Arizona|New Mexico|Oregon|Texas|Washington|TAMU|*Family|*Wedding
We visited Arizona together with New Mexico from 28th December to 4th January 2000.
Our Arizona trip highlights mainly the Petrified Forest National Park, Meteor Crater and Monument Valley.
Note : Please click on the thumbnails to see a bigger photograph.
*Family and Wedding are in a password protected area. Please contact me if you would like to see it.
Petrified Forest National Park in Holbrook
The 93,533 acres of Petrified Forest which contain America's largest deposits of petrified wood, a rich and colorful desert, many fossils of dinosaurs and other creatures, and more than 500 archaeological sites including amazing petroglyphs left by ancient cultures.
Painted Desert : The colors in the desert result from the minerals in the soil; the characteristic red color is due to iron oxides.
Blue Mesa : It features worldly, almost lunar landscapes with wildly sculpted hills and striated rocks.
Petrified wood : After a volcano eruption, its lava buried the tree underneath some layer and after many years of erosion, it revealed the tree fossil or rather crystal.
50,000 years ago, a huge iron-nickel meteorite, hurtling at about 40,000 miles per hour, struck with an explosive force. The meteorite left a crater 700 feet deep and over 4000 feet across. Today the crater is 550 feet deep, and 2.4 miles in circumference.
The Setting Hen, and King on His Throne are among the dozens of formations in the orange and red, terraced sandstones.
