On the Road in Arizona

I enjoy being a front seat passenger on road trips and catching the landscape ahead of the car. Our road trip within our vacation to Tucson was a great opportunity. I’ve perfected my technique over the past few vacations: make sure the windshield is clean, zoom a little to get the car out of the picture, and try to keep the horizon level!

My daughter did all the driving:

• From Tucson to Flagstaff (via Phoenix and Sedona, images 1-8 in the slideshow below),
• From Williams to the Grand Canyon in the early morning (image 9), and
• From Petrified Forest National Park back to Tucson (via Show Low and the White Mountains).

We had plenty of variety in the sky: clear blues, sunrise colors, patches of clouds building and a golden sky near sunset with rain not quite reaching the ground from dark clouds. There were roads winding and straight…up hill and down. Mountains with snow and mesas and buttes. Lots of red rock. Grasses, pines, scrub, and saguaro.

Enjoy the Arizona scenery from the road!

Petrified Forest National Park

I’d been to Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona several times over the last 40 years. This visit was different in at least two ways:

• It was colder. It does get chilly in January even in Arizona! The other visits were during the summer when it was blazing hot and I remember lizards being as fascinating as the petrified logs. This time it was too cold for lizards to be active.
• I was keen to take pictures. Until the past few years I’d left picture taking to others. Now it is one of my favorite activities when I travel.

The very large logs look like long toppled tree trunks. They are in sections - cleaved by the pressure of sediments over the many years they were buried rather than a chain saw. The one above looks like it carried part of its root ball into the water where it was ‘petrified’ along with the rest of the trunk. ‘Petrified’ means that minerals replaced the wood fibers of the trees to create colorful crystals we see today as agate.

On the outermost part of the logs - the rough texture looks like bark.

Sometimes the cross sections are a jumble of minerals. But there are still some remnants in places of the tree rings.

And sometimes a knot where a limb came out of the tree is obvious. I show a log section and then a close up of the knot below.

Some of the logs were rotting when they fell or were swept away. I hadn’t noticed before that there are some sections that have holes in the center which shows that they were already rotting before they fell.

Some of the crystals appear to have grown inside wood fibers - preserving some of that finer structure inside the trunk.

And - last but not least - I couldn’t resist some close ups of some big crystals.

All of these pictures were taken on a short hike from the Rainbow Forest Museum.  There is a lot to see in a small area.

Painted Desert (Petrified Forest National Park)

Painted Desert is part of Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. I’m writing about it before the namesake area of the park because we entered the park at the Painted Desert Visitor Center on our visit a few weeks ago.

Remnants of snow was still on the ground from a few days earlier. The white was a nice contrast with the reds of the terrain at the beginning of the drive.

Newspaper Rock was move visible with the zoom on my camera. I almost stopped using binoculars when I travel since I would rather get a photograph as the same time I am seeing something.

Further along the drive - the layers of color become more distinctive. With the moisture from the snow melt, the colors were deeper than they appeared the last time I was in the area (during a summer).  Some of the slopes were ragged…some looked like melted ice cream.

There is an area there the petrified logs become more numerous. Some of them are in the place they’ve been for a very long time and some of toppled into the ravines - or on the Petrified Forest tomorrow.

For more information about this national park - take a look that the park’s brochures web page. Just about all the maps and informational pages available in the park have been made available.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - January 2015

Noticing something worth celebration each day is an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. This month has been full of ‘little celebrations’ - as had been the usual for the past few months. Here are my top 10 for January 2015.

Winter

Snow in Tucson. The year started off with a pictures from my daughter of the snow they got --- on the palms and cactus near their apartment. It was a beautiful scene to celebrate the New Year.

Fox. A healthy looking red fox walked through our back yard then trotted behind several other houses before turning into the forest. I watched from the window of my office - celebrating the grace of the animal as it moved through the winter landscape.

Fog. The forest and our neighborhood filled with fog. The temperature was in the upper 30s. It seemed like the fog damped sound as effectively as it did sight - celebrating a warm house in the isolation of winter.

Snow. Snow that falls when I can simply stay at home until it melts or the streets are cleared by the plows is my favorite kind of day. It is the classic winter scene worth celebrating.

Other

Dishwasher. Our dishwasher became very loud so we arranged for servicing - anticipating that it would have to be replaced. Hurray! It was quickly fixed and our kitchen is a quieter place.

Zentangle® class. I saw a blurb about a Zentangle class offered at the local 50+ Community Center. It was a good incentive to investigate the place! I’ve been to the first of four class sessions and am enjoying daily ‘tangling’. I’ll post a slide show of my creations once I’ve accumulated a few more. I’m celebrating both the class and learning about the 50+ Community Center.

Arizona and Tucson

Bald Eagle. In recent years, the bald eagle population has increased on the east coast and we see them more often….but when I saw one as we drove into Grand Canyon National Park - settling into the top of a pine tree - it was a first sighting in the west for me. Hurray!

Grand Canyon. Awesome place. I’ve been there before --- it is worth celebrating again and again.

Painted Desert/Petrified Forest. The times I’d been before were in summer and late spring. This time it was decidedly cool/cold. The colors were deeper in Painted Desert because it had snowed/rained. The Petrified Forest glistened when the sun came from behind the clouds. Both places are special…and worth celebrating.

Tree Ring Lab. I’m celebrating that the place lived up to my expectations - interesting from scientific, architectural and historical perspectives. If I lived in Tucson - I’d sign up as a volunteer docent.