“A helluva place to lose a cow!” – Ebenezer Bryce, c 1874
Here we are at Bryce Canyon again, and it’s looking a lot busier than it did in 1992 – we turned out for sunrise yesterday to share the Sunrise Point overlook with a coachload of Chinese tourists, and all the car parks get pretty full during the day. The drive from Capitol Reef was easier than it was then, with good weather over the Boulder Mountain pass at 9600ft, and no snow blowing around.
And yes, it’s more eroded sandstone! This one is called Chimney Rock, and we climbed up the hillside behind it. To me, it should be called The Sphinx.
We spotted the sign as we were driving towards Capitol Reef – with a name like that, we had to have a look.
It was fascinating, and being Good Friday, was full of families – little kids all over the place, jumping on the hoodoos and clambering up the cliffs.
It was a long day – up at 4am for sunrise in Arches, then 200 odd miles driving, as well as a couple of hours in Goblin Valley.
Moab is situated in a valley with towering red sandstone cliffs at the sides. It’s the off road driving capital of the USA, and over Easter (which we had forgotten about) they have the Easter Jeep Safari. The town was stuffed to the gills with highly modified Jeeps – hundreds and hundreds of them! They mostly arrived towed behind big motorhomes, so the campgrounds were all full to bursting. We were lucky to get half a tent site.
There are two National Parks and a State Park accessible from here.
Dead Horse Point State Park
Mesa Verde is a plateau in SW Colorado where the Anasazi people lived until about 1300AD. This is the Visitor Centre, at about 7000ft – note the snow. The highest point is at 8500ft, and these jokers lived a Stone Age lifestyle up there; when we got out into the icy wind, that was not an apealling thought. For some reason, all the artists’ impressions of life up there show the locals in nothing but loincloths. Not very convincing in this weather!
Santa Fe is our farthest point east, and we will now start wending our way back to the West Coast. As you may know, many of the buildings are built of adobe, or look as though they are, so the city has its own look. Sincs 1957, new and restored buildings, especially in historic areas, have to be built in a limited number of traditional styles, so that we get pueblo style ATMs.
Here, the San Juan River tries to outdo the Colorado at Horseshoe Bend, by doing three twirls instead of just the one. I was determined to get a shot with all three, but it’s impossible to get a good one unless you fly over, as you can see from this pano. It looks as though all we need to do is walk forward, but that red bit is metres below us, and actually lower than the tops of the mounds.
Like Antelope Canyon, this is run by the Navajo Indians, and they run things differently from the National Parks. There isn’t a lot of access unless you go on one of their tours. The road is unbelievably bad (not this one) and no way could we take our camper van along it. We had the sunrise tour, our guide took us in a Chevrolet 4X4 minibus and we were longing to get out and walk around the rocks, but that wasn’t allowed. However, we got this one, the tallest rock is called the Totem Pole, and was climbed (ha!) by Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy in ‘The Eiger Sanction’. I think I will have to watch that film again, now I know that.
This is a truly amazing place, and you can Google for great photos with the beams of light. Unfortunately, far too many people were allowed down there, and there was little opportunity to set shots up and get the exposure right. We got a couple of OK ones.
