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Incredible True Wonders of Nature

Hoodoos in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah (USA)

Hoodoos are commonly found in the High Plateaus region of the Colorado Plateau and in the Badlands regions of the Northern Great Plains (both in North America). While hoodoos are scattered throughout these areas, nowhere in the world are they as abundant as in the northern section of Bryce Canyon National Park, located in the U.S. state of Utah.

A hoodoo (also tent rock, fairy chimney, earth pyramid) is a tall thin spire of rock that protrudes from the bottom of an arid drainage basin or badland. Hoodoos are composed of soft sedimentary rock and are topped by a piece of harder, less easily-eroded stone that protects the column from the elements.

The Racetrack of Moving Rocks in Death Valley (Sailing Stones)

The sailing stones (sliding rocks, moving rocks) are a geological phenomenon where rocks move in long tracks along a smooth valley floor without human or animal intervention. They have been recorded and studied in a number of playas around Racetrack Playa, Death Valley, where the number and length of travel grooves are notable. The force behind their movement is not understood and is subject to research.

Racetrack stones only move every two or three years and most tracks develop over three or four years. Stones with rough bottoms leave straight striated tracks while those with smooth bottoms wander. Stones sometimes turn over, exposing another edge to the ground and leaving a different track in the stone’s wake.

Sliding rock trails fluctuate in direction and length. Some rocks which start next to each other start out travelling parallel, but one may abruptly change direction to the left, right, or even back the direction it came from. Length also varies because two similarly size and shaped rocks could travel uniform, then one could burst ahead or stop dead in its track.

Speed is an unknown variable. Since these stones are rarely transported and nobody has witnessed the movement, the speeds the rocks travel at are not known.

Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde National Park

Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in North America. The Ancient Pueblo structure is located in Mesa Verde National Park, in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of Colorado, home to the Ancestral Puebloans people.

Cliff Palace contains 23 kivas—round sunken rooms of ceremonial importance. One kiva, in the center of the ruin, is at a point where the entire structure is partitioned by a series of walls with no doorways or other access portals. The walls of this kiva were plastered with one color on one side and a different color on the opposing side. Archaeologists believe that the Cliff Palace contained two communities and that this kiva was used to integrate the two communities. Tree ring dating indicates that construction and refurbishing of Cliff Palace was continuous from c. AD 1190 through c. 1260, although the major portion of the building was done within a twenty-year time span.

Paria Rimrocks Hoodoo, Utah (USA)

Paria Rimrocks is a region of fantastic rock formations that was virtually unknown until a few years ago, becoming popular only by word of mouth and publication of a few photographs. The rimrocks cover a much smaller area than the buttes and are not subject to any access restrictions though they are also a lot easier to reach, being right next to US 89, a few miles east of the Paria River crossing and just within the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Vast areas either side of the Paria River have similar erosional scenery, based on bands of rock in many different colors - yellow, purple and red are the most prominent, though in the rimrocks, the layers are mostly white and brown, and the differing hardness of the strata have created a great expanse of cliffs, plateaus, canyons, washes and badlands. The one extra, more unusual feature is the many balanced rocks - ‘hoodoos’ or ‘mushrooms’, where flat blocks of hard sandstone are perched atop narrow columns of softer rock. These provide many of the most photogenic scenes.

source: wikipedia.org

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