Arizona

After dropping Bethany off at the airport very early Sunday morning (sniff, sniff), we drove on to Arizona to a KOA RV park near the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest.

The following day
we went to the Petrified Forest National Park in Navajo and Apache counties in Northeastern Arizona. It's known as high desert country, with an elevation of 5,400 feet. This piece of America's heritage was set aside in 1906 to protect, and make available for public enjoyment, one of the largest petrified wood deposits in the world. We drove the entire 28 mile long park road from one end to another, making frequent stops along the way. We started at the Painted Desert Visitor Center where we viewed a park film and browsed in the gift shop. 

There were many spectacular views of the Painted Desert from several overlooks in this area. As we were gazing at the colorful geology, I thought how wonderful it would be to take a high school classroom on a field trip to actually see this phenomenon.  With all the many different layers of silt forming the tall mountains, one can get an idea of the forces at work that created this. An ancient huge lake basin once covered this area, and there are lower (older) layers of lake-related deposits of silt, sand, and clay. The upper (younger) layers contain ash and lava from volcanoes, and all of these layers are of different colors. About 60 million years ago, tectonic movements of the Earth's crust began to uplift the Colorado Plateau, of which the Painted Desert is part. Eventually parts of the plateau rose to 10,000 feet above sea level. 

          

Next we see some typical types of succulent plants found in the area, this one in bloom.

Here is more of the varied landscapes that see as you drive through in the National Park.

Here is a photo of the rock formation that depicts the summer solstice. The sun's ray comes through the crack on the left rock until it gets to a mark on the right rock. Think The Temple of Doom movie.

This is a piece of petrified log that was laying by the side of the road.  

We saw ancestral Puebloan homes dating back to 1250 AD, and petroglyphs along a loop trail we walked. The petroglyphs - images, symbols or designs carved into rock- are thought to be between 650 and 2,000 years old. One of the petroglyphs can pinpoint the summer solstice each year, a very important date to know for planting purposes in a very short growing season.

The Petrified Forest is known for its fossils, especially fallen trees that lived in the Late Triassic Period, about 225 million years ago.  All the organic materials have been replaced with minerals, mostly quartz, while retaining the original structure of the trees. This makes for a stunning view, especially when the sun is shinning brightly.The KOA RV park we stayed at for the week in Williams, AZ was lovely, with lots of tall pines and plenty of room between sites. 

The following day we drove to Meteor Crater, located about 35 miles east of Flagstaff.  50,000 years ago a meteor estimated to have been about 150 feet across, and weighing several hundred thousand tons, struck the rocky plain with an explosive force greater than 20 million tons of TNT.  

The result of this was a crater 700 feet deep and over 4000 feet across that was carved into this once-flat rocky plain. It's very impressive to stand at the edge of the crater and look down. Do you remember the movie Starman, released in 1984? Part of it was filmed at the crater. Although there has been some erosion by wind, heat and water over the years, the crater walls have only been slightly naturally modified. Inside the Meteor Crater Discovery Center is an exhibit and film, both very interesting and well presented.

We spent one full day in Sedona, a desert town near Flagstaff that's surrounded by red-rock buttes, steep canyon walls, and pine forests. It's noted for its New Age shops, spas, and art galleries. We enjoyed browsing through the shops on a beautiful, warm and sunny day.

Since we were so close to the Grand Canyon, we decided to go back, our second time there. The Grand canyon is a natural formation distinguished by layered bands of red rock, revealing millions of years of geological history.  It averages about 10 miles across and a mile deep along its 277 mile length. Much of the area is a national park, with the Colorado River and its white-water rapids flowing through. We got excellent advice from some nearby campers from Rhode Island. They said the best way to do Grand Canyon is to get there by 7:30 am and beat the crowds, and they were right! Close parking, shuttle buses only partially filled, and no crowds suited us just fine. So we awoke at 5:00 am, packed the car with water and snacks, and we were done and ready to leave the park by 2:00 pm. When we got back to our RV we had plenty of time for a nap before meeting our new friends from RI for dinner!

The Colorado River just visible at the bottom of the canyon

Colorado River visible in middle of picture

On our last night at the RV site, the temps, which had been chilly for a few days, were expected to drop to 23 degrees. Oh, No!! Having already been schooled in the disaster of having our water system freeze, we were naturally apprehensive. We drove 26 miles (at 75 mph, the fastest the old man has ever driven) to Flagstaff to get to the nearest Home Depot before they closed. We probably woke up our friend Bob Jackman in New London, (3 hours ahead of us) although he graciously denies it. With his advice, we purchased what we needed to keep our water pump, fresh water supply and hoses warm. We kept our inside faucets on a very slow drip all night, and got up every couple of hours to check that they were still dripping. The next morning dawned with no freezing problems of our RV! Yay!!

We packed up and left the area, heading for Las Vegas, where the temps were predicted to be in the 90's all week. The warm weather sounds pretty good to us at this time.