We visited the Petrified Forest in March 2016.
The Petrified Forest National Park in northern Arizona is in a pretty barren landscape, but there are huge logs of petrified wood, many of which are still lying where they fell, looking like they are still made of wood, even though now they are solid rock. Some of the petrified wood has cracked into chunks where you can see they contain may different beautiful colors of stone and sometimes even an iridescent shimmer. This park is right next to the famous Painted Desert, but we didn't have time to check that out on this trip.
We did the junior ranger program entirely at the the Rainbow Forest Museum and the trail that runs behind it. This museum is the first visitor center you encounter when you enter the park. The museum is small but has some cool exhibits with dinosaur skeletons! The exhibits give you a great idea of the huge ancient forest that was here, deep rivers, and the amazing plants and animals that populated it. There were ferns, conifers, giant crocodile-like reptiles and giant salamander-like amphibians. It's all hard to imagine now, since the area is so dry, empty, and rocky.
The junior ranger booklet is for the most part a scavenger hunt type deal. Kids have to find things in the museum and outside on the trail. The booklet has some coloring parts, so we were glad we brought our colored pencils. It asks you to color the petrified logs with all the colors you see in them. When we finished the ranger gave us the usual petrified forest badges and also junior ranger patches, which was neat.
Junior Ranger: "I thought we were going to a forest. But it was really a desert. That was a surprise!"
Mom: "During their pledge, the ranger made the kids swear to eat their vegetables--ha!"
No comments:
Post a Comment