The Final Leg: Getting to Cortez

The final day of my journey to Cortez, Colorado began this morning bright and early...7am California time (it's an hour later here). I headed out from my hotel in search of the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert (they're the same park). Timing was with me and I arrived at the visitor center just in time for their 10am introduction to the park and explanation about the creation of Petrified wood (silica from volcanic ash invades the trees that have been uprooted and lodged at the bottom of river beds - 225 millions years ago when this area was like a tropical jungle - and eventually all the carbon based cells are replaced with the silica that hardens and creates the petrified wood). I listen to the guide for bit and then set out to see the park. I was on a time crunch so I only had time to stop at a few of the different lookouts and vistas, but the ones I stopped at were magnificent. The weather was nice and I had sun for most of the morning allowing me to get some great pictures.





The first area that I took a look at was called "Giant Logs" because numerous trees had been brought to this location by long since dried up rivers. Pressure from the earth had caused the trees to snap like pieces of chalk where each piece is roughly the same length as its diameter.




The road that meanders through the park passes several different views and vantage points. I took a picture of these cliffs while driving through.






I stopped at a guide marker entitled "Puerco Pueblo" which is the ruin of a 100 room building that is believed to have housed 200 individuals. The ruins also host pictographs which cover some of the stones on the outside region of the ruins.





At the end of the park is the Painted Desert which was named by the Spaniards, who called it "el Desierto Pintura" because of its brightly colored landforms. The area is aptly named for everywhere you look the rocks and sands are a bunch of different colors (reds and pinks and blues and purples and grays and yellows). It's like someone took a paint bucket filled with different paints and threw it all over the desert. There was a mile trail that was supposed to lead to some great vantage points, but unfortunately it was closed. I guess I'll have to go on it the next time that I'm there. I added a pictures of me here too (it's bad though...you've been warned so don't complain)

The Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert were my only vices today as I ran out of time and had to head directly to Crow Canyon from the park. I would have been on time (4pm) too if the locals in Cortez even knew that there was archaeological center located there. I was directed 15 miles the wrong direction to an Anasazi heritage center (at least they sent me to a Native American Center and not a church or something). After asking a few other people and consulting my map, I finally made to to Crow Canyon, my home for the next few months.






It turns out that I am the only education intern here for this session. The education department only has one intern per session. There are two other lab interns here as well, but they are house sitting for various different staff members that are on vacation so I get to have a 6 person cabin all to myself. Until April 7th (and hopefully longer if I can work it out), I'm in a cabin that has heat and light and a place to put my stuff. After April 7th, it's considered the busy season and they will most likely need the cabin I'm in for students that will come up. If that happens I get moved to the furthest away rustic cabin that has no amenities and no space (not even for clothes), but since I'll be the only one in the cabin I'll just put all my stuff on another of the beds. But here's to hoping that I can just stay where I am.

I got a quick introduction to everyone that was here, had dinner, met the kids that I'm going to be working with for the next 3 days (they arrived at the same time as me and will be here until Thursday morning), went to the kids' introduction meeting and that's about the gist of the night. It's only 8pm but I think that I'm even more tired than all the kids and they had 6 and 11 hour bus rides to get here (there's a group from New Mexico and one from near Tusan), so I will sign off for tonight.