Wigwam Hotel and the Petrified Forest

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Day 64 and we were on our way to Holbrook in Arizona - a convenient stopping point before the Petrified Forest National Park. We crossed the Hopi Indian Reservation East of the Grand Canyon, on what allegedly is a scenic route, but the dry desert scenery and isolation of the few scattered homesteads made it quite depressing.

We were happy to arrive in Holbrook - although we had to wait a couple of hours before the hotel opened, it was well worth it to stay in the famous Route 66 Wigwam hotel. There are 15 concrete wigwams altogether - all equipped with everything you need, including a tiny shower, and with what seem to be the original furniture and fittings! Classic cars are permanently parked outside most of them - but the black car in the picture below was actually owned by one of the guests (and we bumped into him again a couple of days later further along Route 66).

Next day, and a short but very windy drive brought us to the Petrified Forest National Park. Again, this park is quite different from anything we had seen before - very barren grassland scattered with petrified tree trunks. The area was once a vast floodplain with many streams; when the trees fell the logs were eventually covered with layers of volcanic ash, silt and mud. The sediment cut off oxygen and subsequently slowed the decay of the logs, and the groundwater seeped through them and replaced the original tissues with silica deposits. The silica eventually crystallized into quartz, preserving the logs as petrified wood; the colors of which are quite amazing (unfortunately it was a very overcast day and the pictures we took don’t really show the colors). Over time the area was uplifted by the shifting of the continents, a feature of all the parks we have visited, changing the environment. Erosion by wind and water subsequently wore down the rock layers to expose the fossilized trees that are visible today. The park also has some fantastic examples of ancient petroglyphs, pictures etched into stone by the Puebloan people who once lived here.

The other attraction we wanted to see was the meteor crater, the first proven meteor crater in the World. It’s a very impressive hole I have to say - but the $15 entrance fee per person was a bit steep, despite the new facilities.

We had huge problems with wind the whole day (!), and at times we were literally nudged off the road by strong gusts of wind. This was much to the awe and amusement of a group of Taiwanese tourists who we ran into in the Petrified Forest Park - and again at meteor crater. They greeted us like long lost friends, and insisted on taking pictures of us with the bike!

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