Lower Calf Creek Falls and Petrified Forest State Park

Thursday (March 16th) was a hiking day!

We set off for our first hike in the Calf Creek Recreation area, just off Highway 12.  It was an easy hike, elevation gain wise, into the canyon, but the Falls were 3 miles in, so it still took us 3 hrs to do the round trip (with all my picture taking stops).

The hike itself was really pretty and mostly in the sun, which is different than most of our canyon hikes so far.

Cactus, with bloom buds on top... we're too early to see these!

Lovely rock wall, with hiker in foreground for perspective

Calf Creek, with lots of greenery growing at water's edge

Heading into the canyon

The Lower Calf Creek Falls was spectacular.  Both John and I commented that it was one of the prettiest Falls we have ever seen.  The water backtracks into hollows and fans out to cascade down the back of the hollows in several places.

We stood and watched it for several minutes and it kept changing sizes and shapes. So beautiful.

Reds and oranges are iron

We drove about 1/2 hr to the Petrified Forest State Park after our Falls hike.  There was a short (albeit steep) hike around a bluff that showcases the many, many examples of petrified wood that have been uncovered by nature.

Minerals present during fossilization created a rainbow of colours in the petrified wood.

Yellow is also iron

John commented that he had never seen such a large accumulation of petrified wood before, and he enjoyed the interesting shapes.   A lot of the pieces showed the bark texture, and several showed the rings in the tree.  Amazing.

Gorgeous purples and pinks, created by presence of manganese

I was astonished at the size of the pieces and of course I loved all the varying colours.

The rock below the lovely pine tree is a petrified tree.

Look at the size of these pieces!

View from top of trail, looking over reservoir

The views on the hike were also very gorgeous. With the elevation changes, and the fact we stopped at most pieces of wood, it still took us almost 2 hours to do a 1-3/4 mile loop.

We had a great hiking day!!