Petrified forest Arizona late November 2010

Mike and I drove to Houston and stopped at the Petrified Forest and spent nearly a day looking at the trees, badlands, petroglyphs and a stray black crow or two.

Very old rock. And nice socks.

I was trying out my new camera and not used to settings yet, so the photo does not do justice to any of the colors in these truly beautiful rocks.

 Truly amazing that these bright sediments replaced the tree matter.

This was supposed to represent a replica of a building the ancient people who lived here built.

 The Park Rangers constantly talked about not taking any rocks with you and the sins of doing so; then they held up loose leaf notebooks, which they claimed were filled with letters from people who had taken rocks and then felt guilty and sent the rocks back. The people who had taken them testified that they were cursed rocks and therefore returned them to feel better about themselves (or so it was implied.) They rangers didn't mention what happened to these cursed rocks.

Nice long logs in several places.

I just thought this was a nice lookin' empty seed pod.