day 14 - cortez, co to grand canyon, az

Our first stop today was at Petrified Forest National Park.


The northern half of the park is actually a swath of colorful land that is part of the Painted Desert. The sand here is extremely strange and colorful, with various minerals contributing to the various colors you see. We'd expected the warmer tones, but certainly did not expect colors like green and yellow. You see them a lot both on the ground and on the hilly cones, which are striped:









The ancestral Puebloans also lived here, and left many rocks with petroglyphs on them:

Afterwards, we began to see more petrified wood. Millions of years ago, this land was once covered by a tropical forest. After flooding, they were buried in sandy ash, which prevented decomposition. Silicates from the ash accumulated in the cells of the wood, eventually hardening and turning to rock.

This is Agate Bridge, a natural petrified wood bridge that has since been reinforced by concrete.


Since the 1800s a lot of visitors and rock collectors have been coming to steal the wood. Now it's a federal offense, but regardless there is only a little left, mostly in the form of these stumps littered all over the place.



Close ups of the wood.


We stopped by the gift shop and bought a piece of our own, then headed out towards the Grand Canyon.

On the way, we passed the Wigwam Motel, a hotel in Holbrook where every room is a wigwam.

Partway across the I-40, we passed this sign for the Meteor Crater National Landmark, so we decided to go take a look. This is a crater that was left by a meteor 50,000 years ago. It's a pretty big crater; the first picture below shows what we show, but the second is a picture of an image that gives some size of its scale by depicting the building near it.



Here are also some facts about the crater.


After we left, we decided to get a car wash because our car looked like this:

We stopped in Flagstaff, AZ for a tasty lunch at Pato Thai, a local Thai restaurant.


Then we drove the remaining hour-and-a-half to the Grand Canyon, passing through some national forests filled with ponderosa pine. On the way, there was also a little campground inspired by the Flintstones:

The Grand Canyon is huge. It's about 4000 feet tall and an average of 10 miles across. It was carved by the Colorado River, which you can see in some of these pictures, and which is much smaller than the canyon it made.





It's also deadly!



These ravens kept hanging out near the viewing points, probably looking for food. They seemed pretty friendly and fearless.


The Grand Canyon is not only appreciated by people; this dog appeared to enjoy the view as well.


We took the Desert View drive from the central entrance on the South Rim to this historic watchtower in the east of the park.


Unfortunately we didn't have time for a mule ride (apparently those take a full day) and it had also started to rain a bit. So we got to our hotel, ate a somewhat mediocre buffet dinner at the Cafe Canyon, and called it for the night. Vegas tomorrow!