Got Rocks?

- As told by Lauryn Claassen

As we headed East, the lush saguaro forests gave way to snow covered pine trees and then dipped down into endless stretches of open roads. We blasted Avril Lavigne and Hoobastank to stay awake. There’s nothing like belting songs from your childhood to keep you alert on a road with no turns.

We finally arrived at the Petrified Forest and pulled up the to the park entrance kiosk. The ranger checked our National Park Pass and asked if we had any rocks.

“Uh… no?” I scoffed from the driver's seat. 

“Yes!” Richelle belted out, holding up her hands filled with the rocks we’d collected (as weapons) earlier in the trip. It’s one thing to collect beautiful rocks and crystals as you travel through the desert… it’s another thing to admit you’ve literally been collecting chunks of asphalt to a complete stranger.

“They’re to throw at cougars,” Richelle continued.

She wouldn’t stop. I laughed and told the ranger not to mind my embarrassing friend but to my surprise he extended his hand, took the worthless rocks and sealed them into a little, clear plastic bag. Theft is a huge problem in the Petrified Forest, it turns out, and they’re not taking any chances. We drove off admiring our rocks that were once weapons collected out of irrational fear… now neatly packaged into some kind of goody bag.    

The Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert are one big park. You can drive from north to south or south to north, pulling out for short hikes to see the technicolor stone logs up close or petroglyphs from far away with a telescope.

Wide open spaces are hard to come by these days. Richelle lives in Portland and I live in Oakland, and while we both are outdoors as often as possible, the West Coast just doesn’t have this kind of… space.

We had the entire horizon to ourselves. We pulled over on the sempiternal road since nobody was around to mind. We spent the rest of the afternoon there, fussing with our cameras and dancing in the road.