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