Long-awaited Zion NP photos! Nov 23

So these photos are six months late... But we honestly forgot that we'd never posted them! Enjoy. (as always, click the image for a larger size.)













This was a really huge bug we saw at one of the parking lots. It was about two or three inches long! I had to uncover it a couple of times to get a good shot; it kept crawling under the leaves.

Maybe I could sell this next photo for millions of dollars and we could continue this trip forever (translation: I think this photo came out fantastic!).


Coming soon are shots from Yellowstone and Badlands Nat'l parks.

-Lily

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