Travels with Dick and Karen SW USA 2010
We drove from Seattle to the Moab Utah area and back mid-April to mid-May 2010. In 2017 we finally put up the photos so we're doing the travelog from dimmer memory than usual. After staying with friends in Protland we drive across Oregon and ID. Two days of fantastic clouds.
Dinner at Foley Station restaurant in La Grande: interesting train all around ceiling and good food (now closed).
Turned south into UT and ran into the edge of a blizzard as we passed through Salt Lake.
Ah.Finally the warm and dry we came for.





Spent the night at Goblin Valley State Park
With lots of HooDoos

Wild onion
continued east across UT toward Moab

Into Arches National Park








The maze of columns needs a guide.








Deadhorse Point in Canyonland National Park just SW of Moab. This is the Colorado River doing a hairpin turn or "oxbow" (upstream of the Grand Canyon).

Canyonlands plateau is "Island-in-the-sky" overlooking some needles.



Penstemon
A little crack gathers organic material and pretty soon you have enough soil for plants to grow.

Canyonlands has arches too.

Deadhorse in different light and not as windy as the previous day.
mini-arches

Bright blue lakes are potasium mine evaporation ponds
lizard
Grainery from older times.
A current native.
Claret Cup cactus
Camp at Needles Outpost.
If you are in this area be sure to stop at the Dinosaur Museum in Blanding (don't seem to have phptos). On to Hall's crossing, Lake Powell. House boats are not something that makes me think "Utah".
Share the road.
Goosenecks St. Park: another hairpin turn for the Colorado
Drove down the Moki Dugway into Monument Valley (far too bumpy on the rollecoaster of gravel to take photos but the view was fantastic).
Small dust devil swirls by as we go south into Arizona.
Petrified Forest National Park, painted hills
And lots of petrified logs.


Piles of stone instead of wodd for posts.



Painted hils areaagain
Flooded campground at clear creek reservior.
Doing dishes
Meteor crater just east of Flagstaff.
They don't let you go down in it but they have this photo backdrop so you can pretend.
Cinder cone near Flagstaff (Sunset Crater?)
It had nice lava nearby too.
Pecaries crossing the road.
Lava River Cave: too icy and steep for us.
Witches broom? Or some sort of parasite on the tree.
Hiked in to Red Mountain cinder cone, highly recommended




You drive north of Flagstaff through fiarly flat land and then the edge of the wrold drops away. Welcome to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
The next morning was very foggy
and then started clearing off.
I edited these, really. Every time we looked it was different so we took lots of photos.


The Grand Canyon train.
The Colorado River



Elkmin parking lot.


A little ways away and you can barely tell what's there.
Glen canyon is full of water

and boats.
Crossing the dam.
A day of clouds and distant storms.
From a distance it doesn't look like much
But close up you see the color ...


The notes say Vemillion Cliffs, Johnson Creek Road.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes Utah St. Park. Really. Pink. It is more amazing in person.

Get up the next morning and check the weather: the north rim of the Grand Canyon opens today.
There's a reason the only road doesn't open till mid-May.
The views are less dramatic but the pace is 50 years ago. This side is much more relaxed and less commercial.






But has snow later into the summer.
On the road again toward




Shade
High collision chance?
Maybe the stop sign was for the deer?

And here's zion National Park.

with new critters.



A tunnel to get further in






Goodby Zion
Hello Bryce.



Another place that was different every time you turned a corner.





One last view.
This is Kodachrome basin State Park just down the road.
Tall pipes of sediment, thought to be the remains of springs that cemented the surrounding sand together and the rest blew away.


This is the surrounding area to give you an idea of why the name Kodachrome got picked for the previous park (and used with Kodak's permission).
But the flowers were colorful




Escalante Petrified Forest State Park

Rt 2 is just stunning.




















We were running out of time so we didn't follow it. Probably filming for "John Carter of Mars"
Turning north toward home
Crossed into Nevada to the only national park in the state: Grand Basin NP and Lehman Caves.






Lava tube in Oregon is quite a contrast with Lehman Caves.
The windfarms on the Columbia hills greet us as we get back to your home territiory.