Gleanings of the Week Ending February 14, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Behind the Photo: Paul Nicklen’s Leaping Penguins - Video of leaping penguins….and how it came to be.

This Scientific Paper Proves That Nature Never Stops Weirding Us Out - Did you know that frogs retract their eyes into their heads to push crickets down their throat?

Older adults: Double your protein to build more muscle - Maybe the recommended daily allowance for older adults needs to change.

Your Two-Minute Break to Enjoy Wildlife Along The Moose-Wilson Road In Grand Teton National Park - A short video….I enjoyed the reminder of how much I enjoyed a vacation at Grand Teton National Park years ago.

Expert panel recommends new sleep durations - Is your sleep duration within the new recommended range? Mine is. I was intrigued that there were two new categories added for this study: Young adults (18-25) and older adults (65+).

A surprisingly accurate map of the U.S. made with 600,000 bridges — and nothing else - Map created from data in the National Bridge Inventory maintained by the Federal Highway Administration…includes bridges that are longer than 20 feet. That’s a lot of bridges!

6 Wildlife Facts for World Wetlands Day - World Wetlands Day was Feb. 2….enjoy the facts and photos.

Fake Meat Gets Real - There are lots of new ways to get protein…some better than others. I liked the last sentence “you’re better off getting most of your protein from whole foods, including legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains.”

Review of nonmedicinal interventions for delirium in older patients - Good! My observation has been that older people on multiple medications have side effects (like increased delirium) that are often worse than the symptom being treated….so it seems prudent to resist adding medications unless they are absolutely necessary.

An Inventory of Protected Bike Lanes - Bikes are becoming more popular for recreations and transportation in many places around the country. Bike lanes are one way cities are responding. By the end of 2014 there were 191 around the country. I hope the trend continues!

Valentine’s Day

Are you doing anything special for Valentine’s Day?

I made a Zentangle® with heart shapes…that’s about the extent of my extra activity this year. I will be traveling tomorrow….celebrating the return home rather than Valentine’s Day.

I can remember in years past ---

Creating paper bags to receive valentines from classmates in elementary school; it was the tradition to give Valentines to everyone in the class whether you liked them or not!

My grandfather buying a big heart-shaped box of chocolates of us (the 4 granddaughters)

Helping my daughter to decorate my husband’s piano with red and white curly ribbons and hears

Buying a coffee mug with hearts (which we still use occasionally)

Sometimes we have used it as an excuse to go out to eat….but most years we choose the 13th rather than the 14th because then it becomes one of the monthly wedding anniversaries for us. 

Wupatki National Monument

The first time I visited Wupatki it was a very hot June day and I can remember taking the short walk around the site vividly. I drank almost all the water I had with me and got very hot….and the walk to the ruins is short - within sight of the visitor’s center. In January - it was cold and breezy with snow still on the ground. We didn’t need to carry water although I did refill my water bottle and drank most of it as we drove away; high altitude and dry air is dehydrating even if it is cold.

It is easy to visualize how the ruins could have been homes. They are a neat cluster of walls even today. The stone walls often incorporate larger boulders of the site.

Sometimes the lintels above the windows and doors held….and sometimes they didn’t.

There is a community room in the center of the settlement in a natural depression that still held some snow. Further away there was a ball court.

The old wildlife I saw was a very cold rabbit sitting in the sun. Note the pock marks (like mini-potholes formed wind and sand) and striations on the rock above the rabbit.

Next time I go to Wupatiki I want to plan more time to see some of the other areas...but I enjoyed this area near the visitor center even more than I did the first time around.

Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument

We had Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument to ourselves when we were there a few weeks ago. It was cold and breezy with snow and ice still clinging to the cinders in all the places that did not get full sun. It was quite a contrast to previous visits to the monument that were extremely hot with the sun glaring off the rock.

I did notice a pine tree that had probably been struck by lightning at some point. Part of the tree managed to survive and is now almost as large as the original trunk! Surely it was there a few years ago - but I didn’t notice it then.

The trail was too covered with snow and ice to be passable without boot spikes and poles - so I contented myself with a few pictures from the trail over the cinders. Some of the lava is very black and some shows the colors that gave the crater its name.

I like the idea of visiting this monument during the cooler months. It would be the best time to the hike (as long as there is not ice and snow). I was glad I didn’t have any altitude problems since it is quite a bit higher than Tucson; I did focus on making sure I drank water even when I wasn’t thirsty.

Sustainability - Focus on Light

One of the luxuries we often times take for granted is the availability of light at the flip of a switch. It makes it possible for us to do just about anything we want at any time of the day or night. What are the elements of sustainability related to light?

Lighting requires energy so:

• Use energy efficient fixtures and bulbs. All our lamps that originally had incandescent bulbs now have compact fluorescent bulbs and the overhead lighting fixtures in the kitchen/basement utilize the tube style fluorescent bulbs. There are still a few halogen floor lamps in our house but I try to not turn them on in the summer when the heat they generate is at cross purposes with the air conditioner! The lights around the mirrors in the bathroom and the dining room fixture still use incandescent bulbs and I don’t plant to replace them.
• Turn off lights when they are not needed. ‘Need’ is full of nuance. When I read - I need a light. But how much extra light do I need if I am reading on a tablet…or if it is in the daytime and my chair is by a window? How important are some lights to feeling secure? We do have a timer system in our house that turns a few lights on and off even if we are not home. If we are home - the lights are on in the evenings and early mornings in the rooms where we are….and not in other parts of the house.

Another element of sustainability when it comes to light - is the influence light has on health. It is an area of research and harder to internalize that the energy consumption issue.

• More outdoor light exposure seems to reduce nearsightedness. It’s not clear what it is about outdoor light that is important.
• Seasonal depression is linked to the amount of daylight (i.e. winter blues).
• Light from computer monitors and e-reader before bedtime can impact sleep.
• Melatonin in linked to light exposure and then a lot of other biological functions. One researcher is investigating the use of blue light to slow, prevent preterm labor (because it reduces melatonin which is linked to contractions).

Tucson Botanical Garden - January 2015

I’ve already posted about the butterflies and poison dart frogs at the Tucson Botanical Garden. Today the post is mostly about cactus! I am always fascinated by how alien cactus sometimes looks. Their flowers look like they don’t belong nestled in thorns or atop smooth surfaced succulents. And what about the ones that look hairy? Sometimes the thorns are unusual colors - or several different colors. Sometimes the ribs stand out - sometimes the plant looks like a cushion - or a long stem that flops over. One non-cactus in the slide show below is the very last image. Can your guess what it is?

A pomegranate! The tree had several dried fruits on it. Another non-cactus was a net-leaf hackberry. I know this one only because there was a sign. The leaves were gone but I was fascinated by the bark.

Airports and Airplanes in Winter

Our trip to Tucson a few weeks ago had all the pluses and minuses of flying in the winter. It was snowing when we drove the airport….and continued on as our flight time approached. Our plane arrived at the gate with snow patterning the airflow over the body of the plane. We were delayed by an hour boarding the plane and then had to be de-iced which added a little more time on the ground in Baltimore.

Fortunately we did not miss our connecting flight in Little Rock to continue on to Las Vegas and then Tucson so our trek to Tucson was just a little bit delayed. I was prepared for delays with plenty of reading material and healthy food (fruit, veggies, protein bar, nuts). If we’d been delayed much in Las Vegas, I would have taken the opportunity to charge my electronics in the airport. Comfortable clothes - with layers - is important too. I appreciated that I had been able to get my coat in my checked luggage so I was not lugging very much through the airport between planes. Is there anything unique about those things for winter? Maybe not. I supposed I’ve just had more lengthy delays in winter and so I think about them more when I fly during the winter months.

A joy of the flight back from Tucson to Baltimore was the view from the window between Tucson and San Diego in the early morning - a lovely sunrise! And in January it happens late enough that it is easy to be awake to see it.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 07, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Millions of Mutated Mosquitoes Could Be Unleashed In Florida—On Purpose - There is concern that tropical diseases like Dengue and Chikungunya will become more common in the US as the climate becomes warmer. Reducing the number of mosquitoes that spread the disease may become a priority and there biotech firm Oxitec has experimented in the Caymen Islands and Brazil with GMO mosquitoes that suppressed the population there by 96%.

Swarm of microprobes to head for Jupiter - The probes will burn up in Jupiter’s atmosphere was send a mass of data for 15 minutes. A lot will be learned about the atmosphere of the planet.

Assateague Island National Seashore Turning 50 This Year - Chincoteague/Assateague is my favorite place on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay….I’ll keep an eye out for extra activities that celebrate its 50 years as a National Seashore.

Mindfulness-based program in schools making a positive impact, study shows - Something to combat the stress of modern childhood?

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #75 - A feast of bird images from around the world. I always enjoy looking through these collections.

This Glorious Gallery Highlights A Myriad Optical Delights - Wow - images from a visual celebration of the International Year of Light. Next time I go to Arizona - I want to see Antelope Canyon

The origin of life: Labyrinths as crucibles of life - This article caught by eye for two reasons: it linked well with the Origins course I finished recently on Coursera and I like the picture of lava.

Two Graphs Highlighting Growth Surge in US Solar Market - With oil prices lower, will the trend continue in 2015?

Food Industry Drags Its Heels on Recyclable and Compostable Packaging - The food industry - particularly the fast food industry - is definitely not trending toward sustainable practices (with the possible exception of McDonald’s and Starbucks….and do we really need K-cups anywhere?

A Stunning 3D Cross-Section of Greenland's Ice Sheet - Made using ice cores and ice penetrating radar technologies. Watch the video to understand how it was done. There are three distinct periods of climate reflected in the Greenland Ice sheet.

Zentangle® Class

I am taking Beginners Zentangle Art at my local Community Center and enjoying it tremendously. In some ways, it is very much like doodling but the myriad of patterns have me on a path of trying new things rather than sticking with too much of the same thing. I’m also learning more about shading, to list the pattern names on the back of the tile, and how to get the ‘Zen’ from the activity. When I doodled, I sometimes got the ‘Zen’ and sometimes not. Now I know that keeping my focus on the tangle - encouraged by the environment I choose for the activity - increases the value of the activity beyond producing the 3.5 x 3.5 square of artwork.

My favorite time of day to produce my daily tangle is right after breakfast - when the house is quiet (except for the birds getting breakfast at the feeder outside the window) and I don’t yet have anything else started for the day. The patterns I selected the previous afternoon are ready for me at the table as are all my materials. I have a pretty box I didn’t want to recycle after I’d mailed away all the greeting cards; it has found a new function: storing my Zentangles. Zentangle is also a way to utilize some of the card stock I’ve accumulated in my office supply cabinet; the 3.5 x 3.5 standard tile size is easy to achieve with a paper cutter.

What do you think of the results so far? The photographs are the tangles in the order I made them. I did break the rule about orientation (Zentangles do not normally have an orientation) when I added the spiders to the webs (day 3) - I couldn’t resist.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Poison Dart Frogs at the Tucson Botanical Garden

The butterfly exhibit at the Tucson Botanical Garden (earlier post here) included more than butterflies and plants. There were poison dart frogs that were roaming about the greenhouse. The docent told us they had been imported a few years ago to help control ants and fruit flies; they seem to do a good job! When they first arrived they were about as big as a thumbnail. They are still small - about the size of a thumb.

For some reason - the blue ones (not sure how many of them there are) seemed to be the most active.  These frogs tend to climb around on plants and objects rather than jump. They are quite agile.

They seem to be constantly in motion and like to be under vegetation. One got close to the door and one of the volunteers moved the frog back to some plants. These are non-native to the US so are carefully contained in the moist greenhouse that is the butterfly exhibit in Tucson!

Which color is your favorite? I think the blue is mine but maybe it is because I managed to photograph them more easily.

Pinyon Pines and Birds in Arizona

Two topics today - both from Arizona: pinyon pines and birds.

Pinyon pines are part of the landscape of the Grand Canyon. I have always been fascinated by their cones. They are short and squat and often full of sap. I learned that the hard way on a trip across New Mexico in a new car 30+ years ago. I picked up some pinyon pine cones and put them on the dash of the car - enjoying their wonderful smell as we continued our road trip. The sap stayed on the dash for years! I am enjoying the pictures I captured this time. The first picture is of a cone that has already lost its seeds; the second and third are developing cones.

I accidently took some good bird pictures in Arizona. They were accidents in that I was not set up to photograph birds; I was just being opportunistic. The varied thrush was in the parking lot of the Petrified Forest Visitor Center! The bird is a little out of normal range according to allaboutbirds.com.

The next three birds were in the alleyway outside my son-in-laws research greenhouse in Tucson (I was waiting outside after getting too hot in the greenhouse). The mockingbird kept an eye on every move I made but rummaged in the pebbles for food. This bird lives year round all of the US but they are usually too nervous for me to photograph.

The curve-billed thrasher felt secure on the electrical line. The wind ruffled the feathers periodically making the bird look rather scruffy.

The white-wing dove was also overhead on the lines. The red eye outlined in blue and the white tips on the wings are distinctive….and the ruffling of the feathers by the wind is too.

I am learning to always be prepared for bird photography in unlikely places!

Sustainability - Water Use

There are projections that say that water will become a bigger problem in the years to come both because of increased population and climate change. So it is wise to think about how we as individuals can use water more sustainably. Here are some strategies I’ve implemented to reduce the amount of water we use in our home:

• Yet the yellow mellow. We don’t flush our toilets after every urination. This could be a bigger water saving strategy for houses that don’t have low flow toilets (our house is new enough that it was built with low flow toilets originally).
• No drips. We maintain our faucets so that no water is used when they are turned off. This is not a hard maintenace task (although one that usually requires turning off the water under the since before the job!).
• Take short showers. Sometimes I time my showers because it is so easy to enjoy standing under the hot water. I can’t remember the last time I took a bath - which almost always use more water than showers.
• Use the dishwasher - don’t pre-rinse dishes. The dishwasher takes less water than hand washing dishes…but only when we don’t thoroughly rinse off items while loading it up.
• Wear clothes more than one day. It depends on our level of activity. Many days we can wear our clothes for a couple of days unless we do something that is dirty or hot/sweaty. Daily changes of underwear and socks don’t take much room in the laundry!
• Load up the washer. Launder clothes when there is enough to fill the washer rather than doing several smaller loads for the same clothes. We always use cold water so generally can do different colors together (unless they are new and may fade).
• Develop rain-watered yard. We water vegetables and new plantings but not the grass. It rains enough in Maryland that this is an easy strategy. If we lived in a drier area - I would probably not have a grass lawn at all.
• Rinse water for watering indoor or deck plants. During the summer, I keep a container in the sink to capture rinse water when prepping fresh veggies….and use it to water pots on the deck or indoors. The downside is that water is heavy! Maybe I’ll figure out a way to capture and utilize gray or rain water that doesn’t involve carrying it by next summer.

Another aspect of sustainability when it comes to water has to do with runoff. The water that runs off our yard flows into the Patuxent River and then into the Chesapeake Bay. There is a band of forest that starts at our house and extends for 0.25 miles to the river. The forest floor is deep with leaf mulch that acts as a sponge to slow the water down as trickles toward the river. We have minimized our application of yard treatments over the years and have not added any additional impervious sources (other than the house and the driveway).  The trees have gotten bigger and are shading the back of our yard enough that the grass is thinning. I’ve started letting the forest leaf mulch accumulate in those areas rather than leave the ground bare (and eroding). Next fall I’ll plant daffodil bulbs to hold the leaves. At some point perhaps I’ll to get ferns started in that shady area that gets the first runoff from our yard. Plantings will absorb water and/or slow it down enough that more will soak into the sediments rather than taking soil to the river.

I've stopped using the disposal in the kitchen sink and started composting instead. Using the disposal contributes to the nutrient enrichment of waste water that causes algal blooms (and dead zones); compost is a better destination for food parings and cores!

There is quite a lot we as individuals can do to utilize water more sustainably.

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!

Coursera - February 2015

Only two courses in progress for me right now! It takes a lot of will power to not sign up for more; there are competing activities this month: travel and classroom-based courses. Here are the two that will keep me busy in February.

Circadian clocks: how rhythms structure life (from Ludwig-Maximilians - Universitat Munchen (LMU) is off to a good start with a mix of history of the research and vocabulary. It’s a topic that is interesting and has lots of implications for health and well-being.

The Land Ethic Reclaimed: Perceptive Hunting, Aldo Leopold, and Conservation (from University of Wisconsin-Madison) started off by having student pick an avatar that reflected their perspective of the course topic. I chose ‘naturalist;’ it will be interesting to see the demographics of the other students in the course. I like the way the instructors are using surveys and probing questions along with the typical MOOC videos, reading list, and discussion forums.

Two courses finished in January:

Recovering the Humankind’s Past and Saving the Universal Heritage (from Sapienza University of Rome) was a more philosophical course than I expected. It included discussion of the science/technology of archaeology and how it developed over time which is what I expected. But the more thought provoking parts of the class were about the concept of ‘universal heritage’ and why it is important; the relationship of wars and destruction of material culture of the past is striking. It happens alongside the human lives lost and plight of refugees in Syria and Iraq.

Origins - Formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Life (from University of Copenhagen) was a very broad course taught by a team of people from the Natural History of Denmark. It was a good update on what has been discovered since I was in college in the 1970s. Scanning Science Daily over the years helps - but it was refreshing to get a fresh update that tied it all together in an organized way.

As usual - I thrive on having some new topics to learn about and Coursera is a prime avenue for that. Hurray for Coursera!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 31, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

At 90, She's Designing Tech for Aging Boomers - She was a designer all her life! Good for her…for the company that is using her ideas…good for consumers.

Telescope to seek dust where other Earths may lie - This article caught my attention because my daughter recently was there for a ‘field trip.’ The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) is run by University of Arizona.

Sleep tight and stay bright? Invest now, researcher says - I am so lucky to be able to go to sleep easily and awake on my own after 7-8 hours. This study says (once again) that good sleep is linked to a lot of good health and mental outcomes. One of the joys of post-career is not waking up with an alarm clock!

The lip of the caldera - I couldn’t resist sharing this picture of the inside wall of Santorini.

Decorative and flexible solar panels become part of interior design and the appearance of objects - I enjoy technology that is functional and beautiful. So many times the engineers focus exclusively on functionality.  

Should arsenic in food be a concern? - The answer in this article was ‘no’ but I was frustrated that they focused primarily on plant foods and did not mention the status of nitarsone/histostat (an organoarsenic compound used in poultry production).

Boston's leaky pipes release high levels of heat-trapping methane - Not good for Boston and probably many other older cities….and worse is that there is little economic incentive to make the necessary investments to reduce the incidental losses from leakage.

What to do in a flu epidemic? Stay at home and watch TV - This was a study to assess the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during epidemics - particularly of flu.

The Chemistry of Highlighter Colors - Download the graphic (link at the bottom of the article) and take a look at how the colors are made.  Note how that they have a lot of ‘rings.’

Is Hospice Losing Its Soul? - My grandmother’s last few months were spent at home under hospice care; the hospice support to her and our family was invaluable. This article is troubling because the trend in hospice is toward standardization/institutionalization….not the tailored, compassionate practice that has been the strength of hospice from its inception. I hope there are enough people that will demand that hospice stay true to its roots.

Montezuma Castle National Monument

Montezuma Castle National Monument is a good stop on the way between Tucson and Flagstaff. The reconstructed ‘castle’ is in a large depression in the cliff face. But everywhere there are smaller spaces that were walled to make storage areas

And on flatter ledges near the base of the cliff there are walls were there were other dwellings.

Water is nearby. It is easy to imagine why this was a place people chose for building/farming.

In one of the rock niches on the cliff, there were combs of bees (I used my camera zoom to 30x)!

There is good signage for native plants like Desert Christmas Cactus

And Arizona Sycamore. The Arizona Sycamores look different than the ones we have on the east coast. There is green shading in the peeling bark and the lobes of the leaves are deeper.

Next time I am in the area, I want to plan enough time to check out Montezuma Well that is part of the same National Monument but not contiguous with the castle area.

Meteor Crater in Northern Arizona

The Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona is a stop we always make when we are in the area. The weather for our visit a few weeks ago was cool/cold and cloudy. The crater is too large to fit in one photo. There are handy line of sight pipes at one of the overlooks to help orient the view. I’ve included one of a house size rock on the rim of the crater.

And a bill board of a 6’ tall astronaut and flag on the fence around the very center of the crater where some drilling was done and some of the old equipment is still in place.

The snow on the side of the crater that gets the least amount of sun helps for orientation too. The differences in light as the sunlight came and went between clouds influences the colors you see in the rocks.

The walls of the rim still show the trauma of the impact. I liked that the snow provided additional contrast to make the striations more visible.

Much of the rock is fractured from the impact and then rounded by erosion.

In my previous visits I took binoculars but this time I relied on the zoom capability of my camera and probably saw more on than my previous visits. It also helped that it was not blazing hot!

Grand Canyon National Park

I’ve been to Grand Canyon National Park three times:

• When I was in high school - in early spring 1971 when I walked a little ways down Bright Angel Trail then turned back when it started snowing.
• In May 1983 when my husband and I walked down the Bright Angel Trail to the plateau level. I remember blisters from the too-new hiking books and my legs feeling like jelly for most of the walk back up.
• In January 2015 when it was cold and breezy. We drove to the park through early morning light and saw a bald eagle landing in the top of a pine tree beside the highway. I wasn’t fast enough to get a picture but it started out the day right. The pictures below are from the visit a few weeks ago.

It is hard to fathom the sheer size of the place. The rim trail on the South Rim - accessible from many points - is an easy walk to try to get perspective. We were early enough that the haze had not burned off completely and sometimes the vegetation seemed to glow from light within.

There has been a lot of building in the main park facilities since 1983. I liked the way the paving incorporated different colors of concrete to make designs - spirals and gentle curves. But we didn’t stay in the developed area long. We decided on our plan for the day - settled on where we would eat lunch (Maswik Lodge Food Court) and began working our way toward Hermits Rest stopping at just about every overlook. After lunch we headed in the opposite direction (toward Desert View) where we would leave the park and head to our hotel about sunset. Along the way we saw rapids and twists of the river below, a mini-snowman, beefy crows, and the zigzag of a trail into the canyon. Sometimes I took pictures of lichen and small plants just to not be overwhelmed by the Grand Canyon vista!

I am already thinking about when I can go again!

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.