After a decadent dinner, great night’s sleep and breakfast at La Posada in Winslow, Arizona, we headed for Petrified Forest National Park (PFNP), one of the smaller, less traveled but most dog friendly national parks in the country. Like most of the area in eastern Arizona along I-40, it does not appear to be a likely spot for a national park. Joni had last visited the park a little over 50 years ago, so we were due. Kiara and Joni were in Kiara’s small, but powerful Honda Civic and I was becoming “at one” with the new jeep. We met up in the parking lot of the northern visitor center and carpooled in the Civic on our old folks NP pass.
The park north of I-40 is mostly the Painted Desert. Very colorful and picturesque, especially with the veneer of snow on the ground. As you loop around the northern portion of the park road and head south to the I-40 overpass, you cross the remnants of Route 66 which is commemorated with a front fender of what looks like an old Buick and a rusted-out Studebaker truck. As you tour the park south of I-40, you drive into the petrified wood part of the park nicely accented by the geologic formations of the Painted Desert.
The geology of the park is dominated by the Chinle Formation which was deposited in the mid to late Triassic Period between 238 and 201 million years ago. This was the time in the earth’s history when there was one big landmass (Pangea) and the area that is now the PFNP was a basin/lowland located near the equator. The area was very tropical, very wet and very warm with significant drainages and waterways. The trees that fell and were transported in the waterways were up to 9-feet in diameter and up to 200 feet tall. Sediment deposition in the streams and drainages was fast and furious and was supplemented with wind borne volcanic ash from volcanic activity west of the park. If the logs became fully buried in the sediments and ash in drainages before decomposition started, silica (quartz) from the volcanic ash would dissolve in groundwater and be carried into the logs replacing the cellular structure with quartz. This geologic period was also the dawn of dinosaurs and continued evolution of the progenitors of alligators and crocodiles. All of which have a rich fossil history displayed at the parks south entrance.
This was one of those stops where we spent about 7 hours exploring. During that time, we took 228 pictures or about 32 per hour. By far, most were of colorful petrified logs. Not to worry though! They have been culled down to the 77 pictures included below.
