Road Trip: Arizona-Petrified Forest NP

My friend at Kathalog mentioned she loves to learn about the little-known places in the United States to visit. We've visited a few of these on our many road trips and I thought I'd share some here.

I posted about Meteor Crater in Winslow, AZ in my last post. We will work our way down I-40 and visit Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL PARK

In March of 2007, we were on a road trip with our girls to visit my grandmother in Arizona. The girls were getting restless on day two, so we decided to stop at Petrified Forest National Park. It's a nice round-trip diversion with plenty to see and do. The entrance is off of I-40 near Holbrook from the West, and nearer to Navajo on the east; you can enter from one side of the park, drive through, and loop back to I-40 easily from the other end (see the map by clicking the link above).

It is beautiful throughout the park. The visitors center has some great information and just outside of the building is what can only be described as a petrified wood garden. After getting some great information, we drove from one end of the park to the other.

Petrification (from the National Parks Service Brochure):

Distant volcanoes to the west spewed
tons of ash into the atmosphere,
carried by the wind into this area
where it was incorporated into the river
sediments. Some logs were buried by
sediment before they could
decompose. Ground water dissolved
silica from the volcanic ash and carried
it into the logs. This solution formed
quartz crystals which filled hollows,
cracks, even the interior of the cells,
and sometimes replaced the cell walls.
The process could be so exact the
resulting fossils show many details of
the logs’ original surfaces and,
occasionally, the internal cell
structures. Traces of iron and other
minerals combined with quartz during
the petrification process, creating the
brilliant rainbow of colors. Within the
larger cracks and hollows the growth
of quartz crystals was not limited in
size and larger crystals of clear and
milky quartz, purple amethyst, and
yellow citrine formed.

A few fun facts from the National Parks Page:

• Petrified Forest National Park has one of the most diverse collections of prehistoric pottery fragments in the Southwest.
• The ecosystem at Petrified Forest National Park is not desert. It's one of the largest areas of intact grassland in the Southwest
• On clear days in the Southwest, especially on crisp, cold winter days, you can see landscape features almost 100 miles away!

Are you a homeschooler thinking of visiting the park? NPS offers free online curriculum help:

http://www.nps.gov/pefo/forteachers/curriculummaterials.htm

PRINT THE BROCHURES

If you are a homeschooler, road trips are such an amazing way to experience science, history and culture. The National Parks are also a great resource. Did you know you can buy a National Parks Annual Parks pass for $80? It gets you entrance into any National Park and other Federal areas for no additional fee. Are you aged 62 or over? You can get a pass for $10....LIFETIME. And all throughout the website are lesson plans for teachers.

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Road Trip: Arizona-Meteor Crater, Winslow, AZ

METEOR CRATER National Monument

On our way to Peoria, AZ we stopped to see the Meteor Crater in Winslow, AZ. It's a place we've passed no less than a couple dozen times in the last twenty years, but for some reason we've never stopped.

It's only 6 miles off Highway 40, just a short diversion from the road trip. The building built next to the crater is quite large and houses a decent sized museum dedicated to things falling from the sky.

History:

"Approximately 50,000 years ago, on a continuous plain extending for miles in the high desert plateau of Northern Arizona, out of the northeastern sky, a pinpoint of light grew rapidly into a brilliant fireball. This body was probably broken off from an asteroid during an ancient collision in the main asteroid belt (between the planets, Mars and Jupiter) some half billion years ago. Hurtling about 40,000 miles per hour, it was on a rendezvous course with earth. In seconds, it passed through the earth's atmosphere with little loss of velocity or mass."

"The result of these violent conditions was the excavation of a giant bowl shaped cavity. In less than a few seconds, a crater was carved into this once flat rocky plain. During its formation, over 175 million tons of limestone and sandstone were abruptly thrown out to form a continuous blanket of debris surrounding the crater for a distance of over a mile."

METEOR CRATER National Monument

OUR REVIEW: We didn't get much of a chance to really spend time in the museum, but it was pretty impressive. Lots of interactive exhibits explaining the phenomenom of debris from space and the differences. There is also an actual remnant of the meteor on display--a significant size.

The view of the crater is amazing and the private owners have successfully given the viewer a great perspective of the crater. It doesn't "seem" as big as it is, until you look through the various telescopes and see the 6 foot tall astronaut at the bottom, or the boiler, crane and a manhole that was explored. Of course, they seem tiny through the viewfinder and almost invisible to the naked eye, reinforcing the actual size of the crater.

In all honesty, we didnt' spend half the time there that we wanted. My four little ones, the oldest being 6.5 years old, were tired at 2 in the afternoon when we arrived and had little patience for exploring the museum. It was a little pricey, though for myself and my 4 kids it was only $22.00. If my girls were all 6 and over, it would have been $39.

It is definitely worth the stop; where else can you see where such an event has occured? Be sure to stop when you have time to properly explore the wealth of information offered at the museum.

FUN FACTS:

On August 8, 1964, a pair of commercial pilots in a Cessna 150 flew into the crater for a closer look but were unable to climb out due to downdrafts. They ended up circling the interior until their fuel was exhausted and crash-landed. They survived their ordeal and a small portion of the wreckage not removed from the crash site remains visible to this day-Wikipedia

• Featured in the movie Starman. In this, a large spherical shaped UFO hovers over the crater.
• Featured in the movie Damnation Alley. In this, it is featured as a nuclear blast crater.
• Featured in a montage on the cover of the Midnight Oil album Red Sails in the Sunset. The crater is superimposed several times over Sydney Harbor suggesting the aftermath of a nuclear strike.
• In the novel The Martian War, Dr. Moreau and Percival Lowell take a crashed Martian scout to see the crater. It reminds the Martian of its home.
• In the novel 3001: The Final Odyssey, Frank Poole views a computer-generated model of the crater, and remembers exploring it as a child.

FUN STUFF RELATED TO METEOR CRATER:

Have some 3D glasses? View THIS IMAGE

Barringer Meteorite Crater Official Site

Play the Crater GAME

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Off for the weekend! And Maisie's play

Maisie is in a play tonight (The Velveteen Rabbit) in which she is the gardener :) Our Drama Club worked really hard at the play, sets, costumes etc. and we're really excited about seeing the end result!



After the play, we're having dinner then coming straight home to get ready for our road trip to Wyoming at 4 a.m. tomorrow morning :) Yes, we're a little nuts. Mom, Dad, my brother and his family, and we are all going to visit our newest nephew, our niece and my bro and SIL. It should be a blast!

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