Crocodiles

Cheetahs

I am starting a series of favorites by mammal. As you can imagine I have thousands of images after nine trips to Botswana. Since we are not traveling this year until May (new puppy), I thought this series would be interesting. Minimal words, mostly images.

We stayed three nights after Zion with friend, who have a weekend place in the desert outside St. George, UT in a place called Ivins. While we really enjoyed the visit with them, their patio offered wonderful views of bird life, including a quite friendly roadrunner, as well as colorful cacti and a chipmunk.

Zion, one of the US’s most popular parks, is located at the intersection of Three major ecosystems – Mojave Desert, Colorado Plateau and Great Basin Valley. It was established as a national park in 1919. The park is essentially a narrow valley in the midst of very tall formations, with the Virgin River flowing through. The river initially flows through a narrow slot canyon 100′ below sandstone cliffs. This section, called the Narrows, is a very popular hiking location which offers the experience of wading in the river for as far as six miles up a much longer canyon.

The main visiting area is the first six miles of the canyon, where the cream/pink/red sandstone cliffs soar far above the valley floor. There are four life zones in the park – desert, riparian, woodland and conifer forest. The end of the shuttle ride is the Temple of Sinawava, where a one mile trail then leads to the Narrows. There are some seven hiking trails in the park, from short to six miles long and steep.

The main road from Springdale runs past the visitor center, climbs via switchback about five miles to a 1.1 mile long tunnel on the way to Mount Carmel and beyond. There are several viewpoints on the way up and beyond the tunnel.

Bryce is a top ten national park, one of several in Utah. It was discovered and named after Ebenezer Bryce, an early settler in the area, in 1874. It became a national park in 1928. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon. This is not a typical canyon, but is a collection of giant natural amphitheaters. They are distinctive for hoodoos – natural geological structures formed by frost weathering and stream erosion. The colors are dramatic with reds, orange and yellow colors.

Frost weathering is a mechanical weathering process that breaks down soil and rock through the freezing and thawing of water. The water seeps into cracks in rocks and freezes, expanding and putting pressure on the cracks to expand and break the rock.

The park offers numerous hiking and horse-backing opportunities. For those not so inclined, a 15 mile drive provides a significant number of overlooks which enable a wonderful view of the amphitheaters, as well as longer views of Escalante.

We left Moab and Arches and headed for Bryce National Park. Our route took us down 24S from I70 west via Hanksville and then through the narrow part of Capital Reef at Fruita. We then cut south on 12 to Boulder and Escalante to Bryce City. The scenery was spectacular down all along 24. The road then climbs to 11,313″ over Boulder Mountain and through the Dixie National Forest.

We found a neat little cafe in Boulder (Utah) called the Burr Trail Grill, which was well worth stopping at. The meal – and the craft beer – was great.

One evening we drove northeast of Moab to have dinner at the Red Bluff Inn, which sits right on the river about 10 miles from Moab. The terrain along the drive was incredible, and the following images were taken on my cell from the moving car.

Located just 5 mil;es outside Moab, Utah, Arches National Park is a 73000 acre wonderland of eroded sandstone fins, towers, ribs, gargoyles, hoodoos, balanced rocks and , of course, arches. The park has over 2000 arches including Delicate, Double, Sand, Landscape, Broken, Window, Skyline and so on.

Arches is an easy park to visit, offering a reasonable drive with multiple viewpoints, some with short walks, some with longer hiking opportunities.

A group of us recently toured the main national parks in Utah, visiting Arches, Bryce and Zion. On these travels we also visited Dead Horse Point State Park and drove through Capital Reef National Park. The scenery both in the parks and between them along the byways we spectacular.

Dead Horse Point is a small state park near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, and just north of Moab, UT. It was formed in 1959. The park is on a mesa which narrows to a point which is only about 100′ wide and surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs which drop 200′ or so to the basin formed by the Colorado River. It provides a spectacular view of the river and Canyonlands NP, and should be a must stop if you are in the area. The park is best visited in late afternoon.

The name is derived from legends. The most popular has it that local settlers corraled a bunch of wild horses on the point, trapping them with a fence made from brush. After selecting the best, they left the rest to die from lack of water in order the keep the horses out of the hands of the Utes, the local Indian tribe.

The site has appeared in a number of movies including the car scene in “Thelma and Louise”.

Breckenridge is one of our favorite places to visit. This is particularly so in mid to late November, when the as;pens are in the process of changing color from green to yellow to – in some cases – orange/red. At this time we often drive up the road on the SE end of town up to Boreas Pass. This is a paved road that turns at some point to gravel, and is a favorite road for hikers, bikers and walkers, as well as drivers. Here are a few of this year’s images.