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!

Cottonwood Campground, Theodore Roosevelt National Park

The air was still but it wasn't silent, it was filled with the sound of cicadas humming their siren call from the tops of massive cottonwoods. The cottonwoods along with junipers filled the campground along the Little Missouri River’s valley floor. No police sirens, no cars driving along filled city streets rushing to work. Just the sound of cicadas from treetops….

Later a storm front roared in, again the only sound of its arrival the cottonwoods swaying in the breeze. The sky took on a green that I have only seen a few times before and a massive wall cloud appeared in a break in the trees and we saw cumulus mammaltis clouds filling the sky! To hear the sky change from the hum of cicadas to the winds roar of a massive storm.

After the storm passed  we  got into our truck and drove to an open spot, all the while Renita continued to watch the radar on her smart phone as I gazed around the sky, our camera in  hand. We never did see any circulation but we watched cloud to cloud and cloud to ground bolts of lightening dance across the sky.

To think we had seen the grandest shows in only a few hours. It’s a small wonder why we love the west and I really feel that Teddy Roosevelt felt the same way we do. He may have even watched as a storm swept across this valley and surely he had heard the cicadas sing from the tree tops of his Elkhorn ranch. What a great man to have saved so many wild places.

I don’t really know what I expected, coming here to his national park, I expected to see some beauty but not to be so moved. Tomorrow we will explore more and we already has discovered another unexpected treasure, North Dakota magic. Clear skies