The Egg Factory
The Egg Factory is probably the most-visited area in the Bisti Wilderness. Google "Bisti Wilderness," and you'll undoubtedly see images of the Egg Factory. Scattered in a small wash, the "eggs" look like something from an alien planet. They include all kinds of shapes and sizes, including some eggs that have "cracked" open and left the shell on the ground beside them.
Because we were so close on Wednesday, we had a pretty good
idea of how
to find the
Egg Factory.
The hike directly to the Egg Factory
was a little over 2 miles, and
we ended up in a wide flat wash. The "trick" is to find a gap
in the black rolling hills at the edge of the main wash and drop in to the Egg Factory. Several times later in the trip I "rescued"
other hikers wandering around the main wash who couldn't find the Egg Factory. I'd seen the photos of the "eggs" in the
Egg Factory and thought they were somewhat interesting, but they were much more intriguing in real life. They only cover about 20 yards
of the wash, but each "egg" is unique. The lighting was subdued, but we had great clouds for photographing the eggs.
Just around the corner from the Egg Factory were the petrified logs. The famous "Perched Log"
was lying on an ash pedestal in a back alcove. Broken pieces of the petrified log lay at the base of the formation. As you can see in the image below, hoodoos with
caprocks of sandstone or siltstone were common in this area.
We crossed over a small ridge into a giant wash to discover a giant petrified log that had to be 40 feet long.
Part of it was still supported by a small pedestal while other parts of the trunk had broken off and lay slightly askew.
The wash with this giant petrified log looked like something right out of a geology text book.
We waited around hoping for better light, but there would be no golden light for our petrified logs on this hike.
As we walked out into the main wash, we saw another very long petrified log exposed on the edge of a hill.
We stopped to shoot the Egg Factory again on the way back to the Explorer. The light wasn't good, but the swirling cirrus clouds above the chocolate hills added a nice contrast.
When we reached the area we named Hoodoos 3, the sun broke through the clouds and bathed the area with warm light.
The soft light with the dramatic clouds behind the hoodoos created some very interesting shots. And then things got even better.
The Super Moon rose in a notch between two brick-red hills. They looked like someone had gotten carried away with the saturation button.
Can you find the shark swimming in the first image or the sea serpent head in the last image?
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We finally had to start hiking back to the Explorer or we would be hiking in the dark. We packed up and started hiking, but we stopped every few minutes to look back at the pink clouds painting the sky. It was a gorgeous evening!
I'd like to go back and re-shoot the petrified logs area again in good light, but the rest of the day was AMAZING!
We hiked a little over 5 miles in our 5 hours of shooting today. Tomorrow is the super moon and the total lunar eclipse.
We'll see if tomorrow can "eclipse" today's shooting.
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