I woke up at 3:30 a.m. (TYG!) to get my daily message out to you and leave for Boston by 6:30. This adventure is such a pleasure as it allows me to revisit memories, all of which are pleasant. I thrive on your feedback and this was the best of all from my friend who said, "Good morning...thank you for education. Are you on our President's email list? He should be getting a copy of this each morning. It would help to center him." Wow! I interpret that to mean that they help center her, which is exactly what I'm seeking to do. So, if you think it's a good idea and you have access to people who can make this happen, let's go for it.

On Day 25 of our "365 Parks in 365 Days" adventure, let us travel to northern Arizona, and visit the Petrified Forest National Park.

                              Can you believe these gems? Petrified wood.

Did you ever think in your whole life that you would see a tree that had turned to stone? Or that trees can turn to stone? This was my feeling when I first visited in 1995 on the great road trip around the country that changed our lives and made us passionate about the national parks and our environment. Here's how we describe it in "Legacy on the Land: A Black Couple Discovers Our Inheritance and Tells Why Every American Should Care:"

"Driving on I-40 through the Painted Desert just southeast of Flagstaff we were enveloped in an unending landscape of multicolored hills, from deep purple and rich gray to red, orange and pink. The Painted Desert encompasses 93,500 acres of spectacular beauty. The view continues all the way to the Petrified Forest National Park, about 100 miles east of Flagstaff. . .I hadn't even known that such a place existed. For miles before we got to the entrance, we saw hand lettered signs offering petrified wood for sale.

"As soon as we turned onto the short drive into the park, we saw the glint of jewels in the grass. There were small pieces that were maybe a couple of inches, and gigantic pieces that were literally tree trunks. We were surrounded in a dazzling display of jewels without price, that no one had ever had to mint or polish. The trees were more than 225 million years old, and scientists have proven that they washed down from a grove higher up, got stuck in a logjam, and were buried for millions of years under ash and silt. With their oxygen cut off, the process of decay had slowed down. Then, mineral-rich water seeped into the wood, and slowly, the organic fiber of the trees was gradually displaced by multicolored quartz!

This Ranger and I discovered we have mutual friends in Everglades and Biscayne National Parks - one degree of separation.

"The park also bears the relics of an ancient Native American civilization, which apparently left the area around the 1400s. But their accomplishments are indelibly written in petroglyphs that they drew on the rocks and the brick remnants of their community structures. Intricately positioned boulders form solar calendars that they used to chart the passage of the sun across the sky.

"The park covers 50,000 acres, and we learned that it contains more than 500 archaeological sites that reveal the bones of ancient amphibians and reptiles, including some of the earliest dinosaurs. We promised ourselves that one day we would go back and join an archaeological dig.

                                          I had a wonderful time!

"Park rules strictly forbid visitors from removing any petrified wood -- or anything else -- and park rangers question everyone leaving to assure themselves that nothing has been taken."

 
  If you've missed any of our "365 Parks in 365 Days" .adventure, find them here. .Archive