Bryce Canyon National Park, Nov 21

The are pictures from Bryce Canyon NP, our favorite of the five Utah national parks. In Bryce Canyon, for at least 200 days a year, water freezes at night and then melts during the day. The expansion of the water between the rocks when it freezes at night forces the rock farther and farther apart, creating a series of rock towers called hoodoos. For shear multitude of cool rock formations, Bryce is the place to go. Instead of captions, Ben named each picture.

Fairyland

Tree

Into the depths

Straight and narrow

The path

Forest interrupted

White (sandstone) power

Red gate

City

Rock forest

Layers

Hell meets Earth

-Lily (with help from Ben)

Canyonlands National Park, Nov 16 & 17

Ben and I spent a couple days at Canyonlands NP and of course saw some amazing natural architecture. The Colorado and Green Rivers combine to create, over millions of years, a huge mesa called Island in the Sky. The mesa is surrounded by 2000 ft. deep canyons formed by the rivers on each side. Here are the pictures:





Ben took a hike to up to Upheaval Dome, a huge crater with mountains of salt formed at the bottom. The creation of the dome is a mystery, but some geologists believe it to be ground zero for a huge meteor impact millions of years ago.

These pictures were taken on top of Aztec Butte, where wind had eroded the sandstone and formed a series of caves at the top. Ancient Puebloans used these caves as granaries by building stone walls around the open end of the cave and storing their food. We couldn't believe it, because the hike up this butte was NOT easy.




And finally, our first nice picture of Inigo, now displayed on the travel blog.


-Lily

Mule Deer from Arches and Capitol Reef

The title pretty much says it all, but I'll add that these deer are called mule deer because of their huge ears. The first one was taken at Capitol Reef NP, the rest were taken at Arches NP. These deer are fearless of humans. The three at Arches just did their own thing while people walked by talking loudly. And to add to my growing collection of animal butts, the last one is a nice MULE-DEER-BUTT!







More to come soon!

-Lily

Arches National Park - Nov 13, 14, 18

Regular blog to be updated soon. For now, here are some photos I took at Arches National Park, in Moab, Utah. Coming soon to this page: lots of Mule Deer, Canyonlands NP, and Bryce Canyon NP.


Some of the first rock formations we saw at Arches NP:

Landscape Arch. So named because it stretches almost 300 feet across.









We caught sunset at Delicate Arch on our first night. I didn't adjust the color in these images.




-Lily

Sam and Moo Shu

One more from the dog park that I forgot to post. Sam has trained Moo Shu to stand/sit on his shoulders, and I got a pretty cute picture of her doing that:


-Lily

I can't wait to get a dog!

Some shots I took at the dog park near Sam's apartment.

This is a beautiful boxer, one of my favorite dog breeds.

Just a bunch of dogs running around.

More dogs playing with each other.

Nice action shot of another of my favorite breeds, border collie.

Interesting thing I noted was that almost none of the dogs I saw were mutts. There were a few, but the overwhelming majority of the dogs there looked like they were pure-breds.

Oh, and I really want a dog!

-Lily

Niche Restaurant

Here are some pictures I took in the kitchen of Niche Restaurant when we were in St Louis. Enjoy!

World's Awesomest EVERYTHINGS!

When Ben and I were in Atlanta visiting my uncle Bob, he took us to the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world. It's pretty difficult to get good pictures at an aquarium, since nearly all of the animals are used to very little light. The coolest exhibit, and thankfully the one with the most light, was the enormous saltwater tank that held THREE whale sharks. These sharks are huge. They grow to an average of 40 ft, and weigh about 15 tons. The largest recorded specimen was 60 ft long! So basically they are the ocean equivalent of an 18-wheeler.

These sharks are really beautiful and majestic animals.


Two at once!

It's very difficult to get an idea of how huge they really are, because the two feet of glass encompassing the tank distorts how you see what's behind it. But hopefully you can see here that just the final tail fin of the shark is about the size of a person.

And an angry looking alligator (or crocodile).

From Atlanta we headed to Memphis, TN, home of Elvis and Rock 'n' Roll. We couldn't leave without taking in a little bit of each, so we visited Graceland and the studio birthplace of rock and roll.

Since neither of us are huge Elvis fans, we decided to skip the mansion tour, and just go to his car museum. Again, there was very little light in the Elvis Auto museum; for some reason museum curators, et al, must think people LIKE having mostly dark pictures. (In order to get the best use of available light (no flash allowed) and also be close up and still get most of the car in the frame, I had to use a somewhat wide-angle lens, so please disregard the slightly distorted perspective.) I still got sweet pictures of a couple of Elvis' cars. I don't remember all the stories behind the cars, but I did make sure to take pictures of the labels so I could remember which car was which.

Perhaps the most beautiful car I have ever seen, a 1971 Stutz Blackhawk. This picture does NOT do this car justice. It is a sexy beast of a machine, and it was almost ecstasy just to look at it.

Elvis' famous 1955 pink Cadillac Fleetwood. Damn, cars used to be so huge.

Did I say huge? Just seven years later this mammoth 1962 Lincoln Continental was more beautiful and even longer than that '55 Caddy.

A unique design element of this car are the custom "suicide doors" that really make it a bad-ass gangster-mobile.

1966 Rolls Royce. Nothing exciting for me to say about it, but it's very elegant.

Elvis' 1956 purple Cadillac El Dorado convertible. Custom paint, custom white leather interior. This man knew how to spend his money.

The next day we went to Sun Studio, where Elvis got his first recording contract. Sam Phillips owned Memphis Recording Service and recorded a lot of at the time unknown blues artist that other people wouldn't record because they weren't white. Artists like B. B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Junior Parker, and others were recorded for the first time by Sam Phillips. Eventually, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and more, made their way through Sam's recording studio, and the tour guides like to think his studio was the "birthplace of rock 'n' roll". I suppose since Sam was recording the blues musicians that inspired all the rock 'n' rollers, maybe his studio did have a hand in the "invention" of rock 'n' roll.

Studio front as it looked in the '50s, except for the "Sun" sign. Sam Phillips never called any of his various music industry ventures "Sun Studio", it was simply a name that was applied to this studio by the people who turned it into a tourist attraction in the '80s.

Ben rocking out with THE microphone that was used by almost everyone that walked through that studio: Cash, Lewis, Presley, etc.

Our final stop in Memphis was Beale Street, which is closed off on the weekends for foot traffic only. There are a ton of bars that feature different blues and blues-inspired musicians, and we were lucky enough to come by when some guys were doing crazy flips and stuff. They were moving too fast to get a really dynamite shot, but here are a couple mid-air views:

Yeah, this guy was flying. He was really that far off the ground, it's not some optical illusion because of where I was standing or something.

Another not so close, but equally amazing view of the same guy in his final flip of that run.

We are now in St. Louis, MO, and aside from the huge number of old-factories-turned-apartment buildings, I haven't found a lot to take pictures of. It may be a while before I post again, since the drive from here to Denver probably won't be a very visually exciting one...

-Lily