Mike Bauer

One thing that impresses us so much about this area is that you have a desert landscape on one side, you have mountains and forests on the other, and then in between it's these really cool rock formations.

Right.

It's all uplifted from earthquake activity.

Oh, wow.

That's Punchbowl Fault, and that runs parallel with the mountains.

And then when you came up the hill, you crossed the San Andreas Fault, which is, of course, the big one that runs through California.

Several faults in the area took all this sand that was laid down flat by streams and tilted it up into vertical relief.

and it creates a bowl shape.

You can see a definite bowl shape coming around like this.

So that's where it got the punch bowl name.

See this right where the shadow ends?

There's that big rock kind of all by itself.

If you look, it's like a forehead is facing us and there's a nose pointing straight.

Yeah, it's a natural Mount Rushmore.

Cool.

So there's all kinds of faces out here because it's like, oh, our brains are programmed to see patterns.

Okay, here's the Devil's Pond.

Okay.

And there's Burkhart Trail right there.

It goes over toward Devil's Chair, so that'd be just to the east.