This area in Death Valley National Park is known as the Artist's Palette...I'll let you decide why they call it that.

“In our creations, the imagination is a limitless palette of colors, expressions, and tones, used to touch up memories of old, or to create and curate dreams yet to unfold. You are your palette and only have your heart and tethered soul, to bring to your own art and make it whole; to your colors of life amongst a world of love and strife. Whether by note, word, or brush of light, always keep evolving with your world of colored sight – spilled out, vulnerable, and wandering on the melodies, pages, and palettes of life remaining – converging…merging…urging – while the chords, scripts, and canvases of imagination are still in the great unfolding – still yet emerging. Built upon the ever-weathering erosion of ego’s flux as your uncertain foundations, what awaits on this journey are the spiritual experiences and deep sensations of bringing your true self to your manifestations. And the more self-expression you give to those many colors in this masterpiece of being all-in, the more you can let go and begin to ascend the artist’s palette within.” ~ Jack Mountain

A spectacular array of colors is splashed across the hills of the Artist’s Palette, tucked away within the Black Mountains of Death Valley National Park. Of all the weathered and charactered landscapes of magnificent erosion I've stood upon and admired, hoping in the eroding of my own life that my own weathered character can eventually reveal such brilliance, this one takes the cake. The kaleidoscope of colors, like a symphony of reds, oranges, yellows, blues, pinks, and greens adorns the badland eroding rock formations like the strokes of an artist’s brush. Beyond its intense variety of colors, the Artist's Palette reveals the volcanic forces which shaped the land in the Miocene Era. Formed as a result of tectonic activity and volcanic eruptions millions of years ago, as molten rock and magma rose to the surface, it interacted with the surrounding rock layers. These interactions caused chemical reactions that led to the formation of various metals and minerals, and the colors we see today are a result of these geological processes. Iron-rich hematite produces the reds and pinks, while yellows and golds seep from various iron oxides, and volcanic ash deposits of decomposing tuff derived mica form the greens, and still yet, manganese creates the purples.