's out there. The drive itself is really pretty.
The first stop on the road pointed us to Puerco Pueblo, where some people lived ages ago.
There were also some petroglyphs there. I love petroglyphs!
If you like games, see if you can find this footprint petroglyph on these rocks:
I'm glad this trail was very short, less than 1/2 a mile, cuz the weather was really cold and windy.
So we continued driving on to the next trailhead, which led to what they call "Newspaper Rock". I can see why they call it that. You could spend hours trying to read it. Supposedly there are more than 650 petroglyphs on it, some of them as old as 2000 years (but again, how can they really know that? from what I read, petroglyphs are very difficult to date) For me, it's satisfying enough to know that they are old.
It was hard to get a good picture of it because you can only see it from a overlook, which wasn't at a very good angle to get a good view of the rock, so I ended up buying a postcard with a better picture of it. With my camera, I tried to zoom in on some of them. It's a really big rock and it's completely covered with symbols. So very cool! If the weather was nicer I would've wanted to stay there a lot longer. Too bad we didn't have our binoculars with us.
So the next stop was the "Blue Mesa". This was one of my favorite parts. We got out of the car and walked this mile long trail that loops around in these really pretty formations. By this time the weather improved somewhat, which made it somewhat nicer.
As we were walking on this trail we could see pieces of petrified wood scattered around. Whatever happened there at that forest, some of the trees got carried away to this area.
more petroglyphs!
I absolutely loved walking on this trail!! It was like being on a different planet! I am trying so hard to limit the amount of pictures I want to post. I sure would like to know how those rocks got formed that way! Look at all the interesting stripes of layers in them! Once again, my mind defaulted to the Flood of Noah's day.
Our next stop was the area of the petrified forest itself. It looks like you can roam around freely, but there is a trail and they expect you to stay on it.
As you can see, it's not a standing forest like I thought it was going to be. It's an area of land littered with fallen trees that have petrified. They say the trees are from the "Triassic Period" 200 million years ago, and would be the same trees that dinosaurs roamed around in. I disagree with this dating of course, but something big and catastrophic definitely happened here a long time ago.
Here is a tree that fell and spanned across a gully. (The wooden beams were added underneath it to give it support).
A lot of them look they fell and broke in pieces when they hit the ground, so did they petrify before they fell????? I don't know anything about this kind of science.
Some of them even look clean-cut, like someone went in there with a chainsaw and then just left them there.
Anyway, it was really neat to walk around there and imagine a whole forest there. The whole entire landscape would've been different.
I could get carried away showing you tons of pictures, but I have to stop somewhere. Anyhoo, this was a day well spent - very interesting!
There were a couple other things to stop and look on the driving tour, but we were less interested in those, so we left the park and headed towards our next destination. Being a Saturday, we knew that we wanted to find a nice hotel with a laundry room so we could wash our clothes, and get a good rest before going to church the next morning. So we headed to a city called Show Low.
Next stop: Canyon de Chelly
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