Crystal Forest was a paved 3/4 mile loop. Unfortunately the light was beginning to fade, losing the vibrant colors of the wood, but we enjoyed what we could.
Imagine the Triassic, 225 million years ago. Large carnivorous reptiles hunt in the thick, swampy forests. Countless trees are swept away by stormy floodwaters and laid to rest in floodplains. Over time, they petrify as the land mass drifts from its tropical location near the equator to where we stand now.
How does a tree turn to stone?
Periodic flooding buries logs underneath layers of silt. Over time, water carrying minerals and silica (from volcanic eruptions, for example) seeps into the wood, slowly replacing the organic material with the minerals. All organisms, from bacteria to vertebrates, can be petrified. The replica of the original specimen is similar down to the microscopic level.
The colors:
Red, orange, yellow - iron oxide
Blue, purple, deep blacks - manganese oxide
Grey - carbon
Even the knot in this (ex-) tree is preserved.
This was one single tree!
In spite of the numerous signs...
... people used the logs as benches, picnic tables and a place to kick up their feet.
Our final stop as the light of the day faded was the Rainbow Forest Museum. At first we thought it would be closed, but then realized that it was an hour earlier here in Arizona since they don't follow Daylight Savings time.
Arizona used to be a subtropical forest just north of the equator.
The rock layers of the Colorado Plateau
The events that happened during the Chinle Formation
If the 4.6 billion years of Earth's history can be put into a single calendar year then:
• the first microscopic organisms appeared in July
• the late Triassic (the rocks of the Petrified Forest) ocurred mid-December
• the last dinosaur died by early morning on December 27th
• humans appeared at 11:15 pm on December 31st
• recorded history is only the last half minute of the entire year!
The color wheel of stone
Wouldn't it be great if people changed color based on their moods!?
A Placerias Besternus dons a wizard's hat and gazes into a crystal ball to see the future. I wonder if he can see us!
We left the park and headed a few miles to Holbrook, where we checked into our hotel. We grabbed some dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant then called it a day.
The storms continued all around us, yet we never got a drop.
Our room in Holbrook
