A Forest of Stone

Fascinated. On our last full day of exploring the desert back in May my sister and I had the chance to get ourselves to Petrified Forest National Park. Now, I say "had the chance" for a reason. My sister and I have both tried twice to see Petrified Forest in the past and have both been thwarted by weather. The first time we tried we were with our family on our first two-week long summer vacation where we loaded up in my dad's truck, towed our pop-up camper behind us, and set off for the desert southwest. It was my first time seeing the desert, and it was that trip that sparked my love for it. I can't even count how many times I've been back since that first trip in the early 2000's. That first trip we had stopped at Petrified Forest National Park and I can't remember much about it, other than the storm. We got caught in one of the monsoon rains that crash across the desert in high summer, dumping buckets of rain accompanied by flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. I don't remember anything about the park other than that storm, trying to take shelter from it under a metal picnic pavillion with my dad, while Mom, Lisha, and little Austin ran for the car.

Alisha and Austin tried to visit the park a couple summers ago and ran into the monsoon rains yet again, cutting their stay in the park short because it wasn't safe to be outside. You are literally the tallest thing around. I tried to go myself on my desert adventure during the winter of 2016, and had made it to the park entrance before I was stopped short and turned back; a blizzard was tearing across the park from north to south, and it was headed straight for me. The rangers had closed the gates to the park and told me it was best if I found a place to stay put for a couple days while the storm blew itself out. My sister and I finally had good weather as we drove through Arizona on our way home from our Grand Canyon Adventure, and we had no reason not to stop. 

Petrified Forest National Park preserves an ancient forest of giant trees that fell, got buried, and instead of rotting over time filled with minerals that took on the shape of wood. The logs in the pictures of this post are all rocks, not wood. Most of them are very well preserved, right down to the details of the tree-rings, but filled with colors more brilliant than any living wood. Petrified Wood is one of the most colorful rocks in the world, and that plus the fact that it is wood turned in to rock makes it a high target for collection. Collecting and removing petrified wood from within park boundaries is highly illegal, but that doesn't stop people from trying, unfortunatley. There are signs everywhere and volunteers and rangers at checkpoints to make sure visitors leave the rocks where they belong. If everybody who visits the park took a piece of rock home with them there would be none left for future visitors to enjoy. 

Alisha and I spent several hours in the park, walking the shorter trails on feet that were still healing from our trek across the Grand Canyon and taking in the views of the desert littered with chucks of petrified wood. There was hardly a cloud in the sky and the temperature at the end of May was not yet unbearable, making for a perfect afternoon to take in the beauty that surrounded us. No storms in sight.