These otherworldly "towers," located in California's Mono Lake, may look like eerie art installations, but they occur naturally and are made of limestone. Mono Lake is a shallow salt water lake located in the high desert on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in California in the United States. The lake has no outlet to the ocean causing high levels of salts to accumulate in the waters. These rock towers form when underwater springs rich in calcium mix with the waters of the lake, which are rich in carbonates. The resulting reaction forms limestone. Over time the buildup of limestone formed towers, and when the water level of the lake dropped the towers became exposed.
Many of the trees at Zion National Park in Utah have variable sizes and fantastic shapes because they grow in harsh and difficult conditions, on cliffs and bare rocks, in crevices and cracks. They grow in places that receive little water and where summer temperatures can soar daily above 100 degrees. These trees send their great roots down into joints and fissures in the rock, searching for available water and breaking the rocks into soil. High on the tops of hoodoos and out along the slick rock of the Mt. Carmel Highway, their twisted shapes resemble, perhaps, goblins and witches, giants and wizards. Often they look like Japanese bonsais, as if they have been carefully pruned and shaped and then placed for all to see and admire.
One of the most recognized landmarks in Zion National Park, Court of the Patriarchs reach into the Utah sky. These three photogenic peaks bear the biblical names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Towering above Birch Creek Canyon almost 2000 feet, the Court of the Patriarchs represents nearly a full layer of Navajo Sandstone. This exposed sandstone is one of nine Zion rock layers that together span 150 million years of sediment deposits. The Patriarch cliffs represent one of the thickest layers of sediment, making up some of the tallest cliffs in the world. Occasional flash floods in the Virgin River increase water volume by 100 times and bring down tons of loose rock and sand, scouring out new side canyons and re-channeling the river. Here in Zion Canyon this magnificent scenery is always experiencing change, but its subtleties are seldom recognized in such an immense canyon.
