CHANGES, MORE CHANGES

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Here I go again - forgot to tell you something from 2 days ago. When I drove out of Oklahoma City, I passed a Happy Tracks Horse Motel - ha! There was a livestock smell in my van after that that I couldn’t get rid of despite running the windows down. That smell stayed and I began to wonder if there was something in the van that smelled. About 10 miles out of Oklahoma City I saw ahead a large area that was all black - very curious. When I finally arrived close to it, it was a cattle shipping station and that was where the smell was coming from - it was absolutely disgusting! There were acres and acres of black angus cattle all crowded into small corrals waiting to be shipped. It was enough to make me stop ever eating beef again. Looked very inhumane to me but what do I know?

So when I awoke this morning it had been snowing most of the night by the looks of it. It wasn’t that cold but there were big fluffy snowflakes coming down with intention. I left really early because I was headed for Petrified Forest and I wanted to spend lots of time there so I headed out at 6 a.m. in the snow. When I got onto I40 it was a literal heavy snow blizzard. At that point of leaving Edgewood, I had to go over the mountain and the mountain was where the blizzard was. So I white-knuckled it and drove slow in the right lane and a half hour later came out on the other side in Albuquerque. The snow stopped and the roads were wet but safe so off I went back into the desert again. There were so many landscape changes today I doubt if I can remember them all. From the desert it changed into low red mesa land but climbing steadily upward. Quite soon I was coming into large mountains, both high mesas and also pointy mountains - high enough for snow to be on them. I was crossing the Continental Divide and was high up enough for lingering snow along the road sides but as soon as I came down the other side the temperature started to rise - only a little mind you. It was about 3 degrees until I arrived at Petrified Forest where it started to climb and went all the way up the scale to 10!

I stopped at a classy Navajo store (the billboards got the best of me!) and I did buy a couple of really nice things - a silver turquoise bracelet and a soft woven Navajo wrap to keep me warm, also a couple of sandstone coasters.

I previously did research about Petrified Forest National Park and was looking forward to seeing it. But let me tell you the research was pretty puny compared the things I saw in this park. I was totally unprepared for the scope and magnificence of this area. This park is 7,500 square miles! I will never be able to describe even the small part I saw. I will apologize for all the pictures of rocks right now. But you might as well get used to it because that is what I came to Arizona to see - rocks. This park is not called Petrified Forest for nothing - there is petrified wood scattered all over the park in huge quantities. In some of the pictures you will see what looks like boulders lying on the ground but it is chunks of petrified logs. The park is 28 miles long and there are many stops along the route. The first stop, besides the lookout points, is Puerco Pueblo. This is an important archeological site where the people lived in two story apartment buildings in a large square with a courtyard in the centre. Much of the site has been covered up to preserve the fragile environment. There is a solstice marker rock here where the sun shines down through a crack in the rock onto a petroglyph. At exactly 9 a.m. on the solstice the sun beam hits the round petroglyph dead on. Then comes Newspaper Rock. This was a little difficult to see as the cliff face had fallen down. The the massive rock lies at the bottom. It is covered in petroglyphs. Next is Blue Mesa. Unfortunately the sun wasn’t shining today as this intensifies the colours in the Blue Mesa. No matter, it is mighty impressive anyway with its many layers of different colours. The overcast sky makes the layers look purple instead of blue.

Agate Bridge is a 110 foot petrified log that got fell into the river when it first died. The river carried it downstream and it got caught where it stayed for millions of years and became petrified. Jasper Forest is next and the outlook deck shows me thousands of pieces of petrified logs. Jasper Forest is the largest accumulation of petrified wood in the world. The Crystal Forest so named because many of the logs glimmer with quartz crystals. Again a dull day but I am amazed at the different colours of logs in the different areas. Maybe because of the location of different minerals or maybe different species of trees. At the final stop are the Giant Logs and the Long Logs areas. Each of the important stops along the way have hiking trails and I did as many of them as I could. There are many many pictures and all I can do is encourage you to scan through them because I could never describe the colours and even the camera doesn’t pick up an accurate accounting of the vividness of some of them.

The mesas are continually falling down. They seem to be made up of rocks glued together with some magic formula that only God knows. Over time large square boulders fall off the face of the mesa and eventually they become small and worn down to nubs.

The KOA I am staying in is not a very good one. The whole grounds are gravel and the internet is the worst yet on this trip. I doubt you will get this on Monday. I can’t upload pictures and half the time I cant even get on the internet. I am going to post this blog as it is. I can’t download pictures any more so you’ll get the rest of the pics tomorrow. Stay tuned…you haven’t seen the petrified wood yet.

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