WOW!

We spent the day in 

Petrified Forest National Park

(and entrance was free today!)

Our first stop was the Rainbow Forest Museum where we saw acres of desert strewn with petrified logs just like this one. We got talking to a Park volunteer in the Museum and he was so knowledgeable, challenging us with facts and thoughts that made us realize that this area was not just another badlands like Drumheller near our home in southern Alberta....even though the terrain seemed somewhat similar.

Petrified wood was created long before dinosaurs roamed the earth. This area was tropical and as trees died or were knocked down by wind or water, they were carried downstream and buried in layers of sediment. The logs soaked up the groundwater and silica from volcanic ash and over time crystallized into quartz. Different minerals created the rainbow of colours as seen in this log.

Our volunteer explained that the petrified logs break into chunks in a similar way that a  glass rod would break when dropped. Here we see how the fractured bits might eventually move through the landscape.

Inspiration for "desert" colours?

Jawdropping panoramas everywhere we looked

Painted Desert Inn National Historic Landmark

This building, which started in its life around 1920 as a tourist attraction known as Stone Tree House, was built of petrified wood and native stone. Over the years it has experienced many changes and owners. Severe structural damage, an unstable building site and outdated building materials (asbestos) and the changing ownership all contributed to multiple re-developments, so it bears little resemblance to the original.

Just when permits to raze the building had been issued in 1975, a public campaign got the building placed on the national Register of Historic Places in 1976, and it became an Historic Landmark in 1987. So much history has been preserved here including some fine Fred Kabotie Hopi murals commissioned by Mary Colter* and the Fred Harvey Company* when they owned and operated the Painted Desert Inn from the 1940s -60s.

*Mary Colter/ Fred Harvey Company of La Posada in Winslow

WOW!