During the mid-day hours of day 4 in Bisti, my son and I scouted in the northern area of Bisti. The unofficial parking area for access to this area is several miles north of the official south parking lot and it is on Navaho land.
A short distance along the dirt road access to the “unofficial” parking area is another spur road going south. This road leads to a rocky drainage crossing, which can be made with a high clearance vehicle and maybe best with a 4 wheel drive. We decided not to drive across the drainage or to drive all the way to it, since the dirt road had much broken glass on it. It appears that this area might have been a dumping site for trash at one time.
We hiked across the drainage and towards hills and rocky features a few tenths of a mile in the distance. There we discovered interesting features. We think this area is on BLM land, outside Bisti proper, but maybe some of it is on Navaho land. Where we parked is probably on Navaho land.
Although, there are interesting photographic subjects in this area, note the human infrastructure items along the horizon, which will present problems getting compositions that exclude those structures.
Another view of the area in the previous photo is presented above. Note the two steel items. We have no idea what these were used for nor why they are here at this location. It appears that they were designed to lift or hold something. These will present some compositional problems.
A close up view of one of those mysterious steel items is shown above.
The portion of a weathered, petrified log shown above is near the previously photographed features. There is much petrified wood in the Bisti Wilderness, so apparently this was a lush forest area many years ago.
Another portion of a petrified log with scattered pieces of weather petrified wood around it. This is very common in this area.
The photo above puts the petrified long into context with the other local features here.
One possible composition that eliminates the nearby human infrastructure is shown here.
Another interesting looking hoodoo in this area is shown above. Big mouth rock?
I named the hoodoo above “Snail Rock” for obvious reason.
Another view of “Snail Rock” is above.
More petrified wood protruding from the ground.
A small bridge formed by harder rock overlaying softer, faster eroding rock is shown in the photo above. Such features are common in Bisti.
I will have more scouting information for Bisti North proper in a subsequent post.
[Note: None of these scouting photos are posted on Flickr].
Until next time,
Ken