![]() ![]() The cliffs line a big, flat, grassy expanse (Moenkopi Plateau), the far side of which breaks up into an even more colorful series of escarpments and branched ravines, all tributaries of Moenkopi Wash. The desert is bordered on the east by Ward Terrace, a plateau beneath a great line of creviced, red/white badlands and ravines, stretching for over 40 miles, with many pretty rock formations, though this area is difficult to reach, needing long drives on remote tracks, deep within the Navajo Reservation. But even so, much of the Painted Desert is sandy and featureless - the interesting locations are small and isolated. In Arizona, variegated rock strata are exposed in scattered locations across the Painted Desert, which is a broad, flat region that extends from near the Colorado River north of Cameron, 150 miles south and east towards Petrified Forest National Park, and indeed the north end of this preserve has an interesting mix of undulating hills and small hoodoos, in addition to the usual petrified logs. As with several other landscape features, badlands are best viewed on the Colorado Plateau of south Utah, northeast Arizona and northwest New Mexico, though the desert areas of southeast California and south Nevada also have a selection of eroded landscapes, such as Anza Borrego, Red Rock Canyon, Rainbow Basin, Valley of Fire, and sites in Death Valley like Twenty Mule Canyon, Zabriskie Point and Golden Canyon. The appeal is generally in the small-scale details, the shapes, colors and forms of the rocks, rather than in the overall scene. Some locations have rocks that are harder and more resistant than others above and below, giving rise to extensive arrays of hoodoos - fantastic eroded formations of every shape imaginable, and while the great majority of such places are remote and little-known, not part of national or state parks, they rank amongst the most photogenic landscapes around. In the Southwest, badlands are a low relief landscape of soft, thin-layered, multicolored sedimentary rocks which are weathered into small hills, gullies and pinnacles, largely or completely lacking any vegetation, and occurring in generally arid environments.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |