One of My Favorite Finds

Petrified Forest National Park

Arizona

We stayed at this place just outside of the south entrance into the park.  They had a free camp area and you can see our home way in the background.  Those cars parked in front are for looks, giving the image of visitors stopping by the gift shop and museum.  Notice the truck with flat tires.  This is a common practice with the gift shops in the area - park some junkers out front.

I like it.  Whatever to attract the tourist into stopping.

Inside amid all the petrified rock, other rock and souvenir gifts in the store, on the back wall were these museum pieces of Indian culture.

This was the real deal, dating back almost 1000 years in age.

These baskets weren't that old though but genuine no less.

Polished Petrified Wood

Petrified Forest National Park

Arizona

Gift shops around the area offer petrified wood for sale.  

Much of it has been cut and polished to really bring out the beauty on the rock.

Can't have too much petrified wood.

It took 10 hours to cut this slab with a wire saw.

A comparable piece of granite would take two and half hours.

The polishing involves days for flat slabs such as these.

Irregular surfaces like this must be done by hand with nine different grits of ever finer sanding.

Now we are talking days evolving into weeks of work.

The prices reflect the effort involved.

Those flat slabs above were in the four digit range of prices.

 For those with a limited budget these were under $50.

Petroglyphs

Petrified Forest National Park

Arizona

Petrified Forest National Park had it's share of petroglyphs to display.

This one here marks the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.

See the large boulder split in half.  On the day of the solstice sunlight will show through the crack...

...as a shaft of light that will pierce that circle on the left face of this boulder with what looks like a "C" in the center.  I don't doubt the purpose of this but what I wonder is how did they know this was "the day" and not the day before or the day after?  Someone put it a lot of time, days, weeks, sitting around observing, making little marks until they were sure that got the correct day.

Okay, I've held back on this subject long enough.  Here are my thoughts on petroglyphs.  I think we, the experts, are reading into these rock symbols more than what is really there.  They interpret them to hold cultural and religious significance (trying to communicate to the world around them as stated in the above sign) to those who created them.  I say they are simply preserving memories.  Today we take a photograph to preserve a memory.  Before the camera we drew or painted a picture to preserve a memory or event.  For example a hunter shoots a deer with an arrow.  It's the biggest deer he has ever taken.  He etches out a drawing of a stick figure launching an arrow or spear into a deer.  He can look upon that drawing years later.  

Yep, I remember that day, that hunt.  That was good.  

I've seen petroglyphs all over from different cultures with different beliefs and religions yet all the drawings look similar and have nearly identical themes.  If you asked someone to sit down and doodle an image of a person or draw a picture for fun you'd pretty much get a stick figure from them.  Why not think these Ancestral People just sat down to doodle some images on a rock for fun, passing what little free time they had away for pleasure with friends creating images on rock without any specific meaning?  For example in the photo below.  Two friends sit down to doodle some images on a rock (far right).  The first one says "Look, I made picture of myself".  His friend replies "Me too, only my penis is longer than yours. Ha, ha!"  Preserving memories or simply doodling.  Pretty much that is all petroglyphs are in my opinion.

One guy walked by and mentioned to me "Someday people will ask what is a newspaper?"

Hmm...maybe long from now this sign will read Google Rock Petroglyphs?

Blue Mesa

Petrified Forest National Park

Arizona

This is the "badlands" of the park.

It was a steep trail down to the floor of the valley.  Part way I thought to myself I've seen enough of these "badlands" do I really want to go there?  About then this nice looking lady passed by.  She had a big Nikon camera stopping to take pictures here and there.  Well, if she's going to do it then I am. 

I eventually passed her as she kept stopping to take pictures.  Once at the bottom I looked back

 and I never saw her again.  Damn if she didn't turn around and go back!  

Tricked again by a pretty woman.

Anyway, I was glad I made the effort and was greatly impressed with the colors and geology.

There is a cute little kitty up there in that RV waiting for her Dad to come back.

Thanks pretty lady for having me do the trail.

Boy, I bet it gets cooking down there in the middle of summer.

Petrified House

Petrified Forest National Park

Arizona

They say Native Americans used blocks of petrified wood to create living spaces.

This is a recreation of one such living space.

This is what they had to work from in 1934 when rebuilding the house.

Notice the caption above the photo.

The more I see of these "recreations" where it all is just a result of guesswork the more it kind of bothers me.  Like there are trees out here in the desert of this size to make rafters.  I didn't see any.

If you don't know what you are doing, just leave things as they are.

And like at Bandelier, the rain and snow would quickly dissolve the mud mortar between the blocks of stone.  The visitor is being deceived into believing this is how the home looked. 

Oh well, the regular park visitor doesn't really care.  Just me.

Colors

Petrified Forest National Park

Arizona

As I wrote in yesterday's post the mineral rich water that soaked into the wood is what created the assortment of colors in the rock.

They call it the Rainbow Forest

The park encourages you to stay on the trails and for the most part it appears people do just that.

After all, you can see all the petrified wood that you want just from the trail alone.

Not much point to go wandering about.  It's just more of the same.

Petrified Forest

Petrified Forest National Park

Arizona

To begin with, this park would prove to be the cleanest, litter-free National Park I had ever visited.  Not only that, but I saw not one bit of abuse, vandalism or graffiti anywhere - okay, some idiot did scratch in his initials along the border of one sign, but that was all I saw. 

There are a bazillion pieces of petrified wood scattered all about ranging from small easy to steal chips to massive 100 foot long logs.  The park really stresses not to take or disturb any of the rocks but you and I know how people are.  Really, if you want a piece of petrified wood, it can be found outside of the park boundary and even gift shops give away small pieces. 

I took way too many...pictures.  Did you think I was going to say souvenirs?

I was much more impressed with all I saw than I thought I would be.

I guess you appreciate things more the older you get. 

This log was one of the largest.  That tree is five feet tall or in diameter.

 One of the very few I found that showed where a limb once was. Clues like this help researchers determine what kind of trees these were.  Most were conifers, like our pines of today.

This one here clearly shows the thick bark.  

I didn't see any others like this.

This diagram was in the visitor center which I found very interesting.  The land that makes up the United States was on the western edge of the super continent of Pangea.  The southwest, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah was very near the equator about where present day Costa Rica is.  And like Costa Rica the deserts of today's southwest was tropical jungle.  The trees of that jungle were upwards to 200 feet high. The land where they grew had a massive river flowing through it much like the Amazon of today.  Trees would die, get blown over, or floods would take them out and they'd flow down river eventually getting hung up. Silt quickly buried them stopping decay.  Slowly mineral rich waters would leach into the trees and these minerals replaced the cells of the trees slowing becoming

multi-colored rock under the pressure of over lying soils.  And there you have a petrified forest.

Painted Desert

Petrified Forest National Park

Arizona

The first point of interest in Arizona coming in from New Mexico on Interstate 40 is the Petrified Forest National Park.  The Painted Desert is the first portion you drive through from the north entrance into the park.  It had been around 40 years when I was here last.  Ah, it was like seeing it for the first time.  That is one of the benefits of growing old and not remembering things.

First off, I did not know the exposed terrain that makes up the Painted Desert was so vast as you can see in this diagram.  We see only a tiny bit of it driving.

So as with most geographical wonders it looks so much more impressive in real life 

than what photos are able to display.

And too, the colors would be more vibrant in the early morning or late afternoon hours.

Buy Your Own Fort

Houck, Arizona