Zion

We drove into Springdale, Utah from the east on UT9 because we went to Bryce Canyon. (We were supposed to come from the west off I15.) Little did we know what we were getting in to. We were driving at sunset and I will include two pictures to give you an idea of what the drive is like.

First there is a tunnel that is over a mile long (there are 4 windows) which was built in 1930. If you are driving anything big (even a pickup with a camper shell) you have to pay $15 and be escorted through the tunnel. There are gate houses on both ends with men to manage the traffic. Of course, when we came through last night we did not see any lights or people or cars. I guess it is a free for all at night.



This picture will give you an idea of the switchbacks we drove down. Do you see the white car on the road behind us? I think there must be three hairpin turns coming down. The first time we came down the road it was twilight and Dad could not get any good pictures. So after we did our hiking today, I drove the 24 miles back out and back in again so that he could take pictures!!



As you drive down into Zion, at every turn you see a cliff with a different and strange erosion pattern. This one is called Checkerboard. All of those horizontal and vertical cuts in the rock are made by nature. We saw others that had wavy patterns cut in the rock. It was amazing. (And worth doing the drive three times.)


Zion is a fitting end to the trip. At both Grand Canyon and Bryce canyon, we were up on the top of the canyon looking down. At Zion we were down on the bottom hiking around the river that cut the canyon. The rock is much harder at Zion than at the Grand Canyon, so the sides are closer together. And there are all kinds ot trees and plants growing along the river. We took three hikes.

The first hike was 2 miles straight back into the canyon. The day was cloudy and cool. Look at the water in the picture. Out here in the desert that is considered a river. This picture was taken as we were coming out of the canyon and shows the canyon spreading out.








Here is a look that shows how steep the canyon walls are and how narrow a canyon the river has cut. There is danger of flash floods often in this canyon.






The rock that you see here is called Weeping Rock. The picture does not show it but there is water spraying out all under the white layer. The rock is a top layer of sandstone with a layer of shale underneath. Sandstone is pretty porous so water seeps into it. When it comes to the hard shale, the water can't seep through; it pushes out the side of the sandstone, making a spray all along the edge of the rock. This was a half mile hike but up some pretty steep inclines (for old people).








Now you need to look at this picture for a long time. We went to great lengths to get it for you. See the waterfall in the top middle? This is the waterfall into Emerald Pools. We had done a fair amount of walking to this point and we are not stupid so we decided to walk the easy trail. We crossed the bridge from the parking lot to the trails with a tour busload of people. With all of the milling around, we misread the sign. We set off on a trail - after a long way we met some people coming back who confirmed this was the moderate trail. We turned back. Then we tried the horse trail. That wasn't working out either (and was like walking in loose sand at the beach). We were ready to give up. When we got back to the bridge, we saw where we had gone wrong. So we hiked the six tenths of a mile to get this picture for you. Enjoy it a lot. That was the end of the hiking for today.

Dad took over 400 hundred pictures today. He took lots of pictures of rock formations as he has done all along. But there were also lots of different plants and many were labeled. He saw ashes, maples, junipers, oaks, cottonwoods, aspens, and willows to name a few.

The trip has been amazing. We have seen so many interesting and beautiful sights. The time of year has been great; another week or two and it will be too cold. We have seen people everywhere but have not had to contend with crowds.

I expect this will be the end of the blog. We look forward to getting home and seeing you all. Thanks for reading. It has been great fun sharing our trip with you.

Susan and Paul Mistretta

Snow!! and Bryce Canyon

We got up to a cloudy day in Moab, Utah. The dryness is getting to me. My nose and throat and eyes are dry. My fingernails are splintering. My skin is itchy. It is time to get to someplace with some humidity at least. While eating breakfast they were talking about snow on the TV but it was almost 50 at 8 am. Oh, and we revised the itinerary so you can discard your copy now. Instead of driving to Zion we added a park. We set off for Bryce Canyon. It is only 78 miles from Zion but is reported to be totally different.

We drove north out of Moab to pick up I70 and travel west across the state. Early on Dad took the usual pictures of farming and scenery. When we got to I70, he took over driving. (Up until then he had driven 40 miles and I had driven 1050 miles; he had taken 1400 photos and I had taken 3 photos). Just after Dad started driving we got:

**!!SNOW!!**

It is the second snow storm they have had this year. As we were driving we could see that in some places it was sticking and some it was not. Once it was sticking on one side of the highway and not on the other. The temperatures were hovering around 30.


You enter Bryce Canyon National Park through Dixie National Forest. This is a fake arch that you have to pass through in the National Forest. We reached Bryce Canyon in the sunlight, I bought a knit hat, we got our maps and headed for the far end of the park (that has become our usual mo.)




This is the view from 9100 feet. Why is it so hazy, you might ask? That is snow. So here we are 9100 feet, it is 28 degrees and snowing, I stopped to get myself together and Dad took off in search of a bristlecone pine. He turned to look for me a couple of times but decided I had chickened out. I really tried to follow him but when I got to a fork in the path, I went the wrong way (of course, I did not know it was the wrong way when I took it). About that time Janet starting texting me. Signal is pretty good at the top of the world. I gave up and went back to the car (luckily I had the keys). Then I am trying to guess how long I should wait before I panic.




Pretty soon Dad returns having seen a bristlecone pine for the first time. So today you get the tree picture in the middle of the blog. And we start down to the rest of the viewing sites. I must admit I am seeing most of these sites for the first time as I post them. I was freezing and feeling headachy. Meanwhile Dad was giddy with excitement over the snow and the fact that he had trees and rock formations in the same pictures. He was like a kid. (My guess is that when he looks back, this will be his favorite park.)







Bryce is called a canyon and looks like one (having seen the Grand Canyon, I am now an expert!) but it really is not. A canyon is formed by a river eroding away the surrounding land. Bryce was formed by rain falling and freezing and melting (an estimated 200 times a year) - so water but not a river is doing the sculpting. I did see this view and it was neat because everything is so close. In the Grand Canyon everything is far away. A big difference is that because of the wind blowing through the trees, it is noisy here at Bryce Canyon, not that vast quiet we experienced at the Grand Canyon and Arches.



This is called Natural Bridge, but really it is an Arch. They seem to have trouble with names in Bryce.
















To the left is a picture of Hoodoos. Remember the fins from Arches? After the fins are formed, they start to erode away. When the hardest rock layer is on top, the fins break apart and the eroding starts in the softer layers of rock lower down creating these shapes. Aren't they amazing?



We stopped in the Visitor's Center on the way out and bought more prizes for people who comment. Tony, what are you thinking? You don't want to miss the prizes. And, Jeff, it is good that Anne saved your bacon. Andrew is a lost cause. Janet and Erica are trying to earn all the prizes. Linda is coming on strong too. Dan returned after a busy weekend. I hear that Linde and Mer and Beth and Kay are reading but I have no proof.


And one final picture - this is what the same fake arch looked like on the way out. We had 78 miles to drive to Zion. It was a little scary until we got out of the snow. We were driving south and descending out of the mountains. As we drove I started feeling better. I finally realized that the altitude was getting to me. We have been above 5000 feet for days and have been up to 7000 or 8000 often - no problem. But 9100 feet with snow was too much for me.

Now we are safely tucked in and will see Zion tomorrow. Weather should be 20 degrees warmer. We actually are scheduled to spend two nights in one place for the first time on the trip! Hooray.

Utah and Arches National Park

The days and the parks are starting to run together. I'll have to read this when I get home so I can sort it all out.

We drove west to Utah then north for about 150 miles - not bad at all. There were few trucks on the road but lots of RVs. We drove through farm land - crops seem to be hay, wheat and beans. A lot of irrigation is going on; I can see why there are such water wars out here. The picture above shows a harvested field (they go on for miles) with the watering pipes running across the picture.


I am guessing the hay crop at least was pretty successful. We saw stacks and stacks just like this along the highway.










We got to Moab, Utah about 11:30 am. It looks to be a happening place. There are all kinds of motels and outdoor activity tour places and microbreweries. I imagine in the summer young people are out all day hiking and boating and 4-wheeling. Then at night they are walking up and down the main streets just having a good time. We picked up subs for a picnic and took off for the park.

As we drove into the park we got our first look at an arch. According to the brochure there are 2000 in the park from 3 feet across to 306 feet across. Our plan was to drive to the far end of the park and work our way back.

The park has a much more rustic feel, I think. There are pit toilets but no running water (except at one camp ground). What is listed as an easy walk here would have been listed as a moderate walk elsewhere in my opinion. We set off to Landscape Arch (.8 miles easy) and got to one too many uphills and turned back. Instead we saw Pine Tree Arch (so named because a pine tree is growing right in the bottom of it) and Tunnel Arch.





This is where we ate lunch. In the shade of Utah Juniper with Pinion Pine. Right next to a big rock. See how small the table is?













The arch at the right is named Delicate Arch. Yes, there are people standing under it. That is a 1.5 mile hike. We passed on that and took a picture from below. There is a picture of people standing under it dated 1905. A family tried to ranch not far from here. They stuck to it for a few years but it was just too hard.









There used to be big horn sheep in this area. They had disappeared because of disease from domesticated sheep and drought. Arches imported 25 from Canyonlands NP just down the road. Now there are about 50. But the sign is more hopeful than real. They are seldom spotted in the park.









This is a picture across salt valley to Fiery Furnace. There is salt from 200 feet to 2 miles thick under this whole area. Millions of years ago this land was all under the sea. Apparently the salt water got trapped and the water evaporated leaving a thick layer of salt. That was covered gradually by rock. Then the heavy rock pushed all of the salt together creating a dome. The rock could not bend over the top of the dome so it cracked, letting water in which melted the salt. Then there was a bubble and the rock collapsed leaving this salt valley. As you can see not much grows there. In the distance you see the fins of red sandstone sticking up. These are what the arches are carved from.


We walked in a ways to see Double Arch.We walked up the path to where you see those people but did not climb up into the arch. If you blow this up and look closely, you can see some kids in the bottom of the arch on the left. As good as these pictures are, they just do not show the beauty. The sky is so blue and the sandstone is so red. Everything is so peaceful and vast (even with lots of other people around).


We checked out the Petrified Sand Dunes. Scientists think that this was once sand like in the Sahara Desert. But water and rock got mixed in until it is now rock in the shape of the sand dunes. So it is not petrified like the trees we saw on Friday. But cool looking none the less.









Here is another interesting sign we have seen in several parks. I particularly like the part telling you to pick up small children. Fortunately we have not seen any mountain lions.












And finally the tree picture:


Those are quaking aspen and show the fall color. The weather is gorgeous. Cool enough so that we can hike around comfortably. I guess we walked 3 miles today and we are pretty tired. I was starving so we had Italian for dinner.

Andrew, forget Alaska. This is the place for you. There are lots of park ranger led hikes which are set up for young people. The countryside is incredibly beautiful. And nightlife is 5 miles down the road. So what if you have a degree in Political Science and Economics. Your meterology and entomology and horticulture courses should make you a shoo-in.

Driving through New Mexico and Mesa Verde

After a quick look at the rest of the Painted Desert, we drove east to New Mexico and then turned north and drove into Colorado. Mostly just a lot of desert to see. The trains out here are enormous. At the left you see four engines and in the picture below that bumpy white strip at the bottom of the cliff is the one hundred twenty plus cars the engines were pulling. Most of those are double-decker tractor trailer sized cars. In addition most of the traffic was trucks. We move a lot of stuff around this country.



We were driving through Navajo Indian Reservation until we hit Colorado; then it is Ute Indian Reservation. I'll have to do some research when I get back but the Utes look more prosperous than the Navajo. Mostly there was miles and miles of flat land with every few miles a small cluster of houses and trailers and a few range cattle eating the grass. As we drove north we saw a few trees which are a sign of water. The houses got nicer and the grass looked fuller. Eventually we saw irrigated fields. Dad said that they are drilling deep wells and draining the aquifer which is making things worse in the rest of Colorado.


Every few miles we would see a monolith of some sort sticking up. We could see them for miles ahead because the land is so flat. And Dad took so many pictures of them that he used up both of his fully charged batteries before the end of the day.


These are two that we saw. Now can you imagine what it would be like to have that in your front yard? we also saw what New Mexico is doing with their ARRA money - paving two more lanes so that 491 is four lanes wide instead of two. By the way - this was our cloudiest day so far.

We got to Cortez, Colorado and had lunch and drove into the Mesa Verde National Park. Paul's $10 Senior Pass is working like a champ. We paid for it at the Grand Canyon and have not paid a cent since.

After you pass the gate at Mesa Verde, it is 20 miles of climbing twisty road to the museum and visitor center. We passed through a sign for 7000 feet elevation. We started down the trail and we had a first look at the Spruce Tree House village on the left. All of that under the cliff is rooms that the Anasazi Indians built. There are 100 rooms and 100 people lived here. Many of the rooms were for sleeping and working, some were for storing grain, and there were round kiva's for hanging out and ceremonies. The Anasazi were farmers and grew their crops on top of the cliff where you see those trees. This house was inhabited for about 100 years until around 1300. These Indians had lived in this area for 700 years before they started building the cliff dwellings. At the end of the time there was severe drought so they picked up and left - moved south into Arizona and their decendents are the Hopi. The Navajo took over this area but they were hunters and not interested in the cliff dwellings. So they were just left alone until discovered in the 1880's.



We are getting pretty fearless. We walked all the way down(100 vertical yards) and got a close up look. That is me in my purple fleece looking into a kiva and reading a brochure. I'll bring it back to show you. And, yes, we walked back out. You know that because you are reading this post; there is no wireless internet in the cliff dwelling.



This is a picture from the left side of the cliff dwelling looking all the way back to the right. Most of the structure is as originally built. In a few places where there was extensive damage and the dwelling was about to collapse, the Park Service rebuilt the walls using original techniques.

We drove to another site and looked at The Cliff Palace. It is the largest cliff dwelling in the park. If any of you get out here while you are young enough, go down into that. You have to climb down stairs and ladders to get to it. By this time the camera was done so instead here is a link to read more about it and see pictures (from Wikipedia, of course).

And finally Dad was having a great time taking pictures of the trees, bushes and grasses because they are all labeled. But his favorite sign is this one:


And finally, finally while driving through Mesa Verde we saw huge plots of burned forest. It seems that when the land was not managed at all, there were often small fires which kept down the underbrush. Then there was a time when all fires were put out immediately so the underbrush did not get burned out. Then they got into a cycle where there was so much underbrush that fires could not be controlled. This is the result.



We are back on schedule and off to Arches National Park. Only 150 miles to drive. Love you, Mom/Susan

Petrified Forest and Painted Desert

Thea and Claire, this is for you. Do you see the thing that looks like a fallen down tree in the picture. It is really a rock. What happened is this. Millions of years ago there was a tropical forest (yes, around the equator) with lots of trees and animals in it. When trees died and fell down, they were often buried in mud and silt because the land flooded so often. So the trees did not rot like normal. Instead they got filled with water containing minerals. Then the continental shift occurred which moved that land from the equator up to Arizona. And somewhere in there the water evaporated leaving only the minerals in the shape of the tree. For years and years they were still buried in rock from the mud and silt but eventually the wind eroded that softer rock and the petrified trees are just lying around waiting for us to look at them. Pretty cool, huh? I have pieces of petrified wood for all grandchildren except Caeli. Now girls, explain this to your sisters. Get your dads and moms to help.


The pictures at the right are pictures of petrified trees. Some are in the museum and some are outside lying on the ground. The rocks are all different colors based on the color of the minerals. We have a paper telling which colors from which minerals. It was odd. We walked two trails which were a couple of miles apart - one has mostly red petrified wood and the other has mostly white.








We were so confused about where and what the Painted Desert is. It is any desert land that is colorful. It runs all the way from the Grand Canyon to the Petrified Forest. The picture at the left is a view called the Teepees and it shows the colors in the painted desert. They are lovely pastels.

At the last place we stopped there were petroglyphs in the rocks just below us. According to the sign there were some 650 in the rocks. We tried to find them and think we saw a few. But it was getting dark by then and we were not sure.

And one final picture for you. Not a tree this time:



The park was closing and there are about 6 overlooks that we missed because we started out late. So tomorrow back to Petrified Forest to pick those up and then on to Mesa Verde. We'll cross into New Mexico and turn north to Colorado. We lose an hour in that traveling so wish us luck at getting back on schedule. We miss you all but are kind of glad you are not here. I think after one hike through the red part of the petrified forest, you would not have seen the need to hike through the white petrified forest.

End of the Grand Canyon and more

We got up pretty early, did some gift shopping. (Only people who comment are going to get gifts and they are pretty nifty.) Looked at the now familiar views one last time. Then we drove 25 miles to the east end of the Grand Canyon and that gave completely different vistas. Here is the obligatory picture of me so that you know we were really there.







This is a view of the canyon from the east end at Desert View Point. You can see the river here entering the canyon. The canyon is not as deep. We spent several hours looking at the canyon before we left. It was difficult to leave; I was afraid that we were going to get behind on the itinerary!!!






We were driving along on our way to Desert View and saw a sign for the Tusayan Ruins; though not planned, we stopped. About 800 years ago a tribe of maybe 30 Indians lived on that site. They grew some vegetables, did some hunting, and I guess for vacation they walked over to the Grand Canyon. This is not the earliest indication of people in the area. There are lots of caves down in the canyon and many of them were inhabited.



On our way out of the park we saw the park service at work. They had set a quick fire to burn out the underbrush. If the underbrush is not kept to a minimum then eventually a lightning strike will start a fire and it will be a big deal. (Like in Yellowstone at least 10 years ago.) So instead they set small fires and then put them out. We saw lots of evidence of these fires driving into the park. Overall the Grand Canyon park is just wonderfully run. I guess if the Park Service is going to do anything right, it better be this one. (By the way, Andrew, They hire 800 seasonal workers for the summer and there are cabins.)






We spent the next 3 hours driving through Arizona. I had Dad take this picture of the power lines because the power grid is such a prevalent part of the landscape. I don't know if it is just because we spent time at Hoover Dam but it seems so much more prominent than in the east.

Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is unbelievable. The thought that it most brings to mind for me is that the earth is incredibly old. And that people are incredibly insignificant. Another amazing thing is how quiet and still it is. The Colorado River is not that wide and has never been any wider. Most of the canyon was created by rock being undercut and collapsing. So the quiet seems in contrast in some weird way.




We walked almost two miles of the Rim Trail. It runs right along the rim and people have complete access to the canyon. There are lots of flat places right off the trail that call you to walk right to the edge. It was a beautifully clear day and we could see the other side clearly except that it is 10 to 14 miles away.



The biggest surprise and disappointment is that you cannot see the river except in small glimpses. The first sighting for us is that triangle right in the middle of the picture to the left.







Here is the same picture - just an enlargement of the the middle of it and you can see the water in blue.





We are spending the night in El Tovar. It was opened in 1905 and has a feel from another time to it. It was built by the railroad; the deal was to ride the train out here and stay in the luxury hotel. Must have been only for the privileged few. Dinner was lovely and elegant.



We are beat. It was a great day.The weather could not have been more perfect. There were no crowds. This may be the best time of year to see Grand Canyon. Here is the tree picture.