Petrified Forest

So before entering the national park we stopped at a gift shop/ Dinosaur museum
This is a skeleton of a dino
and some fossils
A fun little pond
And the back yard full of rocks/ and petrified wood for sale
But as it was Sunday there were no purchases made.
I got this baby Dino hatching for the grandkids cute huh?
Then it was off to the forest Or as in the brochure Stories of climate and culture
told in stone: This high, dry grassland was once a vast floodplain crossed by many streams. Tall , stately conifer trees grew along the banks. Crocodile-like reptiles, giant amphibians, and small dinosaurs lived among a variety of ferns, cycads, and other plants and animals known only as fossils today. The trees, Araucarioxylon, Woodworthia, Schilderia, and others, fell, and swollen streams washed them into adjacent floodplains. A mix of silt, mud, and volcanic ash buried the logs. This sediment cut off oxygen and slowed the logs' decay. Silica-laden groundwater seeped through the logs and replaced the original wood tissues with silica deposits. Eventually silica crystallized into quartz, and the logs were preserved as petrified wood.




This was a huge tree as it is buried on either end and more than
half is unseen.

petrified trees as far as the eye can see.


They look so much like chopped wood you just have to touch it
to see that indeed it is stone.















This log bridge was Strengthened in 1930's so wouldn't fall.
If it was discovered today they would leave it in it's original state

The Tee Pees
And so after seeing the sights we were again on our way to San Angelo