vacation pictures #5: south coyote buttes

[ilanarama]

I...I'm going to have to punt, here. Because the South Coyote Buttes are so mind-blowingly magnificent - the colors, the shapes, the sheer abstract artistry - that I really don't have anything to say. I've uploaded thirty pictures to my Flickr site, and you can find them all here. Or do the slideshow thing. There's a sliver of moon over a butte, there's a weird tower with a window in it, there are stripes, there are squiggles, there's a couple pictures of me. Um, yeah. Ogg say: sandstone nifty, make pretty pictures.

Comments

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

Taffy! It's rock made out of taffy! The pics at the end of the flickr site in particular. Amazing photos.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Hee, just don't try chewing on it! It does look all stretched and squished and twisted.

[j-s-cavalcante.livejournal.com]

WOW. They are mind-blowingly magnificent! I don't have time to say more, am packing for con.txt, but just wanted to appreciate these. WOW. And *waves* Thanks for sharing them! {{{hugs}}}

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Have fun at con.txt - I am sorry to be missing it (and you). And thanks for stopping by to look!

[libitina]

These are all so beautiful that it's rather overwhelming - I'd love to see it in person someday.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that part of it, for me, is hiking around through this stuff, seeing it in person, touching the curve of the rock. So you should come west for a vacation!

[ptyx.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, magnificent! The colors!!!

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

No photoshop was used, I swear!

[jeddy83.livejournal.com]

I feel so insignificant just looking at these photos; I can't imagine what it would be like to see them up close. The length of time it must have taken to first build up all those layers of sediment and then expose them. It's incredible.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's really a testament to time, I think. Layers of sand building up, and then the tiny effects of erosion accumulating, bit by bit. And what I think is really cool is that while driving on House Rock Road we noticed how different the landscape was on the left and the right sides of the road - the right had red sandy dirt, the left had whitish-yellow. So while looking at these buttes it occurred to me that what must have happened is that during regimes of wind from the west, white sand accumulated, and then during eastern winds, red sand accumulated. So you could read the rocks like tree rings, and infer what the climate was like during the periods they were forming.

[alembicresearch.livejournal.com]

Beauty!

I'm always stuned and amazed by the way the rocks
in the southwest look/are.

So different from the geology I grew up with here in California,
where its just greyish "rounded" granite.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Utah has more geology than anywhere on the planet, I think!

[alembicresearch.livejournal.com]

I wish we had more! :-)

Although I kind of like these green things too,
that cover up much of ours.

[zebra363.livejournal.com]

The lines cut into the rock like in the last picture in that set are really interesting. Amazing landscape.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

The lines are the shadow effects of the overhanging very thin layers. So actually they are not so much lines cut in the rock as they are flakes protruding from the rock. It's very odd, looking at them - the rock is so clearly made up of lots of layers stuck to each other.