Mittwoch, 24. September 2008

Day 18 - Petrified Forest

We spent most of the day today visiting Petrified Forest National Park. We started our visit with a stop at the Painted Dessert Visitor Center where we watched a great movie about the park. We then visited the Painted Dessert area of the park with is just north of Route 66. We stopped at several viewpoints to see the colourful badlands with bands of greys, reds, oranges, yellows and violets.
































After having visited the Painted Dessert area we drove to Puerco Pueblo where the ruins of an ancient Puebloan village can be seen. When we came to this place a ranger talk was just about to start and we decided to join. We learned about the different plants in the area and how the Puebloans used them for food and got to see different petroglyphs. Interestingly enough some of those where used as a calendar to know when to crop.

Right after the ranger talk we did the trail at Blue Mesa which was well worth due to the magnificent colours of the rock.



























































We then visited the Crystal Forest, the Giant Forest and the Long Logs. At all these places we could see petrified wood being more than 200 years old. During the Terriasic period there used to be tropic rainforest and the remnants can be still seen today. Unfortunately, the petrified forest is getting less and less as huge amounts of wood are stolen every month :-(.

































After a great day in Petrified Forest National Park we drove to Page where we stayed overnight.

1 Kommentar:

Unknown hat gesagt…

The Petrified Forest seems to be more interesting than we supposed... We shouldn't skip it. ;-)