The landscape here is arid but spectacular. In the US we have Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, all rather dry but all stunning. This page will show happens when very old ocean sediments and eons of time and tectonic pressure work together. About 2.2 billion years ago this area was covered by a great and long-lasting sea. The sediments that built up were huge and many layered. They weigh on each other eventually forming a sandstone that was obviously sedimentary as it became exposed. Sheet after sheet of sediment can be seen. But, about 900 million years ago they were the base of a great mountain range with immense pressure now compacting them and changing the sand to rock-glass; quartzite. There followed an array of tectonic actions and then a second orogeny which finished this transition, after another several hundred million years that is.
Now there are but mere fragments of these mountains; merely the basement sedimentary layers. Now, however they are bent, folded, and tilted. They appear here and there and then dive under the ground only too reappear many miles away. The stone links like chunks of glass. It is now covered with iron oxide and manganese dioxide which color it reddish or black.
Here we stand more than two billion years into this areas geologic time and we are treated to some spectacular scenery.
On The Road With DEC 