Petified Wood

Utah is wonderful, but it really is time for us to start heading east. Unfortunately, directly east of Utah is Colorado. And the Rocky Mountains. And it is still officially winter. So to go around potentially snowy roads and steep hills (ie. The Rockies), we headed south into northern Arizona. Plus it is warmer in Arizona. That was a draw of its own.  But there is an obstacle between us and the warmth of Arizona: the Grand Canyon. Other than backtracking to Nevada, the only place to cross is to the east, in Page, Arizona.

We had previously visited the Hoover Dam, and now we saw the dam at Powell Lake. No wonder there’s so little water left in the mighty Colorado River.

Many people admire the beautiful canyons carved by that river. Obviously others looked at the gorges and canyons and thought, water storage.

But I don’t live in this arid land, so I looked at the trickle left behind on the downstream side of the dam and wished I could have seen the Colorado River when it was strong enough to carve its way through the rocks.

We did stop for a look at the far eastern edge of the Grand Canyon.  There is a bend in the river called the Horseshoe Bend - for obvious reasons. I didn’t get too close to the edge because we were 1700’ over the water level.  And I knew if I fell over, there wasn’t much water there to break my fall. But my intrepid hubby ventured to look over the precipice. So I made him take the picture.

We headed south from there, aiming for a spot we had missed two years ago, when we were fleeing from an oncoming December snow storm. We wanted to see the Petrified Forest.

When we were in the Valley of Fire in Nevada, there was a petrified log displayed on one of the trails. My first impression on seeing it was, ‘A log turned into rock. Neat.’

Seeing the petrified wood in the Petrified Forest National Park, though, my reaction was, ‘Oh wow. Its not just rock, its crystal!’

It was like night and day. While these also looked like wood on the outside, the inside was a kaleidoscope of colours. 

In the museum there were pieces that had been polished into a glassy shine, accentuating the glow of the crystals inside the structure. 

But even the logs we saw outside, on the trails, had beautiful hues of red, black, yellow, and purple. Again, the outside looks like normal wood. When disturbed by the erosion of the soil around it, the original log is fractured by the great weight of the solid rock the log has become. And then the colourful quartz inside is revealed.

We walked several of the trails in the park. These are mostly one mile in length and fairly flat. And petrified wood is scattered everywhere. For the full length of the 28 mile park, you can find these red pieces of rock all over the place.

In many places it looks like a lumberjack went mad and cut up hundreds of logs into chunks.

And with all these convenient rocks around, one tribe built a stone house of petrified wood. It was probably the prettiest house on the block!

Those ancient civilizations weren’t dummies. They etched a solar calendar onto a nearby rock. The circular drawing on the left of this block will have a point of light from a crack in the rock beside it hit the center of the drawing exactly at 9am on the summer solstice. Then they will know that it is time to plant crops with no danger of frost.

As for me, it’s just telling me it is time to head east again.

W