What do you call a forest that is scared?

Petrified!  

BAHAHAH!!!! 

You see what I did there?  

Matt and I have lived in Mississippi our entire lives and recently we started talking about some of the things in our great Magnolia State that we have yet to visit or see.  The Mississippi Petrified Forest is one such place.  Since our hunting trip took us almost sorta right by it we decided that we would be crazy not to stop and check the place out.  

I was always under the assumption that I would walk through a clearing in the trees and just over the horizon I would see a forest of trees that had turned to rock, tall and sparkling in the sunlight.  Okay, maybe not quite like that but I did expect a lot of stumps.  To me a "forest" is a clump of trees all together that are beautiful to look at in the daytime and scary at night time, so what would a petrified forest be any different?  It was.  Oh...there were stumps, spread out sporadically around a 6 block nature trail.  Some were buried under years of clay, some were cleverly disguised under pine straw, some I really don't even think were there even though the brochure said they were.  

When we walked into the gift shop to buy our tickets (yes our tickets, this is not ran by the state therefore the private owners jacked up the price to $7 a person for us to look at rocks wood), the sweet old lady working there told us to make sure we stop by the "black light fantasy room" before we left.  And yes, the "black light fantasy room" was as creepy as it sounds.  In case all of the trees and black lights weren't enough for you, they also have a random fossilized shark jaw...score!

Even if I would only give it a 5 on a scale of 10, my curiosity has been satisfied. 

Registering...maybe they will send us a Christmas Card this year!

The first piece of petrified wood we saw, we drove a long way for this.

Apparently this really big tree trunk was dated all the way back to 942 A.D.  I honestly don't know if I believe that... 

I make him pose for me and he happily obliges me.

America's Next Top Wood Model right there

Looking GQ on a naturally occurring wood/rock bench. Neato!

He told me to Vogue and I gave him what he asked for

Just some roots

Thank you timer for being able to get a picture with both of us in it.