Bentonite Hills: Maybe they did fake the Mars Lander!!

On our way out of Cathedral Valley, we passed through an area called the Bentonite Hills, don't know what that is, but it is very colorful. My first thought when I saw it is in the title, I could seriously see using this place as a place to fake a landing on Mars. Seriously freaky!

This first series is just down on the flat below the hills. There is a well/watering station for the cattle being ranched in the area. How I don't know, it is the most gosh awful and desolate place I have been since the Bonneville Salt Flats. Anyway, at this watering hole is an old truck, possibly used to drill the well hole. It was fun to look at, but I didn't get as many good shots as I would have liked, there was a dead cow next to it... several days dead.... I just couldn't stand to stand downwind.

Looking up the beam of the... boom? I just liked the Depth of Field and perspective.

Rear View, pretty complicated piece of machinery.

I love the weathered brush strokes in the paint, and the dulled shine in the chrome bits. I'm not sure why but this shot just drew me in.

The whole rig as is. Wish it was more alone in the middle of the desert, the stupid tank in the foreground distracts me.

Looking out towards the plain the truck was on. This is officially the Bentonite Hills.

3 feet to the right, and turned a little bit to the west.

There are boulders all over Cathedral Valley that are volcanic in origin, this area also seems to have a liberal scattering of much smaller pebbles along with the larger kind. It is such a surreal landscape it is hard to describe. Nothing grows there either. Decaying rock is all there is, and this stuff is pretty poor rock too, very crumbly.