Petrified Forest & Painted Desert

2006 August 11, Friday & August 12, Saturday

We spent over a full day exploring this fabulous place. Pretty much all I did was alternately shake my head and tsk tsk about how it must have looked before Horrible People pilfered tons and tons of wood, and fight my instinct to pick up a chunk and put it in my pocket. That part of Arizona used to be a thick, tropical forest, all green and wet and full of creeturs now extinkt. About 225 million years ago, give or take, and for reasons unclear, the trees -- instead of just falling, turning to duff, then dust -- were covered with layers of silt through which drip drip dripped water. The water carried with it minerals that, cell by cell, transformed the wood into rock. As the climate changed and erosion carried off layers of earth, the trees started poking up to the surface. It was difficult not to just sink into the colors and stay there. deb