It was frequently cloudy during the days spent at Bisti in early June of 2021, which is good for dramatic sky backgrounds, but it can be bad for golden hour photography.
I thought the rock (photo above) with the pointy feature looked like some sort of weird creature guarding an egg, others have suggested it looks like a baby elephant. I can see that, too.
There are many pieces of petrified wood, logs and trees scattered around in this area. The mineralization of these objects is not as colorful as that in the Petrified Forest National Park, but it is amazing how much of the original tree detail is retained in these rocks. Most of the petrified log sections are horizontal, but occasionally there are vertical ones, which I suppose tumbled into this position somewhere in the distant past.
The cap on the hoodoo in the photo above, looked like a turtle soaking up some sun, but there was no sun.
I made some photos just to capture geological features, even if the photos are not highly interesting in an artistic manner. Having worked with many geologists and as a petrophysicist, might make me more prone to see and marvel at the layering in rocks.
Weathering and erosion continue to create and modify the features found here. Some features might linger for many years and some might be changed quickly by a heavy rainfall.
The petrified log in the photo above, may be the longest exposed one that I’ve seen here. It was difficult to capture in a single photograph, so I shot it from multiple view points and on multiple occasions under different light conditions.
More later,
Ken