Oh, my Arches! (National Park)

We had a pretty good day at Arches National Park. We finally got to experience some warm Southwest weather, but fortunately for us it wasn't really a scorcher. The high was a bit over 90 degrees, but it wasn't very humid so it was bearable. The sun was pretty intense, though, so any shade was welcome.

This park has a lot of different rock structures and I again had fun trying to capture the different looks in pictures. Many of the arches are visible from the road, but there are some that require various amounts of hiking to see well. With the weather a bit hotter than we are used to, we didn't do all the hikes, but we still were able to visit quite a few arches. We even had a picnic lunch at one of the picnic tables that was tucked under a nice shade tree.

I guess we're about done with the various rock formations of the Colorado Plateau, the next stop is Durango Colorado and a ride on the Durango and Silverton RR. WOOHOO!!

Catching up on pictures

I managed to get a bunch of new pictures posted to my Flickr account. Check it out!

Pictures for:
-Bryce Canyon
-Trip from Capitol Reef NP to Natural Bridges National Monument
-Inside National Bridges National Monument
-Arches National Park

More fun with auto repairs (same song, second verse)

I think the bad shocks we had on the car ended up hurting the rear tires more than we realized. I happened to take a look at them when we were packing up on Friday morning and noticed that they were wearing very badly on the outside edges. One of them is close to showing cords through the rubber, so we are on the lookout for a tire shop that can get us set up with a pair of new tires. There was one tire shop where we were on Friday, but they didn't have any tires in our size. Towns that are big enough to have a tire shop are few and far between out here, so we called around a bit and found a shop near where we'll be on Monday. They happened to have a bunch of tires in stock that will work for us, so I guess we'll get to do some more car fixin' on Monday.

yay.

I'm not sure what the tires looked like when we had our shocks replaced a couple of weeks ago, but it seems to me they would have said something if they looked this bad at that time. I'm hoping that the damage to the tires was already done and what we are seeing now is abnormal wear because the tires were already damaged internally before the shocks were replaced...

A quick visit to Natural Arches National Monument

The last couple of days had us running ragged, so Saturday was made into an easy day. We slept in and then decided that our next destination would only be about four hours of driving. We took a route that allowed us to make a visit to Natural Arches National Monument. This spot is fairly unique in that it has one of the largest concentration of natural arches that you'll find anywhere in the world. It is a fairly small area compared to the other national parks that surround it, so it isn't very busy. We had a nice picnic lunch there, complete with a raven that desperately wanted us to look the other way for just a few minutes.

We ended the day in Monitcello, UT and spent a good bit of time swimming in the pool. The kids have been getting a bit burned out with all the park visiting and driving, so they really enjoyed the goof-off time. Tomorrows' goal is Arches National Park. Looking at the weather predictions it appears that we may actually have some hot weather to deal with. It would really be the first hot day of our whole trip! Anyone in Michigan feel sorry for us???

Here's just one quick picture of one of the arches in Natural Arches National Monument:


While driving around southern Utah we've been continuously surprised at the variety of rock formations. I suppose if you lived here it would all be commonplace, but for us Michiganders it seems like there is something new around every corner. I've got whole bunches of pictures for anyone who is interested in seeing them... heheheheh

This particular formation wasn't really all that spectacular, but as soon as I saw it it made me think of pictures that I've seen of a submarine performing an emergency surfacing maneuver. I wanted to post it here, so I found it and while I was resizing it I noticed that if you look near the base of the larger structure, you can see a gorilla face in the rock. Can you see it? Or is it just me? ;-)

Havin' too much fun...

to get more pictures uploaded, that is!

After Zion N.P. we headed over to Bryce Canyon N.P. which is only a short drive away. We decided to pay a few $'s more to stay in a hotel near the entrance. It turns out that the hotel we chose was brand new and very nice, so we had a very nice night. Friday's weather was a bit chilly, windy, and rainy, but the rain part came and went so it didn't really ruin our day. We realized that it was the rainiest day so far on our trip, so we've got nothing to complain about in that area. We sat out some of the worst rain in the visitors' center watching a movie about the park and then drove as far as you can go into the park. Once to the end of the line we started working our way back, checking out the scenic spots as we went. This strategy worked pretty well because by the time we got to the end of the line the rain had become just intermittent sprinkles. After a while the sun even started to peek through from time to time.

Bryce Canyon is the type of place where I go crazy with a digital camera. I ended up taking so many pictures that I haven't had time to pick out a few good ones to put online. Here's just one shot looking out over one of the more spectacular places in the park:

Entering Zion

Thursday was a short but good visit to Zion National Park. Although not nearly as big as Yellowstone, Yosemite, or Grand Canyon, this park has a remarkable diversity in the scenery you can find. I was fascinated by the many different textures in the rock formations and tried to capture as much as I could on "film", but many pictures were taken from a moving vehicle and the day was a bit cloudy so the camera didn't always achieve proper focus. I still managed to capture a few good shots. I uploaded quite a good batch to my Flickr page if you'd like to view some more.

Apparently we've been able to maintain our powerful cooling effect over any area we visit. The Zion park rangers told us that it was 104 degrees in the park on Wednesday, but it was only 78 degrees when we arrived on Thursday. Needless to say, that doesn't bother me at all!

The car has even managed to cooperate pretty well for the last few days. Maybe we'll make it home without too much more grief.

Bryce Canyon tomorrow! We're staying right outside the entrance and we've already spotted a bunch of red rock formations. I can't wait for tomorrow.

Good times, bad times...

Our visit to the Grand Canyon did include a reminder that there are still a lot of good people in the world. We initially parked in a fairly remote parking lot so that we could walk to the shuttle that would take us on the shuttle-only road along the South rim. We decided to put on suntan lotion and such and in our desire to get ready and head for the shuttle bus, we managed to walk away from the car with one of the doors standing wide open. We didn't discover this until three hours later when we returned from the shuttle bus. As we walked toward the car our hearts sank because we thought someone broke in to the car. Fortunately for us nothing was disturbed! We couldn't believe it! Even though it was a remote lot, someone had to have noticed a car door standing wide open...

The bad time was pretty minor in the grand scheme of things... I've been taking a LOT of pictures (just ask Bev) and most of them have been taken with my dad's camera. This camera has a button on the back that you can use to easily change the size of the picture you want the camera to record. This may be a nice feature for some, but for me it has turned into an annoyance. Twice on this trip I've found that somehow the camera got switched to a size that I didn't want. It happened again in the middle of our day at the Grand Canyon and I didn't realize it until I downloaded the pictures to the computer. Oh well... I guess I'll live!