Get update alerts
Locations
- .All Trips
- Art
- Car Culture
- Central America/Caribbean
- Food
- Food Tour
- Pic of the Week
- Sl;ovenia
.All Trips / Arizona / North America / Southwestern USA / Utah
Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah
Monument Valley has been featured many times in classic western movies, especially those starring John Wayne and directed by John Ford. Ford loved the beautiful scenery of Monument Valley and perhaps more than anyone helped put it on the tourist map. The valley floor is not that large — around a half dozen square miles — but it’s been filmed from so many angles you’ve likely come to think of it as being representative of the entire American West.
You’ll have seen Monument Valley in the movie Stagecoach, this photo including the Three Sisters rock formation….
Stagecoach, 1939, with the Three Sisters formation.
And in the classic film, The Searchers…..
The Searchers, 1956
Henry Fonda’s “My Darling Clementine” (a screening of which my father-in-law told me was the first date he and my …
Tagged erosion, geology, John Wayne, Monument Valley, movies
“Pic of the Week”, November 28, 2014: Hoodoos, Drumheller, Alberta
The amazing patterns of erosion you find in Alberta’s badlands sometimes create unusual formations, especially these structures known as “hoodoos”. The name “hoodoo” was based on the word “voodoo”, and was given to these formations by Europeans. Each hoodoo is a totem-pole like sandstone pillar resting on a thick base of shale that is capped by a larger stone. Hoodoos are created over millions of years by differential erosion, the hoodoo eroding at a rate which is slower than the surrounding land because its cap-rock is made of more durable material. Native Indian tribes (eg. Blackfoot) believed the Hoodoos were petrified giants that could come alive at night.
This particular grouping of hoodoos is one of the most dramatic examples you’ll see …
