A Study of Rock Formations, Textures and Colors – Day 1

The first day of our trip led us through Flagstaff AZ with the beautiful juniper and pine forests, past Sunset Crater, Wupatki National Monument, and Navajo National Monument.  We stopped at those three places on the way home.  The Little Colorado River has a dramatic bridge alongside the road where we climbed around on rocks to look down into the river.  I started looking at the dry river bed with the idea of making texture plates for jewelry.  This one would be great to imbed in wet clay.

Spaces were vast and sometimes the placement of the advertising made me smile!

With lots of interesting cacti and wildflowers! 

We wanted to get to Monument Valley and camp there for the night.  Never have I seen so many rental RV’s as I did on this trip.  All the campgrounds were full and this was early in the season!  We drove through the monument and took some side roads when all of a sudden we saw a very large arrow pointing into the ground with ‘Sleeping Bear Campgrounds’ printed on it.  No one was in the campground.  I mean no one!  It was clean, had an outhouse (with a cushion seat) and a nice picnic table. It also had a sweat lodge.  We set up camp.

Morning View

Setting up camp for us is pretty easy.  We set up the camp stove and while Peter got his homemade chili heating and my salad ready, I blew up our mattress and got the sleeping bags ready.  We had a yummy dinner and watched the sun set on those gorgeous mountains.  Morning came, a few birds sang and we fixed breakfast.  Coffee never tasted so good!  The owner of the campgrounds came but no one else ever did. 

It became apparent that this trip was going to be about rocks, colors, textures and formations as we drove to Mexican Hat.  There is no doubt why the town was named after the Mexican sombrero.  The balanced rock makes a great landmark!

Mexican Hat

Color and Shape

Look at the smaller formations within the larger mountain