Petrified Forest National Park - Day One

Dear Blog!  Today was our first day in the Petrified Forest National Park.  We started at the north end of the park, which has the Visitor's Center.  After watching a video and buying the requisite t-shirts, we entered the park.  Our first view was of the painted desert.

We stopped at a number of scenic overlooks before parking at the Painted Desert Inn National Historic Landmark.  This inn once served as a respite for travelers along the historic Route 66.  It was completely remodeled by the Civilian Conservation Corps. 

The CCC also worked on the road inside the park and expanded a number of the scenic overlooks.  As part of the expansion, they created a number of paths using flat stones they found in the park.  One of the stones they picked up just so happened to have one of the largest petroglyphs ever recorded.  Luckily, one of the CCC workers turned the stone over before it was set it, or this little guy might have ended up face down in a walkway.

Hopi artist, Fred Kabotie, was engaged to paint the Inn's murals in 1947. Mr. Kabotie also worked at the Hopi House at the Grand Canyon. Kabotie's work depicts aspects of Hopi life, including a journey through the Painted Desert to collect salt.

Each stop we made contained a placard outlining various facts about the geology and history of the area.

The historic Route 66 ran through the park before it was combined with U.S. Interstate 40.  There are a number of places you can still see the old highway.  Here is Dave standing by the remnants of a bygone era.

Native peoples lived in the park area for over 10,000 years.  We stopped at the Puerco Pueblo, the site of a 100 room pueblo.  Here are some of the petroplyphs etched into the rocks below the pueblo.  Do you see the bird with a human-like figure in its mouth?  Some have said it represents the fertility brought by the rains, with the ibis and frog along the riverbanks.  Others have said it was a stork delivering a baby.  Some of the pueblo people warned their children that it was the bird that would eat children if they misbehaved.

Our next stop was Blue Mesa.  It really is sort of blue or purple, depending on the light because of the mineral content in the bentonite clay.

The clay also helped preserve the petrified logs.  Here you can see one of the logs that has been exposed due to erosion.

We parked Great White on top of the Mesa and hiked down the Blue Mesa Trail.  Here we passed a couple of hoodoos having a conversation about the weather.  You could see some thunderheads in the distance. They assured us that there would be wind, but little rain.

Down in the valley, we had a totally different perspective of the whole erosion process.  The darker brown spots you see are actually pebbles washed down from the top of the mesa.

All along the bottom of the canyon were remnants of the petrified trees which had been eroded from the sediment above and washed down in the canyon.  Here is a particularly colorful piece.

Petrified wood's varied colors came from minerals in the silica-saturated water.  Iron, carbon and manganese made patterns and blends of yellow, red, black, blue, brown, white and pink.  Once the wood has been transformed into the rock, it is extremely heavy and very slow to erode.

We took dozens of photos and couldn't possible post them all to the blog.  So, if you are interested in seeing more really cool photos of the Petrified Forest, please visit our Flickr site.

Happy Trails!