We were up and gone relatively early. The car was pointed northeast with the consideration that the 4th of July exodus from Phoenix that would have started yesterday afternoon and continued today was likely heading west to California and north to one of the many lakes in Arizona. So why were we going to the northeast? Because nobody goes to nothingness.
The only place we had in mind before leaving Phoenix was the Petrified Forest National Park that Caroline had recommended after I refused to take us to Monterey, California, and its aquarium due to the horrific traffic returning to Arizona on Sunday that there would have been no way to avoid. Travels on holidays in America by air or car have become exercises in frustration. The sooner we are able to get away from the traffic jam without having to finish a nice long weekend stuck for hours on the road, going nowhere, or hanging out in the airport, the better. Turns out we were lucky in deciding not to go to California because around the time we took this photo the city of Ridgecrest experienced a 6.4 magnitude earthquake.
Kat loves horses so much so that it might verge on obsession. As the ranger rode up on her steed, I grabbed Caroline and Katharina, who were busy working on the Junior Ranger booklet so she could earn her very first Junior Ranger badge from an American National Park.
Over the past 24 years, we’ve probably visited these petrified trees more than half a dozen times, and try as we might to see changes, things appear exactly the same as they did during our previous visits. Funny how wood that has turned to stone has such resilience against the elements.
Aunt and niece off checking out the sites, talking German, and getting to know one another just a little better.
Meanwhile, I study the colorful details of wood that is no more. This brings up the thought of how much else we see that we think we understand, only to have no idea that it is something completely different than what our first observation might suggest it is.
The vast expanse of the desert acts as a great camouflage for the similarly vast expanse of time that is directly before us but might not be so apparent. When we see shifting sands and plants, it brings us to the immediacy of the moment, but every other element preceded our here and now by many millions of years. In the arid remains of our past, we find the reminder of how briefly temporary our own fragile existences are.
As I look at this red rock, I can’t help but see petrified travertine rivers flow, and I suppose this is possible as obviously the trees that fell along the banks of rivers in this area about 225 million years ago were being exposed to highly mineralized waters, thus transforming their wood into stone. Then, all of a sudden, I can imagine that this area may have looked very similar to the Plitviče Lakes National Park that we recently visited in Croatia. Compare this landscape to some of my photos from that day back in late May by clicking here.
Trees up to about 200 feet (60 meters) grew in this area, and this fallen giant has a brace of concrete underneath it to help support its incredible weight. What you are seeing is not the full length of the tree, but it was the best I could do, and even though I’m relatively happy with the image where support is hidden, I don’t feel the photo has any depth to all you to just how massive this thing is. Thinking about this now I should have had Caroline and Katharina standing over on the opposite side of the tree for a sense of scale.
The fossilized remains of volcanic ash flows can be seen peeking out from the red rock debris that has fallen over it. The rock above the gray and purple underlying layer is sandstone that accumulated on top of the earth where a forest once stood, but now even remnants of its existence are quickly disappearing.
The little bit of precipitation the area gets is still enough to work at carving away the stone, with evidence of water flow everywhere you look.
Would an Ancestral Puebloan from 4,000 years ago who may have stood right here seen essentially the same thing? How did they see this world, and was there any need to explain it or understand it?
There’s a trail down in there that Caroline and I have never taken and the same is true for the Agate House. So this is a note for us to visit the Petrified Forest National Park again, get out on this trail at Blue Mesa, and get over to the 700-year-old house made of petrified trees.
Katharina is being sworn in as she receives her Junior Ranger Badge.
It’s called a Picadilly, and it’s made of shaved ice, kool-aid, and pickles. Sounds strange, but it was certainly an interesting concoction. While its origins are mysterious, it definitely originated on the Native American lands of northern Arizona, and rumor has it that it came out of the mind of Shasta Namoki, who is Hopi-Tewa living up on First Mesa.
We’ve been on the constant lookout for horses and were not disappointed when coming across this near-perfect specimen of a stallion. I’d like to point out the almost imperceptible copyright statement of my niece, who is my guest photographic contributor of all things horse for the duration of her stay in America. By the way, I should also give her blog a nod by giving the link to Kats Travels and Adventures.
We are calling it a day up in Chinle, Arizona. Today, we learned that Kat was not prepared for the incredible distances between places out here in the southwest. For us, the 382 miles (619 km) is a relatively short drive, but for Kat, it is the equivalent of driving from Frankfurt, Germany, to a bit past Paris, France.
Our stop after checking in to our motel is catching the sunset at Canyon de Chelly National Monument.
It’s funny how familiar all of this looks to us now and how exotic it appeared during our first encounters. We wonder how Kat perceives it and if she’s able to pick up on the beauty of it all or if she sees it as a relatively barren moonscape.
I think it’s great that Caroline and Kat have been able to spend the first full day together here in America in each other’s company. I’m wondering if this is the first full day ever that they’ve been together?
Time to go find dinner as the sun sets on the west. Our only real choice was Denny’s because I refused Church’s Fried Chicken or Burger King. Dinner in Chinle on the best of days is a chore, but here on July 4th, it was made even worse. I should point out that Kat is a recent convert to vegetarianism, and we are doing our best to accommodate her, though in rural America, that is no easy task. By the end of dinner, we agree that, yes, the drives are long but are necessary to get to worthwhile sites that can lend broad impressions to Kat and her first visit out west.
Dessert was drinking in the Milky Way back at Canyon de Chelly.