The Grand Canyon, Part 1

     Our main goal of staying in Flagstaff, AZ was to visit Grand Canyon National Park. After an amazing breakfast at a local Flagstaff Eatery, MartAnne's we were ready to embark on our journey.... after getting handed a speeding ticket (I guess I was really excited to get there) we arrived with dozens and dozens of others.
     Thankfully, without children or restraints on our physical ability, we were able to avoid the biggest crowds and hike an hour down the Kaibab trail. It is definitely not a trail friendly for families with young children or older folks, it's very steep, little shade and you do hike along the edge of a cliff at points. We made sure to carry water, mind our time, so we wouldn't end up too far down, and just hiked smart. We hiked back up faster than going down, and felt relatively good after.
     Oh yeah, and the sights, they were stunning! Photos do it little to no justice versus seeing it in person:

Carved out by the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon!

The Zig-zagging trail is part of the Kaibab trail, we didn't go that far, to where this part of the trail is.

5,000 feet to the bottom!

Found an Elk along the Rim trail. I think most folks skipped right past this guy!

Prickly much?

Another Plateau Fence Lizard, basking in the sun along the Rim Trail.

Lots of red tail hawks, the red tails out there have some darker wing markings and heads.

A side blotched lizard on the Rim Trail.

Really really stoked to see this, an Arizona Blonde Tarantula! My first North American Tarantula, just walking across the Rim Trail.

These tarantulas are harmless and generally docile and want little to nothing to do with us. This one is a male, you can tell from his lanky features and darker colors, females have the more blond look, are a bit more stocky, and also live longer. 20 years for a female is relatively normal, males 1 or 2 years of life is relatively normal!

A rock squirrel... in a tree!

Kaibab trail, going down!

You spend a lot of time looking down to be sure of your footing, but don't forget to look up and savor the views!

Oh yeah, mules, you have to sometimes share the trail...

I think this is another side blotched lizard... but not 100% sure, like 95%.

A rock squirrel on rock, who ever named this guy was super creative!

He has some pretty sweet real-estate, for a squirrel!

Mountain chickadees were hard to photograph, hey don't sit still. They sound like a black-capped chickadee with a cold. Much more nasal than the ones here in NY.

Western bluebirds grab a sip to drink from a leaky hydrant.

A "grey headed" Dark-eyed Junco was one of the two junco forms found in the area....

The "Oregon" dark-eyed juncos were also quite pretty! Same species though as the grey headed, just some different color variations. 

Petrified Forest National Park

     Last week Tim and I made a trip out west for a short vacation in the high elevations of Arizona. We traveled to Phoenix then drove North, heading toward the Petrified Forest National Park before settling into our Route 66 Flagstaff Hotel. The drive was gorgeous, seeing the towering cacti and the scraggly-looking shrubs that covered the desert. As we moved north the landscape became very chaparral-like, dry and very scrubby, with less cacti and more shrubs and grasses.
     The mountains and rocky scenery painted the landscape with earthy red, orange, and ochre tones. Our first steps into the petrified forest were awesome and very beautiful, prepare to be overloaded with desert scenery in 5, 4, 3, 2...

The petrified wood is better weathered than these sad dinos. But at one time, during the Triassic, dinosaurs roamed these lands among these preserved and mineralized trees that remain here in this National Park.

Big sky and wide landscapes is what this land is all about. You often forget, that despite the billions of people on this Earth that expanses of land even exist like this!

Petrified wood is no longer organic plant material, it has become mineralized and is no longer at all wood but rock. 

The process of becoming a mineral makes these petrified wood pieces look quite beautiful, each one is very unique getting it color due to the presence of various elements, reds and oranges mostly results from iron. 

In the Triassic, 200 million years ago this place looked more like a swamp. Wet, with mosses and lush with green. Dinosaurs lived here as well as giant crocodiles. The conditions within this environment were perfect for the process of petrification. When plants died, they could quickly be buried in a low oxygen environment where their organic cellular structure would be replaced with stone.

Super excited to see my first reptile of the trip here, a plateau fence lizard. I laid across the path to catch a shot of this guy as he scuttled under a rock for cover, as I probably looked very scary to this 4 inch lizard.

Quartz is often found within the petrified wood, an entire area of the park, the Crystal Forest has a bunch of quartzed (is that a verb? Now it is) petrified wood pieces. Unfortunately before the area was highly patrolled by the National Park Services, much of the quartz was taken from the area.

Different layers tell history, the grey stuff is referred to as the newspaper layer, it looks like wet newspaper pulp, it crumbles and erodes like it too! It is important to keep on the trail to preserve these features within the park.

More of that "newspaper." I'm sure a flash flood from a heavy rain can really erode this stuff.

The layers in these hills and rocky outcrops coincide with time and different layers reveal different fossils and artifacts. From 200 million year old dinosaurs, to more recent megafauna like giant sloths, to humans who lived on this land and used it for their survival and culture.

Pretty stoked to see this dude, a collared lizard! Named for the collar-like marking around its neck, this lizard is always dressed business casual, and is super professional.

Part of the iguana family, this lizard preys mostly upon insects. Males can be vivid blues and brightly colored when mature and vying for the attention of females.

Petrified wood that looked pretty similar to normal wood, complete with lichens growing on it!

Sometimes there isn't much to say. Fantastic scenery.

The colors, the immensity of these features, and the world surrounding them is just absolutely unreal. Note the tiny grass patches, this isn't a little hill! 

In New York City, we get pretty pumped to see ravens. Out west, they are a dime a dozen. One of the park rangers referred to them as flying rats, I suppose they never visited New York. The ravens here are not shy and give you the opportunity to get some nice head shots.

One more before we drive 2 hours west to Flagstaff along Route 40, which runs the route of historic Rt 66.