M&D's Big Adventure

We had been told the park can become quite congested between about 10 am and 2 pm so we were there shortly after 8 am and were surprised to find that we could find a place to park a long motorhome everywhere we stopped. The complexity of the geology is interesting. Many phases have deposited various minerals, muds and organic matter and then compounded it through pressure from layer upon layer on top. The time scale is hard to imagine. One feature is named balancing rock . A tubular rock. It looks as though it was carefully placed there round rock is sitting on another The entire structure is 40 meters high and is calculated to weigh over 3,500 tonnes.  We had to walk over a more difficult path to see another feature, delicate rock , so named because bits of the arch are loose and it will soon collapse. Of course, in this context, soon means anywhere from 10 to 10,000 years.  The walk to Delicate Arch took us past a petroglyph, a picture formed...

We are now in the USA Southwest where the land formations and rock compositions are due to about 350 million years of the region having a cycle of being open to the sea (contributing a range of minerals before being evaporated), being closed off from the sea but subject to freshwater flooding (causing sedimentation), volcanic activity, earthquakes, and erosion. Distinctive lines showing different layers over time characterise the landscape. Some of these lines are compressed organic matter that has formed coal and oil. Erosion “sculpts” the land. This has produced some dramatic features such as canyons, arches, balancing rocks and weird shapes that are said to resemble other objects from our world. The journey today took us through a variety of geography and culture. We passed through some villages that seemed to be on Indian Reservations. We saw even more oil production and large machinery. We saw hardly any agriculture.      We have been above 6,000 feet (...

We left Jackson and within minutes found that the trees were disappearing and we were climbing into a barren and arid desert. We climbed to a high plateau and could see the silouettes of mountains in the distance. Unfortunately they were obscured by a haze. We don’t know the source of the haze; we couldn’t smell smoke and there didn’t appear to have been any moisture for some time. Combined with high cloud, the haze meant that we couldn’t get any good photographs. We could see the immediate surrounds well enough. They consisted of sage bush. The plentiful trees of just the previous day were absent. We saw the occasional small animal, possibly prairie dogs, and a few deer. There were no towns and little sign of habitation. It felt isolated and lonely and most of the sparse traffic was trucks from the mining and oil industry. We saw occasional collections of buildings, some with oil pumps and most with tanks and large machinery. We wondered whether they were engaged in fracking...