Petrified Forest and Painted Desert

After staying for a night on a parking lot just next to the enrence to the National Park in the morning which is quite unusual for us we went to see Petrified Forest. We didn't pay the entrance fee - thanks of course to Interagency Pass America The Beautiful. It is 28 miles from one end of park to the other. There are view points and short (up to 2 miles) trailes all along the way. Everything described in a magazine we received at the entrance. The whole place is amazing.

According to the what we read and heared on the way trees mineralized around 225 millions of years ago, when the continents were all one big land called Pangea. Where now is Arizona there was a forest crossed by rivers. River system of this area looked like Amazonia nowadays. River would wash away the banks and the trees would fall into the water. They would be carried away as well after periodic floods. They would float, loosing their branches, and finally they would stay somewhere on the bottom and would be covered by sediments. For thousands of years they would sink deeper in deeper into the mud until the oxygen couldn't get to them any more.

The logs were proteceted from decay but dead wood would absorb silica and other minerals. Porous cell walls were filled by quartz. If this process had been stopped for some reason, cell walls were only embedded by silica but bot changed inside. It's called permineralization. Permineralized logs are brown and resemble modern wood.

If the petrification continued then all organic substances were replaced by silica crystals and now we can see just a crystal copy of wood. To make things more colorful other minerals were absorbed by the wood. Iron minerals gave orange, red and even black. Magnese minerals brought blue, purple, brown and black as well. 

What happened next? Pangea broke down into continents and tectonic movements uplifted Colorado Plateau. Strong winds and erosive processess removed layers accomodated through millenias. Finally they reached petrified trees we can see today. Some of them are really long, athough most of them are broken into smaller parts.

There are lots and lots of them, although in the beginning of last century a lot was stolen. To prevent stealing and vandalism the forest was proclaimed National Monument. It was still not guarded well. Soon after that Route 66 was built (now part of it crosses the park, although there is no aspfhalt anymore, only a line of electric posts) and a railroad, which caused that even more trees were stolen. After all in 1960s Petrified Forest became national park and got the funds to protect whatever was left. Of course all of these information were taken from very usefull and free as always leaflets given at the entrance to the park.

There was also a bonus at the end - Painted Desert. Looks exactly how you can imagine by its name. It's "painted" with lots of colors - mostly red, orange, grey, black. What you see is different rock layers uncovered in the process of tectonic movements. Exhausted by long walks in the forest, we stopped at just a few view points in the desert before we went back to Interstate 40.

We stayed at a free campground in McHood Park near town called Winslow. It was peaceful and quiet, even though we could see both the "40", and the railroad. They both look quite picturesque, especially the interstate with brightly lit trucks. Campsite was described at a few forums as not the best place to stay, it said something about young people drinking and being loud. We didn't see anyone, but it was pretty cold so maybe they went to party somewhere else. Besides it was nice - there were a few large parking/camping spots with picnic tables. After a long day we fell asleep like children (children also fell asleep like children).