The Road To Arkansas, Day 2

Four days is a long time for four young kids to spend in a minivan, so we tried to plan some fun things to do on our way to Arkansas.

Today we visited the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

The colors of the fossilized trees are amazing--swirls of dark purple, deep red, and bold orange in the same piece of stone.

The Rainbow Forest Museum in the park had some interesting exhibits.  We learned about dinosaurs that once lived in that area . . .

. . . and the kids loved hunting for simulated fossils in the sandbox.

My camera doesn't do the colors of the Painted Desert justice.  It was stunning to see stripes of purple and even bright pink across the landscape.  Little natural surprises like that make me think that God had fun creating our Earth (and Jupiter, too--"I think I'll put a giant red spot right THERE").