Jaap van 't Veen's photos with the keyword: Mexican Hat

Goosenecks State Park lies northwest of Mexican Hat, where the San Juan River flows through a couple of bends in a deep canyon. The landscape is similar to the Horseshoe Bend (Page - Arizona), although personally I found Goosenecks more impressive because it has more bends. For visitors Goosenecks State Park is ‘only’ a viewpoint for spectacular views over the river. There are no trails and/or access to the river. The San Juan River meanders – about 300 meters below the viewpoint - through the landscape in a number of large bends, covering a linear distance of about 2 kilometers, but the real distance is no less than 9 kilometres. The bends are popularly called “goosenecks”. Goosenecks is considered being one of the most striking examples of a river meander on the North American continent. Various geological activity have contributed to the creation of this landscape. About 300 million years ago, the rock was pushed up by movements in the earth's crust. In addition, folds in the earth caused the river to carve out the enormous bends. Water, wind and frost erosion further shaped the landscape. (For this panorama I had to stitch a couple of images together.)

The landscape of Valley of the Gods - located just north of Mexican Hat - is a scenice backcountry area, which is more or less similar to that of the much more famous Monument Valley, which lies about 30 miles to the south. Valley of the Gods is also home to magnificent buttes and towering pinnacles scattered in an empty and vast desert landscape. The sandstone valley is accessed - free admission - by a 17 mile long dirt road. During our visit the road was very easy to ride in the beginning, but at the end were some rocky parts. Unlike Monument Valley we didn’t see almost no other tourists. Main picture: Valley of the Gods seen from the Moki Dugway PiP’s: panorama and rock formations of Valley of the Gods

Monument Valley - or officially Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park - is without doubt one of the most striking examples of the breathtaking beauty of the empty desert in the southwest of the USA. The vast plain serves as a backdrop for the silhouettes of the red rock formations. With its natural beauty it is one of the most majestic and photographed places on earth. Before human existence, the area was a lowland basin. For hundreds of millions of years, materials that eroded from the Rock Mountains deposited layer upon layer of sediment which cemented a slow and gentle uplift, generated by ceaseless pressure from below the surface. These horizontal strata were quite uniformly elevated one to three miles above sea level and the basin became a plateau. Millions of years ago there were many more rocks in this area, which consisted of various types of sandstone rock. The softer layers are worn away by the natural forces of wind and water, causing the so-called mesas. These are wide rocks that are flat at the top. The continuous erosion process ensures that even a mesa wears away very slowly. The harder top layer wears less quickly than the softer sides, so a mesa gets narrower and narrower. If the width of rock is eventually smaller than its height, it is no longer a mesa, but a butte. Also the butte slowly wears away, until a spire remains. Even those rock needles will slowly disappear completely. Most of the park is located in Arizona, the northernmost point belongs to the state of Utah. Window is one of the most visited stops so the viewpoint can get rather crowded. Main picture: North Window, between Elephant Butte and Cly Butte, looking towards East Mitten Butte, with Castle Butte, Bear & Rabbit and Stagecoach in the background PiP1: the famous panorama with the Mitten Buttes and Merrick Butte PiP2: Merrick Butte, along the Valley Drive PiP3: classic image of Monument Valley, taken at mile marker 13 along the road from Mexican Hat (US Highway 163)