Petrified Forest; WTF Fliers in NM

The plan was to drive to the Petrified Forest, get out and do some hikes with the Boy on his own feet---just to tucker him out---and then get back into the car and keep going. If we could make it past Albuquerque, we'd be in good shape for a short drive into Amarillo and on to the Farm.

We found a couple of short hikes on the maps, and headed out from Scottsdale. Corrie drove a diagonal north-by-east through what started out as rocky mountains but what slowly turned into pine forest. It was beautiful and serene, and reminded us of our own little slice of mountain town heaven way up north in California.

216 million years prior, the area had an earlier type of pine tree, one that lived on the shores of creeks and rivers frequented by many kinds of reptilian fauna. Early dinosaurs were fluttering around the feet of the more established critters, so it was a ways back, before dinosaurs came to power.

Sometimes these pine trees would fall, and occasionally they would make it into the river. There the branches and bark would get washed away. Soon the silt would build up and completely submerge the great tree trunks. Over the course of a few million years, minerals would slowly seep into the logs, replacing each cell of the tree with minerals. The mineralization process is slow, obviously, but in the end, the result is spectacular.

Eventually the creeks go dry. Millions more years go by. Erosion begins to beat the sand and silt away, and soon enough these great trunks get exposed. The silt upon which they sit is uneven, and because of the weight of these mineral deposits, the trunks crack on pretty clean lines. Quartz and silica do that---wood doesn't.

They look so cool, feel so cool, and are heavier than I ever imagined. Holy cow, they're heavy.

We started on the first tiny hike---where we took those pictures---and had Cassius walking around. Eventually he was far more enamored with the steps that had been sculpted out of concrete and left for tourists than with anything else, and soon had to call it a day.

We were also starting to lose the sun:

I drove out of the park, and a few hours later we stopped for dinner. I took the following picture of our little potato man: fries in his mouth, two in his left hand, and he's searching for more:

Corrie took over driving after here, and we sailed into Santa Rosa before hitting the sack. At breakfast the next day, before going to a park to run the Boy around a little before a short (two hour) drive into Texas, I stopped by one of those displays that has all the fliers for the cool touristy shit that's offered within a hundred miles of whichever place it is. A font very similar to one from my childhood called to me with words that seemed in juxtaposition:

This whole thing is too weird and probably should get its own...yeah, you know what? Meow Wolf will get its own post later. Santa Fe...weird shit is going on in Santa Fe...