Petrified Forest State Park

On our way home from Bryce Canyon, we stopped at a new (to us) park - Petrified Forest State Park.

I tried to set careful expectations with the children... when I was a wee-one my family took a vacation to California and visited a petrified forest. I was super excited to see majestic trees soaring into the air, their trunks and leaves and needles all magically transformed into stone. The experience fell far short of my imaginative expectations - vaguely tree-shaped rocks lying on the ground were not what I was hoping for.

I think that I sufficiently expressed my traumatic childhood experience to the kiddos because they ended up deciding that petrified wood was pretty darn cool and Ben even insisted that we stop at the rock shop on our way out of the park so that he could pick up some legally-acquired petrified wood to bring home.

And the tree-rocks really were cool.  I must have been too hard on them as a child (what with the crushing realization that they were hunks of rock on the ground to cope with and all) because seeing the big and small hunks of beautifully-colored stone littering the ground really was fun.

See? The rock-trees really are pretty

Thanks for redeeming a small dark spot on my otherwise very happy childhood, Petrified Forest State Park. And I'm glad that my children will have naught but happy memories and dust-collecting (but legally collected) souvenirs of your ancient trees.