No, we are not on Tatooine but may the fourth be with you anyway.

However, we are still at Petrified Forest National Park or PEFO, but not for long. We have two more days of work and then we leave on Saturday the 9^th of May. We are heading to Albuquerque for an appointment (Shannon) with the cardiologist on the 11th, a haircut (Tuzi) for the 10^th, and I’m just the driver. Depending on what Shannon finds out from the cardiologist and regardless of the quality of Tuzi’s haircut, we will head out the next free day for Ridgway State Park in Colorado. There is the beginning of an orientation session for the campground hosts starting on May 15, but that word came to us some time ago and from the volunteer coordinator who has moved onto another park. If the cardiologist wants her to stay close to ABQ for a few days, we may be late for the orientation. Anyway, we are eventually heading for Colorado.

We have had more rain here lately than we had expected. We ARE in a desert… It rained a week ago this past Sunday enough to see water running in the dry washes. It has been raining off and on today as well. We are planning a hike tomorrow to look at some petroglyphs, but rain is also forecast for tomorrow. Sheesh, who would have thought? The colors in the Painted Desert and the badlands of the Blue Mesa are much more vivid when it rains. We drove through the park last Sunday during the rain. It was beautiful and relatively quiet which was a double bonus.

The other bonus at this time of the year, and influenced by the rain, is the amount of flowering that is happening at this time. The cliff roses are just about over but have been spectacular being a fairly tall woody shrub that helps them stand out among sparse and only low-growing vegetation. But the white evening primroses and the yellow mariposa lilies cover the ground and lend pleasing colors to areas of brown soil. The primroses are so thick in places it looks like snow piles.

A new area in the park that we have become aware of is the “conscience pile” or as Shannon calls it the “pile of shame.” It is an area that is off limits to visitors. The conscience pile is a pile of petrified wood and rocks that visitors have picked up, have tried to leave the park, and have been caught. Or, pieces in the pile also are from people who have picked them up in the park and got away with it, but then had second thoughts, their conscience got the better of them, and they returned the stolen wood and rocks. The park has no way to know where the petrified wood and rocks came from; so, they throw them on the conscience pile.

Along the drive to the conscience pile, hoodoos are passed. Although there are sandstone cliffs and ridges in the park, few hoodoos are present and visible. This is somewhat of a rare treat; too bad visitors cannot see them.

We have not done as much sightseeing as we did the first time we were here, and perhaps that is one disadvantage in repeating a volunteer experience. We did spend a day visiting with a classmate from my growing up days in Lititz, PA. She lives in Gallup, NM which is only about 80 miles from here; so it was an easy day trip with a wonderful New Mexico lunch with traded memories of growing up. We also took a trip to the area around Globe, AZ and ended up visiting Tonto National Monument. This monument preserved and interpreted another of the many prehistory cultures in AZ.

As we headed to Tonto NM from Globe, I became aware of signs marking the mileage to Roosevelt Lake. I realized I had passed the lake in 1966 when I was on a fire crew out of Fort Collins, CO, and our first fire was in the Tonto National Forest. We flew into Phoenix and were bused northward into some God-forsaken country where we fought and mopped up a huge fire for 4 or 5 days. My memory is hazy after that. I did send the photo to a friend from the crew I am still in contact with, and he appreciated the memories. The country is now beautiful and not God-forsaken. I, or course, have changed more than the countryside has changed.

We have also done some of the new hiking opportunities the park has developed called “Off the Beaten Path.” These are descriptions of hikes without formally established trails. The information provided describes the objective, the distance, and where to start. After that you are on your own. The photograph above is a place called “Martha’s Butte.” Of course no one knows how it got its name which provides license for wide speculation.

The draw for us were the petroglyphs at the base of the butte. The most interesting one was the spiral which was a summer solstice marker. There is a summer solstice marker at one of the stops that visitors can see and read about, and the one at Martha’s Butte is another example. Information provided to us indicates that there are a number of these markers throughout the park.

So, it’s one more hike either tomorrow or Wednesday, work on Thursday and Friday, and leaving early Saturday morning. In the meantime we have to adjust our perspective to moving on out, and we have to figure out where everything goes again so that we don’t leave anything behind or drop things off as we rumble down the road.