Farewell, Bisti wilderness... Part 6

To look at the sunset in Bisti wilderness, click here - The sun was rolling down... Part 5

I know I promised you to come back here and explore some more of the Bisti wilderness. And... let's do it! Even more, let's go back in time... Not too far, just a few months back... From April to October... Why? From the dry season to the rainy days. In fact it was raining hard just the day before we visited Bisti for the first time and it made a huge difference with our Spring visit. We got there early in the morning and started walking towards the north side of the valley. Immediately we realized that wet clay is the hardest thing on Earth to walk on... It sticks... sticks... sticks... more and more and soon every boot weighs at least 10 pounds (I am not kidding or exaggerating)... Just look at our tracks... You know what saved us? Grocery bags! ;) We wrapped the boots before entering the clay field and... surprisingly it helped - less clay stuck ;) But.. nothing is perfect on this Earth and we still had heavy feet but kept going... we had no option but to keep walking ;)

 

Surrounding landscapes were unbelievable. We passed by a few "islands" - the hills growing in the middle of the lake of clay and were struck by the shapes. Our imagination went wild and... listen - do it yourself, look at it and tell me what you see in there? Animals? Abstracts? Something else?

We were getting closer to the bright orange hills we marked as our destination... And the closer we get the more they attract us, like a huge magnet attracts small iron particles...

But before we reached the hills on the far end of the valley, we found a lake (or was that a creek?) and a track going around it so we followed it to get around the water (it's hard to call it a "road")... Do you remember the last picture in the previous story? Believe it, or not, it was the dried bottom of this very lake! The rains stopped and the water evaporated and exposed the lake bed... Interesting metamorphosis, huh?

Just look at this 360 degrees view, isn't it amazing? Also look at the surface... This area was slightly elevated compared to where we started and the clay was drying out already. So, at this point we had less weight on our boots and left almost no track... But just a few steps forward and everything changed and we were in square one again, struggling through wet and soft clay...

Twenty more minutes and we were walking at the foothills and looking at the lake (or creek?) from the other side...

I climbed to the top of the nearest hill to capture this panoramic view around... You know what was the hardest part? To leave the top of the hill and climb down. I was stuck there, bewitched by view and wanted to stay forever...

 

And we continued exploring and finding new petrified animals and other fantastic creatures. And... the colors... These orange rocks...

Later we met some guards. Or at least we thought those were guards. Why? Have no idea, they just looked like ones ;) Don't you agree?

By this point we were already tired. And decided we'd better return before our legs stopped. So we turned and retraced our steps, trying to walk across the driest areas. It wouldn't help much but we found a road on the other side of the creek/lake. Hm... road is a big of the word, but this track was elevated and we can walk there. It made our way longer (almost twice compared to crossing the clay field) but much-much easier so we didn't think twice ;)

Soon enough we were back in the parking lot (hm... actually just a flat and relatively dry area off the road with the sign to mark it) and that was it. But after this short and adventurous hike we were dreaming of coming back so we did it next April (but you already know about that, don't you?). Probably the northern part of the wilderness is not as interesting as others, but... still worth exploring and wandering around. And the best part is - we still left almost 90% unexplored and need to come back again (and, maybe, more than once) to satisfy our itch to find more exotic creatures and places...

Pictures were taken on October 04, 2011.