Petrified Forest National Park / The Golden Boulder

so cool good morning today is Saturday April 20th and it is National Park week and I am celebrating at Petrified Forest n National Park this is the Painted Desert behind me which is super cool looking um you know I've been putting off doing this park for for a while for two reasons mostly because it's been pretty cold in this area overnight um it's finally getting warmer I think it's going to be in the high 70s or low 80s today um and then the other reason was I just wasn't that excited about it but uh but today I am excited because I'm going to do my first Back Country camping um so I'm going to hike into the um Painted Desert tonight and sleep here overnight um and then hike back out tomorrow so I'm really excited for that um so let's go check out some of Petrified Forest National Park so this is none Point as you can see some of the different colors in the rock we are at Porco playo Village on Porco Porco playo is a prehistoric settlement built of shaped Sandstone blocks by ancestral play blow people it was inhabited between ad. 1250 and 1380 so this is a stone Kea the structures above ground served as living quarters and storage rooms there are also several Subterranean rooms or keas such as the one behind you keas are ceremonial and religious structures these likely had flat roofs with a square entrance above a hear as the smoke Rose through the entrance fresh air was drawn through a small ventilation shaft so very similar to the ones in uh Mesa Verde where they had the holes in the ground only instead of these keas being made of dirt they're made of stone some more of the Sandstone foundations you can see the different rooms outlined in the foundation so here that we have some of the Petra Cliffs this one if you can see see the bird shape according to the plaque here that is a Petroglyph of a white-faced ibis there are more petroglyphs down there and over here we have according to this plaque these are migration symbols that is like very clearly defined love the layers of rock here it's like very very th fin layers I'm still amazed how different the rocks look at every Park I go to so this is my first hike for today the Blue Mesa Trail this one is just a mile but it's one of the most popular hikes because of the amazing scenery at that cool so [Music] cool this looks like something from a movie this is so incredible all this Blue Rock and there's this just one gold Boulder so [Music] weird so the gold Boulders actually petrified wood it's like crystally sparkly starting to see a bit more of the Petrified Wood it's kind of just randomly distributed throughout the area weird I haven't seen any plaques on the wood yet so I don't really know how it got here at the top of Blue Mesa is the Flatt tops one Sandstone of the sella member mainly a conglomerate a collection of C cobbles and Pebbles cemented together the particles were laid down by a stream in the late Triassic Epoch the larger size pebbles in this conglomerate indicate that the stream is moving at a higher velocity other layers are very fine remnants of silt or mud from the bottom of slow moving or Still Water the hardness and cohesiveness of the rock layers also Define its resistance to erosion a clue to erosional changes of the future I love how stripy it is looks like just like that looks like a river of logs so weird it looks like they were just placed there but I I don't think that's the case I don't know mushroom like pedestals supporting petrified wood pieces are products of water erosion the softer material beneath the hard caps of petrified wood will eventually erode away dropping the piece to the ground it's so sparkly so cool Blue Mesa is one of the best places in the park for visitors to explore Badlands Badlands are found around the world usually in arid regions where poorly Consolidated Rock under goes infrequent but torrential rain the the soft rock funnels quantities of water water down reals gullies and washes the water carrying loads of camon away bentonite clay within the formation can swall up with moisture shrinking and cracking as it dries creating an elephant skin surface I can't believe that I wasn't excited to come here this is one of the coolest places I've ever been so unique this is the Agate Bridge Water created a gate bridge and will destroy it the fossilized tree that now forms a Gate Bridge grew in a lush subtropical Forest 217 million years ago when this tree died it washed into a river and its quick bu bual by river sentiments prevented Decay volcanic ash dissolved in ground ground water provided silica which reacted with the log and slowly crystallized it into quartz millions of years later rivers and streams eroded massive layers of rock strata to expose this fossilized tree inevitably water now carving the small goly under aate bridge will cause its collapse the supportive concrete span constructed in 1917 is a tenuous attempt at preservation water will always have its way that's so cool so that's how it becomes crystallized from volcanic ash providing silica so this is Crystal Forest hopefully I'm going to learn more about this petrified wood that turns to quartz how cool is that so 200 million years ago 218 million years ago this was uh Lush forest and uh these logs these trees from the forest some of them fell into onto the ground and uh were eventually covered with layers of silt and groundwater that was filled with silica pen penetrated the logs and basically turned the inside to quartz over a long long long time and then as the land eroded the logs became visible again and they broke apart due to the heavy weight of the quartz which became brittle and caused the log to break so nobody nobody cut them nobody put them here they're just really old trees from the Triassic period so cool nature is so incredible so this will be my last of the day I'm doing the onx Bridge Trail and then hiking into the um Petrified Forest Wilderness to Camp so this will be my first time doing any backpack camping I'm pretty excited for it I had to go and get a uh Back Country permit from The Visitor Center wow look at this so cool there's my pack it's pretty heavy um I probably brought more than I need but uh I just I I I want to be prepared I used to be a girl scope The Motto was be prepared um so I just wanted to have everything I could possibly need so hopefully that works out my mom was messaging me about all of the wildli that I might encounter Bobcats coyotes rattlesnakes so uh let's be on the lookout for those but yeah I think you should be good so what kind of Scat do you think that is it's fairly large uh what do we think dog or coyote they look big for coyote right how big are coyote aren't they small well I'm going to guess that it was a dog because they're headed directly for Onyx bridge I got to say this is one of my favorite hikes ever I might say that every hike but it's so pretty it's so pretty do I keep going check out these rocks the color's not showing up right on video they're like a pale pink white stripe so pretty it's like strawberries and cream like like cream Savers cream Savers candies that's what they remind me of pink and white swirls look at this so cool holy cow I love it so all Trail says it's right here this log which I just walked right over and looking for [Laughter] it uh I think because it said onx bridge I was expecting darker petrified wood but this is it all right I got to set up camp it took me quite a while to find the right spot for my tent because a lot of the ground here is really hard um and I brought my Mallet with me to you know to get the steaks into the ground but um it's just like I don't know it's like quartz or something it's hard rock so uh yeah so it took me a little while but I think it's mostly secure and the wind isn't too bad today so uh I don't think I'll blow away yeah it's pretty quiet here I haven't seen any Wildlife like I saw maybe one or two birds when I first started hiking um but yeah it's pretty pretty quiet I'm the only one out here um yeah I'm excited this is so beautiful I can't wait to wake up here good morning today is Sunday April 21st and sun is coming up I just packed up um my tent and I am headed back to my car and uh yeah survived my first night camping in the Wild by myself and I'm really glad that I did this because now I know that I never have to do it again last night was terrifying um I barely slept I think I slept from 10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. and then heard animals outside my t tent I heard sniffing around my tent and uh I was pretty uh concerned about coyotes because uh of those tracks I saw yesterday so um I yelled quite a bit and um banged on my tent until whatever it was went away and then just repeated that for the next I don't know seven eight hours did not sleep at all um so uh I'm pretty sure now that it was uh Havalina because this morning um there were several of them around me I didn't look out it was dark um and I was afraid to open my tent but uh there were um I heard several animals kind of all around the tent and uh I banged and yelled and then I heard grunting and uh yeah sound like pigs to me so probably Havas anyway my battery's dying um and I need to navigate back to where I parked so that is it for me for now and yeah very interesting visit to Petrified Forest National Park

Channel: Sue Cloutier

Views: 674

Keywords:

Id: ph4gqqWAnHk

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2024