Continuing our August 2019 tour of the American West, after we left the grounds near the Petrified Forest Visitor Center, we drove on into the Petrified Forest National Park, a large national park in Eastern Arizona, with more petrified trees, and wide, wondrous scenery.

Those boulders strewn across the landscape are mostly petrified tree logs.

Looks like recently chopped wood, doesn’t it? It’s actually rocks, fossilized trees that lived 200 million years ago.

This petrified tree had become, over time and water erosion, a petrified tree bridge. Below it is cement that was poured decades ago to support it when it was feared it may collapse. Nowadays less unsightly means of support might be feasible, but it’s too late for that now.

New Hampshire’s Old Man in the Mountain sadly collapsed. But it appears Arizona also has one, still visible, from a certain angle, in Petrified Forest National Park.

Ancient petrographs.

Another ancient artifact.

Maybe not quite as old as the petrographs. Or the petrified logs.