January 31 – Almost made it to the Painted Desert

We headed out first thing in the morning for an all day tour to the Painted Desert.  We got about 2 hours into the trip (on gravel/sand roads) and ran into wet driving conditions.  The area had been hit with a major shower the day before.  Our guide said it was unlikely that we would be able to make it across the creeks because even if they weren’t filled with water they would be too wet to make it through.  And it was obvious he was struggling with the wet conditions, even with the 4-wheel drive.  So we turned around and came back. 

But it was a pretty awesome drive anyway.  The vistas were endless…

  

And the road seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. 

The surface was very crispy and we left footprints as we walked across the area.

The creeks were very dry in the area we were in. 

We had stops along the way at a mica (gypsum) deposit.  Talk about sparkley.  It was hard to do the mica justice when it was laying on the ground…

but held up to the sun it was pretty magical.

And “moon rock”.  This area is littered with rocks deposited by glaciers and the area looks just like the moon. 

We drove a long distance on the road that ran through the Mt. Barry Station.  

This cattle station covers 4920 square kilometers (almost 1900 square miles) with only 3900 head of cattle.  That is only 2 head of cattle per square mile.  There really isn’t much vegetation in this area.  We saw a few cattle (who all checked us out carefully)…

And a water hole with some very dead trees. 

The hole is supplied with water from a nearby water bore.

We saw some wild horses. 

We also drove through Lollipop Lane.  There was an area with trees spaced about 200 meters apart.  The roots are very shallow and spread out around the trunk.  If the roots connect one of the trees dies…competition for water.  They look a little like lollipops.  The guide didn’t know the name of the tree and Googling was unsuccessful…So, they are just lollipop trees. 

Also saw a dead car.   Our guide said that it belonged to the wife of the station owner.  We saw his dead truck later but it was quite a ways from the road.

We were back at the hotel in time for lunch in the underground café of the hotel.

While Paul worked in our cave of a hotel room Mary had a successful opal shopping trip opal.