Petrified wood in Arizona

[val horn]

I went out to Arizona this fall.  Still looking for mammoth, but did come back with  triassic petrified wood.  The Petrified Forest is outside of Holbrook.  It really is a whole petrified forest that was  brought down by massive floods--  whole trees no branches no leaves.  After that i went looking for wood i could take home.  Near the Petrified forest is a paid dig site  DoBell ranch.  It looks like something out of "American Picker " with the old trucks  and and the old buildings.  There were visitors there who went to town digging.  I stayed with surface finds and and came home with more wood than I know what to do with-- in great colors.  

 

 

[val horn]

I also stopped at Gray mountain a free site on the road to Holbrook.  The information I had  just said take a side road and  drive.    i took one of the little dirt roads and stopped where ever there was gravel..  I don't think I drove more than  500 feet total.  There were small pieces of wood  scattered in the gravel.  Sometimes that's all that they were, and sometimes there were decent chunks, and one piece (still there) was a good part of a tree.

 

 

 

 

[Tales From the Shale]

I think these forests are Triassic in age right? Most of them came from a rapid burial if I remember 

[jpc]

Yeah, Triassic.  For those who are unaware.  The huge logs in the first pictures are part of Petrified Forest National Monument.  Not open to collecting.  The Monument have a great little museum full of more than trees.... Triassic beasties found there. 

[val horn]

jpc is correct on several points.  there was a really nice fossil display in the visitors center. and you dont collect in the Petrified Forest.