“Road Trip USA 🇺🇸 Part 4 of 6 ~Leaving California and Heading for The Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, then Driving thru New Mexico to Laguna Pueblo” October 2024

• November 4, 2024
• By Pen
• 0 Comment

WE STILL BE ROAD TRIPPIN!

LEAVING CALIFORNIA TO GET BACK TO NORTH CAROLINA!

Day 1

Today was Daryls 70th Birthday!

4:00AM-8:30PM

We Departed Best Western in Lake Forest, California and drove to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

9 hours

590 miles

I visited The Petrified Forest National Park when I was around 8 years old. I remember walking all around the various “Forest” grounds, touching the cool wood that appeared to have turned to stone.

Daryl had never been to this Park, so we took the exit. Things have changed, though. There is no more walking on the grounds of the “Forests,” and clearly no touching the ancient, petrified trees. One must stay on the marked pathways, only. This might be a good idea, since it was pretty easy to pocket some petrified wood pieces, by those who do those things. I also remember walking out on to a nearby rocky outcropping of rocks, and my parents freaking out and hollering at me to get off that ledge. Ha! 

PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL PARK

Theodore Roosevelt created Petrified Forest National Monument on December 8, 1906.

The Petrified Forest was designated as a National Park on December 9, 1962. The Park boundary encloses 221,390 acres, with legislation in 2004, more than doubling the authorized size of the park.

Stretching for miles on both sides of Interstate 40 and located near the town of Holbrook, in Northern Arizona, Petrified Forest National Park is a high-desert geologic treasure chest. You’ll see loads of petrified wood, not to mention eye-popping views of The Painted Desert, which sweeps through the Park.

There are two visitor centers: the Painted Desert Visitor Center in the north, and the Rainbow Forest Museum, to the south.

Sometimes Petrified Forest is called high desert, but the main environment of this National Park is Intermountain Basin semi-arid steppe and grassland (shortgrass prairie). This basically means that, while it’s not desert, it is dry with lower-elevation grasslands, most of which you will see in the southern third portion of the Park.

The petroglyphs of Newspaper Rock were created by ancestral Puebloan people living, farming, and hunting along the Puerco River, between 650 and 2,000 years ago.

Over 13,000 years of history, including 800 archeological and historic sites, may be found within the Park’s boundaries, including as the well-known Newspaper Rock and Agate House.

If you looked across the Painted Desert in the mid-1800s, you might have seen a camel caravan crossing the landscape. Between 1857 – 1860, E.F. Beale, hired by the U.S. Government as a civilian contractor, made several camel caravan trips from his home in California over to what is now Petrified Forest National Park, to promote camels’ value at transporting goods.

The petrified logs were not sawn, even though they sure look like they were. To cut a petrified log would require a diamond rock saw and take quite a bit of time to slice. This is because quartz (of which a petrified log primarily consists) is very hard; 7 out of 10 on the Moh’s Hardness Scale, in fact. These broken logs look like they were sawn because quartz is a brittle mineral subject to breaking at a clean angle, and the weight and pressure of overlying strata cracked the petrified logs, while subsequent erosion and ice wedging then broke the logs clean off, from the main trunk.

Nearly a dozen types of trees have been found petrified in this National Park, including coniferous trees, tree ferns, and some ginkgoes.

The age of some of these petrified trees date as far back as 218 million years, when the landscape was much wetter, with rivers and swamps, allowing for the growth of so many different tree species.

Petrified wood found in the Park is the result of trees dying and being buried beneath sediment and volcanic ash, to create an oxygen-free environment; perfect for preserving the logs.

Over the millennia, the wood organics were replaced by mostly silica (quartz) that maintained the cellular structure of the downed and buried trees.

We enjoyed our visit, and then got back on the road, again. We had made that plan to go North towards Albuquerque, to avoid going through so much traffic in Arizona; through Tucson or Phoenix.

Laguna Pueblo and Indian Fry Bread Tacos

Next Stop, was for Indian Fry Bread Tacos at the Indian Arts Center; exit 14 off I-40; Pueblo Laguna, New Mexico Navajo Reservation.

The reservation consists of approximately 500,000 acres of land situated in Cibola, Valencia, Bernalillo and Sandoval counties. The Tribal administration building is located in the village of Laguna. You can experience the uniqueness of our Pueblo by visiting in person.

(We stopped for 30 glorious minutes)

2.5 hours

164 miles

Dominic makes the best, authentic Indian Fry Bread Tacos, on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. We had visited before, a couple of years ago. I knew we would be back, one day!

I wasn’t so sure of their hours on a Saturday, so I called Dominic. He is just the nicest person. He said he would wait for us! I told him what our map indicated; which was a 5PM arrival. He said no problem. We arrived and enjoyed his yummy Tacos, and we did some shopping in their Indian Cultural Art Center for Daryl’s Birthday. This means I got stuff too! Ha!

We got two more Tacos to go and ate them the next evening, at our next motel stop.

Dominics Uncle makes some of the art. He is also very nice. I later learned, they usually close shop at 3PM. How nice was that?

What a wonderful meal, and it was nice to eat something other than a sandwich, from the gas station store. Seriously, if you are ever in the Albuquerque New Mexico area, Laguna Pueblo Reservation is not that far. Do take the time and give their place a visit.

You will be glad you did! 

We were off again, and this time, we were headed to White Sands National Park, also in New Mexico. We had a long drive ahead of us, since we went North to Pueblo, and now we had to go, far South.

Click here to see Part 5 of this six-part Blog road trip:

“Road Trip USA 🇺🇸 Part 5 of 6 ~From Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, Heading for White Sands National Park New Mexico” October 2024