Walking Among the Petrified Cypress, Theodore Roosevelt National Park

It felt so strange to be walking among an ancient forest of cypress with logs and stumps everywhere littering the horizon. It hadn't been that long ago that we had canoed the Suwanee river and admired the towering cypress of Florida and now we were here in North Dakota enjoying the cypress again.
I thought of how my brother in law Gary makes furniture from old logs, recovered from the beach of Louisianna after storms, logs that had been buried in mud but not yet pertrified. I knew the forest was millions of years old and it made everything seem timeless.
I remembered Huttons Uniformity Of Process, that everthing really is the same through geologic history and this was such a great example.We shared the petrified forest with a few other visitors but we were alone for most of the hike and that's so rare in a National Park.
Sitting down for lunch I thought of my Geology summer field camp and this was so much like the months I spent mapping while I had been hiking Wyoming. I wanted to take a short cut to the north unit of the petrified forest, but as was said in the Lord of The Rings, short cuts can make long delays, and we didn't have that much water.

Playing among the stumps I watched Renita peering bewtween a crack and I was reminded again of the girl inside her and of the child still within us all. Returning to the truck we were both surprised that we had hiked 4.8 miles, at least thats what our gps said.
It was a fine day and we decided not to hike the trail to the northern forest but to save it for another visit. Driving back we passed new oil wells, evidence of the North Dakota boom and again I said a silent thank you to Teddy Roosevelt for saving such a place from future oilmen. Clear Skies

ps Among the pleasures of fulltiming are the many friends we make along the way, and friends we meet again as we travel down the road. It was a real pleasure to run into Jim and Nancy, who write the blog, Running Down Our Dream, a recording or journal of their travels. If you haven't read it, you can click on the blog list along the side. Jim, a retired social studies teacher lets us see a different view of  the places they visit!