Surf’s Up

This surfer rides a wave near the pier in Huntington Beach, California. On the horizon is Catalina Island. Huntington Beach (Surf City USA) is known for its long 8.5-mile (13.7 km) beach, mild climate, and excellent surfing. The waves are a unique natural effect caused by edge-diffraction of ocean swells by the island of Catalina and the waves from distant hurricanes.

I love road trips, especially when I only do twenty percent of the driving.  In mid-September, my husband and I loaded up my minivan with some of the left-behind belongings of my daughter and her boyfriend and headed west to Huntington Beach, California.  Laura and Ryan had moved there in mid-August, making the drive in their two small cars jammed to the ceiling with their stuff.

Dozens of windmills in western Kansas produce electricity. They stand in the flyway of migratory birds, such as the endangered whooping crane.

I got the idea to make this odyssey when the Spiritual Rez band stayed at our house and talked about how much they loved traveling the country.  I hadn’t made a driving trip to the West Coast in a long while.  Our home state of Kansas is very familiar, but this time I tried to look at it with new eyes instead of wishing it away until that first exciting moment when we see the Rocky Mountains rise up from the horizon.  So eager are we to make progress that sometimes we make a mountain out of a cloudbank. I love the gradual change in landscape.

Morning in Dillon, Colorado, in September 2009.

Mid-way through Kansas we saw Monarch butterflies fluttering across Interstate 70 as they made their annual migration to Mexico for the winter.  We saw scores of tall modern windmills slowly turning their blades, some overshadowing the old-fashioned farm windmills first erected in the 1880s.

As we drove through Colorado, Utah and Nevada, I recognized sights Laura had emailed me from her camera phone.  My husband and I have driven much of this route before, but it was still awe-inspiring.  I still gaped at every ridge and butte and mountain peak and begged for my husband to stop the car at every scenic turn-out during much of the drive.  When I was behind the wheel, we did stop at everything!  I wish there were scenic turnouts along the Flint Hills in Kansas, too.  Kansas Turnpike officials, are you there (wishful thinking)?

The first night we spent in Dillon, Colorado, which is ski country. There was a brew pub conveniently located right by our hotel.  The night air was crisp.  I’ve been to this area several times during ski season, but it’s so much more beautiful when you’re not freezing to death.  I won’t be visiting during ski season again.  My skiing days are over! I wasn’t much of a skiier to begin with. I’m so slow I should have an orange triangle fastened to my back, and I hate to be cold. And I don’t like snow, either!  Already in September, it was in the mid 30s when we headed back on the road.

Interstate 70 cuts through an ancient ridge north of Capitol Reef National Park in Utah. Doesn't this formation look like an ancient reef or the spiny backbone of a massive reptile?

Horses graze in a pasture at sunset in St. George, Utah.

The second day we drove through western Colorado and through Utah, spending the night in St. George, which we visited last November.  We toured our “old” neighborhood. We knew where the Walmart was, too.  Both visits to Wal-Mart we saw a few women with french-braided hair who were wearing long pioneer-style dresses with muttonchip sleeves. If you want to read my Utah posts, type in “Utah” in my search box. There are lots of great photographs!

We hurried through Nevada, stopping in Las Vegas only to get gas, and it seemed like forever to get through the desert of California to reach Huntington Beach.  Laura had said that seemed like the longest part of the trip, maybe because you’re so close to your destination but the desert never seems to end.

I've always loved Joshua Trees. They look like sentries. These trees, a member of the yucca family, are near Interstate 15 in the Mojave Desert in California.

Yeah, yeah, I know I just wrote that I never tire of it, that it was gorgeous and amazing.  Some parts do drag on a bit.  I thought about all of the immigrants who had plodded through these bleak, arid western lands in the 1800s on the California trail, which starts in our green part of the country of Kansas City.   I thought of “Death Valley Days,” “Wagon Train” and “Twenty-Mule Team Borax”  — two old television shows and a commercial that I barely remember beyond the titles.  I do remember Ronald Reagan was the host of “Death Valley Days” for a while. (Yes, this might be the spot for a political joke, but I won’t go there.)

I’m not going to recite a mile by mile account of this trip (although it seems like it so far), but I’ve got to have some words to hold the photos together in this post, like eggs beaten into a  cake.

Loki can't wait to go to the dog beach. She has to wait until she's had all of her vaccinations. (Yes, Laura and Ryan got a dog the first month they were in HB. We have their cat....)

Huntington Beach is a nice city, very laid-back it seems.  The city is located 40 miles south of Los Angeles.  Houses are packed very closely together because real estate there is very expensive, even now in this economy.  There are no buildings on the 8.5 mile-long-beach, so there’s an unobstructed view of the ocean and of Catalina Island.  It’s the longest open run of beach on the West Coast. It’s celebrating its 100th anniversary as an incorporated city this year.  It was called Shell Beach, later Pacific City and finally Huntington Beach in honor of H.E. Huntington who brought the Pacific electric Railway to the area.

Two surfers head out at sunset on Huntington Beach. You can see an oil rig in the distance.

Here’s what the official Huntington Beach website has to say (yes, they like themselves very much!): “The dynamic coastal City of Huntington Beach, with its sunny Mediterranean climate and idyllic setting, is home to more than 202,250 residents. Internationally known as Surf City, Huntington Beach boasts eight miles of scenic, accessible beachfront, the largest stretch of uninterrupted beachfront on the West Coast. Tourism remains a vital part of the economy, as over 11 million visitors flock to the city during the summer, on weekends and for special events.

Wetsuits drying at a motel.

Our parks and recreation features one of the largest recreational piers in the world, public parks, riding stables and equestrian trails, a marina, and a wildlife preserve, and an eight-mile biking, inline skating, jogging, and walking trail along the ocean. The crown jewel of the recreation system is the wide expanse of beautiful and spacious beaches, where large crowds gather to watch professional sporting events as the U.S. Open of Surfing, AVP Pro Beach Volleyball and the Surf City USA Marathon.”

A surfer rides the waves of the "dog beach" in Huntington Beach, which is also popular with surfers. In the background is an offshore oil rig.

There are also oil rigs offshore, which surprised me.   There’s oil in this town!  I’m a little late in finding this out.  The oil boom began in the 1920s. A few “grasshoppers” oil wells pump away in a beach-view lot in town, walled off next to houses that must be worth millions. When the Spanish arrived, they established the area as a cattle ranch.  Beach Boulevard, the main thoroughfare of Huntington Beach, was originally a cattle route.

Pier Plaza in Huntington Beach.

A hummingbird visits a flower near Laura and Ryan's courtyard.

Much later, I read that an encylopedia company gave away free parcels of land, with the purchase of a whole set for $126.  I don’t know how true this is, but it makes a great story.  The encyclopedia company had obtained the land cheaply.  The company should have kept the land and forgotten about the books, because oil was discovered in the area the company had given away as a bonus with the purchase of encyclopedias. Now the price of land for housing has risen so high it has pushed many of the rigs off the landscape. Links to more history about the city are at the bottom of this post. The city has dozens of pristine parks, protected nature reserves and unspoiled wetland habitats, such as Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve and the Donald D. Shipley Nature Center,

Duke Kahanamoku, the father of modern surfing, is honored with a statue near the Surfing Walk of Fame at the pier plaza in Huntington Beach, California.

Huntington Beach is officially Surf City USA, a title it wrangled over with Santa Cruz, California.

Hawaii’s Duke Kahanamoku first introduced modern surfing in the United States in Santa Cruz, so you can see why that city might want to claim the title.  Kahanamoku is credited with popularizing surfing world-wide during the 1920s, after achieving Olympic swimming fame in 1912 and 1920.  The Surfing Walk of Fame is in Huntington Beach, featuring a statue of Kahanamoku.  I loved watching the surfers, seeing how they’d pop up onto a wave and ride it so gracefully.  I wasn’t tempted, though. That’s COLD water!  The International Surfing Museum is in Huntington Beach.

Links to information about surfing, Huntington Beach and Duke Kahanamoku are at the bottom of this post.  Later (probably much later), I’ll post about the Spanish Missions system, Catalina Island, South Pasadena and the Grand Canyon.

Surfers watch the waves on Newport Beach on a very foggy morning. The surf was great, but the conditions were probably dangerous. A lifeguard pickup soon showed up and told everyone to get out of the water. I was standing far back, but a huge wave lashed the beach, and I got splashed and covered with sticky sand.

Part of the Surfing Walk of Fame in Pier Plaza in Huntington Beach, California.

Kite surfers sail along Huntington Beach at sunset. In the distance is Catalina Island.

Surfers ride the waves along the "dog beach" in Huntington Beach. This is a section of beach where dogs are allowed.

Dogs enjoying the water on "dog beach" in Huntington Beach.

Huntington Beach Pier was originally built in 1904 and rebuilt most recently during the early 1990s. Stretching 1,856 feet into the Pacific Ocean, it is the longest concrete municipal pier in California and a great place to watch "million-dollar" sunsets.

A surfer leaves for the day. His board is tethered to his ankle so he won't lose it.

A woman serves a volleyball at the Huntington Beach Pier beach volleyball court.

Surfing Walk of Fame.

Duke Kahanamoku.

Huntington Beach, California.

Surfing.

Huntington Beach Official Website.

International Surfing Museum.

Surf City USA.

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.

Let Us Be Truly Thankful

A bounty of currant grapes hangs from a vine along the Virgin River in Zion National Park, Utah.

“This is the day that the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.” – Psalm 118:24

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and friends!

To see my post on “Awesome Utah,” click here.

The Great White Throne towers over Zion National Park, 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.