Living Our Dream

A Day Along the Gulf

Summerdale, AL - Events of Monday, November 20, 2012

On Monday, Margery had a pre-admission appointment at the hospital to fill out paperwork prior to her second cataract surgery. After the appointment, we met Pat and Mike and headed south to Gulf Shores. We had read about Gulf Shores State Park in another RVer's blog and we all wanted to check it out for future reference. We also read in the blog about a new restaurant in nearby Orange Beach we wanted to try.

Our first stop was Gulf State Park located just to the east of Gulf Shores, AL. The state park has beaches, a 1,540-foot fishing pier, a golf course, a swimming pool and a campground. We were primarily interested in the campground.

Although the state park lies along the Gulf of Mexico, the campground is across the road from the beach. We drove around several loops of the campground. There are almost 500 sites with full hookups and 30/50-amp electric. The pads and patios are paved, and the sites are nice and big. There are both pull-throughs that are parallel to the road and back-ins. Gulf State Park has definite possibilities if we should ever want to stay closer to the water when we come to Lower Alabama.

The volunteer at the entrance gate also invited us to stop at the nature center located in the campground. There are numerous live reptiles and amphibians in the nature center as well as taxidermy mammals and birds.

Live baby alligators in a plastic pool inside the nature center

Deer and black bear exhibit

Mike and Pat checking out some of the displays

From the state park, we drove a few miles east to Orange Beach to the new restaurant called The Gulf where we had arranged to meet our neighbors from Rainbow Plantation, Lu and Larry.

The Gulf just opened about two weeks prior, and there is little information about it on the internet. They have a website, but as of this writing, the website has no real information about the restaurant - not even the address, hours or phone number. We wouldn't have known about it if it hadn't been for the blogs of a couple of other RVers who happen to be staying in the area.

The restaurant is located on the western side of Perdido Pass, which is a channel through the barrier island. The pass is actually the mouth of the Perdido River. The restaurant has an interesting design. It is constructed from 4 stacked shipping containers.

The Gulf

Ordering is at a walk-up window. There is a chalkboard menu beside the window. The most popular items seem to be the burger and the grouper sandwich, but there are other selections available including one or two specials that the chef comes up.

Order window with chalkboard menu

The Gulf has no indoor seating, so we're not sure what their plans are for winter. It has a lower deck, an upper deck, a grassy lawn and a sandy beach. There are tables and seating located in all these areas.

View of the lawn, lower deck and beach from the upper deck

Note the fine, white lines in the photo above. There is monofilament fishing line strung from the palm trees to the upper deck criss-crossing over the lower dining areas to keep the sea gulls away. They seemed to be very effective because we didn't see any birds at all in the dining area.

One of the picnic tables had stools made from cast-iron tractor seats. Margery tried one and said it would make a perfect bicycle seat!

Margery trying a stool made from a cast-iron tractor seat

There is comfortable lounge seating on the beach...

Seating on the beach

...and on the upper deck. The floor of the upper deck is real grass and has its own irrigation sprinklers.

Comfortable seating on the upper deck

More seating on the upper deck

We chose a table on the grassy lawn because those tables had umbrellas for shade. Shade seemed like a good idea when we first arrived. However, we spent almost two hours there eating, chatting and looking around, so we were wishing for more sun as it cooled off in the late afternoon.

Larry, Lu, Mike, Pat, Margery and Paul

Lu and Larry had grouper sandwiches, and the rest of us had burgers. The prices at The Gulf are a little high, but aren't bad considering how good the food is and considering the waterfront location and ambiance. The grouper sandwiches are $12, and the burgers are $6. Hand-cut fries are $4. The sandwiches are served with half a huge dill pickle. Cheese for the burgers (American, blue or Swiss) is $1.50 extra bringing the total for a cheeseburger and fries to $11.50.

Burger and fries

After we ate, we tried out some of the seats on the beach.

On the beach

We loved The Gulf. Like Bahama Breeze, it really makes you feel like you are on vacation on a tropical island. Not only that, but the food is excellent. We can't wait to go back!

Grand Canyon Part I: Grand Canyon Village 

This year is our third trip to Grand Canyon National Park (the 4th if you count a stop at both the South Rim and the North Rim in the same year). We went to the South Rim in 2007 when Lora and J. Michael flew out to meet us, then we stopped at the North Rim on our way to Utah after they left for home. We went to the South Rim last year, and again this year. Both last year and this year, we stayed in Trailer Village in the park.

Trailer Village is operated by a concessionaire (Xanterra). The roads are paved, but the sites are dusty gravel. There are full hook-ups with 30/50 amp electric and cable. The site width is decent.

 

The great thing about going to a place you like for the second or third time is you can take time to see and do things you didn't have time for on the first visit. The other nice thing is you can have a more leisurely visit. It was mid afternoon by the time we got set up, but we didn't feel compelled to go out sightseeing right away. We just chilled out in the campground for the rest of the day. It got cloudy late in the afternoon, so we didn't even go over to the canyon for the sunset.

The next morning we headed over to Grand Canyon Village. We have come to appreciate the ranger talks and walks, and there was one titled "The Human Story" that sounded interesting. We had about 45 minutes until the program started, so we walked along Rim Trail to the east a short distance. We came across this little lizard.

We are always in awe of the spectacular views of the canyon. The next photo looks across the Grand Canyon toward Bright Angel Canyon on the North Rim. Bright Angel Canyon follows a fault line that crosses the Grand Canyon. The intersection of Bright Angel Canyon and the Grand Canyon is the center of activity on both the North and South Rims. Bright Angel Canyon is the inverted "V" in the center of the photo.

The program started at Vercamp's Visitor Center. Rather than a ranger for this presentation, we were led by a volunteer. Wally, our volunteer, started with a brief the history of Native Americans who lived in and around the Grand Canyon. Evidence of human habitation at the canyon dates back almost 12,000 years, and many area Indian peoples today can trace their ancestry back to the Grand Canyon.

Wally then gave us a summary of the exploration of the canyon by non-Indians starting with the Spanish in 1540. Although there were others, John Wesley Powell is probably the best known and most successful of the early canyon explorers. Powell led two expeditions through the canyon, one in 1867 and the second in 1871-1872. The second expedition resulted in the first photographs of the Grand Canyon and the first accurate maps.

Most of the early white settlers around the canyon were miners. However, because of the expense of hauling ore up out of the canyon then hauling it a long distance for processing, many of the settlers soon discovered tourism had a bigger potential than mining.

By the late 1800s there were several hotels and tourist camps at the Grand Canyon. The only way to get to the Grand Canyon was by a dusty, bumpy, 12-hour stagecoach ride from Flagstaff, but tourists still came.

Vercamp's Visitor Center was originally built as Vercamp's Curios by John Vercamp. Vercamp, who originally sold souvenirs out of a tent, built the shop in 1905. The store was operated up until late 2008 by descendants of John Vercamp. The visitor center now is owned by the Park Service.

Our walk proceeded west from Vercamp's along Rim Trail where we learned about the people and the history behind more of the buildings in Grand Canyon Village. In 1901 the Santa Fe Railroad completed a line from Williams to Grand Canyon Village. Tourists no longer had to endure the long stagecoach ride, and they began to arrive at the canyon in larger numbers. A luxury hotel, the El Tovar, was built by the Sante Fe Railroad in 1905.

 

In the early days of railroad travel, food and lodging were hit and miss. The Santa Fe Railroad changed all that by hiring the Fred Harvey Company to build hotels and food service facilities along all of the Santa Fe lines. These could be considered the first restaurant and hotel chains. The Harvey Company ran the El Tovar Hotel and most everything else at the Grand Canyon. The Harvey Company waitresses became known as "Harvey Girls."

The Harvey Company hired Mary Coulter to design many of the buildings at the Grand Canyon. She designed the interior (but not the exterior) of the El Tovar. Across from the El Tovar is Hopi House designed by Mary Coulter in 1905. Mary Coulter believed in designing buildings that fit the surroundings, so she built Hopi House in the style of a pueblo using native stone. Hopi House was intended to be a living museum where Hopi Indians could live and work on traditional crafts. Native Americans still sell and sometimes demonstrate their crafts at Hopi House.

 

Incidentally, the Fred Harvey Company was bought in 1968 by Xanterra,which is the company who operates the El Tovar today, as well as other park consessions such as Tralier Village.

A lot of work was done around the canyon in the 1930s by the CCC. During the Depression, the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) was made up of single men who worked on conservation and other public construction projects around the country. Margery's dad was in the CCC and worked at what is now Laurel Hill State Park in Pennsylvania. The men received free room, board and health care. They were paid $30 a month, $25 of which had to be sent home to make sure they didn't blow it.

The original walkways and walls around Grand Canyon Village were built by the CCC. There is one place on the wall where there is a heart-shaped stone. The young men in the CCC liked the Harvey Girls, and legend has it one of the guys made a special stone and put it in the wall, possibly to impress one of the Harvey girls.

The next historic building we came to was the Buckey O'Neill Cabin. Buckey O'Neill was an early settler who built a cabin along the South Rim in the 1890s. It is the oldest surviving building at the Grand Canyon. Buckey O'Neill was one of the people who found tourism to be more lucrative than mining, and he was instrumental in bringing the Santa Fe Railroad to the Grand Canyon. O'Neill was killed serving in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders in 1898, so he never got to see the arrival of the railroad.

Buckey O'Neill's cabin became part of the rustic accommodations at the Bright Angel Hotel after his death. When Mary Coulter designed a new Bright angel Lodge to replace the hotel in 1935, she incorporated the cabin into her design. Totally updated inside, the cabin is still part of the Bright angel Lodge today.

In 1914 the Fred Harvey Company built Lookout Studio to compete with Kolb Studio, which is located a short distance to the west. Mary Colter designed Lookout Studio the same way she designed other buildings at the Grand Canyon - to blend in with the surroundings. The building can barely be seen from down over the rim. Back in the day Lookout Studio offered photographs and books about the Grand Canyon, just like it does today.

Just to the west of Lookout Studio is Kolb Studio. Ellsworth and Emery Kolb built their studio partially down over the canyon rim in 1904. The brothers made their living photographing hikers traveling down Bright Angel Trail. The brothers also sold photographs of the canyon. In 1911 they retraced Powell's route down the Green and Colorado Rivers and made a movie of the journey. Emery Kolb showed this movie regularly in the studio until his death in 1976 at age 95. The studio is now an art gallery.

 

The beginning of Bright Angel Trail is just beyond Kolb Studio, and while we were there, Wally told us about Ralph Cameron.

Cameron, who owned a number of mining claims in the area of the Grand Canyon, widened an old Havasupai Indian trail down into the canyon and renamed it Bright Angel Trail. Cameron charged a toll of $1 per person to enter the land covered by his mining claim to hike down Bright Angel Trail. The government eventually prevented Cameron from collecting tolls. Today, Bright Angel Trail is a popular place for hikers and for mule trips down into the canyon. We'll have more about Bright Angel Trail in our next post.

Jerome, AZ

We left Tucson for a relatively short, four-hour drive to our next destination of Camp Verde, AZ, where Rancho Verde RV Park would be our home base for the next week. Camp Verde is about 60 miles south of Flagstaff along the Verde River.

It was getting pretty hot in Tucson, so heading north and moving to a higher elevation provided a welcome change in the weather. Temperatures were still in the 80s around Camp Verde, but with the low humidity of the high desert, it was usually quite comfortable.

Rancho Verde RV Park is a fairly small campground with only about 25 to 30 sites. It has full hookups with 30/50 amp electric and free Wi-Fi. The main road that circles the campground is paved and the pads are gravel. There's a concrete patio on each site and grass between the sites. The sites around the perimeter are back-ins, and there are some extra-long pull-throughs down the center. The back-in sites are fairly wide, but the pull-throughs are set up face to face so you may have to share living space with another RV if the campground is full. Fortunately for the campers, the campground wasn't full. We had a pull-through on the end which wasn't face to face with another site.

There are some trees for shade at Rancho Verde, but not so many that we couldn't get satellite. Rancho Verde is a nice, quiet, attractive little campground.

We chose to stop in Camp Verde because is is in the center of quite a few historic Arizona towns and Indian ruins. We made a day trip to this area from Flagstaff when we were there back in 2007 when Lora and J. Michael flew out to meet us to go to the Grand Canyon. Click here to read about our previous visit to this area. This time, we decided to stay south of Flagstaff and planned for additional time to see more of the sights.

One of those places to see was Jerome, AZ. Jerome is a "boom 'n' bust" copper mining town located about 20 miles northwest of Camp Verde. Jerome was founded on the side of Cleopatra Hill in 1883. It was named for Eugene Murray Jerome, who was an investor from New York who owned the mining claims and financed mining operations there.

In the early 1900s, Jerome became known as the "wickedest town in the west" because of all the gambling and vice. The town boomed in the 1920s and became the 4th largest town in Arizona with a population of about 15,000. The Depression brought a bust in the 1930s. During WWII, there was an increased demand for copper, and the town once again prospered. After the war, the smelter and the last mine were closed in the 1950s, and most of the population left.

In 1967, Jerome was designated a Historic District, and in 1976, it became a National Historic Landmark. Today, Jerome is a tourist town with about 350 residents. Some of the historic buildings have been restored, but there are also a few crumbling foundations and a few boarded up buildings here and there. There is a mining museum, numerous bed and breakfasts, a couple of hotels, restaurants, shops, art studios and galleries.

When we found out they were having their 45th Annual Jerome Historic Home and Building Tour, we scheduled our visit for the weekend to coincide with the tour. The tour included 7 historic, restored homes and other points of interest and one contemporary home. Proceeds from the tour benefit the Chamber of Commerce.

Jerome is known as the "Mile High Town" because it sits on the side of Cleopatra Hill at an elevation of 5,200 feet.

The road to Jerome makes several switchbacks as it comes up out of the valley before arriving in town. Jerome usually gets fairly crowded on weekends, but it was especially crowded because of the house and building tour. Although there are several parking lots in town, we weren't sure where the tour started so ended up following the signs to a large, paved lot on the outskirts of town where there were special shuttles into town for the tour.

New this year were a number of costumed reenactment groups including Civil War soldiers. They entertained visitors waiting for the shuttle with information about their weapons, uniforms and encampment. A battle reenactment was scheduled for later in the day. We heard the fix was in and the South was scheduled to win, but that the Union would be victorious on Sunday.

Transportation to each venue on the tour was provided by means of vans and SUVs operated by volunteers. We originally thought we would be driving our own car to each stop, but with the steep, narrow streets in Jerome and with the lack of adequate parking at some of the stops, having several hundred people driving around town looking at historic buildings just isn't practical. We got our tickets and waited in line about 20 or 25 minutes for our turn to board transportation to the first house on the tour.

While we waited, we took turns climbing the steep steps up to the next street level to look down on the main street and out into Verde Valley while the other held our place in line.

There was also a mock gunfight across the street while we waited.

We eventually got to the front of the line and hopped into an SUV to travel to our first stop. The first two houses were located on Society Hill and were built by the mining company for members of mine management.

The Sullivan House was built in 1886. Con Sullivan, his wife, and their 8 children lived in this 1,000 square foot house for many years.

 

The Mills House was built in 1898 and was occupied by Carl Mills until 1950. The house sat vacant from 1950 until 2003. Part of the roof had caved in, and the soil from the hillside had eroded down into the house. A local resident bought the house and renovated it adding a second story.

We were able to spend as much time as we wanted at each stop on the tour. The tour included the interior of the houses, but with the low light and numerous people, it was difficult to get photos. Volunteers were available at each stop to answer questions.

From the Mills House, we were able to walk to our next two stops. The United Verde Apartments were built by United Verde Mining in 1918. They consisted of three and four-room apartments that were rented primarily by single female teachers and nurses and by small families. The apartments were occupied until 1952. The buildings were purchased and renovations began in the 1990s. Today, the apartments are used for retail space, by full-time residents and for vacation rentals.

 

Christ's Episcopal Church is located right next to the apartments. Built in 1927, the church has a wooden frame with a stucco exterior. Today, it houses the offices and archives of the Jerome Historical Society.

 

From the church, we caught another SUV to the Gutierrez Cottage. This was the home of a miner by the name of Damian Gutierrez. Few of these simply-built miners' houses remain. In the basement of the home, Damian Gutierrez kept a burro that he would take to town for tourists to have their photo taken. The house, which was a bed and breakfast in the 1980s, is now a private home owned by a couple from Phoenix.

The Gutierrez Cottage is known for its extensive, terraced gardens.

One very striking species of plant in the garden was tritoma, which is also known as a torch lily or red hot poker. The flower portion is about 7 or 8 inches tall.

The only contemporary house on the tour is the Kinsella House. They couldn't even save the crumbling foundation of the old house that once stood on this site, so they built an entirely new house. There are two additional stories down over the hillside. The back of the house has two decks overlooking the valley.

From the decks, you can see the Douglas Mansion, which was built in 1916 by Jimmy Douglas as a hotel and residence for his family. Jimmy Douglas was the owner of the Little Daisy Mine.

The mansion was donated to the state by Jimmy's sons and is now a museum. The museum is part of the Arizona State Park system, and due to budget cuts in Arizona, the state park is now closed. An agreement has been reached to have the park operated by the Jerome Historical Society. Renovations to the museum are underway, and it is hoped the park and museum will be reopened in a few months.

From the Kinsella House, you can also get a good view of the Little Daisy Hotel, which was built as a dormitory for miners at the Little Daisy Mine. The hotel was renovated and is now a private residence.

The next tour stop was Lawrence Memorial Hall. Originally built in 1917 as a garage, this building became the home of J. C. Penny in Jerome from 1937 until 1953. It was one of the company's largest stores back in the day. Today, the building is owned by the historical society and is used for the town's Christmas party, the Halloween party, and dances. It is also available for weddings and private parties. Refreshments of cookies and lemonade were being served at the hall during the tour.

Next, we took a van to Audry Headframe Park. A headframe is the structure built over a mine shaft and was used to haul ore up out of the mine. The Audry Headframe was part of the Daisy Mine and was used to haul over $125 million in copper, gold and silver out of the ground. Below the headframe, you can look through a glass window down into the 1,700 foot shaft.

We caught the next van back to Lawrence Hall, then walked about a block to the final tour stop. Along the way, we stopped to watch a glass-blowing demonstration (not part of the tour) by one of the many local artisans.

The last stop on the tour was the Connor Hotel. First built in 1898 by David Connor, the hotel burned down twice by the turn of the century. David Connor was one of only a few in town who had insurance so he was able to rebuild both times.

The Connor Hotel was a luxury hotel with a barroom, card rooms and billiard tables on the first floor. The hotel closed in 1931 shortly after the Depression caused a downturn in the demand for copper, but the owners continued to rent out retail space on the first floor. After the mines closed in 1953, Jerome attracted hippies and counter-culture tourists the 1960s and 1970s. The hotel reopened with low-budget rooms as sort of a flop house. Code violations such as the lack of a sprinkler system and unsafe wiring forced the hotel to close again in the 1980s.

The hotel was reopened with 12 deluxe rooms following extensive remodeling and safety modifications. Guests just need to be aware there is live music in the first floor bar on weekends, and the old building doesn't have very good sound proofing. The volunteer also told us about some strange noises and unexplained occurrences that happen from time to time in Rooms 1, 2 and 5. The hotel has been featured on several TV programs featuring haunted buildings and ghost stories. The hotel management is kind enough to warn any prospective guests.

Visiting some of the historic homes and buildings in Jerome was a unique experience. The town really goes all out for this two-day event. Volunteers put in long hours planning and working the event. They had even taken the time to paint temporary lines on the parking spots in the dirt and gravel lots in town and along the roads in an effort to keep the parking as organized as possible. Since we had left our water in the car, one very thoughtful feature of the tour that we very much appreciated was the availability of cold, bottled water at every stop for a suggested donation of only $1.

Jerome turned out to be a good start to our sightseeing at this stop in Camp Verde. Look for our next post, and we'll tell you what else we found to do.

 

Grand Canyon Part I: Bright Angel Trail

The morning after we visited Petrified Forest National Park, we took off to the west on I-40. Then we turned right in Flagstaff, and headed north to the Grand Canyon where we had reservations in Trailer Village Campground inside the park.

Trailer Village has full hook-ups including 50 amp electric. The sites and roads are gravel. As you can imagine, the campsites are well used so they are pretty dusty. We put out our patio mat to minimize tracking dirt into the motor home. The sites are also surprisingly wide for a national park. The photo below shows our site in Trailer Village.

 

The campground is pretty quiet, even during the day. At night, it is eerily quiet - there is no traffic noise and no trains.

Although we've investigated staying in national parks before, this is the first time we've ever actually done it. The campgrounds in most national parks are older and have only a few sites suitable for our 37 foot motor home. Additionally, most national parks have no hook-ups. You normally have to reserve a site in a national park well in advance, and the big-rig sites are very hard to get. In addition, many of the national parks have a lot of trees, which isn't good for our satellite internet. But Trailer Village doesn't have many trees and it has full hook-ups (including cable). Also, since we there were early in the season, we were able to get reservations only a few months in advance.

We went to Grand Canyon National Park back in 2007. We picked up our daughter, Lora, and our son-in-law, J. Michael, at the airport in Phoenix and drove to Flagstaff where we all stayed at the KOA. We, of course, stayed in the motor home, and Lora and J. Michael stayed in one of the KOA Kamper Kabins.

We took the train from Williams to the canyon, which we highly recommend. You can read about it it in our June 2007 Grand Canyon and Flagstaff Area post. Then we drove up from Flagstaff in the car to spend a second day at the canyon. Seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time was a real thrill and sharing it with Lora and J. Michael was a lot of fun.

This time, however, since we stayed right in the park and since we stayed longer, we had a more leisurely visit and could take more time to get to know the park a lot better. Also, since Margery's successful knee surgery, we were able to do a lot more walking, including hiking a short way down into the canyon.

By the time we got set up, it was mid-afternoon so we relaxed a while before dinner. Then we went to the canyon rim to see the sunset - something we couldn't easily do while staying in Flagstaff.

We decided to go to Yavapai Point, mostly because it was close to Trailer Village. Yavapai Point turned out to be an excellent choice because it has quite a bit of parking - many of the overlooks get pretty crowded around sunset. Also, because Yavapai Point juts out into the canyon, you can see the red light of the sunset shining on the rocks in the canyon looking to the east...



...and you can see the sun setting over the canyon looking to the west.

We also wanted to see a sunrise. However, Arizona does not observe daylight savings time. That coupled with the fact that we were there about a month before the Summer Solstice meant sunrise was a little after 5:00 AM, so we never made it for a sunrise.

The next morning (well after sunrise), we went to the Bright Angel Trailhead located near Grand Canyon Village. Bright Angel Trail is one of the more popular trails down into the canyon because it is not quite as steep as some of the other trails. It is also the trail used for mule rides down into the canyon. You can take a 7-hour round trip to Plateau Point 1,300 feet above the Colorado River. Plateau Point is the smooth, greenish patch toward the left in the photo below, and the wiggly tan line is the trail running out to the end.

You can also take an overnight mule trip to Phantom Ranch, which is at the bottom of the canyon and across the river. The telephoto shot below shows Phantom Ranch.

The scenery on the way down the trail was amazing. Walking into the canyon, even for only a short distance, made us feel like we were really experiencing the canyon. It was a lot better than standing at the top just looking over a railing.

 

The next photo is another view from Bright Angel Trail.

We could see a rider with pack mules ascending the trail in the distance. There are no roads to Phantom Ranch. Everything must be packed in on mules and trash must be packed out.



A little farther along, we could look down and see more mules and riders on the switch-backs way below us.

 

On down the trail, there is a tunnel through the rock.

 

On the other side of the tunnel, we saw more mules coming up the trail.

 

We went a little farther, then turned around and headed back up toward the rim. Shortly after we went back through the tunnel, another group of riders passed us. Mules have the right of way, and we had to stand aside and wait for them to pass. Fortunately, the trail was plenty wide in this area.

As we climbed back up the trail, we could see the pack mules that passed us earlier on the trail above us.

 

After we got back to the top, we hopped on the shuttle bus that goes out to Hermit's Rest. We'll tell you about that in our next post.

Petrified Forest

We left Albuquerque and drove east on I-40 to Holbrook, AZ, where we stayed at OK RV Park. All the sites at OK RV are extra-long pull-throughs. Unfortunately, the sites are very narrow; and, although the utility pedestals are not shared, you are back to back with your neighbor. The good thing is, because the sites are so long, the RVs are parked in a staggered fashion, and you are not directly opposite another RV on either side. The photo below shows our site at OK RV.



The entire campground is sand and gravel and is a little dusty, but that is to be expected when you're in the desert. There are full hook-ups and Wi-fi. We opted to pay the $5 a night extra charge for 50 amp because it was 90 degrees. We didn't want to have to turn off the air to run the microwave.

The reason we stopped in Holbrook was to visit Petrified Forest National Park, which is located along both sides of I-40 about 15 miles east of Holbrook. The national park is located at the southern end of the Painted Desert. The Painted Desert stretches from eastern end of the Grand Canyon in an arc down to the Petrified Forest - a distance of over 150 miles. The southern end of the Painted Desert is incorporated into the Petrified Forest National Park.

You can access Petrified Forest National Park from I-40 to at the northern end, or you can access the park from the south by taking U. S. 180 east from Holbrook. A 28-mile long road connects the north and south entrances of the park. We decided to start at the southern end because that's where the highest concentration of petrified wood is located.

The park has visitor centers at both ends. The southern visitor center is located just inside the entrance near an area called Rainbow Forest. In the visitor center, we watched the video about the history of the park and about how petrified wood is formed. Then we walked the Big Log Trail, which starts behind the visitor center.



Petrified Forest National Park contains one of the largest, most colorful collections of petrified wood in the world. Unfortunately, tons of petrified wood have been taken by souvenir hunters and even more has been destroyed by those seeking the crystals and semi-precious gems sometimes found within the petrified wood. They used to dynamite the logs just to see if there might be crystals inside.

The Petrified Forest was named a national monument in 1906, but it didn't become a national park until 1962. Making the Petrified Forest a national park provided more protection, but it is estimated about one ton of petrified wood is carried out of the park by visitors every month in spite of stiff penalties and in spite of the fact petrified wood that has been legally harvested from private property is readily available for sale all around the area.

Petrified wood is formed when trees are submerged in water then buried in layers of sediment rich in volcanic ash. The volcanic ash is high in silica, which is key to transforming the wood to stone. The silica and other minerals infused themselves into the wood and began to form crystals within the cell structure, much like the way fossils were formed. The silica displaced the cellulose that originally made up the wood. The colors in the petrified wood come mainly from various iron compounds. The photo below shows the rich colors in some of the petrified wood.

 

Here is another example.

 

Most of the petrified wood is from an extinct variety of conifer that grew up to 200 feet tall. The southern end of the park has some of the most colorful petrified wood. It also has some of the biggest logs.

The next photo shows a log called Old Faithful. At over 9 feet in diameter, it is the largest log in the park.

The detail of the wood grain and bark of some of the logs is amazing. You can also see knots where there used to be branches.

 

 

Also in the vicinity of the southern visitor center is a trail Agate House, which is an Indian pueblo. Along the trail, which is about two miles round trip, we came across a colorful collared lizard.

Agate House was built from chunks of petrified wood sealed in place with mud mortar. Archeologists believe Agate House was originally an eight-room pueblo built about 1000 years ago. The pueblo was partially reconstructed in the 1930s.

From Agate House, we drove north through the park. The landscape, which is part of the Chinle Formation, is comprised mostly of compressed, sandy gravel. We began to see more of the multi-colored terrain of the painted desert. Petrified wood continued to dot the landscape, but it isn't as prevalent as it is in the southern part of the park.

Notice the petrified log balanced on the top of the dune to the left in the photo below.

 

In spite of the inhospitable-looking terrain, there were a few wildflowers blooming.

As we proceeded north on the park road, the amount of petrified wood continued to be less and less obvious, and the colors of the Painted Desert became more dominant. We'll tell you more about the northern part of Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert in out next post.