Double treat at the Petrified Forest National Park. The northern half of the park has many viewpoints of the Painted Desert. Multicolored layers hundreds of feet high.
As we traveled along the 25 mile drive in the park we started seeing boulders. Then more. Upon closer inspection we found that these were indeed petrified trees. We've seen a petrified tree before. One. Not a forest worth! Very apt name for the park. We were amazed at the number of logs lying around everywhere.
Learned alot about the geology of the area (but still much more to learn). The petrified trees here are from the Late Triassic period - 225 million years ago. At that time the earth was one super continent (Pangea) and this area was near the equator and much more tropical. The trees were washed down streams and mired into mud and lake bottoms to finally become petrified. This was the declining age for the dinosaurs and living creatures had formed into smaller animals that could survive in the changing climates. One looked like an alligator that ran on it's hind-legs.
Don't take any samples! There was lots of scolding by the park about everybody picking up a piece of petrified wood to take home. But by reading between the lines, we think that much of the big stuff that disappeared was before it was made a park in the early 1900's. (And no we didn't take any home.)
