Day 12: I potentially bought a curse and later channeled my inner Jodie Foster.
We left Holbrook in the early morning and headed further down I-40/Route 66. Our plan was to drive south through Petrified Forest National Park and pick up hwy 180 on the other side and take that toward New Mexico.
Petrified Forest National Park has a large collection of 225-million-year-old petrified wood among badlands of eroded sedimentary rock. You also get views of the Painted Desert, the original Route 66 and thousand-year-old petroglyphs.
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| Ready to check out that old wood. |
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| The pink/red areaa waaaaaay out there is the Painted Desert. |
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| Some dude left his car to take a wiz along old Route 66… and was never heard from again. |
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The poles are original to the old Route 66. You can also see the raised road (but not in this picture) where the road used to be. The cars in the background are on the new 66, aka I-40.
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| Bird monster? |
Apparently members of the Zuni tribe believe that this particular petroglyph represents Crane clan and Frog clan. Hopi interpretation is that it’s a story about a giant bird that comes to villages and eats bad children. I’m going with the latter. It’s like the Hopi version of Krampus.
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| When the little box touches the center of the spiral it’s either the end of the world or a way to chart the solstice. |
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| Huge tree turd on top of a sediment hill. |
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| Add captionPetrified wood has the look of agate- shiny stone with a depth of various colors. |
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| Rock bark. Rark. |
So the story is that people steal pieces of petrified wood from the park and they get cursed. This is from WeirdUs.com:
Bad luck comes to he who possesses it, which has prompted thousands to send the stuff back. For decades, Petrified Forest has received pilfered samples in the mail, returned by visitors who regret having stolen them. Notes included with the fragments describe lives wrought with misfortune since the rocks’ theft. In the letters, filchers plead with park officials to return the pieces to their rightful place.
One visitor described a piece of petrified wood he had taken more than 10 years earlier. “It was a great challenge sneaking it out of the park,” he wrote. “Since that time, though, nothing in my life has gone right.” Another begged, “My life has been totally destroyed since we’ve been back from vacation. Please put these back so my life can get back to normal! Let me start over again!”
Rangers say the frequency of returns varies by season, but in the summer, they get at least one every other day. Their collection goes back decades to around the time the park was established. Usually, visitors send back pieces after only a short period, but sometimes visitors endure their misfortune for a lifetime. Just recently, according to a park ranger, one piece arrived that was stolen back in 1928.
So I did the sane and sanctioned thing and bought a chunk from the park store. They get it from outside sources. Hopefully it was not stolen originally and I’ve accidentally brought a curse back with me.
We came out the south side of the Park and got back on 180, east bound to New Mexico. Our next stop would be just west of Socorro: The Very Large Array (dun dun dun!!). But before then it would be nothing but… nothing. A lot of it.
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| Great sign. |
We had no idea what to expect from The Very Large Array (dun dun dun!!). All I knew is that you could do a tour and that the visitor’s center has a 20min movie narrated by Jodie Foster (which is available via YouTube!) Holy cats. I was excited to see this place. I mean, come on! SPACE yo!
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| And there it is, rising out of the nothing that is the landscape of western New Mexico. |
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| I really like the name of the place. It’s oddly specific, like there was another large array somewhere else and the designers said, “Let’s make ours very large.” |
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| Containing the squee. |
I have many other pictures that I didn’t load here. Mad love for this place. The mountains, the symmetry, the science. Perfect.
We left the Very Large Array (dun dun dun!!) and headed toward Alamogordo where we would spend the night. Along the way we passed the marker for Trinity Site, which is actually over 10 miles away from the actual Trinity Site. Visitors are allowed 2 days a year to the actual site through the White Sands Missile Range. Just don’t touch the bright green rock–they’re radioactive.
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| See? |
https://www.youtube.com/embed/TyXQxduZ5R4?feature=player_embedded
I think we paid $40 for our room, and I feel like we were overcharged. The next day we would take our leave of Alamogordo (thank jeebus) and visit the most surreal place I’ve ever been to in my life.
Modwestern Girl 