BLOOMING LIKE A ROSE

While staying in St. George, it was exciting to see what a difference a month had made.

When I was there in April, no plants were yet in bloom.

Some of the cacti showed signs and promise of color, but I had no

idea what could happen as a result of the season -end's rain and

just the right temperatures, and 4 weeks!

This time we experienced every possible growing thing in its fullness!

 I know absolutely nothing of these desert growing things, except for their exceptional beauty:

 I cannot give a name to any of them, and that frustrates me.

 One other thing I know is that what might resemble something that blossoms in the Northwest is

definitely not the same plant at all.  Everything pictured here has spines someplace

on its make-up.

This is NOT a wild rose:

A desert cousin to the hydrangea?



 Whoever painted this one was definitely a novice, but

I like its character anyway!

And no, it is not a daisy because here again, it has a prickly stem:

 How would you like to pick this bud?

 Or this one?

 These stalks were over 12 feet high:

 And here is a close-up:

 Lastly, my favorite.  This plant looks like something that

is living under water, or that belongs in "Fantasia".  In the morning breeze, its feathery heads were lighter

than dandelion seeds. They swayed as if affected by a tidal current:

COLORADO RIVERWAY

Leaving Moab, we sadly thought we were also leaving all of our red rock "ooohs" and "ahhhs".

What a nice surprise that by choosing to drive the Colorado Riverway we

could enjoy yet more astounding sights on all sides:

This was the first time we saw this section of the real Colorado river; not just

the canyons and formations its flow has created over

eons of time.  The river is nearly as red as its "banks":

To the east of the river is "Castle Valley", and it is easy

to see why it is thus named:

These formations reminded us of our trips down the Mainz and the

Rhine rivers in Germany. Just like there, we saw "castles" on every promontory:

I don't know what river is indicated in the song,

"Red River Valley", but I have to think it is

the mighty Colorado:

UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS

"Canyonlands"!  We had no idea what was in store for us when we visited that national park yesterday.

We entered at the north portal only to learn that there are two completely different parts to the park.

The northern end is the "overview".  "Everything you see here will be from above" the ranger explained.

"You will be looking down on all the formations."

It was like seeing a thousand smaller Grand Canyons in one place.

Here is the Colorado River basin, ala millions of years ago:

Looking over a sort of prairie, with the river basin in the background.

I was standing on the foreground ledge, barely visible here by a slight color difference. 

 "Below" is a thousand feet down:

 Little purple wildflower survivors:

 Just on the other side of this arch is a shear dropoff of hundreds of feet:

 This arch is on a plateau too, but the edge was not so precariously close:

To see the southern part of the park we had to drive back to Moab and south for 2 1/2 hours - there

is no way to connect within the park.

Before the entrance is a rock face as big as 2 garage doors, completely covered

with prehistoric petroglyphs.

It is called "Newspaper Rock" for a good reason:

There is hardly a hand-print-sized space that is blank.

I chose to show here my favorite pattern as a close-up rather than the entire wall:

Now we were back on the "bottom" and once again all the formations were high above us:

This looks like a milkweed pod, but it grows straight up on a single, tall stem from a type of cactus:

These formations were different from any we had seen all week. 

I called them "steam tops" because I imagined how, after all the cataclysms

happened which formed the other shapes, these little mounds popped

open to let out all the steam.  I could almost hear the

"blup, schlop, blup" boiling on the tops:

The southern park is called "The Needles", for this reason:

I scrambled up a boulder to see what I could see from

this little "window". 

Nothing, really:

We had ideal weather in all the parks, but as we

left The Needles, a storm boiled in, with lightening and

thunderous clouds:

ARCHES AND ACHES

A glorious day it was, on Saturday the 22nd, and we spent the entire day in Arches National Park.

Just ask our own foot arches how much we hiked and walked!

At day's end our muscles ached somewhat, but our senses were rejoicing!

Because the "Delicate Arch" is Utah's icon of sorts (the one pictured on license plates and postage stamps, etc) I had the idea that it was something to be viewed alongside the road through the park.

Uh-uh!

To see it, we hiked for 3 miles on a somewhat strenuous, steep trail.  At times the trail hugged overhanging rocks and it was narrow; other times we could scramble just about anywhere over the smooth rocks.  But it was always upward.

This photo does not show the perspective, but it is one of the steep rock passages, and the view is straight upward here.  I thought if this little blossom could make it, so could I (of course, it is resting!):

The Delicate Arch is immense and stands at the edge of an even more immense red rock natural amphitheater.

Exhausted, hot (it was 81 degrees at the bottom)  hikers sat all around to view the reward:

Here Dick starts down to the base from high on the steppes:

Dick and I:

This view is from the side, taken from near where the rock plateau drops away for hundreds of feet:

We are so lucky that the desert is in bloom:

Back down near where the Delicate Arch trail starts are the remains of an early settler's cabin and corral:

Typical panorama:

Though the park rocks' color is predominately red-orange,

there is contrast:

I call this style "Fallen Arches":

The beginning of another trail we hiked:

(Imagine the anticipation; those majesties saying, "Welcome to my kingdom"!)

"Balanced Rock":

A short hike took us to "Landscape Arch".

It is longer than a football field and frighteningly high overhead:

It was bright-hot, so I looked for any kind of shadow from which to snap a photo.

The rocks really are that burning color, and moreso here because of the sun's angle:

There are hikers in this photo, so it shows the immensity of this arch:

Two peaks.  The one with snow is in the Lasal Range:

And lastly, a wildflower backlit by the setting sun: