Sunday 7 October 2012

4 Oct -- Pinetop, Az: Day 6 (Petrified Forest)

On Thursday we drove up to the Petrified Forest National Park.  It was amazing!  The views were spectacular and weather was gorgeous.  It is a National Park that is 28 miles long.  You enter at one end and drive thru with about a dozen stops along the way.  Some are vistas and some have walking/hiking paths to explore.





 Line 'em up!




 Charlie quickly started working on the Junior Ranger Workbook we got from the visitor center.  Man he loved filling that thing out!


One stop was dedicated to Route 66 because it once passed right thru here before interstate 40 was put in.




 You can only imagine the huge cricket that was here a moment before I took the photo.

 More work to be done studying the petroglyphs.









 This is what Henry did with the bag of Ritz crackers I gave him.




 There were ravens at every stop.


 A natural bridge made from petrified rock that was reinforced by cement around 1910.






Anna taking a picture of a group whose heart was set on disgracing the petrified wood--if Charlie had been officially anointed a Junior Ranger and had seen this he would have stepped in!

At the end of the day, we took the completed workbooks for all three kids to the visitor center.  There, a nice man examined the kids' work.  Then he had them raise their right hand and he had them recite the Junior Ranger pledge.  I couldn't have been happier!  They then got a cool badge and patch...they haven't taken the badge off since (7 Oct) and sleep with it on their night stand.

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