As we continued our Road Trip we were revisiting places
we've seen in the past and looking for new sites to see.
Although the site may be 25,000 years old, if we haven't
seen it, it's new to us... so sometimes old is new...
Here's where we traveled on Day 4 - Aug 17th a new day...
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Stop #1 the Petrified Forest - where we got acquainted with the
Giant Logs. These trees died 216 million years ago and
then took many years to become petrified. |
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The Park Ranger, told us that most of these trees were
conifers ferns and ginko. Remember that 225 million years
ago, during the Triassic Period, this was a tropical landscape. |
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We stopped at every site within the park and
walked most of the trails. |
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Age and/or mineral content gave everything
it's one unique color. |
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Some of these trees had reached at least 200 feet in height.
They grew tall with not many side branches except at
the upper crown point. |
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Hard to imagine the number of pieces of
petrified trees just lying around. |
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Who cut the logs? It is possible with the uplifting of the
Colorado Plateau (starting over 60 million years ago),
the still buried petrified trees were under so much stress
they broke like glass rods. The crystalline nature of the quartz
created clean fractures |
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Stop #2 The Painted Desert was exactly that... painted.
There were 5 of these "Teepees" but I zoomed in tight on this one
so you could have an up-close & personal experience. |
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Don pulled over to look for a geocache and there we
learned that the only place where the famous Route 66
crosses into a National Monument is here in the Painted Desert.
Yes, he found it... |
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The design for the glass ceiling in part of the restored
Painted Desert Inn came from pottery shards at Mesa Verde. They
were hand painted on glass by the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC). |
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The Painted Desert Inn is a National Historic Landmark.
Don also found a geocache here, where we also found ice cream...
which has become our lunch staple!!!! |
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This is just one example of the many photos
I took while stopping at a multitude of vista points
in the Painted Desert. They go on for miles. |
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Stop #3 was Nancy's type of "geocaching stop".
It is located in Ganado AZ on the Navajo Nation
Reservation. We stopped here about in about 1975
because I had studied Navajo and Tapestry
weaving and was in the process of writing a book
on Tapestry weaving.
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John Lorenzo Hubbell purchased the trading post in 1878, ten years after
Navajos were allowed to return to their homeland from their
terrible exile at Bosque Redondo, Ft. Sumner, NM.
Hubbell family members operated this trading post until it was sold
to the National Park Service in 1967. The trading post is still active,
and operated by the non-profit organization,
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And for a weaver it is pure heaven to walk into a
showroom stacked with piles of Navajo Rugs. |
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Back in 1975, I sat and watched a Navajo weaver
work on her rug on her traditional Navajo style loom
like this. Navajo's teach by showing and not telling,
so I sat there on the floor next to her, patiently watching her do
a technique I was not familiar, without saying a word, as
unbelievable as that may sound. She got up and went to
lunch... but I waited in our camper until she returned
so I could watch her finish the process she started before lunch... |
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| and I included it in my book. |
