Monday, Sept. 27Today we drove about 90 miles east of Flagstaff to the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert National Park. The visit was FABULOUS!!! The guide books said take a half day to see the park so we planned ahead to have a full day there. We started at the south entrance about 9 AM, where most of the large accumulations of petrified wood are located, and progressed northward to see the best viewings of the Painted Desert in the late afternoon sun. (Seperate posting.)
The amount and color variations of the petrified wood were impressive. The landscape was literally littered with pieces of petrified wood from small fragments to pieces of trunk up to 100 feet long and 4 or 5 feet in diameter. We were good law abiding citizens and didn’t take any pieces with us. (This was VERY hard. On the way into the park we had to have the ranger mark all the rock pieces we had already collected along the trip so we wouldn’t be fined for these.)
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| Reminds me of a fallen column in Greece. |
The ability of the petrifying process to create very life-like looking mineral replacements of the wood cells repeatedly caused us to try to scratch the wood surface to check if it really was not soft wood. It was always rock. The bark looked like bark, the broken off limb holes looked real, even the weathering process made the petrified logs look rotten! In some places, the petrified wood had broken into tiny wood “chips”, just as though someone had walked away from chopping firewood.
We found our next house, the Agate house, but have to negotiate with the Federal Government to relocate it to a more suitable climate. It probably weights a million pounds so I’m sure the move could be costly. |
| Our Agate House |
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| Is this rotten? |
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