Since last winter went so swimmingly, let's try it again! TFS has very graciously opened her home in the west San Fernando Valley to me again. This time her daughter AS (and dog and cat) are there too. Two women + two dogs + two cats = not my usual solitary winter again. Huzzah! Place name links like Los Angeles, CA go to Wikipedia. Place name links like Los Angeles use a local tourism or government website.
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Grand Canyon - Evening |
| 2014.05.02 |
Petrified Forest National Park |
Comment
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Tiponi Point
looking northeast | |
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unnamed Point
looking mostly east | |
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Our ride,
sunning in
repose. |
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and me,
getting wide
like the
landscape |
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Tawa Point
looking northeast | |
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Painted Desert Inn and Kachina Point
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Painted Desert Inn is a lodge built by the National Park Service in 1937-40 on the site of an earlier lodge, Stone Tree House, built using significant amounts of petrified wood from the area in 1924 as a tourist attraction and lodging until it was sold to the NPS in 1935 and replaced with a new structure. The Inn was updated by architect Mary Jane Colter (noteworthy later in our day) for hotel operator Fred Harvey Company . A hotel from 1947 to 1963, after extensive restoration it's now a museum and bookstore.
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The view out back | |
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Pintado Point
looking northwest | |
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| There are a few more points along the way but the views were mostly the same and not nearly as dramatic.
Now we cross Route 66 and I-40_AZ for the southern portion of the park where the petrified trees are. The road is longer and straighter and I can get between points faster. Traffic is very light - one of the benefits of mid-week in the off-season.
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| Newspaper Rock
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A collection of petroglyphs from the Puerco River people 650-2000 years ago. |
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There are recognizable figures on the rocks, though not without magification through one of the spotting scopes or a camera lens.
Also a first glimpse of petrified tree. The minerals that accreted in the tree's cells give all the samples here interesting colours.
I've seen petrified wood before, close to home in Drumheller, AB , but not as colourful as here. |
Jasper Forest
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Jasper Forest was created as petrified trees on the bluff fell into the valley below. At one time the valley was littered with whole fallen trees, but most have been carted off by collectors before the Park Service made picking anything in the park a federal offense. |
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Trees from areas with a high iron-oxide content look like weathered non-petrified wood. Except, all the pieces have sharp breaks, not cuts. And are fractured, not splintered.
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further down the
road we go | | Rainbow Forest Museum
| There's a small interpretive center with some fossilized skeletons, an area to walk around petrified samples, and a gift shop. |
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NOT paint | | |
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| Heading Back
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Time to head back the way we came. We'll stop at the places that we skipped on the way down. |
Crystal Forest
| An area for hiking around petrified samples, it was the most popular area in the whole park due to a contingent of college students visiting. |
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More of the way back
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The Teepees | |
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Route 66
| Our final stop was just north of the I-40 crossing: a portion of old Route 66 through the park with a bit of preserved roadbed and a line of telephone poles. |
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Time to get back on I-40_AZ for our next natural wonder and final destination for the day. |
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< Previous
Albuquerque to Flagstaff |
|
Start
........................................ |
|
Next >
Grand Canyon - Evening |
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