Month: October 2012

I got an 6:00 AM start on my trip to the southern part of Canyonlands National Park, but I stopped so many times to get shots of fascinating rock formations I started worrying I wouldn’t have enough time to spend at the park itself, especially since the campgrounds were full and it was a long way back to where I could camp. Heck, one of the reasons I’ve been so slow publishing these shots is that I have so many shots to go through to select the best ones.

When I saw this huge rock formation right before the turnoff to the park, however,

I just had to stop and get shots of it while the lighting was right. I’m sure it’s just a natural formation, but the “cave” at the base reminded me of ancient pyramids or Mayan Temples. Somehow it was easy to envision Shelley’s “Ozymandias” as I gazed out upon it standing alone in a vast desert.

When I learned that Newspaper Rock was also directly on the way to the park, I couldn’t miss the chance to stop and see the petroglyphs. This is just a small portion of the rock,

because there was so many petroglyphs it was nearly impossible to get all of them in one shot, even with my wide-angle lens. I was awestruck as I stood there. I visit petroglyphs every chance I get, but I’ve never seen any quite as impressive as this.

If the scenery hadn’t been as awesome as it was, I would have gladly spent three or four hours studying the petroglyphs, but I was also distracted by the fabulous scenery.

It was the golden trees against the rocks that first drew my attention, but I couldn’t resist stopping for a closer shot later when I got nearer the formation in the background of the shot, and it was even more impressive up close.

Naturally I didn’t have to drive much further down the road to find even more impressive trees and rock formations.

I had to stop and get another shot of the rock formation from a better angle further down the road.

By then I had realized I had to quit stopping so often if I wanted time to explore the park itself. Nevertheless, when I saw these horses grazing something made me stop yet again.

This place resonated with me deeper than almost any place I’ve visited in recent years, but it wasn’t until I got home that I realized that the area reminded me of the John Ford/John Wayne movies (i.e. “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”). It turns out that they weren’t actually filmed here but were filmed in a very similar, nearby area of Utah. As a child this was the archetypal Old West for me, and deep down it must still be.

I had intended to return home through Yellowstone and The Grand Tetons, but the amount of smoke I encountered the week before convinced me I should return through Utah. I’d originally intended to spend a day at Arches and a day at Canyonlands National Park, a park I’d never visited before. I tried to book a campsite in Arches, but discovered there wasn’t a single opening for two weeks. When I got there I found out why: October is peak season in Moab. In fact, there were so many people that I ended up staying my first night in a BLM site ten miles south of Moab, and if I hadn’t stopped early it would have been full.

As it turned out, I was quite pleased with the site, especially since it only cost $6 with my Golden Age Passport, and it reminded me of some of my favorite places in the Mojave Desert.

I went to bed as soon as it got dark and got an early start for the southern part of Canyonlands, so early that it wasn’t quite light when I stopped for this shot of The Eye of the Needle.

It was so dark that only the fact that I was shooting HDR made it possible to make the shot looked like it did to me at 6:00 AM.

Since I was running early I took a detour to Needles Overlook before heading to Canyonlands National Park. I’m glad I did, too. It offered a spectacular view of the southern half of the park, though even a HDR shot doesn’t do justice to the view.

This closeup does a little better job of showing just how rugged this country really is.

I would have loved to have a four-wheel-drive vehicle so that I could explore more of the backcountry, but that will probably have to wait for the next lifetime.

Though the main appeal of Needles Overlook is the view looking down at the Colorado River and what water, particularly flash floods, has done over time, I probably spent nearly as much time looking at the trees on the site as I did the view.

Anyone who loves bonsai would have to love the rugged trees in the park, hard not to admire the hardiness of trees that seem to grow right out of solid rock.

Although the rocks on the ridge aren’t nearly as impressive as those below, they have the advantage of actually being close enough to take a relative closeup.

Rocks like this almost make me want to grab a geology textbook and figure out what causes such intriguing shapes and textures.

We didn’t manage to get in one of our traditional day-long hikes on this visit to Tyson and family since I was only there four days (and it rained one of those) but we did get in two short hikes above Boulder. On the first hike we started just above the University of Colorado, at the Chautauqua center. It started out as a beautiful day,

but as you can see in the last shot of the sequence it ended up as quite overcast. And since rains were predicted, I decided to leave my Canon home and rely on my iPhone for photographs. Although the iPhone does a good job on scenics, I missed my chance at the best shot ever of a Magpie because I lacked a telephoto capability.

Despite the fact Sydney thinks hikes are a form of grampa-torture, I enjoyed sharing my favorite passion with them. At least I’m sure the dog enjoys the hikes (if I could just keep up with him).

Despite the grumbling, they all seem to have a good time on our excursions, especially when we stop and they can run and play. It never hurts if there happens to be a playground at the end of the trip so they can get some exercise (and gramps can rest and get his oxygen level back to something close to normal).

We ended our first walk back at the Chautauqua Dining Hall, a most impressive building from the outside. Despite several visits to Colorado, I’d never heard of the Colorado Chautauqua before but I have found it interesting to explore its history.

We started our second hike at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, six miles from where we began our earlier hike. We started climbing immediately, looking up at huge rock formations that might well have given the city its name.

I’ll have to admit that in spots I was challenged by the grade, often no more than steps leading up the hill. It didn’t help morale having joggers running past, or having grandkids showing up gramps by climbing rocks when we stopped for short breaks.

The hike really didn’t go to the top of the rocks that dominated the landscape, but we were considerably nearer them when we finally turned around and headed back down the hill.

We ended our last hike the way every good hike should end, at an excellent restaurant and an ice-cream shop. It was a great way to end my trip to Broomfield before heading out to Utah’s Moab.