Take a Ride With Me on a San Francisco Streetcar — 1906!

This amazing movie of a San Francisco streetcar traveling down Market Street was filmed four days before the massive April 18, 1906 earthquake, then shipped by train to New York for processing. It’s a trip back in time to the chaotic streets of early-day San Francisco, where horse-drawn wagons shared the road with streetcars, men on horseback and pedestrians. A sightseeing streetcar passes through the scene. Newsboys cruise the streets, some seeming to pose briefly for the camera. Other boys grab onto the back of a car and run along. The crowd is mostly male, everyone wears a hat and most are well-dressed.

The area shown in the film was destroyed by the big earthquake and fire that followed. In the film, the clock tower at the end of the street at the Embarcadero Wharf still stands. The film originally was thought to have been made in 1905.  David Kiehn with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when the film was shot. Clues he used were the New York trade papers, wet streets from recent heavy rainfall, shadows indicating time of year, the weather and conditions on historical record. He even determined when the cars were registered and who owned them.

San Francisco is the favorite city of my mother-in-law and daughter. My husband went to kindergarten on the Presidio within sight of the Golden Gate Bridge, but he doesn’t have the same romantic attachment to the city as other family members do.  He did alert me to this video, though! He prefers the wilds of Yellowstone National Park, which is also earthquake-prone.

Watch the video in full screen, if you can. 
U.S. Geological Survey’s discussion of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Movie of San Francisco not long after 1906 earthquake.
Wikipedia — 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.
The original version of “Trip Down Market Street” from Archive.org.

It’s Grand!

This rock squirrel hangs out at a scenic outlook at the Grand Canyon. He's got his eye on another vista -- your backpack full of snacks.

We made a detour to the Grand Canyon on our drive home in September from California (Yes, I’ll be wringing posts out of that trip for some time to come!)  It was well worth the four hours’ deviation from our dash (just ask a certain highway patrolman in New Mexico) back to Kansas City, even though we’d visited the Grand Canyon before.   We visited the South Rim, which is about 80 miles north of Flagstaff, in northern Arizona. The North Rim is where that transparent walkway juts out over the canyon. You will not be getting me on that!

Rangers caution against giving the rock squirrels any food. It isn't good for them, and they can bite. This rock squirrel (Spermophilus variegatus) thinks he can sneak in, grab a granola bar and scamper away.

You feel very small and insignificant standing near the edge looking out at a vast display of millions of years of erosion.  One of these days I may actually make the grueling hike to the bottom.  My sister and her family have done it.  Others I know have rafted the Colorado River, which looks like a skinny ribbon at the bottom. It’s supposed to be a spectacular trip.  If you’ve done either, please comment below and tell me about your experiences. If you’ve been to the rim of the Grand Canyon, please comment.  If you’ve never been, add your thoughts. If you think it’s a just an overrated ditch, let me know, too. 

Here’s what the Grand Canyon National Park has to say about the Grand Canyon:

A powerful and inspiring landscape, the Grand Canyon overwhelms our senses through its immense size; 277 river miles (446km) long, up to 18 miles (29km) wide, and a mile (1.6km) deep.

While standing at the edge of this breath-taking sight, I got a cell phone call from my son.  I’d forgotten my phone was even on, and even though I was glad to hear from him, it didn’t seem quite right to be talking when I should have been deep in contemplation. But that didn’t stop me from getting an update on his job search. (He got a job!)  I was one of the few speaking English there, too. There were probably a dozen languages being spoken.   Five million tourists visit every year. I was thrilled to be among that number.

Link to the National Park website: Grand Canyon National Park   Part One of the California Road Trip Saga is Surf’s up.

Tourists at the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon. Everywhere you look, it's grand!

Pronghorn antelope graze near the Grand Canyon.

What a Relief!

New Madrid Fault.

I don’t have the shakes any more!  Today’s Kansas City Star reports that the New Madrid Seismic Zone in the boot heel (southeast) area of Missouri may be quieting down, which is very good news.  A series of earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone from 1811-1817 could be felt as far away as Quebec.  One of the earthquakes woke people as far away as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Norfolk Virginia.  The few people in Kansas City at that time were tossed around in their bedrolls like popping corn.

So many cable television channels are devoting lots of airtime to possible disaster stories — asteroids, mega volcanoes, gamma ray bursts, magnetic pole flipping, climate change, you name it, it’s coming at us.  The news of real events isn’t comforting, either, with earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and fires.  It’s good that we can relax a little about one possible catastrophe.

At the bottom is an explanation from the U.S. Geological Survey of the New Madrid Fault and the earthquakes it has unleashed. You can also read a lot more about the New Madrid Seismic Zone on Wikipedia by clicking here: New Madrid Fault.  Also check out the post by Gallivance noting a book about the New Madrid fault and the Mississippi River, featuring herds of squirrels on the march, a bright, forked comet and pirates!  A Comet, An Earthquake, And The End of The River Pirates

Comparison: the 1895 Charleston, Missouri, earthquake in the New Madrid seismic zone with the 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake. Red indicates area of structural damage, yellow indicates area where shaking was felt.

The New Madrid Fault Poses Little Threat, Scientists say

(Kansas City Star, April 13, 2009)

The New Madrid fault zone that unleashed a series of violent earthquakes in the early 19th century may be quieting down, two scientists say.

The fault line, which stretches into southeast Missouri, shows no signs of building up the stresses needed for the quakes many seismologists expect to someday rock the region again, the scientists say.

The researchers from Purdue and Northwestern universities said that may mean the little-understood New Madrid Seismic Zone is shutting down or that seismic activity is shifting to adjacent faults in the country’s midsection.

Other scientists call those conclusions premature.

 U.S. Geological Report on the New Madrid Earthquakes 1811-1812

Shortly after 2 o’clock on the morning of December 16, 1811, the Mississippi River valley was convulsed by an earthquake so severe that it awakened people in cities as distant at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Norfolk, Virginia. This shock inaugurated what must have been the most frightening sequence of earthquakes ever to occur in the United States. Intermittent strong shaking continued through March 1812 and aftershocks strong enough to be felt occurred through the year 1817. The initial earthquake of December 16 was followed by two other principal shocks, one on January 23, 1812, and the other on February 7, 1812. Judging from newspaper accounts of damage to buildings, the February 7 earthquake was the biggest of the three.

In the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys the earthquakes did much more than merely awaken sleepers. The scene was one of devastation in an area which is now the southeast part of Missouri, the northeast part of Arkansas, the southwest part of Kentucky, and the northwest part of Tennessee. Reelfoot Lake, in the northwest corner of Tennessee, stands today as evidence of the might of these great earthquakes. Stumps of trees killed by the sudden submergence of the ground can still be seen in Reelfoot Lake.

Uplift of over 3 meters was reported at one locality several hundred kilometers to the southwest of the epicentral zone where a lake formed by the St. Francis River had its water replaced by sand. Numerous dead fish were found in the former lake bottom. Large fissures, so wide that they could not be crossed on horseback, were formed in the soft alluvial ground. The earthquake made previously rich prairie land unfit for farming because of deep fissures, land subsidence which converted good fields to swamps, and numerous sand blows which covered the ground with sand and mud. The heavy damage inflicted on the land by these earthquakes led Congress to pass in 1815 the first disaster relief act providing the landowners of ravaged ground with an equal amount of land in unaffected regions.

Some of the most dramatic effects of the earthquakes occurred along rivers. Entire islands disappeared, banks caved into the rivers, and fissures opened and closed in the river beds. Water spouting from these fissures produced large waves in the river. New sections of river channel were formed and old channels cut off. Many boats were capsized and an unknown number of people were drowned. There are some graphic eyewitness descriptions in contemporary newspapers made by the boatmen caught on the Mississippi River near Little Prairie, not far from the present-day town of Caruthersville, Missouri.

Although the total number of deaths resulting from the earthquakes is unknown, the toll probably was not large because the area was sparsely populated and because the log cabin type construction that was prevalent at that time withstood the shaking very well. Masonry and stone structures did not fare so well, however, and damage to them was reported at distances of 250 kilometers and more. Chimneys were thrown down in Louisville, Kentucky, about 400 kilometers from the epicentral area, and were damaged at distances of 600 kilometers.

Although it is impossible to know the precise epicentral coordinates of the earthquakes, contemporary accounts of the events suggest that the epicenter of the December 16 shock was close to the southern limit of the area of sand blows. The epicenter of the February 7 shock was closer to the northern limit of the sand blows, near the town of New Madrid, Missouri. There is not sufficient information about the second main shock on January 23 to know its epicenter. Thus the common practice of calling the entire earthquake sequence the “New Madrid earthquakes” is somewhat misleading. From what is known about the present seismicity of the area, it can be inferred that their focal depths were probably between 5 and 20 kilometers. The fault plane — or planes — on which the Earth rupture occurred are inferred to have had a NNE – SSW strike direction, more or less parallel to the Mississippi River.

The felt areas of the three largest earthquakes were extremely large. They extended south to the gulf coast, southeast to the Atlantic coast, and northeast to Quebec, Canada. The western boundary cannot be established owing to a lack of population. However, it can be estimated that the area of intensity V or greater effects was approximately 2½ million square kilometers. This can be contrasted with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, for which the area of intensity V or greater effects was about 150,000 square kilometers. The large difference in felt areas between the Mississippi Valley and San Francisco earthquakes, which had approximately the same magnitude and focal depth, can be explained by differences in attenuation of earthquake waves traveling through the Earth’s outer crust. The crust in the Western United States tends to “soak up” earthquake energy, whereas in the central and eastern regions of the country the seismic energy experiences a much lower rate of absorption. Quantitative studies of recent earthquakes confirm this explanation.

Invariably the three questions that are asked when one describes the 1811-12 earthquakes are (1) could such earthquakes occur again, (2) if so, when will they happen, and (3) what would be the effect of such an earthquake if it were to occur now?

The answer to whether such earthquakes can happen again is yes. Field studies by M. L. Fuller of the United States Geological Survey published in 1912, provided topographic and geological evidence of large magnitude earthquakes predating the 1811-12 sequence. This evidence included ground cracks as large as any caused by the 1811-12 earthquakes in which trees fully 200 years old grew from the bottoms and slopes. Indications of more recent faults and of sandstone dikes filling old earthquake cracks were also found by Fuller. Futhermore, studies of the seismicity since 1812 show that the region is behaving in a manner more or less typical of active seismic zones.

The second question — when will another great earthquake happen — is much more difficult to answer. Extrapolation of magnitude and intensity recurrence curves is presently the only method of prediction available, but this is full of difficulties because the earthquake record covers far too brief a period of time and because earthquakes do not follow an exact cyclical pattern. Although extrapolations of recurrence curves for the region indicate return periods — depending on the investigator — of anywhere between about 400 to 1,000 years for an earthquake the size of the December 16, 1811 event, there is a possibility that such an earthquake might occur as soon as next year or as late as several thousand years hence.

It is easier to speculate on the effects that an earthquake the size of the 1811-12 series would have if it were to occur today than it is to predict when it will happen. In the epicentral area, a repeat of the kind of surficial damage experienced in 1811-12 can expected. However, this would result in a much greater loss of life and property today because of the much larger number of people and man-made structures in the region than were there 162 years ago. Even more awesome is the size of the area that would be affected. The dispersion of the surface waves, combined with their low attenuation, would result in a large amplitude, long duration sinusoidal type of motion with periods in the same range as the natural periods of tall buildings. Although damage to buildings located outside of the immediate earthquake zone would be mostly nonstructural in character, the monetary amount should be expected to be very large. The emotional and psychological effects of a large earthquake in the central part of the country would probably also be considerable, particularly if the earthquake had a long aftershock pattern as the 1811-12 sequence did.

Perhaps the greatest danger of all arises from the sense of complacency, or perhaps total ignorance, about the potential threat of a large earthquake. The frequency of occurrence of earthquakes the size of those that took place in 1811-12 is very low; however, continuing minor to moderate seismic activity in the central Mississippi Valley area is an indication that a large magnitude tremor can someday be expected there again.

Earthquake Information Bulletin, Volume 6, Number 2, March – April 1974, by Otto W. Nuttli.

More Awesome Utah (and a little Las Vegas)

Trees somehow manage to grow in deep sand and shade in this courtyard of sandstone "fins" in Arches National Park, Utah. The wind rushed through, blowing the sand into our eyes, eyes and mouth.

This is my second post about southern Utah.   It’s just too awesome to be covered in one post, and you may see more about it in the future…..  The link to the first “Awesome Utah” post is at the bottom.  It contains details of the journey, links to websites and a variety of fascinating facts. You can also scroll down to find it.  This post is mostly photographs in no particular order.  See below for a link to a collage card I made of nine Utah iconic views.  Utah Collage Card from Zazzle.com All photographs are copyrighted.  Some are available as greeting cards and other products at “It’s a Beautiful World!”

These geologic features in Arches National Park are known as fins.

We hiked just after sunrise to Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park.

In Canyonlands National Park, the Green River curves south where it will soon join the Colorado River. At the confluence of the two rivers in Canyonlands, you can see that both rivers were aptly named. The water of the Green River is very green, while the Colorado (which means colored red) River carries its colorful load of red silt from erosion.

A lizard seeks shelter from the sun (and me!) in Arches National Park. I think it's a "common sagebrush lizard."

I walked about a mile round-trip through blowing sand to get this shot of Broken Arch. See what I do for you! Broken Arch, which is in Arches National Park, isn't really broken, as you can see. Not broken yet, anyway.

Why did the cow cross the road? It was looking for something good to eat. Good luck! Cattle wander the open range in Utah, so motorists need to be wary.

The Monitor and the Merrimack, just north of Canyonlands National Park, are two buttes named after "iron-clad" ships that battled each other during the Civil War.

This grove of aspens is near Canaan Peak, elevation 9,196 feet.

The terrain changes quickly and dramatically in Utah.  Near mountaintops, aspens and evergreens take over from shrubby cedar and sagebrush.  In early November, when we visited, all of the aspens had lost their leaves.  According to the December 2008 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, aspens are suffering “sudden aspen decline” in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and elsewhere in the Rocky Mountains.  We didn’t see any sign of that, but it would have been hard to tell whether the aspens were in an early state of disease or insect infestation.

Aspens grow in “clones,’ or groups of genetically identical trunks, Smithsonian reported.  Some clones are thousands of years old, but the individual trees usually don’t live longer than 150 years.  Scientists have confirmed that a clone of aspens in Utah covered 108 acres and is thought to be the world’s heaviest, largest or oldest organism.  This particular clone is known as “Pando,” after the Latin for “I spread.”

These aspens stand at the crest of a mountain near Canaan Peak in Utah. Beyond are row after row of more mountains to the east.

We climbed a trail to a series of three pools fed by springs in Zion National Park. A Zion ranger said that the water from the spring had fallen on the mesa in the time of the Roman Empire and that it had taken 2,000 years for it to percolate through the sandstone.

Zion had the most tourists of any of the parks in Utah that we visited, probably because the weather was the mildest in November.  A trio of rock climbers was slowly ascending a sheer thousand-foot cliff while we were there.  The cliffs of Zion are second in popularity after Yosemite National Park for rock climbers to tackle.  Rock climbers are sometimes restricted from certain cliffs In Zion because of nesting peregrine falcons.

It rarely freezes in the city of St. George, Utah, which is less than an hour drive away from Zion.  We stayed in the historic district in a house built of adobe bricks in the 1870s by Mormon pioneers.  Across the street was Brigham Young’s house and grounds, which is open to free tours.  During the summer, a variety of crops are harvested in small amounts on the small Brigham Young estate, such as pomegranates, almonds and cotton.  A huge mulberry tree shades the house, planted by the Mormons more than a hundred years ago.  The mulberry leaves were used to feed silkworm caterpillars.  Cotton was an early crop in the area, which was nicknamed “Dixie.”  Rosemary hedges are common in the historic district, which must be irrigated to maintain its oasis-like quality.

We saw this tarantula by the side of the trail. It's probably a male looking for romance. Females stay in their burrows and are nocturnal.

We saw more wildlife in Zion than anywhere else.  We saw a pair of California Condors, an endangered species (more on them in “Awesome Utah”).  The Zion ranger pointed out a pair of rare golden eagles, too, but I wasn’t eagle-eyed enough to see them. There were Mule deer near a couple of the shuttle stops and along some of the trails.  They didn’t seem to mind human visitors, as long as we didn’t get too close.  A tarantula scuttled along one of the trails.  Tarantulas are rarely seen in Zion, because they are reclusive and nocturnal.  But sometimes, the males can be seen in late summer and early fall when they are out cruising for females. We saw the pictured tarantula along a trail during the day on November 6. Click here to see my  Collage Card of Nine of My Photographs of Utah.

Half of the visitors to Zion National Park are hauling "high octane" cameras and equipment, but this photographer is even more serious than most.

Here are some websites:

• California Condor
• Joshua Tree
• Tarantulas in Zion National Park
• Arches National Park
• Bryce Canyon National Park
• Canyonlands National Park
• St. George, Utah
• Zion National Park
• Brigham Young
• Seven Wives Inn, St. George, Utah
• My first post on Utah, “Awesome Utah”

Mormon president Brigham Young spent winters in this house in St. George, Utah, in his later years. The guide told us that Young only brought one wife with him. Young was thought to have had as many as 55 wives.

We stayed at the Seven Wives Inn in St. George, Utah. It was built of adobe bricks in 1873. Polygamists hid in the attic here after polygamy was outlawed in the state in 1882. Benjamin F. Johnson, who stayed in the house, did have seven wives. In 1983, one of Johnson's descendents restored the house and established it as the first registered bed and breakfast in Utah. The house is in the historic district of St. George, which includes Brigham Young's winter home.

Joshua Trees, a kind of yucca, flourish in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area west of Las Vegas.

Nature means something different in Las Vegas. Here is glass artist Dale Chihuly's version of flowers, "Fiori di Como" on the ceiling of the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel.

This is a Las Vegas version of a fountain -- over the top. Five small airplanes write in the sky at the beginning of an afternoon water show in the lagoon in front of the Bellagio Hotel.

These rock climbers are linked together in Zion National Park in Utah.

Awesome Utah

A thunderstorm rolled in, splashed Zion Canyon with a little rain, and soon transient waterfalls streamed in narrow ribbons down the sheer walls of the canyon.

Not much can top the Grand Canyon in Arizona for an awe-inspiring example of geology, but southern Utah comes close.  It’s one awesome view after another.   Sorry for the adjectival pile-up, but it’s incredible, monumental, expansive, panoramic, spectacular, magnificent, ancient, jaw-dropping, gorgeous…You get the idea. (A map and links to cards I designed, videos and websites about the parks, geology and other fascinating facts are at the bottom of this post. All photographs are copyrighted.  Some are available as greeting cards, mouse pads and other products at It’s a Beautiful World! Thumbnails are at the bottom of this post.)

On November 1, my husband and I flew into Las Vegas, rented a car and headed northeast to Zion National Park.  Joshua trees stood like sentries along the highway that cut through the bright, bleak, arid landscape.

The Virgin River cuts a swath through Zion Canyon.

We left Nevada, crossed a corner of Arizona and headed up the Virgin River Valley in Utah at dusk.   The trip didn’t take long, but night comes early in November.  The setting sun cast a warm glow on the mesas, but it was dark by the time we arrived at Zion Lodge, where we checked into a cabin.

A pair of extremely rare California Condors chase each other in the Big Bend area of Zion National Park. Hopefully, baby condors will result.

During the night, we heard rain pelting the roof.  “Uh, oh.”  Zion Canyon only gets about 12 inches of rain a year, and we were lucky enough to witness an inch of it.  We got our first view of the gorgeous peaks as the storm clouds boiled in and drifted like smoke between the crags.

We took a shuttle, required during the high season, from site to site.  We waited at the first shuttle stop until the rain passed, then started up a path.  Soon lightning flashed, and almost immediately thunder cracked like cannon fire.  Standing under the trees didn’t seem like a very safe place to be.  Luckily the storm passed, and sunlight revealed the vivid golds of the cottonwoods and the brilliant red of the maples.

A shuttle passenger told us about a pair of California Condors he’d spotted at the Big Bend area.  We were excited to see these endangered birds, which were re-introduced to Zion.  They have the largest wingspan of any bird in North America, but they were still difficult to see. One condor seemed to be chasing the other from tree to tree.

The California Condors are some of the rarest birds, with only 332 known in existence, including 156 in the wild, as of August 2008.  In 1987, there were only 22 California Condors, all in captivity, but a captive breeding program has increased their numbers. We were lucky to see them.

The "pulpit" on the left and the "altar" on the right are natural rock monuments in the Temple of Sinawava at the end of the road in Zion Canyon. A riverside walk along the North Fork of the Virgin River continues until the cliffs narrow. To continue, you have to hike in the water.

I promise I won’t make this a minute by minute account of this trip, but let me just say that my mouth was hanging open half of the time, amazed at the number of exquisitely beautiful ways that rocks can erode.  Southern Utah is called color country, and I was reminded of my tubes of oil paints. So many lovely earth tones, the rocks and the vegetation were so beautifully color-coordinated: Russet, naples yellow, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, lavender, unbleached titanium, olive, green, cadmium orange, rusty, pink, salmon, beige, gray.

Mule deer were the most common animal that we saw in Utah. They were busy browsing day and night.

Here are the parks we visited or at least drove through, making a big loop, November 1-7:

• Zion National Park
• Bryce Canyon National Park
• Grand Staircase National Monument
• Capital Reef National Park
• Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (the White Canyon area)
• Canyonlands National Park (Needles and Island in the Sky sections)
• Arches National Park
• Dead Horse Point Utah State Park
• Zion National Park (again)

Zion National Park will celebrate a hundred years as a protected area in 2009.  After leaving Zion, we drove through the Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel, which at 1.1 miles, was the longest tunnel in the United States when it was dedicated on July 4, 1930.  Traffic can only go through one way at a time, because of the tunnel’s narrowness.

At Bryce Canyon National Park, you view the canyon from the plateau’s rim, rather than at the bottom as you do at Zion.  You can take trails to the bottom, but we didn’t because it was cold and windy.  At Zion, you start from the valley floor, hiking to the top of the mesa — if you get that far.

Hoodoo close-up.

Everywhere in Bryce Canyon are hoodoos, which are pillars and spires of rock, usually in a fantastic or odd shape, created by erosion. The hoodoos are a wide range of hues of reds, pinks, salmon, yellow and white.  The Bryce Canyon hoodoos have been called grotesque, eerie, even whimsical. One definition of hoodoo is “to cast a spell,” which they definitely do.  Was I enchanted?  Absolutely.

Technically, Bryce isn’t a true canyon, because it wasn’t carved by flowing water, such as a stream or river, but etched by acidic rainwater and altered by freezing and thawing.  The acid dissolved the limestone, rounding the edges of the hoodoos. Freezing and thawing of water did most of the sculpting, which happens about 200 days a year.

Bryce Canyon is full of fantastic hoodoos. Here is a view from Inspiration Point.

Heading east, beyond Bryce Canyon, we climbed into mountains, where the beauty of fall had already passed.  The aspens had all lost their leaves and were ghostly skeletons on the mountainsides.  We drove mile after mile down into valleys, where water and wind had carved more mesas and buttes.  We passed through a few small mountain and high desert towns, but then for a couple of hours, we saw no sign of humanity except the black ribbon of asphalt that curved through the ancient landscape.  We only saw a little of the Grand Staircase National Monument, but enough to see that it’s aptly named.  We also saw some of Capital Reef National Park, which does look like an ancient ocean reef stranded on land.

The strata of millions of years were visible as the forces of the earth create rock and then wear it away in an endless cycle. Sometimes, a lone building would stand in a deep shadowed valley by a narrow river, lined by a profusion of trees and shrubs.

Near Canaan Peak, 9,196 feet, between Henrieville and Escalante, Utah.

Mormon pioneers in the 19th century carved out farms and orchards along rivers in this very arid land.

The road rose and fell, curved and cut through ridges that looked like a row of mastodon teeth or the undulating vertebrae of an ancient serpent.  We took the road along the White Canyon, crossing over Glen Canyon, as we headed toward Moab.

A section of Glen Canyon near Hite, Utah.

We stopped for the night in Monticello, Utah, where we ate at a family-run business.  The hostess/waitress/owner asked how we came to be so far from home.  Maybe she forgot about all of the amazing scenery just outside her door!  Her young son solemnly asked whether he could remove our empty dishes.  I hated to disappoint him when he asked us whether we wanted dessert, but we were stuffed.

You don't see many cattle in this arid land. Most are free range, wandering across the land. Signs along the highway warn you to watch out for them. Here are cattle at the historic Dugout Ranch, south of the Needles section of Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

The Needles of Canyonlands National Park march across the horizon.

The north section of Canyonlands National Park is the Island in the Sky mesa in the center. This photograph is taken in the Needles district of the park in the Pothole area. Shallow potholes in the rock in the foreground, when filled with rain or melted snow, provide homes for a variety of animals.

You feel really small at Arches National Park.

Balanced Rock at Arches National Park reminds me of a Disney cartoon. The rock on top is the size of three school buses.

Delicate Arch in Arches National Park is the unofficial symbol of Utah. See the tiny person underneath. We hiked uphill a half a mile to see it from this vantage. Others hiked several miles to hike underneath.

Landscape Arch in Arches National Park is one of the longest natural bridges in the world -- as long as three football fields. Pieces keep falling, so that the thinnest area is only three feet wide. Find out more about Landscape Arch in a link to a movie about Arches National Park below.

The soft red sandstone of Arches easily erodes, returning to the original sand of millions of years ago.  The wind whips it up, swirling it around, until it gets into every orifice on your head.  The geologic features of Arches and the other parks in Utah are a testimony to the ancient forces of the earth.  These features come in an amazing array of styles from spires to fins to crags to buttes and mesas, as well as arches.  There are more than 2,000 known natural sandstone arches in Arches National Park. They take eons to form, but can quickly collapse.

In Arches National Park, Wall Arch, near Landscape Arch, collapsed on August 4, 2008. Hikers found the rubble the next day. Wall Arch was the first major arch to fall in 17 years.

Guidebooks suggest getting to Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park at sunrise for the best view.  The park was more than thirty miles from our hotel in Moab, the temperature was in the thirties, there was snow on the ground, I didn’t bring warm enough clothes — as usual. Sunrise?  Not gonna happen.

But I couldn’t sleep.  We were dressed, packed, ate breakfast, checked out and on the road by 7 a.m.  It was freezing, so I shot up the more than half-mile trail to the arch, hoping to get there as fast as I could so I could get back to the warm car.  I started snapping photographs as soon as I saw the arch.  It was about 8 a.m., and the early morning sun cast a fluorescent orange glow on the arch.  Golden light splashed the valley below.  It was an incredible view.  I could hardly make myself leave.  I forgot I was cold until we started walking back to our car.

Mesa Arch glows just after sunrise in the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

We hiked to this strange geologic feature in Canyonlands, which looks like a crater. It could be a meteor crater from 60 million years ago or a salt dome.

The Canyonlands and Arches area gets about ten inches of precipitation a year, half of it in snow.  We saw some of the snow that morning and had to brush it off the signs.  After Canyonlands, we went to Dead Horse Point State Park, which is nearby.  The point sits on a plateau at an elevation of about 6,000 feet above sea level. You can see 300 million years of the earth’s geologic history. On the canyon rim you can see the Colorado River below.  There are 8,000 feet of geologic strata visible from the peaks of the 12,000-foot-high La Sal mountains reaching to the river below.

I’m gratified that you’re read this far.  I’ve barely scratched the surface…..But I’ll give you a break.  We missed so much, too, including Monument Valley and some great Native American pictographs.   There wasn’t enough time — and time is something you’re very aware of in southern Utah, even when it everything seems so timeless.   Zane Grey’s pioneering 1912 novel, “Riders of the Purple Sage” was set in this area.

Many movies were filmed in southeastern Utah, so that these photographs might look familiar to you, but no movie or photograph can capture the majesty of the place.  I’ll write “More Awesome Utah” in a week or so with some Las Vegas thrown in for contrast.  Be sure to check out the links to websites and videos below the photo at Dead Horse Point, where 19th century cowboys corralled wild horses, which sadly died from thirst.

The Colorado River takes a sharp turn at Dead Horse Point State Park.

Links to websites and videos:

Here is a collage card I designed of nine beautiful Utah scenes.
Click on the card thumbnail.

• Zion National Park official website
• Bryce Canyon National Park official website
• Capital Reef National Park official website
• Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
• Canyonlands National Park official website
• Arches National Park official website
• Historic Ruby’s Inn near Bryce Canyon
• Great short movie about Arches and Canyonlands national parks!
• Don’t miss this short movie about the history, geology and animals of Canyonlands
• About Zane Grey’s novel, “Riders of the Purple Sage”

Utah and surrounding states.