"The Utah deserts and plateaus and canyons are not a country of big returns, but a country of spiritual healing, incomparable for contemplation, meditation, solitude, quiet, awe, peace of mind and body. We were born of wilderness and we respond to it more than we sometimes realize. We depend upon it increasingly for relief from the termite life we have created." Wallace Stegner
How big this country! How diverse! And how quickly people seem to absorb into the ambient scene, particularly in the wide spaces of the west. This time we rode in a big white bus with 43 other people. Glad to have done this trip in October, for there were few other travelers to mar the silence of the rocks and sky. Luckily the weather held. The trip began in St George, in southwest Utah, about 100 from Las Vegas. From here we circled north and clockwise through Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, Canyonlands, and Lake Powell, with stops at museums (Edge of the Cedars is a gem) and other features along the way (the Grand Staircase of the Escalante, Monument Valley, Antelope Canyon). We did not get to the Grand Canyon as the North Rim was closed for the season, and there wasn't time to go around to the south side. We gained renewed respect for the national park system as we toured and hiked through the more accessible areas of the parks. The in-park shuttles, not there when I last visited the area 25 years ago, are a marvelous innovation--clearing the air and quieting the environment--thankfully no more traffic jams in Zion. Our guide, a geologist, who tried his best to keep us oriented to the macro scale of geologic time and processes as we went from park to park. I provide a button above to an image of the so-called Grand Staircase of geologic formations, which I find helpful in trying to figure out where each park's glories "sit" in terms of geologic time.
The uplift of the Colorado Plateau began hundreds of millions of years ago and continues today at the rate of a few inches a year. It's the product of the subduction of the Pacific plate under North America. Atop this plateau are layers and layers of sediments washed from ancient mountains (think Rockies, Appalachians) and laid down as inland seas came and went across the heartland of this country. Faults and volcanoes and hot wellings up of lava poured out. Wind and weather and rivers (the Colorado and its tributaries) eroded deep canyons and cut weird and wonderful shapes into the layers of stone. The colors come from different minerals laid down in the sediments, while weird shapes (like Hoo-doos of Bryce) come from the differing erodibility and permeability characteristics of stacked up layers. It's an act of the imagination to understand what the landscape looked like when it all began.
How big this country! How diverse! And how quickly people seem to absorb into the ambient scene, particularly in the wide spaces of the west. This time we rode in a big white bus with 43 other people. Glad to have done this trip in October, for there were few other travelers to mar the silence of the rocks and sky. Luckily the weather held. The trip began in St George, in southwest Utah, about 100 from Las Vegas. From here we circled north and clockwise through Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, Canyonlands, and Lake Powell, with stops at museums (Edge of the Cedars is a gem) and other features along the way (the Grand Staircase of the Escalante, Monument Valley, Antelope Canyon). We did not get to the Grand Canyon as the North Rim was closed for the season, and there wasn't time to go around to the south side. We gained renewed respect for the national park system as we toured and hiked through the more accessible areas of the parks. The in-park shuttles, not there when I last visited the area 25 years ago, are a marvelous innovation--clearing the air and quieting the environment--thankfully no more traffic jams in Zion. Our guide, a geologist, who tried his best to keep us oriented to the macro scale of geologic time and processes as we went from park to park. I provide a button above to an image of the so-called Grand Staircase of geologic formations, which I find helpful in trying to figure out where each park's glories "sit" in terms of geologic time.
The uplift of the Colorado Plateau began hundreds of millions of years ago and continues today at the rate of a few inches a year. It's the product of the subduction of the Pacific plate under North America. Atop this plateau are layers and layers of sediments washed from ancient mountains (think Rockies, Appalachians) and laid down as inland seas came and went across the heartland of this country. Faults and volcanoes and hot wellings up of lava poured out. Wind and weather and rivers (the Colorado and its tributaries) eroded deep canyons and cut weird and wonderful shapes into the layers of stone. The colors come from different minerals laid down in the sediments, while weird shapes (like Hoo-doos of Bryce) come from the differing erodibility and permeability characteristics of stacked up layers. It's an act of the imagination to understand what the landscape looked like when it all began.