But I digress.
It was a cold morning as we checked out of the hotel. Petrified Forest National Park was our day's destination so we headed up I-40 to the visitor center. Big strategic mistake. We should have taken Hwy 180 SE to the southern entrance and worked our way north. That way we would have had time to see the whole thing without doubling back. Oh well, next time...
We came for the petrified logs but what impressed us the most, in the end was the petroglyphs. Not because of the paltry number we were able to sorta see from afar – because of the ones you're not allowed to visit but can see in the book Tapamveni. HOLY CRUD there are a lot of petroglyphs there. This was a major Native American settlement and cultural hub!
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| see that big block in the lower middle? that's the photo below |
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just one of the massive petroglyph panels you can't actually walk up to (or even get close)    
Petrified logs are much harder than the clay they're in, so they often end up on the very top of ridges...and then they roll down into the gullies.
  
We had to hurry back so's to not get caught by a closed highway. Snow was falling back home again.
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