The Pyrlik Family RV Trips: In New Mexico

It's been a while since my last post. From the south rim of the Grand Canyon, we travelled the I 40 east, stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park, and continued to New Mexico, where we stayed for about 10 days at a campground east of Santa Fe. From there, we continued north via Taos into the Sangre de Christo Mountains and stayed a few days in Eagle's Nest on the eastern slopes of the mountain range. We have now travelled more than 10,000 mi (16,000 km), from the 100+ (37 C) degree summer of the Southeast and the Central Plains to the freezing nights of the high desert here in New Mexico - this morning our water pipes were frozen for the first time, until the sun was high enough to get away with the ice! Maybe that's the time to compliment our truck - it worked flawlessly and always pulled our 12,000 lb trailer without complaining, and with an acceptable overall mileage of about 11.5 mpg (20 l/100km). At an average diesel price of $4.25, the fuel cost per mile is about 37 ct - not bad, I think, and definitely better than what I expected.

Painted Desert inside Petrified Forest NP

The petrified (versteinert) wood that is found so abundantly in the national park results from a rare caprice of nature: Several hundred million years ago, fallen trees were transported by a river to a shallow lake, where they were buried in the the muddy ground before they could decay, after the lake eventually dried out. The mud that formed the lakebed happened to consist of extremely fine quartz crystals - so fine that they could penetrate into the cells of the wood under the pressure of several hundreds feet of sediment that was deposited over the following millions of years.