Colored desert. Nature miracle

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Colored desert. Nature miracle

Wonders of nature

If you find yourself in the south of the United States, it makes sense to get to the Colorado Plateau. It is located at the intersection of the borders of four states: Utah. Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Here it is worth looking at the so-called Colored Desert. It fully justifies its name.

colored desert

Most of the world's deserts cannot boast of a variety of colors. Here it's the other way around. From Egypt and the countries of North Africa, tourists sometimes bring funny souvenirs - glass bottles filled with layers of multi-colored sand. Masters with the help of a wand also create different colored figures in these vessels. That's about the same impression and produces the Colored Desert. There is a feeling that the Creator himself had fun here with colored sand. Numerous hills and uplands are composed not only of orange, yellow, fawn, but also of lilac, blue and almost white stripes.

In fact, this is not pure sand, but sandstones - light sedimentary rocks, in which there are many compounds of iron and manganese. They give the desert such a colorful look. The landscapes are especially impressive when the far horizon melts in a thick blue haze, and the oblique rays of the sun breaking through low dark clouds, like searchlights, highlight orange and red spots on the slopes of the hills, still covered with white spots of snow. The sight is absolutely fantastic!

Once in these parts, you can admire not only the beauties of the desert. In its southern part there is a unique place where you can see pieces of huge petrified tree trunks. This part of the park is called appropriately - "Petrified Forest".

More than 200 million years ago, there was no desert here at all. Dinosaurs roamed the half-flooded lowland, and huge coniferous giants rose into the sky. They lived for a very long time, but over time, old age still undermined their strength. Part of the collapsed trunks accumulated in river deltas. Here they would have rotted to the ground if the next volcanic eruption had not covered these majestic remains with ashes. The trunks were buried under a layer of rapidly formed sedimentary rocks. And then a curious process of replacing the organic substances of wood with mineral salts began. So over time, the trunks became stone!

Little of. They are not just made of stone. Silicon compounds eventually turned into jasper and agate. In fact, parts of the petrified trunks are made of semi-precious gems! At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, many trunks were completely brought to the surface, and now they can be admired in full. Rock paintings (petroglyphs) left by an ancient man were also found here. The most famous of them is a heron with a frog in its beak.

The Colored Desert and Petrified Forest National Parks can be accessed via Highway 66. This is not just another road, one of many in the United States. Route 66 is a legendary road. It is worth saying a few words about her. It was built at the beginning of the 66th century and became the shortest route between Chicago and Los Angeles. Along it, through the territory of several states at once, tens of thousands of migrants stretched, who were driven by need to the West - to sunny California. The famous American writer John Steinbeck described these events in his novel The Grapes of Wrath. In it, he called Highway XNUMX "the mother of American roads."

The road ran diagonally from northeast to southwest. The highways that crossed the country parallel to the equator, the Americans gave numbers that were divisible by ten without a trace - 10, 20, 40.

In the last quarter of the 66th century, the famous road was closed. In parallel, new modern highways stretched to it. Now on the old Route XNUMX you can see tiny settlements of several houses with boarded up shutters and "For Sale" signs. And yet, the "mother of American roads" attracts tourists and travelers. Moving along this old highway, you can feel the amazing taste of freedom that created modern America.

Author: Afonkin S.Yu.

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