Eastern Utah

Arches National Park has over 2000 red stone arches, big and small, open to the sky and hidden in stone, some growing more open, some collapsing.  Ancient pockets of salt dissolve with erosion, leaving behind rounded rock formations which often open up as arches here.  We loved this park, coming back a second day to hike further among the surreal red rock fins, straight walls, arches and pinnacles.

The park also has many balanced rocks of harder capstone remaining atop softer sandstone that erodes faster.

Landscape Arch, the longest in the park, has a span of 306 feet and is only five feet thick at the thinnest part since tons of rock fell off its underside in 1991.

Canyonlands National Park is also near Moab, Utah.  We have been to a number of canyons, but they are each a bit different, each unique in some way.  Here we wandered around the Island in the Sky, a plateau nearly 2000 feet above the Colorado River that runs through the park.  Far below on the White Rim, a 4 wheel drive only dirt road wound for miles, luring intrepid bikers and the occasional truck (not mine though).

Upheaval Dome is really a depression, perhaps caused by dissolving salt deposits below it.  I discount the meteor theory, having seen Meteor Crater in Arizona which is round and uniform.  This is not a crater.

Look how deep the river has cut into the flats.

Dead Horse Point State Park features another point reached by a narrow neck of land just wide enough for the road.  Cowboys used to trap wild horses on this point to capture the best ones.  Some died on the point far above the river and the water they needed.

Indian Petroglyphs

Suddenly another problem surfaced--something in the trailer brakes malfunctioned, causing the camper brakes to seize up and buck the whole rig like a bronco.  An RV repair guy was sure it was the truck trailer brake controller.  The Ford garage was sure it was in the trailer brake system.  And we were panicked at having another problem that could have killed us.  The brakes seizing happened in out-of-the-way places where we would not get hit, but they worked on I 70 where it would have been disastrous.  Sunday after church in Moab where the entire congregation of 15 people prayed for us, God sent us an angel.  He was grease stained as mechanics sometimes are and had only one hand, but he diagnosed the problem as trailer power cord shorting out.  He fixed it, checked the wheels and greased them, and charged us only $50, on a Sunday no less.  We paid him $75, of course, and told him he was our angel of mercy.   God has truly been protecting us this trip.

Zion and Bryce Canyons

We had planned to visit the Utah canyons in April, but we decided to shorten the trip a bit and arrived March 21.  We should have waited, because they still have winter here.  This is in Bryce Canyon National Park.

Zion National Park was named by Mormon pioneers who saw its beauty and its fertile valley as a new promised land.

They said it was like a cathedral; one could worship God here as well as in any church building.  Many formations have Biblical names.  These three are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Dripping Rock where water seeps out of the rock and drips down like rain.

The red mud behind the falls was not easy to clean off our shoes.

The road on the east side of the park has switchbacks up the mountain leading to a 1.1 mile tunnel blasted through the rock in the late 1920’s, a marvel of engineering. 

 On the east side, the mountains are solid rock, but somehow bushes and trees manage to grow. 

The Checkerboard has the usual horizontal layers of rock, but also more rare vertical lines eroded into the mountainside to create a checkerboard pattern.

Bryce Canyon National Park was named for a rancher, Ebeneezer Bryce, who farmed below the rock formations in the 1870’s and said, “It is a hell of a place to lose a cow.”  

The Paiute legend is more poetic in explaining the hoodoos (the strange pillars of rock). “Before there were any Indians, the Legend People lived in that place. There were many of them. They were of many kinds—birds, animals, lizards, and such things—but they looked like people. They were not people; they had power to make themselves look that way. For some reason the Legend People in that place were bad. Because they were bad, Coyote turned them all into rocks. You can see them in that place now, all turned into rocks; some standing in rows, some sitting down, some holding onto others. You can see their faces, with paint on them just as they were before they became rocks.  This is the story the people tell.”

Elevation is 8,000 to 9,000 feet; our hikes made me breathless, especially the steep one to Inspiration Point that was snow-covered.

People have told us that Bryce is the most beautiful canyon they have ever seen.  I would have to agree.  However, technically, it is not a canyon (which means rivers have cut away rock along its route over time).  Bryce is really half bowls or amphitheaters in the side of the Colorado Plateau that have been eroded by rain and alternate freezing and thawing, which happens about 200 days a year.  The fins and hoodoos are rock formations that have stood against the erosion, filling the bowls on the side of the cliffs. 

Las Vegas and Habitat for Humanity

What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas for us.  We will share our first visit to Sin City with you.  They enthusiastically sell sex here figuratively, and I guess in reality too.

We spent a whole week here, working with Habitat for Humanity during the week.  We enjoyed the privilege of working with Mary and Gary Welch—dedicated Habitat volunteers who are here for months building houses and coordinating the Care-a-vanners who come in their RV’s to work.

Darryl is the construction supervisor coordinating all the various locations that Habitat Las Vegas has going on.

 It is always nice to work with the future homeowners, and we had the chance to do that here.  Tomika and I planted shrubs that were donated to the affiliate for the houses.

The Circus Circus KOA lets Habitat volunteers stay at a reduced rate—a great contribution to Habitat’s work here.  It gave us the opportunity to live on The Strip and walk to see the amazing, over-the-top casinos.

We went to the old Vegas downtown one evening for the Fremont Experience—a pedestrian street covered with a curved roof—the largest screen light show in the world, four blocks long, with the show arranged to music.   

 

The Legends show is a long-running musical tribute show to some of the greats who played Vegas in the past.  The acts change—we saw Liberace, Rod Stewart, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, and of course, the King:  Elvis.  While they performed excellent renditions of various numbers, footage of the original stars was shown on the screens.  Very nice.  A great show.

Liberace smoozed the audience a bit and when he asked a woman in front where she was from, she said Wisconsin.  He said, “Good for you to get out of that mess.”  Later he made a joke about getting away:  “Maybe we should all go to Wisconsin and help with the recall.”    That has been the attitude everywhere.  When we say we are from Wisconsin, it used to be, “How about those Packers.”  Now it is all outrage about our governor and the terrible things happening to unions.  People are afraid their state might follow suit. 

The famed fountain show at Bellagio was cancelled due to high winds, but their spring flower show in the lobby was phenomenal. 

I guess everyone at some point does the time-share presentation to get some freebies.  We sat through one for free Cirque du Soliel tickets and $50 at Pampas Brazilian restaurant.  Little did we know that entrees are $45 there.  We settled for the salad bar at $23.95 each!!!  It was scrumptious, and we had plenty to eat.    Cirque du Soliel is just amazing.  The strength of those acrobats is beyond belief.  How do they do that?!!!

We did a lot of walking on the Strip.  Those casino resorts are huge, and you walk miles to wander through a few of them.  I asked Don for his overall impression of Vegas.  He said self-indulgence.  Everything is very expensive, but money pours out everywhere.  People drink and gamble constantly.  Vegas is an unreal world.

Now it is out of the big, bad city and back to our kind of place—the wilderness.  We are finally heading to the Utah canyons.  Oh, if you are thinking you can use our Las Vegas time-share—no, we did not buy one.

Death Valley

We have been in Arizona for over six weeks, and it is time to move on.  Our change of state was a dramatic drive over Hoover Dam and the new bridge over the Colorado River dividing Arizona and Nevada.

We are staying in Pahrump, NV for a few days while visiting Death Valley.  We walked to the casinos down the street for good, bargain food.  It is warm here, unlike most of our winter.  We found a dynamic Lutheran church here.  The sermon was on how when faced with the bad things in life and the sins we keep remembering, that we should not “nurse, curse, and rehearse.”  I tend to do that.  Good life lesson.

Death Valley is another place of a lifetime.  God has given us a wildly beautiful world.

This is from Dante’s View, high above the valley.  Don wondered if that could be snow—no, it is the salt flats.  The highest point in the park is the snow covered mountain, Telescope Peak, 11,048 feet and the lowest is Badwater Basin, -282 feet.

I wish I knew what causes the vivid green, purple and pink rocks on Artist’s Palette.

The wagons that were pulled by 20-mule teams hauling borax out of the valley in the late 1800’s.

No, this is not ice fishing on an unusually warm day on Long Lake.  This is salt, miles of it left when water run-off evaporates with no river outlet.

The salt crystals.

The tiny white sign half way up the mountain (you may need to click on the picture) is sea level, 282 feet above the salt flats on the valley floor, the lowest point in North America.

Some re-enactors who called out to the stopped cars, “Is this California?  We are trying to get out to California.”

I have been hoping to see cactus blooms and desert wildflowers.  No cactus here, but the flowers are lovely on the high slopes of the south end of the park.

The creosote bushes we have seen everywhere in the desert are blooming here.