Petrified Forest National Park

Yesterday I biked and hiked around the northern half of the Petrified Forest National Park. Not my photo, this looks quite like what I saw yesterday at sunset. Always beautiful, the badlands of the Painted Desert become vividly red as the sun is setting.

With a friend, we rode down to the Pueblo Ruins to check out the petroglyphs and then back up to the visitor's center/park entrance. On the way to the ruins, we hiked down into the badlands, wandering about and looking at (and touching) petrified wood up close, climbing a bit on badland structures, and spotting lizards and various stones, including tiny pieces of petrified wood and what looked like rose quartz that I so wanted to pocket but didn't. It was an amazing trip, through grassy desert with wild flowers and past the colorful badlands.

Back to school today, with break only 4 days away. My students are writing short stories right now, and so far, they seem to be doing much better than they did on their myths. I'm not sure if that's because myths are more difficult because they are more specific; because this is their second writing assignment; because I insisted on collecting and grading their pre-writing (and it's the last week of the first marking period); or because journaling and my comments on their journals has boosted their confidence and even provided a source of ideas for some more reluctant writers (I have one kid who never even turned in a myth who is turning a journal entry on Roswell, NM into a first-person point-of-view short story): I'm thinking it's a combination of all of these reasons. They're working fairly well on their rough drafts, and I'm hoping to try out peer-review on Thursday.