A Walk in the Forest

23-24 September 2012

We spent an extra night in Holbrook, Arizona in order to tour the Petrified Forest National Park. Believe me, there is no other reason to spend extra time in Holbrook, there is NOTHING in the town.

The Petrified Forest is fascinating. Strewn across large areas of desert are these fallen logs and log fragments.  All are now stone, not wood, because they were buried in a swampland millions of years ago under silica which helped to replace the wood cellulose cells with minerals.

The geography of the area is very interesting also. There are dunes of ribboned color, part of the Painted Desert. There are also flat mesas where petrified logs are exposed as erosion of the mesas occur.

The Native Americans have inhabited the area for many hundreds of years. So there are pueblo ruins that have been partially restored and are viewable.

As we spent the day traveling from one viewpoint to another and taking some short walks through designated areas of the park, we were treated to a desert storm. Large winds, thunder, lots of lightening and sporadic downpours. As we stopped at one viewpoint with a panoramic view of the Painted Desert, we saw a storm flurry advance across the valley and completely hide the view.  Then, after a few minutes, it was gone. I tell you, that train ride at Disneyland has a pretty good depiction of that.

We decided to head to Sedona for a few last days of camping before we reach home, looking forward to getting back to Long Beach.

A beautiful sunset after the storm.

 

 

 

One of the forest's residents many millions of years ago.



A current resident.

Semi-precious minerals often replaced the tree's cells, resulting in beautiful red, green, yellow and blue hues.

There must be tons of logs still buried in the park.  They get slowly exposed through erosion of the soil.



These logs aren't cut by humans, they apparently break as a result of the heating/freezing of the rock.



This log is sticking out of the mesa.

Vista of the Painted Desert.

These are called Tipis, for obvious reasons.



These petroglyphs were drawn by the natives that lived in this area about 700 years ago.

A partially restored pueblo, about 700 years old.

One of two kivas in the pueblo.

A small storm overtaking one of the viewpoints in the park. A couple of minutes after this picture, you couldn't see the valley floor.

 


God's promise shown once again.