I am impatient, selfish, competitive,
and have a short temper when things don't go my way.
I wanted to camp where I wanted to camp,
and that was at the petrified wood site in northern Arizona.
We 4 fossil hunters, on the Great Western Fossil Adventure, were tired of being in the car, tired of dealing with rain, worried about setting up camp in the dark,
and each had a distinct rockhounding agenda brewing in his or her mind.
It was 6 pm, 2 hours from our campsite, when I gave in and suggested a motel. Little did I know, there was a national Little League tournament in the area and everything was booked solid.
Lots of hope, then lots of dashed hope. Ugh!
Wisely, Vickie began pointing out potential campsites as we drove through the national forest but as the miles wound down, I was more determined than ever to see it through and
camp where I wanted to camp.
This would be a good time for a disclaimer: long before this trip happened, I let everyone know that I had a specific agenda, which I was happy to do on my own, but if they wanted to go with me,
they would have to bend to my will!
The beauty of the scenery as we emerged from pine forests and began our descent to a desert valley ringed in vermillion cliffs was astounding but our joy was mixed with trepidation as part of the impressive scenery included lightening and sheets of rain in the distance.
I LOUDLY cursed my way through setting up camp.
The wind was trying to grab our tents out of our hands and it was impossible to hammer stakes into the rocky ground. Pam patiently did what I yelled at her to do and with a little adaptation (I weighed down the inside of each tent corner with boulders), and a little luck (the rain didn't hit until the middle of the night), we were all safely in our sleeping bags just after nightfall.
Rest assured, I apologized to everyone for my cursing.
Jim said he couldn't hear me over his own cursing.
Best decision of the trip!
Look at our little camp in the distance. What a great place and so interesting!
Everywhere you look there's petrified wood from tiny splinters to trunks, whole trees laid out on the top of the hills, ravines cluttered with it.
I suppose since it's not "rainbow wood" (the highly colorful agatized wood from around the Petrified Forest National Park) there's not a lot of interest in it, but to us, it was one of the best places on the whole trip!
I sat by this tree, on the top of a hill, for along time, trying to take it all in: the beauty of the location, the antiquity of the material, that there was once a forest of conifers in this desert location.
I love how the lichens growing on the surface make it look like it's still wood and not stone.
Depending on where you looked, the petrified wood had different characters.
The tree in the photo above was very light in color with areas of cream-colored druzy quartz crystals.
Jim discovered a single gully with the smooth, more colorful agatized wood.
I found one hillside that had wood with dark tinted druzy crystals. It looks like bark in the photo above but that was the inside of the tree, and through mineral replacement over millions of years,
it transformed into big quartz crystals.
There were also lots of small druzy pieces on this hillside.
These look like seed pods or fossilized ears of baby corn but they are pieces of the inside of the trees.
Hard to capture their full beauty with my inferior camera.
This is the top view of some of the druzy fragments which initially led me to believe they were petrified twigs but later we spotted sections in situ, inside a whole tree.
We all agreed that at some time in the future we would return and camp for longer so that we could do more exploration but by lunch time that day, my whirlwind schedule dictated
We had to go!
To be continued...
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