After returning from scouting the north area and having a late lunch, I decided to kill some time, while waiting until time to go out for sunset photos by walking around in the area just across the road, west of the south parking area. Usually, I only went a very short distance into this area to climb a hill to get a cell signal.
This area, as far as I know is not a part of the designated Bisti Wilderness and is probably on Navaho land, but it might also be BLM land.
Just into this area, I spotted this small arch with a view through it into the parking area. The red blob within the arch opening is my Sportsmobile.
This photo is a close up of the arch with the parking lot visible through it.
A really close up shot through the arch in which my red Sportsmobile is visible near the center.
Continuing through the wash behind the arch, I found these small red capped hoodoos in the wash.
A little further down the wash, I found this upside down automobile body on a hill bordering the wash. I wondered how this got here, since there is no road, not even a reasonable way to drive into here to dump a wrecked vehicle. Then I realized that it must have been deposited here by a flash flood.
This view from the opposite side gives a better context for its location.
Hiking through this wash I encountered more automobile parts, which may have come from this vehicle. One such part is in the photo below.
The dark layer in the side of this hill is the geological deposition from which all the dark rock fragments scattered all around Bisti are derived.
I saw the horseshoe like features on this hill side from a distance and they looked like a strange geological feature, so walked closer to investigate. This photo clearly shows that there are exposed portions of the dark rock layer that are weathering. The loose rock fragments are then washed downhill creating this geometric feature.
The red rock layer above is probably the source of all the red rocks scattered all around Bisti. This is the only place that I consciously have observed this rock layer still contained within other layers of rock. I frequently see it as caps over the underlying layers, where the overlying layers have already eroded away.
The geological observations and/or conclusions/conjectures here are my own and not necessarily academically robust.
A hoodoo on the wash wall with a clothes dryer visible in the wash in the lower left of the photo. I’m guessing that this clothes dryer shell also got here via a flash flood.
And a roll away bed frame that probably got here via a flash flood, too. I suppose it is possible that some of these type items might have been intentionally dumped into a wash somewhere, then got moved around via flash flooding.
Walking back towards the parking area, I looked more carefully around the drainage flowing out of Bisti into the area across the road. It is apparent that there are salts or other minerals in the water that drop out along the stream as the water floods over the land, then evaporates. This area is very soft and it is not advisable to walk into it.
The stream creates abstract art like patterns in the mud, some outlined with colorful mineral deposits.
The above mud pattern makes a really nice abstract photo.
This has gotten into a much longer post than I intended. I hope you have not been too bored by it.
Ken
WOW! I guess I never expected to see a car, a bed frame and a clothes dryer shell littering the area, but flooding may well have carried them there. I can’t help but wonder what kind of fossils have been found in the area. I have been reading a bit about the Bisti Beast, a tyrannosaur that was discovered in 1997. Evidently it lived 74 million years ago. I find all of this quite fascinating!
Shutterpug, I never expected to see those items in that wash either. I have discovered other items (automobile engine parts, a rusty bicycle frame, for example) in the main Bisti Wilderness that one would never expect to see in the places where I found them. Regarding the Bisti Beast, I apparently met the native American that found that fossil on my last visit. There is much petrified wood all around the area, so this area was apparently a lush forest at one time.