The Petrified Forest, Part Deux…

We made it over to Albuquerque this afternoon riding in great weather!  We are moving closer to Ontario, as we are now only 2 hours behind in time!  We will get there!

We are staying at the Enchanted Trails RV Resort, and it is a real nice spot, Passport America of course, and great WiFi.  I quickly put up the Shaw Direct Dish, and am watching the Ottawa Sens take on the N.Y. Rangers tonight while I do up the blog! 

Yesterday, I gave you the first half of Sunday’s Tour, and here is the rest…

The next are we toured down to was called the Tepee Area… they look like Tepee’s!

Check out the petrified log below, balancing on this mountain…what happens is the ground below the lot, erodes from underneath the log first, making the log fall over time… they have had a couple big logs fall a big distance due to erosion!

Real neat colours in this area…

We took a 1 1/2 mile hike along this ridge, and down into a valley.

I just laughed when I saw this sign along the trail… one for my Daughter… It was over a 300 foot drop off a cliff… ya, I would consider it “closed”

What a great hike it was… you could see for miles…

We walked down into the canyon below… it was real cool!

Hard to show in the picture, but the trail was real steep, you knew it on the way back up!

Again, how do you show people this with a camera???

Judy was making her way down…

I looked up this wash, and found a whole bunch of petrified wood!

What a terrific hike it was through this canyon… we enjoyed!

Come on… who put this rock below, up on that pedestal????

Check out the natural bridge below made of petrified wood… they actually had to help it stay in place with cement as they did not want it to fall.  It would have!

We made it to the biggest field of wood… here is the scoop… This wood grew as trees, over 2 Million years ago!  Some up to 200 feet tall!  The continents were all one big mass then, and a huge river formed, washed away these trees and carried them down to Arizona where they are now.  They were left on a high plain, which eventually ended up under water…  There was volcano’s in the area, and they logs got covered with ash under water… there was also a bunch of silica which over time, soaked into the wood, and replaced all the wood cells, with silica which formed into crystal of all types… that is as short a story you will get on this… trust me!

There was petrified wood all over this area, and over the years, tons of it have been removed.  It is illegal to remove or pick up this wood now… you can end up in jail, with a big fine, so we just left it all where it was, and only took pictures.  The Rangers were telling us that they have people now, writing letters to them, and returning wood that was picked up illegally!  Why not!

This big chunk below, was right beside the trail, and you can almost see it is now all crystal… very cool…

 

This area is also know, to be the area where the first dinosaurs roamed the earth!  This is a cast of an actual jaw off one of them… the original fossil was found near here, and is at the Arizona State University.

It was a great Park, and certainly worth your time invested! 

Till tomorrow…