Petrified Forest anyone? ~ Day 3

Finally! All of the kids slept in! That was definitely a welcome treat, and as an added bonus, made for a much happier day all around. We had a fairly lazy morning again, and got on the road just before 11am. Our first stop wasn’t scheduled, but we’re glad we made it. We stopped at a local rock shop. Sound boring? It wasn’t. Not even a little bit. You see, this rock shop was huge, and it was surrounded by roughly 89,000 pounds of petrified wood for sale. Apparently, the owner owns a patch of land nearby and all of the wood is from his property. Did you know that petrified wood isn’t rare? It is easily found throughout the world, on every continent except Antarctica. Only about 10% of the petrified trees in Arizona are protected within the boundaries of the Petrified Forest National Park.

Anyway, I digress. We stopped in this rock shop and explored. They had geodes, from the tiniest I’ve ever seen (half an inch to an inch across) to some monstrosities as tall as the kids! We saw amethyst, quartz crystal and dyed geodes. We saw slices of geodes that had been made into wind chimes, book ends and countless other novelties. We also saw mined copper, pyrite, Apache tears, turquoise, arrow heads, obsidian and so many more varieties of rocks and minerals. It really was a fascinating stop. We purchased a small geode for each of the kids and then headed off to the southern entrance to the Petrified Forest.

Now the Petrified Forest…wow. My first question was how in the heck did so many huge trees become petrified out in the middle of the desert? I mean, look around. It’s a bunch of cactus and scrub brush. Not exactly enormous petrified tree material. Apparently, this area used to be part of a subtropical forest. Oh, how times change! Well, a big flood hit, killed the trees, then a volcano blew its top many times over, covering the water logged trees with ash full of a variety of minerals. As time passed, the minerals leached into the trees and replaced the tree fibers bit by bit, turning the trees into solid rock. The now petrified trees are vibrantly rich in color and some even have crystals within the tree.

I can’t even begin to describe all that we saw today. It was beautiful and well worth the trip. We saw countless pieces of petrified trees, ruins from Pueblo Indians, petroglyphs, and the Painted Desert. The Painted Desert is just what it sounds like…a desert with mesas and a wide variety of geological features, all in various hues of red, terracotta, gray, white, and blue courtesy of the many minerals and metals present in the earth. Simply amazing and definitely breathtaking. We could easily see the San Francisco Peaks 120 miles to the west of one of the overlooks.

After our final stop in the Petrified Forest National Park, we got back on the freeway and headed east. We passed into New Mexico, and then crossed the Continental Divide. All in all, today was a great day. Well, with the noted exception of getting stuck in traffic west of Albuquerque. It took us over 3 hours to go about 6.5 miles. Pass me the lemon juice and salt, please. I have an open wound I need to tend to. Oh well, such is life!