Petrified Forest & Painted Desert
For what will be our last stop (I think) on our way home, we stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park. We’d both never been there and thought it might be a good place to see. At least I don’t think I’ve been there. When we lived in Phoenix (while I went to high school and Dad was stationed at Luke Air Force Base), my parents added a bedroom to the house and put in a fireplace stove-like thing. Dad made a hearth for it and I remember he embedded a petrified wood stone in it. He may have gotten it at the park; I don’t know.
Anyway, it was very interesting. Unbelievably windy! It felt like it would blow us over, really. And desolate countryside. It definitely earned the name Painted Desert. At one point, Randy pointed out the window and said, “It’s like they painted a red stripe over there.” Hence the name. And then we saw the petrified wood. It’s incredible to think that there used to be a river or maybe a swamp or something and lots of trees. I never knew how the petrified wood happened. I guess trees died and fell into the water, then were buried for years and years and became petrified. It was a strange sight to see broken logs and pieces of “wood” all over the landscape.
Pictures, of course, don’t do it justice, partly because you can’t see the vastness, and also because the colors of the rocks don’t really show well. But here are a few, anyway. We’re about 8-1/2 hours from home now so I imagine we’ll get there tomorrow.
To give you an idea of the wind.