The Wave, Arizona

The Wave is a distinctively undulating sandstone rock formation in the Coyote Buttes area of the Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, straddling the Arizona-Utah border, carved from the same Jurassic-age Navajo Sandstone that underlies much of the region. Its swirling, cross-bedded striping, alternating bands of red, orange, yellow and white, preserves the original layered structure of ancient wind-blown sand dunes, later cemented into rock and then sculpted by wind and intermittent water erosion into a series of parallel, trough-like undulations resembling ocean waves frozen in stone. Because of its fragility and popularity, visitor access is tightly limited through a permit lottery system, and the formation is considered one of the most striking examples of eroded cross-bedded sandstone in the world.