Petrified Forest

Continuing our Valentine's Day trip, between Calistoga and Santa Rosa, on the Calistoga Highway, we paid a visit to the Petrified Forest. It's another natural phenomenon owned by a private family, and another $10/per person cover charge. However, we got the rainy-day discount. The gift shop is also a museum, and provides the opportunity to purchase a variety of rocks, lava, crystal, and other geological gems. But most puzzling are the fossils. Fossils that seem to belong in a museum can be yours for a nice fatty price, so perhaps there is an abundance of them to go around (or perhaps they are replicas). Not that I doubt the integrity of our nation's roadside entrepreneurs.

Not to be deterred by a cold mountain rain, this time I made use of the umbrella, and my husband and I walked the self-guided trail through the petrified wood forest. Remember the large volcano that stood where Old Faithful is now? It blew its top. Millions of years ago (a speck in geologic time), lava, molten rock, and ash covered the area and deeply buried the redwood forest. The forest remained buried for millions of more years (another speck in geologic time). Fire and ash turned to torrential rains, and the saturated ground (dissolved ash), caused silica to seep down to the buried trees below. The silica molecules replaced all of the wood molecules, but maintained perfectly the shape, texture, and colors of the fallen tree. So what we're looking at is not a redwood tree any more. It's a stone replica. This colossal fossil of a redwood still extends out from the mine from which it was excavated.

This time I managed to stay dry, but please don't notice the shoes. I meant to grab my Merrills and wound up with one Merrill and one Nike. Two different shoes beats slipping and sliding in clogs, so that was that. And Chris couldn't help himself in the gift shop. I walked out with a Valentine's Day gift of a heart-shaped box of polished volcanic basalt that had entombed and fossilized an extinct gastropod.