Jaap van 't Veen's photos with the keyword: desert

Petrified Forest National Park is well known for its many chunks of petrified logs ( www.ipernity.com/doc/294067/45523794 ), but it offers more fascinating and intriguing scenery. The Blue Mesa area of the park is part of the second-oldest layer of the so called Chinle Formation, deposited approximately 220 - 225 million years ago. This formation can be seen across the park with the multi-coloured Painted Desert (PiP 1) and the Blue Mesa badlands. Blue Mesa (main image) - easy accessible by a three mile long loop road - is a very desolate landscape of mudstone and sandstone layers in blue, purple and greys. The landforms have been sculpted by erosion. The Tepees (PiP 2) is a part of Blue Mesa with tall, cone-shaped hill striped with almost perfect layers of reds, pinks, blues, greys, purples, and white.

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)

Erg Chebbi is one of Morocco's two Saharan ergs (large seas of dunes formed by wind-blown sand). The dunes stretch about 30 kilometers from north to south and are between 5 ands 10 kilometers wide. They rise dramatically from a surrounding pancake flat of black hamada (a barren hard rocky plateau) up to a height of more than 100 meters. We visited Erg Chebbi during a camel ride (PiP 1) from our hotel to one of the dunes (PiP 2), where we were waiting in the descending sun on the play of light and shadow (PiP 3) and the constantly changing colours of the Sahara sand into a warm orange colour (main picture), which is one of the features of Erg Chebbi.

Uluru is considered being Australia’s best-known natural landmark. The huge ancient monolith is located in the (hot) heart of Australia’s “red centre” and is part of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Uluru is the Aboriginal and official name; it is also known as Ayers Rock, a name given in 1873 by William Gosse in honor of the Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers. Uluru is an ancient landscape, rich in Australian indigenous culture and spirituality. The Aborigines of the area, who are known as the Anangu (traditional custodians of Uluru) believe this landscape was created by their ancestors at the beginning of time. They have been protecting these sacred lands ever since. Uluru did arise about 600 million years ago; originally the rock sat on the bottom of a sea. Nowadays the highest point is about 348 meters above ground. The rock is 3.6 km’s long, 1.9 km’s wide and has a circumference of 9.4 km’s. The surface is made up of valleys, ridges, caves and weird shapes that were created through erosion over millions of years. Surface oxidation of its iron content gives Uluru a striking orange-red hue.

Death Valley National Park: colours of Artist's Palette

The Wildrose Charcoal Kilns on a snowy morning in May.

Death Valley National Park: Zabriskie Point.

Mud cracks in/on a dry salt lake along Badwater Road.

Death Valley National Park, (almost) sunset at Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes nearby Stovepipe Wells.