Petrified Forest National Park - Day Two

Yesterday we explored the northern section of Petrified Forest National Park - focusing mainly on the Painted Desert.  Today we explored the southern section, which features breathtaking landscapes filled with petrified tree trunks, agatized wood and other fossils.

The visitor center runs a ranger talk each morning at 11:00 and we attended that first.  Prior to the talk, we explored the museum, which included several skeletons of animals that lived in the Triassic Period prior to the time of the dinosaurs.  The skeleton below is Placerias hesternus, which was not a dinosaur, but a therapsid.  Therapsids were large reptiles that possessed many mammalian characteristics.  This massive plant-eater was up to 9 feet long and might have weighed as much as two tons. Its beak-like jaws helped them pull up and tear tough plants and roots.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the ranger talk was the explanation he gave us for how trees petrified, which in simplest terms involved mineralization of the tree material at the atomic level - that is, atom by atom.  The minerals present in the silt, volcanic ash and waters that buried the tree determined, as of any point in the process, what minerals and colors resulted in the portion of the tree then being petrified.

After the ranger talk, we explored the Giant Logs Trail near the visitor center.  The very largest, nearly whole petrified tree we saw is shown below.  This log was affectionately christened "Old Faithful" by the wife of the park's first superintendent.  Unlike most of the log pieces in the park, this one includes the trunk all the way to the base of the main root.

The highlight of our day was a hike into the wilderness section of Jasper Forest.  The following is a view of that area, which is the desert floor shown below from the vantage point of an observation point on a mesa above:

As we reached the desert floor, we could see large sections of petrified trees littering the landscape, where they had fallen as a result of erosion of the soil around and under them:

Some of our favorite specimens were multihued, their surfaces polished by wind and rain:

Reaching the top of the mesa again after our wilderness hike, we had a view of the expanse of desert through which we had just walked:

Driving back through the park, we stopped again at the visitor center and hiked up to Agate House, which is a reconstruction of a Pueblo residence that had been constructed entirely from petrified wood chunks, just as if it had been built from any other stones.  Here Kathy is examining an exterior wall and window:

Returning to the truck from Agate House, we happened upon what became David's favorite specimen.  The yellows and lavenders contrast beautifully with the red and purplish-black minerals.

Some of the fields of rocks are a testament to man's greed, because they had been completely plundered of the most valuable mineral crystals.  While little has been taken since the park was established in the early 1900's, nevertheless significant losses had already been incurred by then, and it is not now possible to see the most beautiful clear crystals that once could be found in the centers of some of the petrified logs.

For all our photos from today as well as yesterday's journey through the Petrified Forest, look at our Flickr page.

Back at the campground afterward, we decided to take advantage of the "Chuckwagon" dinner on offer at the outdoor pavilion.  We had great New York strip steak and "petrified toast" (toast buttered and coated in grilled cheese), along with southwestern beans and potato salad.  We spent the entire meal chatting with Mark and Penny, an Australian couple taking an RV vacation through the American Southwest.  They have a great sense of humor and zest for life and we were all laughing and gabbing before we had finished the meal.  Unfortunately, as with all the couples we meet, we'll be going our separate ways tomorrow.  But we never know when we'll bump into such friends again, and we look forward to that time - and to the other new friends we'll make along our way.