My Visit To Oak Creek Canyon !

Our Second day visit in this trip was to Oak canyon creek. As the name explains it self that it was a magnificent canyon covered completely inside, with oak trees. The unique part of this canyon was the abundance of oak tree, which was making the environment and the canyon itself very serene and tranquil. As the description explained about Oak Creek Canyon is a 12 mile long river canyon located along the Mogollon Rim in northern Arizona located between the cities of Flagstaff and Sedona .The canyon is often described as a smaller cousin of the Grand Canyon because of its scenic beauty. Oak Creek, a tributary of the Verde River, flows along the bottom of the canyon and is one of the few perennial streams in the High Desert region of northern Arizona. Along the way to my description of this Canyon I will post few pictures, as you know pictures are worth more than a thousand words. All the candid pictures of oak canyon creek, were very close to my heart even though I not being geologists. But I have to agree that I never enjoyed studying geology and geography as much as I did here.

The specialty about the formation of this Canyon is also unique. After the rock layers were formed, between six and eight million years ago during the Miocene epoch there was a sudden huge crack on the surface of the rock. Area on both sides of the cracks gradually rose up forming this canyon. The other interesting part was the explanation about the wide variety of vegetation and animal habitat in the Canyon. One side of the canyon was shady and the other side got full amount of sun ray the whole day. As a result of which even though it was one single canyon it had lots of variation in the species of plants and animals which can flourish in both kinds of flora and fauna.

If you are interested in the geology of the Oak canyon creek, you will get to learn really amazing things. All the geology books which we used to mug up in our school days looked real here. The real thing was so astounding that you do not need that boring book and drowsing teacher to understand the geology and Geography.

There were six different types of rocks which form the geology of Oak Creek Canyon.

Basalt-- Formed from a lava flow. The basalt acts as armor for the sandstone, slowing down the weathering process. This is the top most layers and is black in color
Kaibab-- Developed when the area was underwater. This is the next layer, a gray limestone.
Toroweap-- Going down, we have the Toroweap Sandstone.A water deposited sandstone.
Coconino--Still farther down, we run into the pinkish Coconino Sandstone. Aeolian or wind blown, sandstone.
Hermit Group-- The next layer is the red Hermit group. There are three members to this group:-

(a) Snebly Hill-- Red Sandstone.

(b)Apache-- White band of limestone within Snebly Hill.

©Hermit-- Red Shale.

Supai-- Red silt deposited by streams.

<=========The top, dark layer is the basalt

<=========The lighter layer in the vegetation is the Kaibab

->>The butte on the left side of the picture is made up of the Snebly Hill Sandstone.
->>The structure to its right is made of Coconino Sandstone.

**The butte is the structure that looks taller than it is wide

-->>This is the red silt of the Supai

-->>Here is a good example of columnar joints.

--> Oak Canyon

-->>****Unfortunately, we were unable to get a good picture of the Toroweap.

There was no way for hiking in the Oak Canyon creek, but you can walk along the one side rim of the canyon, which was breadth taking. It amazes you how geology, climate and geography affects the formation of these beauties. We spent around two hours and could not get enough of it. The only thing missing was a good cup of “chai garam” and some samosa.I could live there for ever. Of course it was very cold.

Any way we decided we needed a break from all of the geology after all, not to mention the fact that we also needed to clean off, so we decided to go have some fun at Slide Rock Park. My next post will be about Slide Rock Park, which I guess you will definitely like a lot.