Starting Point: Albuquerque, NM
Ending Point: Scottsdale, AZ
Distance Traveled: 600 Miles
This morning I left Albuquerque at around 6:30 AM and began driving toward Flagstaff, AZ. About midway to Flagstaff, I noticed a freeway sign referring to the upcoming Petrified Forest NATIONAL PARK. National parks have a reputation that has been good until now, so I thought it’d be worth stopping by. This intended brief detour eventually turned into a 2-hour long detour including a one-hour drive through the work and several brief hikes and attractions along the way.
The first major stop was newspaper rock, a lookout point where petroglyths can be seen from about 50 feet away. If it weren’t for the national park ranger I wouldn’t have even been able to locate the petroglyths which were barely visible from the lookout point. The ranger suggested that I backtrack a few miles to Rio Puerco where I can have an up-close look at petroglyths.
Dating back to a thousand years ago, the preservation of these original writings/drawings are unimaginable. These writings aren’t “ink on paper” that have been stored in air-tight boxes in museums. The drawings were etched into the red-oxidized surface of the rocks over a thousand years ago, and have since been exposed to sun, rain, wind, and all other forms of weathering.
Like nowadays, these people etched petroglyths in order to either record their observations, communicate with people who came across the location after them, or some other reason. It’s amazing to see how much humanity has progressed in the past thousand years. Actually, I’m not sure about that. Philosophers and scholars have been writing much more profound symbols, documents, and ideas for over 2,000 years. It’s interesting that in Europe people were writing the bible, for example, using a language containing 26 letters and relaying profound thoughts, while these inhabitants in Arizona were at best, just drawing stick figures of the world around them. One community was thousands of years ahead of the other in terms of sophistication, technology, and philosophy.
The Crystal Forest is the site of ancient forest, where some of the old trees were covered in sediment and preserved for thousands (or millions of years) until they turned into minerals which still retained the detailed form of a tree. According to Geology.com, “Petrified wood is a fossil. It forms when plant material is buried by sediment and protected from decay by oxygen and organisms. Then, groundwater rich in dissolved solids flows through the sediment replacing the original plant material with silica, calcite, pyrite or another inorganic material such as opal.”
After driving toward Holbrook, I noticed a petrified wood superstore. The approximately 10-acre lot size of the business was completely covered in Petrified Wood. The business, Jim Gray’s Petrified Wood Co (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g31244-d2368230-Reviews-Jim_Gray_s_Petrified_Wood_Co-Holbrook_Arizona.html), probably owns a large amount of the petrified wood in the Holbrook area and seems to be taking advantage of his monopoly.
Large pieces of petrified wood are being sold for THOUSANDS of dollars, and more complex designs such as a coffee table are asking $14,000. The prices seem unreasonably high, but I guess these rocks are rare and there is a limited supply, so all the power to them. If they can convince people about the value of petrified wood, they are excellent marketers and deserve the millions of dollars they will probably earn from the acres of petrified wood stored in the storage yard.
Next, I visited Walnut Canyon National Monument, a unique attraction I’m glad I got to see. This beautiful canyon was inhabited by cave (more accurately overhangs) dwellers who built their homes using the eroded limestone overhangs which provided protection from the heat in the summer and cold in the winter.
The 3/4 mile loop hike sharply descended into the canyon and continued to loop around the level of the canyon where most of the “overhang dwellings” were constructed. It seems like this area in Northern Arizona of a few-hundred square miles was heavily populated from as far back as a few thousand years ago by small communities of simple dwellers.
Next, I visited another National Monument in the area, Sunset Volcano National Monument. Like many other volcanic areas, the immediate area of the volcano is completely covered by dark-colored volcanic remains. I hiked several trails in the area, and then drove toward Scottsdale, AZ.
On the way to Scottsdale, I stopped by Camp Verde to visit the CVS-anchored shopping center which I was pursuing several months ago. I think this center provides an excellent value and strong upside through marketing the shopping center as several separate properties. Also, in the case that Walmart decided to open a Supercenter in Camp Verde, we would have at least a few years to unload the property to an investor. Still, I think the risk is too high, because we need to assume forever hold periods when analyzing properties. We can’t rely on dumping a property to a unsophisticated investor upon the announcement of a Walmart Supercenter. It’s unethical, unreliable, and too risky. This center will be hit very hard if a Supercenter opens. Therefore, this is too high-risk and not worth pursuing.
