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Archive for the ‘Adventures With Pepper’ Category

Route 66: Where Dinosaurs Once Roamed

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2012| 5 Comments »

 “For fossils to thrive, certain favorable circumstances are required. First of all, of course, remnants of life have to be there. These then need to be washed over with water as soon as possible, so that the bones are covered with a layer of sediment.” – Richard Leakey

Hard to believe that this creature’s bones are over 200 million years old. — Photo by Pat Bean

The Bones of the Matter

It stands to reason that if conditions are right for ancient trees to be preserved, other things in the landscape will also be preserved.

 

Flowers weren’t plentiful in the Painted Desert. The landscape wasn’t encouraging for them, which is why this small patch of yellow stood out so dramatically. — Photo by Pat Bean

And of course they were, as evidenced by the dinosaur skeletons on display at the Rainbow Forest Museum, which sadly would be my final stop before exiting Petrified Forest National Park.

As dinosaurs go, well if you compare them to Sue, the Chicago Field Museum’s gigantic T-Rex, the ones that lived in this ancient forest, were on the dinky side.

The dinosaurs found here belong to the Triassic Period, the late dawn of the dinosaurs, according to the park’s fact sheets.

Two more ancient dinosaur skeletons. — Photo by Pat Bean

These human-sized dinosaurs shared the landscape, which back them was dominated by a huge river running through it, with phytosaurs and rauisuchians, words that sent me running for my dictionary. Crocodile-like is the best definition I could come up with.

Triassic, another word that left me wondering, refers to the period on earth that existed 200 to 250 million years ago.

Now, just as the age of dinosaurs had come and gone, it was time for me to leave the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest and continue traveling down the road. Flagstaff was awaiting me.

Bean’s Pat: Wistfully Wandering http://wistfullywandering.wordpress.comTake an armchair hike in Grand Teton National Park. I can’t believe I’ve missed this one.  

*This recognition is merely this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too. The Pat on the back is presented with no strings attached. May 25, patbean.wordpress.com

 

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Route 66’s Best Antiques

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , on May 30, 2012| 5 Comments »

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air, that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Agate Bridge: Floodwaters washed away softer sandstone to allow this harder 110-foot long petrified log to form a bridge. Humans, fascinated with the bridge, added supports, something National Park staff would not do today, preferring to leave things in a more natural state. This log bridge, however, was one of the things that prompted the creations of Petrified Forest Nation Park in 1906. — Photo by Pat Bean

Trees Turned to Stone

Stone logs testify to the ancient forest that once thrived here. — Photo by Pat Bean

Araucarioxylon arizonicum. I can’t pronounce it either. But I did learn that it was one of the most common trees found in a 225 million year old forest that once thrived in what is now Arizona.

These trees are extinct, but more than their memory lives on. The great conifers among them that were quickly buried by mud, silt and volcanic ash in ancient days, then at some point were exposed to silica-laden water, live on, their organic tissues transformed into quartz.

That, at least, ‘s the abbreviated version of the science behind the stone trees. If you want more details, you’ll have to do your own research. It could be fun.

I tried to picture the forest as it once was, with dinosaurs roaming through it, as I stood in front of “Old Faithful.”

Old Faithful: The largest 225 million year old tree trunk in the park. — Photo by Pat Bean

That’s the name of the largest Araucarioxylon arizonicum tree trunk on exhibit along a short hike behind the Rainbow Forest Museum near the south entrance to the park.

Petrified tree remains were once so plentiful, and not just in the Petrified Forest National Park where it’s illegal to remove then, that you can find homes and cafes and other structures in which they were used as building material.

Araucarioxylon arizonicum is also the Arizona’s state fossil.

Hmmm. I wonder if I can learn to speak the name of the tree as easily as I learned to say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Bean’s Pat: Love Thy Bike http://tinyurlcom/7n85fbh Take an armchair bike ride along the California Coast. 

*This recognition is merely this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too. The Pat on the back is presented with no strings attached. May 30, patbean.wordpress.com

 

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Route 66: From Hot Reds to Cool Blues

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Art, Favorite Hikes, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 29, 2012| 8 Comments »

 “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” Thich Nhat Hanh

Blue Mesa Trail in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. — Photo by Pat Bean

Blue Mesa

Big old petrified tree trunks like this is why it’s named Petrified Forest. — Photo by Pat Bean

I appreciate nature best when I can get up close and personal with it. I had that opportunity when I left Route 66 at the top of Windy Hill and hiked the Blue Mesa Trail.

The paved loop path, just a little over a mile long, drops about 100 feet down to the valley floor. It winds among the stratified rocks that tell 200-million-year-old stories, just as the petrified logs along the trail bear witness to an ancient forest.

Blue Mesa’s layered rocks contain 200-million years of the planet’s stories. — Photo by Pat Bean

A few people passed me on the hike, but mostly I had the trail to myself. It was an opportunity to drink in the peaceful stillness and ponder the creation of this landscape in which wind, water and the passing years were the artists.

My canine traveling companion, Pepper, greeted me as if I had been gone those 200 million years when I arrived back at our RV. I gave her treats and thought to myself that life couldn’t get any better.

Bean’s Pat: http://tinyurl.com/br2wub5 Take a walk with Mountain Mae.

*This recognition is merely this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too. The Pat on the back is presented with no strings attached. May 29, patbean.wordpress.com

 

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Route 66: With Plenty of Time to Linger

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Books, Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 28, 2012| 10 Comments »

 “Life is all about timing … the unreachable becomes reachable. The unavailable becomes available, the unattainable, attainable. Have the patience, wait it out. It’s all about timing.” Stacey Charter.

It’s pretty easy to see why this area of Petrified National Park is called the Tepees. — Photo by Pat Bean

Tepees and Grinning Old Men

But can you see the two grinning old men that I see in these rock formations? — Photo by Pat Bean

Having the time to dawdle as I travel, time to let my imagination run wild, time to stop just to see a dandelion’s fine seeds blow in the wind, to watch a cloud dragon turn into a mouse or a red-tailed hawk circle above is precious.

While I didn’t always keep my nose to the grindstone, the time I could let my mind wander in wonder in my younger years was always way too short. That is not the case these days. And each day I awake with gratitude in my heart for every unrushed second allowed me to on this beautiful planet.

Which is why this blog is still a couple of weeks behind my reality. I don’t want to rush you through the landscape either.

I want to share fully the unhurried day  day I spent in Arizona’s Painted Desert lands, espcially for those who told me they had passed this way but  didn’t have time to linger.

And these reminded me of pawns on a chess board, and then I immediately thought of the chess game in the first Harry Potter book. Perhaps you see something different? I’d love to know what. — Photo by Pat Bean

I hope you enjoy lingering and dawdling with me – and my odd thoughts. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bean’s Pat: A Small Press Life :  http://tinyurl.com/bpnf80c Surfin’ Bird – this one’s for Agatha Christie fans. As one myself, it tickled my funny bone to see this early photo of the Grand Dame of who-done-its. 

*This recognition is merely this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too. The Pat on the back is presented with no strings attached. May 28, patbean.wordpress.com

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Summer

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , on May 26, 2012| 7 Comments »

 “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.” – John Lubbock.

Ye Old Swimming Hole

Everyone should have a summer swimming hole in their past This one can be found near Carthage, Missouri. — Photo by Pat Bean

“Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all’s right with the world.” Ada Louise Huxtable.

Bean’s Pat:: The Kindness Kronicles: http://tinyurl.com/bnjcqha Today I simply pass on Debbie’s Irish blessing to my readers. Her blog offers daily inspiration for a kinder world. 

*This recognition is merely this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too. The Pat on the back is presented with no strings attached. May 26, patbean.wordpress.com

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Ancient Graffiti Along Route 66

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Birds, Favorite Places, Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , , , on May 25, 2012| 9 Comments »

“When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.” Samuel Lover, “Handy Andy,” 1842

Marker depicting some of the petroglyphs that can be seen below the cliff from the viewing platform. — Photo by Pat Bean

Newspaper Rock

The newspaper I found as I continued my travels on old Route 66 through the Petrified Forest National Park was 650 to 2000 years old. And it wasn’t written on paper pages.

Newspaper Rock, a National Historic Landmark. — Photo by Pat Bean

It was scratched in desert varnish on large boulders. And I couldn’t understand it. Neither can the experts.

Actually, in today’s age we would probably call it graffiti.

Were the petroglyphs carved into the rock by wise men among the Puerco River Valley Indian farmers who lived in the area?

 Or were they done by bored Indian teenagers wanting to leave their mark on something?

Up close details — Photo by Pat Bean

As usual, the landscape I’m wandering through has me wondering again.

I love it.

“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.: – Albert Einstein

Bean’s Pat: Everyday Sunshine: Get Close http://tinyurl.com/73enmyg I dare you to look into these birds’ eyes – even if you’re not an avid birdwatcher like me, I think you will be amazed. 

*This recognition is merely this  wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too. The Pat on the back is presented with no strings attached.  May 25, patbean.wordpress.com

 

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Route 66 Memories

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 24, 2012| 2 Comments »

 “We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they’re called memories. Some take us forward, they’re called dreams.” — Jeremy Irons

 

This old junker is part of the Route 66 Memorial located in the Petrified Forest National Park. Note the passing semi on Interstate 40 in the background. — Photo by Pat Bean

You Can’t Get There From Here

As I continued on the park road after leaving the restored Painted Desert Inn and the mystery of the missing 200 million years’ unconformity, I found myself back at Interstate 40, but with no access to it.

This wandering old broad wonders how many of my readers traveled this road in its heydays. — Photo by Pat Bean

Located in sight of the freeway’s roaring traffic of semis and automobiles with occupants in a rush to get some place, I came upon a rusted, wheel-less relic of a different age. Like the A-Dome in Hiroshima, the only building remaining after the city’s bombing, this junker was a reminder of what once was.

Route 66 lives on only in memories, and bits and pieces of a route that truly takes one nowhere these days.

This tickled my funny-bone. — Photo by Pat Bean

I didn’t have the same degree of sadness in my heart as the day I stood before the A-Dome in Japan, but I wasn’t jumping up and down for joy either. Route 66 is a part of my past, a road that took this Texas flat-lander to magical places where there were mountains when I was only 14.

But then I thought of all the many places that today’s highways have taken me in my life. In the eight years that I have been a full-time RV-er, I’ve traveled this beautiful country called America from sea to shining sea. And more than once.

With this in mind, I gave a second look to this Route 66 memorial standing in front of me. And I laughed at the absurdity of encasing the front section of an automobile in cement. And this wasn’t the first such one I had seen. There had been similar encased old cars in the Albuquerque aquarium I visited, and in the Auto Museum in Santa Rosa.

Yup! Route 66 may be gone, but it certainly isn’t forgotten.

Bean’s Pat: Egret and Ibis http://tinyurl.com/cwefngs My kind of  poetry.

*This award is simply this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too.

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OK: Let’s Get a Bit Scientific

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 23, 2012| 16 Comments »

 “Read, every day something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.” – Christopher Morley

200 million years are missing from this landscape. — Photo by Pat Bean

Unconformity Along Route 66

It’s amazing how much you can learn from stopping to read roadside markers. I rarely pass one by, usually only because it’s on the wrong sign of a busy highway, and I value my life more than my curiosity.

It’s amazing what one can learn from roadside markers. — Photo by Pat Bean

That was no problem during my recent loop through the Petrified Forest National Park, where I’m not sure I even saw a dozen other cars.

The educational marker shown here notes that the basalt cap on the top layer of the cliffs was deposited five to eight million years ago. The lower valley layer, however, was deposited about 225 million years ago. What happened to the 200 million years in between?

The scientist have only guesses.

During the 1990s, I saw similar unconformities in the landscape in the Grand Canyon, when I rafted the Colorado River through it. There was a fun discussion around the campfire later that night about the missing landscape.

But just like the scientists, we rafters could only speculate. Meanwhile, this wandering old broad is left in her familiar state of wondering.

Bean’s Pat: Don’t Follow the Lights http://tinyurl.com/7avfh7v I’ve gotta visit Marfa, Texas – so I can wonder some more.

*This award is this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too.

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Route 66: Petrified Forest National Park

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Dogs, Favorite Places, Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , , on May 22, 2012| 9 Comments »

 “I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” – Rosalia de Castro

Painted Desert Inn

Painted Desert Inn, Petrified Forest National Park. — Photo by Pat Bean

A National Historic Landmark, the Painted Desert Inn was once a thriving roadside stop for Route 66 travelers.

Restored ceiling tiles beneath which diners once ate. — Photo by Pat Bean

It went belly up, Like so many other attractions along the Mother Road, when Interstate 40 replaced Route 66 and bypassed the 25-mile loop through the park.

But where so many of the other relics of the past stand sagging and crumbling, the park has restored the inn to all its former glory.

But without the bustle of a busy lunch crowd, or travelers who might pay to spend the night, the inn felt sad and forlorn.

With only myself, the inn (now a musuem) caretaker and another couple, the place felt ghostly as I wondered through it, trying to imagine it in its heydays.

I didn’t stay long, but rejoined my canine traveling, Pepper, in my RV, so we could continue enjoying the scenery.  

Bean’s Pat: You Are My Collected http://rtewrite.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/you-are-my-collected/ Ditto what Harper said about my own followers. You are appreciated.

*The Pat is simply this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps the readers of this blog might, too. It’s given with no strings attatched.

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Route 66: Colorful Landscape

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , on May 21, 2012| 11 Comments »

 “Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

First Come the Reds

A colorful landscape as far as the eye can see. — Photo by Pat Bean

Getting off Interstate 40 to follow the Mother Road, Route 66, through Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park made for a fantastic 25-mile detour.

Red was the dominant color in this section of the Painted Desert. — Photo by Pat Bean

Journey with me this week and I’ll share the treasured eye jewels. I hope you enjoy the vivid landscapes as much as I did.

Today’s photos of the Painted Desert were taken near the northern entrance to the park.

Bean’s Pat: Molly’s Story http://tinyurl.com/7p5aq78 A heart warming story about a horse that had a will to live and survive.

*This daily award is this writer’s opinionated choice for best blog of the day. There are no requirements for accepting it.

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