These monoliths are made primarily of sandstones over 200 million years old.
The Kayenta Formation is a sandstone that is more resistant to erosion than many of the other sedimentary rocks in the park. It was deposited by a river system.
The Wingate Formation is a tan sandstone with sweeping tilted layers. It was deposited in a desert environment where wind-swept sands accumulated and were buried.
The Chinle Formation is mudstone that was deposited in densely-vegetated floodplains.
Precambrian Metamorphic rocks are extremely erosion-resistant. These rocks began as sediments that were later deformed in mountain-building processes. They were heated, squeezed, uplifted, then exposed by erosion.
Independence Monument from the side
Independence Monument Overlook:
From this angle, Independence Monument looks like a tower. It is actually all that remains of a giant rock wall that stood two million years ago and separated two canyons.
The large monolith behind it is called The Island.
We stopped briefly in the Visitor Center. These are always filled with great displays of the area... maps, animal exhibits, tons of history, etc.
Click for a larger view
A great rock display
The Great Unconformity is a gap of rock that is "missing" between the Chinle Formation (about 210 million years old) and the Precambiran rocks (about 1.7 billion years old). This chuck of missing time... ranging 1.5 billion years (or a third of Earth's geological history in this area)... is completely unexplained. The rock is simply gone.
Building Rock Rim Drive
An old photo of building one of the tunnels
Eek! Glad we didn't encounter one of these... a Giant Desert Hairy Scorpion!
When it rains, it pours... in the desert at least. Flash floods can be very dangerous here.
We drove back to the camping area, intending to have some lunch in a designated picnic spot. Unfortunately all the tables were in the direct sun... which was QUITE hot at the moment. So we found a tiny bit of shade in the parking lot and ate there.
We walked along the top edge of the canyon, starting at Window Rock Nature Trail and continuing over to Canyon Rim Trail. The gentle sound of cicadas was back again.
Window Rock
This tree is not going to give up easily!
Canyon Rim Trail gave an extensive overview of everything we had just seen.
Life behind the lens.
While we could have stayed much much longer, there were still so many things to do this short trip. So we left the park and headed to our motel in the nearby town of Fruita. We could have camped another night, but Regan didn't have enough battery power to last more than a couple days, so we decided to splurge with a room, recharging both our power-requiring devices and ourselves.
One final gift as we left the park... Balanced Rock. Eventually, someday, this rock is going to fall as the sandstone beneath it is eroded away.
What a great town mascot!! Fruita is known for its numerous fossils.
We checked into the motel. The hefty woman with the thick Eastern European accent who had her hands full with her young grandchild was at first indecisive as to which room to give us. Eventually she gave us a huge suite with two large bedrooms. We settled in with one of our fruit wines (apricot) and enjoyed the rest of the evening in stretched-out luxury.
One of the two large bedrooms
The room even had a genuine velvet painting!
