We left Santa Fe before 7:30 this morning. We were wondering if Jon had started out for the Fire Station in Los Alamos. Suddenly my cellphone rang. It was Jon calling from the Fire Station. He was already on duty and just wanted to see if we had begun our journey yet. As we looked out at the homes in Santa Fe we noticed that all the homes were adobe colored and not more than a couple of stories high. We liked how it just blended in with the countryside.
11:12 AM We arrived at the Painted Desert National Park. It’s really an amazing place. The explanation for the pertrified forest was written on the brochure:
“…The trees, Araucarioxylon, Woodworthia, Schilderia, and others, fell, and swollen streams washed them into adjacent floodplains. A mix of silt, mud and volcanic ash buried the logs. This sediment cut off oxygen and slowed the logs’ decay. Silica laden groundwater seeped through the logs and replaced the original wood tissues with silica deposits.
Eventually the silica crystallized into quartz, and the logs were preserved as petrified wood.”
“The Teepees: Layered blues, purples, and grays created by iron, carbon, manganese, and other minerals stand in cone-shaped formations.”
We met somebody from Illinois here and he guessed that these were antelopes.
This was the biggest gosh darn crow we've ever seen!
Art went out by himself while I checked out the gift shop and he found this colorful lizard who seemed to be sunning himself on a rock.
The fauna and flora were also pretty darn incredible.
