Day 5: Sunday 5th September

Whoo - Petrified Trees - Meteor Crater - and running out of gas ..

It gets dark quickly here - almost as quickly as gas tanks empty ....

Today was always going to be one of the highlights of the trip (to me, at least!) and was I going to let a couple of bashed in knees and cracked ribs spoil it? No, sirree!! So I put a plaster on one knee and a smile onto my face and off we went!

The drive to the Petrified Forest was largely over flat, dusty desert - and the sun shone brightly - sure was magic! We turned off to the forest road and arrived at an information centre/vast amazing shop with all sorts of quite unbelievable things for sale - like huge hunks of pet wood and enormous tarantula paperweights - and injun clobber.

Quite amazingly I didn't buy anything at all in the shop (a big mistake, I think) and we drove into the south entrance to the park. We presented our National Parks Pass for the first time, and were given a map and a couple of leaflets.

click for bigger

This high, dry tableland was once a vast floodplain crossed by many streams. Tall, stately pine-like trees grew along the headwaters. Crocodile-like reptiles, giant amphibians, and small dinosaurs lived among a variety of ferns, cycads, and other plants and animals that are known only as fossils today. The tall trees - Araucarioxylon, Woodworthia and Schilderia vell and were washed by swollen streams into the floodplain. Silt, mud, and volcanic ash then covered the logs. This blanket of deposits cut off oxygen and slowed the decay of the logs. Silica-laden groundwater seeped through the logs and replaced the original wood tissues with silica deposits. As the process continued, the silica crystallized into quartz, and the logs were preserved as petrified wood.

We first stopped at the Rainbow Forest Museum for a look around and then walked around the Giant Logs, before heading off to the Crystal Forest, Jasper Forest, the Blue Mesa Badlands, The Tepees and several view points at the other end of the park, overlooking the Painted Desert. It being Labor Weekend, there were a fair number of visitors here - but, amongst all this vastness, we *seemed* to be alone!

Click on any of these pictures for a more splendid view!

View over the Jasper Forest
Lots of people at the Crystal Forest	Blue Mesa Badlands (sandstone and clay)
Painted Desert	view over the vastness of the desert
a very happy me!

and Holbrook high street (not much difference!)

Then we continued along 180, to Meteor Crater! It cost $20 to enter, and some people appear to think that the place is a bit of a rip-off, but, if you've studied crater formation both on the Earth and on Mars, then you might find it interesting to see a real one, in the flesh! (Regardless of that - I cannot understand how anybody could fail to be impressed!). Outside, there were a few space knick-knacks and an American Astronaut Wall of Fame. Over everything, there was an amazing view, out over the plains, towards the San Francisco Peaks.

click for bigger

And up the stairs ... the crater itself! (The picture is, of course, clickable to enormous!)

Nobody could manage to take a picture of the whole crater - it was so huge! What's more, it was an awful lot deeper than I had imagined it to be. Paul went down for a better view - hub went up for a better view. I stayed where I was - as the knees were playing up somewhat. So I sat and looked at it and tried to imagine what it must've been like for a meteorite, obviously that big, to hit the Earth. A little girl, who was looking through one of the telescopes, obviously had similar thoughts in her head when she asked her mother what had made the hole. "A meteorite from outer space". "What, ALL of it? Gee".

Meantime, an airplane flew over the crater and dipped its wings. The security man (who was standing close by), didn't go much on this and immediately reported this 'unidentified' plane - but it flew off, harmlessly.

We looked around the museum for a while, playing with the interactive thingies - and then left to continue down to Sedona.

Paul standing on the crater floor (not really!)

It was getting dark, so we decided against driving via Oak Creek Canyon - but rather to turn off at Flagstaff, onto Interstate 17. After a few miles, we found the Sedona turnoff - but, horror or horrors, it was a dirt track!! We tried it for a mile or so, but it went on for 12 miles, and, as it was getting dark, it would have been foolish to have tried it!

So we returned to the interstate and started to drive towards the 'proper' turn-off. Then a little dinger in the car went off. Apparently, this was to tell us that we were nearly out of fuel!! "You didn't fill up with gas?" "No". Oops. It was now very dark. We were on a busy interstate. In the middle of seemingly nowhere. We turned off into a rest area, but there was no gas. God must've been watching over us though, because there, parked on the side, was a posse from Yavapai County! The hub got out and explained our predicament and a wonderful lady, by the name of Mary, told us that she would escort us to the nearest gas-station - and, if we didn't make it to there, she would call for help and make sure that we weren't stranded! We got there OK and filled up the tank. Will always be grateful to that lady.

So, to Sedona and our accommodation for 2 nights at the Hyatt Pinon Pointe. It was amazing ; even better than the link photos!! We roamed from room to room, grinning at each other and kind of speechless. There was a huge sitting room, with balcony and enormous TV and fire and DVD and stereo - and there was a large dining area - and a kitchen straight out of House and Home, with the biggest fridge and cooker and a washer-dryer and a huge granite worktop! In the master bedroom, there was a huge jacuzzi AND a separate bathroom with double sinks and a giant walk-in shower. That wasn't all. There was the studio bit attached (which was Paul's), with a huge bed, sofa, chairs, 2 TV, its own luxury bathroom and a kitchenette. Wow. And wow again. And all that for the price of an ordinary hotel room! They were trying to flog their timeshares, of course - but nobody bothered us with any hard-sell - and it was all just, well ... wow!!

We relaxed into our luxury, after a busy, busy day!

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[ Introduction ] [ Day 1 ] [ Day 2 ] [ Day 3 ] [ Day 4 ] [ Day 6 ] [ Day 7 ] [ Day 8 ] [ Day 9 ]
[ Day 10 ] [ Day 11 ] [ Day 12 ] [ Day 13 ] [ Day 14 ] [ Day 15 ] [ Day 16 ] [ Day 17 ]
[ Days 18, 19 and 20 ]

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