The McKenzie's Official world tour site
# Thursday, 29 January 2009
Amarillo to the Grand Canyon!

We trekked back to Texas and did manage to find Amarillo! We stayed at the Amarillo Ranch RV Park which had a beautiful heated indoor swimming pool too! It was bath temperature and so I even ventured in!

The Palo Duro Canyon State Park was our next stop. Once more beautiful scenery swept past us as we drove to the view points. This is known as the Grand Canyon of Texas and has a land which has been shaped by erosion. This canyon was formed less than 1 million years ago when the Prairie dog Town Fork of the Red River first carved its way through the Southern High Plains. However the rocks which are exposed today tell a story spanning back 250 million years. There are defined layers of rocks which have been exposed, adding to the colourful beauty as their story unfolds.  We enjoyed walking around the canyon lands and luckily the rattle snakes kept themselves to themselves! However we did see plenty of deer and wild turkeys too!

The view from the first vantage point was so breathtaking that I managed to forget to pick up my bag from there! I did not miss it until much later into the evening when we were back at camp and so we could only hope it would still be there tomorrow?

We packed up Nessie and took an extra journey back to the canyon and LUCKILY my bag had been handed in to the front gate station – fully intact! Another lesson learnt and many thanks to that person who had the decency to hand it in!!

We travelled out of Texas once more and into New Mexico. The Enchanted Trails RV Park and Trading Post was on Route 66 near Albuquerque.  This also had a Camping World sweetie shop for Phil and we spent a good while in there chatting to the helpful staff – Grant and Wendy. It was great to be recommended places not to miss on the rest of our journey toward California and to find out lots more information about Alaska that we shall need later on in the year!

We visited ‘Old Town’ Albuquerque which had a unique blend of people, cultures, traditions and creative forms of expression. Historic Old Town is a cultural shopping destination with a strong sense of identity. It follows the traditional Spanish pattern of a central Plaza and church surrounded by homes and businesses. Many artisans lined the street, still making and selling their jewellery in silver, turquoise and other south-western stones. Also on display was a variety of authentic native rugs, weavings and pottery. We found a beautiful ceremonial drum with a buffalo scene in the centre and now just have to find somewhere to store it!!

After a cultural time we left New Mexico and travelled into the Arizona desert! This has been a much anticipated highlight of our journey for Phil! Something about driving in the desert is very appealing! At least it is not mid -summer – in fact we are still following the snow!

We went to see the Petrified Forest (and expected it to be very scared -at the very least!) This is also a National Park which is home to the Crystal Forest and Painted Desert in addition to the Petrified Forest. There is also a wilderness area –so defined as being an area where human imprint is minimal. In 1964 Congress passed the Wilderness Act, restricting grazing, mining, timber cutting and mechanized vehicles in these areas. They are protected and valued and the Petrified Forest wilderness area consists of over 50,000 acres of mesas, buttes, badlands and scattered areas of grasslands. The trees in the forest have been turned to stone through a process involving millions of years. As a result of the different minerals found in the rocks – a huge variety of intriguing colours have been left behind.  This National Park has one of the largest deposits of Petrified wood in the world! Ben was a little bit disappointed as he expected the trees to be stood upright but made of stone!  The high, dry, grassland was once a vast floodplain which was crossed by many streams. As the trees fell, the swollen streams washed them into the floodplains. A mix of silt, mud and volcanic ash buried the logs. It was this sediment that cut off oxygen and slowed down the logs decaying process. Next, as silica –laden water seeped through the logs it replaced the original wood tissue with silica deposits. Eventually the silica crystallised into quartz, and the logs became preserved as petrified wood. The colours are amazing as minerals such as iron, carbon, manganese, and sometimes cobalt and chromium produce patterns and blends of yellow, red, black, blue, brown, green, white and pink.  

Some of this wood is polished up and sold commercially today. There are many very unusual and attractive pieces that may be purchased at several petrified wood trading posts and we had a great time at one of these stores!

We stopped over at the OK RV Park in Holbrook on our way through to Flagstaff – a milestone on the Route 66! On our way we thought it would be interesting to drop off at a Meteor Crater which is the best preserved and the first proven meteorite impact site on Planet Earth! This is one of the most extraordinary places on earth!  Approximately 50,000 years ago, a giant meteoric mass weighing millions of tons hurtled through space at 26,000 miles per hour and impacted on Earth.  The crater is nearly 1 mile across, 2.4 miles in circumference, and over 550 feet deep! This is as tall as a 60 story building! The terrain so closely resembles that of the Earth’s Moon and other planets that NASA designated it as an official training site for the Apollo Astronauts. The Meteor Crater is the site of many important discoveries in the Science of Meteorites and cratering mechanics. We saw the actual Apollo Test Capsule with a viewing window to show the astronauts cramped quarters. We all got to touch the biggest surviving piece of meteor that has been left behind and this was about a three foot long nugget. It was a weird feeling to think that this was not even from our world!

We continued to Flagstaff and stayed in the KOA RV Park. They had a huge amount of snow about a month ago and lots of it was still around. The children had a great time as it was now warm enough to go out and enjoy playing in the snow without getting frostbite in the first few minutes!

We continued travelling in Arizona and went to visit the Grand Canyon National Park.........more to follow!!

 

FACTOIDS-

·         Palo Duro Canyon is 120 miles long and 800 feet deep and is the second –largest canyon in the United States.

·         PALO DURO is Spanish for HARD WOOD – in reference to the Rocky Mountain Juniper trees found in the canyon.

·         Native American Tribes in the area once included Kiowa, Comanche and Cheyenne.

·         The endangered Palo Duro mouse is found only in the Red River canyon lands and nowhere else.

·         The endangered Texas horned lizard is also found in this region.

·         Palo Duro State Park officially opened on July 4th, 1934.

·         In Albuquerque every October there is the largest ballooning event in the world. The 78 acres launch field at Balloon Fiesta Park becomes immersed in the process of inflating, launching and landing balloons!

·         Old Town Albuquerque is an historical zone for the city and home for many families whose ancestors founded the town.

·         Petrified Wood is surprisingly heavy and hard. It weighs nearly 200 pounds per cubic foot and its hardness is 7 on a 10 point scale.

·         In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt set aside selected strands of the Petrified trees as a National Monument.

·         In 1962 Congress designated the monument as a National Park.

·         Crocodile – like reptiles, giant amphibians and small dinosaurs lived among a variety of ferns, cycads, and other plants and animals that are known only as fossils at the Petrified Forest today.

·         The vast floor of the Meteor Crater is large enough to accommodate 20 football games being played simultaneously as over two million fans watch from the sloping walls of the impact site!

·         The Crater has been the setting for the movie “Star man” and numerous documentaries.

·         The Meteor was estimated at being about 150 feet across and weighing several hundred thousand tons, and it struck the rocky plain with an explosive force greater than 20 million tons of TNT!

 

WILDLIFE HITS-

·         Wild Turkeys

·         Mule Deer

 

 


Thursday, 29 January 2009 02:24:46 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [1]  USA

Tuesday, 03 February 2009 12:45:21 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Hi everyone, your trip is amazing and the photos are great - fantastic for Ben & Jemma. This is a quick email to say we have been buried underneath a thick covering of snow! We are all snowed in down the lane and will not be venturing out!!
I will email some photos!
love from the Hendy's x
The Hendy's
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