A couple of hours north of Monument Valley is Arches National Park. This park lies on top of an underground salt bed that is responsible for the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths of the sightseeing mecca. Thousands of feet thick in places, this salt bed was deposited across the Colorado Plateau 300 million years ago when a sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated. Over millions of years, residue from floods, winds and the oceans that came and went blanketed the salt bed. The debris was compressed as rock, at one time possibly a mile thick.
Salt under pressure is unstable, and the salt bed lying below Arches was no match for the weight of this thick cover of rock. The salt layer shifted, buckled, liquefied, and repositioned itself, thrusting the rock layers upward as domes, and whole sections fell into the cavities.
 |
| Panorama shot showing many of the rock formations at the La Sal Mountains Viewpoint. |
 |
| Connie is leaning on the hood of the car to be able to see up to the top of the Courthouse Towers. |
 |
| Balanced Rock |
 |
| Panorama view towards Balanced Rock and North and South Window arches. |
 |
| Delicate Arch |
After leaving Arches Nation Park we headed north on highway 191 until it met #70 where we turned east. Near that junction is a small hamlet called Thompson Springs. North of this almost ghost town of Thompson Springs there is a historic site of petroglyphs and pictographs.
 |
| Connie in front of one section of Sego Canyon Rock Art |
No comments:
Post a Comment