This trip is highly recommended for atheists, but also for theists in hopes that they may become more educated of the world and universe in which they live.  It is laughable to that some people still believe the 10,000 year history of the earth outlined in the Bible, especially while witnessing the awesome geological forces and time frames you will experience on this trip.

Moab, UT

This will be your initial base for day trips.  You will begin to see the powerful geologic processes that formed the region from Moab.

The geology of Arches provides an indisputable, detailed record of earth's past.  You can witness the millions of years of erosion, extreme temperatures and crust movement that created this amazing area.  (Again, it is clear that these geologic process took hundreds of millions of years, not 10,000.)

Geologic Background of Arches (courtesy of NPS):  "Arches lies atop an underground salt bed called the “Paradox Formation” which is responsible for the arches, spires, balanced rocks, fins and eroded monoliths common throughout the park.  Thousands of feet thick in places, the Paradox Formation was deposited over 300 million years ago when seas flowed into the region and eventually evaporated.  Over millions of years, the salt bed was covered with the residue of floods and winds as the oceans returned and evaporated again and again.  Much of this debris was cemented into rock.  At one time this overlying layer of rock may have been more than a mile thick.  Salt under pressure is unstable, and the salt bed below Arches began to flow under the weight of the overlying sandstones.  This movement caused the surface rock to buckle and shift, thrusting some sections upward into domes, dropping others into surrounding cavities, and causing vertical cracks which would later contribute to the development of arches.  As the subsurface movement of salt shaped the surface, erosion stripped away the younger rock layers.  Water seeped into cracks and joints, washing away loose debris and eroding the "cement" that held the sandstone together, leaving a series of free-standing fins.  During colder periods, ice formed, its expansion putting pressure on the rock, breaking off bits and pieces, and sometimes creating openings.  Many damaged fins collapsed.  Others, with the right degree of hardness and balance, have survived as the world famous formations of Arches National Park.  Faults deep in the Earth also contributed to the instability on the surface." [1]

Canyonlands National Park, UT

The next stop on the trip is an area of extreme geologic uplifting and canyons created by erosion from the Colorado and Green rivers.  In these canyons, one can see detailed maps of the earth's recent history as layer upon layer of geologic and fossil evidence are unveiled.  (10,000 years?  NO!!!)

Geologic Background of Canyonlands (courtesy of NPS):  "For hundreds of millions of years, material was deposited from a variety of sources in what is now Canyonlands National Park.  As movements in the earth's crust altered surface features and the North American continent migrated north from the equator, the local environment changed dramatically.  Over time, southeast Utah was flooded by oceans, crisscrossed by rivers, covered by mudflats and buried by sand.  The climate has resembled a tropical coast, an interior desert, and everything in between.  Layer upon layer of sedimentary rock formed as buried materials were cemented by precipitates in ground water.  Each layer contains clues, like patterns or fossils, that reveal its depositional environment.  For example, the red and white layers of Cedar Mesa Sandstone occur where floods of iron-rich debris from nearby mountains periodically inundated coastal dunes of white sand.  Only a trace of iron is needed to color a rock red.  It is difficult to imagine such major changes and the time scale they spanned.  Equally surprising is the fact that all of these rock layers were flat when they were deposited.  Only recently, speaking in geologic time, have these layers eroded to form the remarkable landscape seen today."  [2]  (For more, see Geology of Canyonlands.  [3])

Monument Valley, AZ

Geology of Monument Valley (courtesy Navajo Nation):  "Monument Valley is part of the Colorado Plateau.  During the Eocene epoch of the Cenozoic era, huge quantities of these rocky mountain sediments were deposited in the section of land that now contains Monument Valley. At the same time, a regional uplift occurred on the Colorado Plateau. The plateau was pushed upward by pressure from below. It broke and cracked, thus creating a new cycle of corrosion. Most of the breaking was done underground long before the rocks were revealed.  The base of the rock is made up of what's called "Organ Rock Shale". This is the soft rock shale. The middle section is made up of "DeChelly Sandstone". This is the hard rock shale. At the top of the rock is called "Shinarump". The Shinarump is made up of mountain sediments that were deposited during the Cenzoic era. The rocks that you see out there have what are called joints. Joints are vertical, very smooth and even, it determines how a rock erodes. If you look at the base of the rock, you will notice a slight change of color, that part was eroded away. It was part of the "DeChelly" formation.  A mesa does not start out as a mesa, it begins to emerge when a succession of hard and soft layers is cut into by a river or brought up by a fault. The mesa becomes a butte, then becomes a spire, and then it disappears."  [4]

Canyon de Chelly National Monument, AZ

Geological Background of Canyon de Chelly (courtesy Department of Geosciences, The University of Arizona): "The desert regions that contained Arizona during the Permian, was full of sand dunes which were created by winds coming from the northeast.  These sand dunes lithified, or turned into rock, and the crossbedding within them was preserved.  This is how the De Chelly Sandstone was formed.  It is called sandstone because it is composed entirely of sand.  Later, during the Triassic, the Shinrump Conglomerate was formed.  A conglomerate is a rock made of lots of different shapes and sizes of other pieces of rocks.  These two rock types, the De Chelly Sandstone and the Shinrump Conglomerate, are the two layers that compose the Defiance Anticline.  An anticline is a geologic structure in which the rock layers have been folded and the center has moved upward.  To create an anticline, a force must be applied to the originally flat lying layers of rock.  Canyon De Chelly is cut in the west limb of the anticline.  As the Defiance Anticline started to get squashed into the upside down U that it now is, it began to rise up.  As the anticline rose, the stream wanted to stay in the same place, so stream downcutting started the initial erosion that cut the rock layers.  After a notch was cut downward, the vertical joints in the rock were widened and weakened by repeated frost action."  [5], [6]

Petrified Forest National Park, AZ

Another "must see" location which features one of the world's largest and most colorful concentrations of petrified wood.  The area has also surrendered some great fossil treasures from the Triassic Period and is considered "one of the world's greatest storehouses of knowledge about life on earth when the 'Age of the Dinosaurs was just beginning." [8]

Geology of Petrified Forest National Park (courtesy of NPS): The Late Triassic Period (225 million years ago) environment at Petrified Forest National Park can be studied through examination of the rock formations and the fossils contained in them.  From these clues, geologists have learned that during the Triassic, what is now Arizona was located near the equator.  It is believed that Arizona's climate was hot and tropical with periods of aridity.  The park area was a lowland flood plain and lacustrine area through which freshwater streams flowed north and west towards the receding sea.  During this period of shifting plates, the land began to uplift and the streams increased their sediment carrying loads.  These streams deposited mud, sand, volcanic ash, and conglomerates that formed the Moenkopi and Chinle Formations.  The Chinle Formation, the most common rock formation within Petrified Forest National Park, contains many tree, amphibian, and reptile fossils as well as the many petrified logs found throughout the park.  After the Chinle Formation was deposited, there were several episodes of deposition and erosion until the late Cenozoic Era when the Bidahochi Formation was deposited.  The Bidahochi Formation, which dates to the late Tertiary Period, 3 to 6 million years ago, began as a shallow, large freshwater lake.  During this period, the lake dried and was covered by lava from numerous volcanic eruptions.  The Bidahochi appears in the Park as a yellowish-gray siltstone and black volcanic rock. [7], [8]

Tucson, AZ - Annual Gem & Mineral Show  [9]

The show spans much of the month of February at over 30 hotels and convention centers around Tucson - the largest of its kind in the world.  And, in fact, it has distributors and exhibitors from most countries of the world.  It is an excellent education in minerals and fossils.  You get to see them up close and talk with the individuals from around the globe that discovered them and prepared them.  It has become an annual pilgrimage for the Ethical Atheist who is developing quite a collection.  To see the collection and hopefully learn something new, click here

Kitt Peak Observatory, AZ:  Night Observatory Program  [10]

Bill Schoening, Vanessa Harvey/REU program/NOAO/AURA/NSF
THE GRAND FINALE!  After traveling back in geologic time, now you temporarily leave this planet and look out into the cosmos.  You are now dealing with time frames in the millions and billions of years.  Our Milky Way galaxy is just one of many thousands of galaxies.  Our closest neighboring galaxy is M31: The Andromeda Galaxy.  In astronomic terms, we can practically reach out and touch it, yet it takes light over 2,200,000 light years to span this short distance.  It has a diameter of 180,000 light years and contains as much material as 300 billion suns.