Petrified…Petroglyph…Painted

Finally, I have a moment to catch up on parts of our trip before our brief interlude in Springfield Missouri. After we visited The Grand Canyon’s North Rim and the Virmillion Cliffs we drove to a small town in east Arizona on Highway 40 (the old Route 66 at that point) by the name of Holbrook. Our original intent had been to spend the evening in Flagstaff. However, a slight diversion in search of petrified dinosaur tracks—which were supposed to be just a couple of miles off of our route to Flagstaff—took us instead quite a distance into the Hopi Indian Reservation.

As we drove along Arizona Highway 160, we saw a home made sign that said “Dino Tracks” and turned down the potted and pocked dirt road. Bob was convinced that this must be a ruse. And I have to admit it did look rather sophomoric for something that ought to be so amazing. So, we backed out of this road and carried on a bit further east only to find ourselves at the town of Tuba City…much beyond the mapped location of the Dino Tracks, which in retrospect must have been at the location of that dopey sign.

Not wanting to backtrack, we decided to bag our plans to find the Dino Tracks and to stay the night in Flagstaff and rather decided to carry on through not only the Hopi Indian Reservation, but also the Navajo Nation Indian Reservation…a route that would ultimately take us to Holbrook, a little town just on the edge of the Petrified Forest National Park.

After our drive through both reservations where we were treated to incredibly beautiful plains and plateaus (and a very sad perspective of amazingly poor folks) we spent an uneventful evening in Holbrook. By 9 AM the next morning we entered the Petrified Forest National Park via the south entrance from Highway 180. Among the cool things about this National Park is that it is two parks in one since the petrified trees are located within a part of the Painted Desert. Not only that an ancient town by the name of Puerco Pueblo is also contained within this park. Puerco Pueblo was known to be occupied from 1100-1200 and from 1300-1400. In addition to being able to see a portion of the structures of this old village, very near to there are ancient petroglyphs.

It was very cool to see the ENORMOUS trees which had been petrified. Having never seen them myself before this time, I didn’t know what to expect. Now I know that these trees are not standing…duh. Rather, they are lying down in spots where they were left after raging waters transported them from lands far, far away. During their rough, watery journey these trees (which were originally hundreds of feet tall and as large as 9 feet in diameter) lost their limbs and now lay in quiet repose. Most of these trees were still very long (60+ feet), except that over time as the ground underneath them settled and the support beneath them gave way, being brittle, they would break into sections from 2 feet to 10 feet long…but still all in their original location vis-à-vis the entire tree. On many of these trees we were able to see the age rings of the trees because each of the rings had absorbed different minerals…very cool.

We didn’t take as long as we could have exploring this National Forest, but we got a really nice exposure to the petrified woods, the petroglyphs and the painted forest. We got some great pictures of the all of it. Hope you enjoy!