Petrified Forest

The Petrified Forest is a place I have wanted to visit for my entire life.  I think it started because my parents travelled across country while my mom was pregnant with me.  My dad would show slides (remember those) and one was of my mother, very pregnant, in the Petrified Forest.
We weren't sure it was do-able on this trip, but with alot of driving yesterday, we made it!  It gets dark very late now, and we had an extra hour, since Arizona is not on daylight savings time.

Because of people stealing petrified rock, before and after it became a National Park, about 90% of the original petrified wood is gone!  About one ton of it is stolen EVERY MONTH!  Hearing about that in the visitor's center really irritated me.  People can be such jerks.  One of the rangers told us about an 80 year old woman who brought back a piece that she had taken over 50 years ago, and the same ranger said she had collected six pieces in the auditorium that day alone.  Evidently, people take a piece and then feel guilty about it....sometimes right away, sometimes not for decades.

Petroglyphs from about 1100-1200 

Teepees section of the Painted Desert

A huge field of petrified wood--only 10% of it remains

"I could just take this piece home and no one would miss it...."

It looks like it was sawed cut, but it wasn't

Petrified wood

A very mellow collared lizard

Painted Desert

The Petrified Forest is in the Painted Desert, which Kenny said had brighter colors when he was here in the early 1960s.  I guess we can add that to the list of "it's not as good as it used to be."  But it looked amazing to me!