Our Great North America Trip: Arizona: Petrified Forest; Painted Desert; Canyon de Chelly; Monument Valley; Antelope Canyon; Grand Canyon-North Rim. Utah: Coral Sand Dunes; Zion NP; Grand Staircase Nat. Monument; Capitol Reef NP. (May 23-30)

 

Petrified Forest, Arizona

Ranger talk

 

The actual thing:  225 million years old trees

Petroglyphs from pre-Columbian times

Painted Desert, AZ

Canyon de Chelly (pronounced “Chay”) is in north-west Arizona

 

There are cliff dwellings; we followed a trail down into the Canyon to see “The White House” close-up

In front of “The White House”

 

This monolith is called Spider Woman

 

Monument Valley, famous from old Westerns  (John Wayne country)

“The Mittens” in the background

 

Antilope Slot Canyon; if you see this narrow opening you don’t think you can actually get in….

 

but we did…..

 

If you look closely you can see an eagle head in the sand stone.   Eleven people (mostly french tourists) drowned  12 years ago in this canyon because of a sudden flash flood that came rushing thru at a speed of 80 miles an hour.

 

Horse Shoe Bend; the Colorado River – on its way to the Grand Canyon - meanders here around a huge rock

 

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon

 

Our long hike down into the Grand Canyon towards “Roaring Springs” almost a 1,000 meters below the rim

 

A flowering yucca

 

At Roaring Springs after descending from 2,500 to about 1,500m

 

In southern Utah, on our way to Zion NP, we detoured to see these Pink Sand dunes

 

Zion Nat. Park: this is Angels Landing; we climbed to the top, starting at 1,300m and summiting at 1,760m

 

The trail to the top is up this cliff (if you enlarge this picture you can see people going up the trail)

On top of Angels Landing

 

Water gets through porous sandstone as explained here….

 

“Weeping Rock” weeps because of this

 

“Emerald Pool,” another well-known hike in Zion canyon

 

Checkerboard Mesa, at the east entrance of Zion NP

 

Grand Staircase Escalante Nat. Monument; this is the vast desert area with beautiful vistas we drove through, past Bryce Canyon (which we skipped) on our way to Capitol Reef Nat. Park

 

Anasazi Indian Village State Park: archeologists dug up this indian village from the 12th century

Burr Trail; we drove through this canyon; it is in the southern part of Capitol Reef NP

 

The pocked cliffs along Burr Trail

Guadalupe Mountains, TX; Carlsbad Caverns, NM; White Sands, NM; Las Cruces, NM; Gila Nat. Forest, NM; VLA, NM – May 19 to 22, 2009

Hi everyone:

Time flies when you are having fun…..

Below some photos of our adventures in the South West of the US through May 22.

I am a little behind with my blogs.  So there is more to come in the next few days.   I am dependent on wifi connections which you don’t find here that often.  Even cell phones don’t work very well in this desert area…..

 

 

This is the Nat. Park that has the highest mountain of Texas, appropriately named: Guadalupe Mountain.

 

We climbed it.  Starting at about 1750m…

and summiting at 2667m

 

Our camper way down (the small one in the middle, top row)

 

 

    

Carlsbad, New Mexico; it has the largest caves in the Western Hemisphere;  the one you can visit, The Big Room, is 30miles long

 

Taking photos inside the cave in low light is hard; this one gives you an idea of the enormous halls you find inside.  Someone called it an underground Grand Canyon

They found another set of caves, not open to the public yet which is 100 miles long

B and I in one of the caves

An elevator takes you down 230m in 30 seconds

 

“White Sands” New Mexico;  sand that consists of pulverized gypsum (gips for the Dutch)

Amazing all these white dunes

 

You can walk and drive through this area for miles….

The habitual picture to prove that we were there….

 

Some plants, a spiny yucca in this case, survive here

 

 

Las Cruces, NM; we visited with my old neighbors and friends Judi and Lance and had a Mexican dinner in a local restaurant (after all Las Cruces is right on the Mexican border).  We all lived in Springfield, VA, just outside the Beltway around Washington DC in the mid-70s.   Lance is a Kiowa Indian. 

They have 2 sons whom I have not seen since they were little; one is a pilot, the other is the head soccer coach at  Carnegie Mellon university (see link)

http://www.cmu.edu/athletics/intercollegiate-sports/mens-teams/soccer/head-coach.html

 

Lance showing off a set of eagle feathers still used during the annual Pow Wow; they belonged to his greatgrandfather (I hope I remember that correctly)

 

In front of Judi and Lance’s home in Las Cruces

Copper mine close to the Gila Nat. Forest

 

See what strip mining does to the mountains…..

 

Mule dear in the Gila National Forest, New Mexico

 

Start of our visit to the pre-Columbia cliff dwellings in
Gila Nat. Forest, NM

 

Overview of the caves

 

The dwellings were built and occupied in the 12th century

 

The native americans who built these cliff houses were the Mogollan Indians, ancestors to the Hopis, Zunis and Navajos.

Below various shots of the cliff dwellings which we could freely visit

 

 

 

 

VLA = Very Large Array:   In the desert of New Mexico, you’ll find a series of 27 huge dish-shaped antennas that work together (the largest such setup in the world), to receive and analyze radio signals from outer space

Antennas in the rain

The configuration of the antennas, mounted on rails, can be changed

 

Antennas under the rain clouds…..