A big piece of my younger days....

 

Ahhhh....the Hardy Boys. A big part of my youth. I would eagerly get my hands on one of those blue books and devour it from cover to cover. Many I read more than once. Even now, I can pick out the titles of the ones that I read and I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. I still have many of the old books. This shot is from a random book store in Milwaukee that I wandered in to waiting for a meeting to start. Did you read the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew or another series when younger? I wonder if my travel and adventure bug comes from them???

Mesa Verda from afar

 

Got to visit Mesa Verda and see the wonderful ruins. Unfortunately, we couldn't get into any of the buildings as the tour season wasn't open yet. That was a bummer as I heard so many good things about the tours at Mesa Verda. However, to compensate, at least a little bit, I purchased what looks like a wonderful book, House of Rain, which tracks the lost civilization of the Anasazi across the American Southwest. Looking forward to cracking it open soon. 

Sangre De Cristo Mountains

 

From the top of the Great Sand Dunes you get a great view of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains. It takes a hell of a hike to get to this point, but it also gives you a hell of a view. Lots of great views of mountains out west. This is one of the top ones to see. We hiked for about 90 minutes, with lots of time to rest up a sand dune that was about a mile high. From here it looks like an easy walk to those foothills, but that is up and down more sand dunes and the foothills are probably a couple of miles away at best. Would be an interesting hike....for a 20 year old. We were happy just to get to this point. Took only about 30-40 minutes to get back down. Much easier. Here is the view looking the other way, where you can just see my camper down where we started: 

A very Black Canyon

 

I had easily several thousand dollars worth of camera equipment either on my shoulder or a couple of feet away from me in the camper but sometimes the cell phone shot turns out best. Although you can't see down into the canyon in this shot, I like the sky and the rim of the canyon across the way. So, this is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, our 5th of 6 national parks on this trip. I wasn't expecting to find an amazing national park here and we were pretty limited here anyway. Snow hit the park the day before and that closed the main road past the visitor center, but it was impressive none-the-less. After all the reds and browns in Utah, it was weird seeing all of this dark, volcanic rock back in Colorado. Not the best of the national parks, but we also didn't get to climb down into the canyon, which would have made for a workout on the way back up. 

Celebrating Earth Day with Sandhill Cranes

 

Drove through Nebraska last week and caught some of the Sandhill migration. I think I was past the peak migration time but there were still thousands and thousands, perhaps millions of Sandhill Cranes all over the place in central Nebraska in a 50 mile stretch near the Snake River. They overnight, rest up for several days and head on north to Canada to breed. Clean air, clean water and a safe resting place is what these birds need and that has been helped by programs inspired by things like Earth Day. So, Happy Earth Day to all. Hope you all get good weather to get out and enjoy some of the day. 

Lots of Arches

 

When you head out to Moab to visit National Parks, you are going to see lots of arches. This is one of the world's best locations for the formation of arches. The inland sea came in and evaporated numerous times over the millennium when the world was hotter and wetter than it is now, especially in what is now our American west. Salt domes would form and then evaporate leaving the rock formations behind. As a result, places like Arches National Park and sister parks like Canyonlands and Capitol Reef have a lot of arch formations and other features created by water in what is now this very high and dry desert plateau. These are some of the arches we saw on the trip, including Delicate Arch, which is one of the world's only free-standing arches, seen in the middle shot on the bottom row. Quite amazing to imagine that the whole ridge was one huge rock formation and it has all eroded away, except for the our aptly names Delicate Arch. Very unusual. 

Hickman's Arch

 

We saw a number of great arches last week on our national park trip. This is the first we came across and it was something. Hickman's Arch is located in Capitol Reef National Park and it is a massive arch that you are allowed to climb around and walk under. Basically, these rock arches form when underlying salt domes wear out and are washed away by water, leaving the rock cap behind. At several times in the distant past this area was under a huge inland sea and the salt was left behind as the seas evaporated, forming an arch.  

Great Sand Dunes National Park

 

When I thought of the trip to the Great Sand Dunes, this is one of the shots that I wanted to get. So, happy that it showed up right as we got to the parking lot. Beautiful carved dunes in sunlight and shadow. The lone hiker was a fortunate accident as his placement gives the dunes some scale. Lots more shots to come but this is an early favorite. 

World's Largest Free-standing Arch

 

New shots are coming! New shots are coming! Still on a 10 day, 6 National Parks trip but, so far, this is one of my favorites. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of Delicate Arch in the internet, on book covers and on the Utah state license plates, but I like this one I took putting the Delicate Arch in its surroundings. Hard to imagine that the only part of whatever cliff or structure the arch came from, only the arch is left. Every other arch you see is connected to some amazing rock formations. This one stands on its own. This shot is not hard to get. Just a short couple of steps from the car. Those people on the ridge are maybe a mile and a half away, uphill. I think this is the better view. In any case, pretty amazing.