Horsfall Beach

While in the Coos Bay area, I wanted to check out a pup-friendly beach.  Yes, it was great fun for Max, but we also saw some wonderful sights at the beach…..

On the way to the beach, we came across this lovely calm bay just on the other side of the ocean beach.  I loved the reflection of the trees growing up from the sand dunes in the calm, reflective waters.

Yes, this was a large piece of driftwood that Max played “Chase” with.  But, after he raced on by, I saw the beauty of a peaceful scene and had to capture it to share

What is this?  That was my thought when I saw this.  I showed it to Jeff, who immediately identified it as a crab shell.  I just loved the texture and color of it and how it blended and yet contrasted with the sand in which it sat.

There’s something about a path to/from the beach in the midst of beach grass that I find so appealing.  It’s just relaxing to look it, reminding me of lazy summer days, even though I never had such lovely walkways to the beach when I was younger!

As I was leaving the beach, I happened to look through the beach grass at the ocean one more time.  I loved the scene that was there, and just had to capture it.

Enjoy!

Max on the Beach

One day while at Coos Bay, we took Max to a dog-friendly beach in the area.  We like to expose him to as many different situations, people and other dogs as we can, just to get him to hopefully be a well-rounded pup.  He had such fun to his visit to a wide open, plenty of space to run around beach!

It didn’t take long before he was racing around the driftwood logs that were on the beach.  One of his favorite games is what we call “Chase” where he races around us.  I guess he decided to play “Chase” with the logs!

Here he is racing directly at us, and I think it looks like he’s smiling or whatever dogs do, as he races by us, getting some pent up energy out!

Eventually, he did get too close to the ocean when Jeff was tossing him sticks to fetch.  He’s still not used to water, and maybe he’ll never be a water dog.  It was kind of funny to watch him deal with the waves as they rolled up around him as he was running to get a stick!

Enjoy!

Exploring Around the Great Salt Lake

On our travels, we decided to spend a day in the Salt Lake City, exploring and checking out The Great Salt Lake at Great Salt Lake State Park.  But, we didn’t want to get here via the regular route, so we found a back road through the nearby mountains to get there

On the way through the mountain, we came across a mine that all info we found said was small, but we thought it was pretty large!!  I especially loved looking at the tailings – I thought it looked a bit like a scrappy patchwork quilt!  But on to the Lake!!

Here we are looking out onto the Great Salt Lake and Antelope Island.  The Great Salt Lake is 4200 feet above sea level.  Its maximum depth is only 34 feet, with the average depth of only 12 feet, so it’s really quite a shallow lake.  It covers almost 1.5 million acres of water!  It’s the largest lake west of the Mississippi River and is 4 -8 times saltier than the ocean.  It gets salty because 3 major rivers flow into the Lake.  However, nothing flows out, making it a terminal lake.  The only way water leaves the Lake is by evaporation, leaving behind salt and other minerals.

There are no fish in the Great Salt Lake, only brine shrimp, brine flies, algae and bacteria.  However, the shrimp & flies make this a favorite place for migratory birds, and the Lake is part of the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network.  People can often be found sailing on the lake; in fact, that’s the most common type of boat found on the Lake.  However, due to the shallowness of the Lake, sailing conditions can change quite rapidly – from mirror like calm to dense waves of up to 10 feet in minutes.  So, beware!!

Enjoy!

Tusher Tunnel

Our third exploration in the Moab area was to go in search of the Tusher Tunnel.  Jeff and I had found this tunnel a few years ago, but I wasn’t certain that we could find this very cool place again.  Of course, even though I wasn’t certain, Jeff was and we got there without any real question.

Can you see the entrance to the tunnel?  We couldn’t either!  It is somewhat hidden, but is actually right by the dead tree reaching up to the sky.  We had to climb up a bit of a rocky scramble and walk on a semi-path to reach it.

Here we are with Jeff & his sis and bro-in-law (and Max, of course) entering the tunnel.  The walk at this point is fairly sandy without many rocks to trip one up!

One of the coolest things is coming to the end of the tunnel, which opens up to a great view!!  Lonnie said he was blown away by how expansive it got at the end of it.

Here’s that expansive view I mentioned!  You just couldn’t believe that it was this open on the other side of the tunnel.  When you start walking into it, you have no idea this much openness lays on the other side!

Once out the other side, the views were really something, and there were a couple more little enclaves of a semi-tunnel to explore, too.  Max was thoroughly enjoying himself on this new adventure for him!

When we walked back through the tunnel to get back to the Jeep, we came across the dead tree that marked the entrance to the cave, and I felt like I had to capture it in an image.  I call it a dead tree, but really, there’s still some life left.  Don’t you love the look of the roots that are exposed by erosion over the years?

Enjoy!

Potash Road, Shaffer Trail and More

When you drive along the road that passes through Moab, to one side, you have open spaces with mountains in the distance.  On the other, you see high red rock bluffs, towering over the town and everything around.  You are most likely amazed and impressed by the height of those bluffs, but probably don’t think much about what lies beyond those bluffs.  Well, come and see what is behind those bluffs…..

On Potash Road, the first sight to be seen is an arch that’s not part of Arches and a differently shaped one – Jug Handle Arch.  It does look like the handle of a jug with the rock formation being the “jug”!

The next rather amazing sight to see is what first looks like either rushing water or ice/snow.  In reality, it’s salt!!  There is an operation going on behind the bluffs that gathers salt deposits from the earth.  And, these are the results!

As we traveled further along Potash Road, we took a little side road around a large rock formation called Pyramid Butte.  At the far end of Pyramid Butte, we came to our first spectacular view of the Colorado River.  I wasn’t comfortable getting any closer to the edge to take this shot!!

The next view we came to was actually the site of a movie from several years ago – Thelma and Louise.  This site is called Gooseneck Point, and it is where Thelma and Louise drove off the cliff at the end of the movie.  I couldn’t help but think of how difficult it was to bring all the cameras, etc., needed for this movie shot over the rough back dirt roads we had traveled!

Our next stop was along another side road, called White Rim Trail.  It’s actually 100 miles long, but we only traveled a few miles to another formation called Musselman’s Arch.  As you look at this image, you may be wondering where the arch is.  Well, Jeff and Max are standing on top of it!!  A very different view of and experience with an arch! I was rather nervous about Jeff taking Max on top of the arch.  It’s about 6 feet wide, but he is a puppy!  Still, the one thing that I feel good about with Max is that, for all his enthusiasm and exuberance, he is a cautious pup when confronted with something new.  As you can see, he was happy to stick close to Jeff in this instance!

Our next great experience was when we moved on to the Shaffer Trail.  I love the top view of the road as it seems to disappear into the bluffs.  But, as you can see from the bottom image, we don’t come to a dead end.  Instead, we drive up the side!!  It is a bit hair-raising, but rather exhilarating!

The next off-road we travel down is called Pucker Pass, and you can see why!  The road is barely wider than the Jeep and just when you think you’ve covered the most it has to offer, you come to the fall rock, with an opening just large enough and tall enough to accommodate a Jeep!  All of this made for a great morning of exploring!

Enjoy!

Arches National Park

One of our favorite national parks is Arches National Park, just outside Moab, UT.  Arches seems incredible to many, as there are so many arches cut out of the rock, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins and other formations all contained into a relatively small space.  The park lies on top of an underground salt bed that, combined with floods, winds, and oceans that came and went, created the features that make Arches a true national treasure.  Although we’ve been there several times, I never get tired of the stark beauty of Arches.

One of the first features is called Park Avenue, after the skyscrapers found in larger cities, like New York.  The formations are made up of Estrada Sandstone, which began forming over 150 million years ago. Within the past 2 million years erosion has formed these rock walls, called fins.  These are actually the first step in arch formations.

Moving on through the Park, we came to an interesting formation called Three Gossips.  I find it amazing that Nature can created something that reminds us so clearly of human beings!!

This is another interesting rock feature, just down from the Three Gossips.  The rock on the right is called Sheep Rock, for obvious reasons.  The sort of slab on the left is called Courthouse Rock, and some geologists feel that at one point in time, there was a rock bridge (my term) connecting the two rock features with 2 arches cut into the bridge.  These arches, geologists feel, collapsed probably several million years ago.

Along the route through Arches, in addition to the rock formations, there are some pretty interesting dead trees, too.  Here are just a couple that seem to have quite a bit of character!!

Balanced Rock (on the left) is a popular stop along the route.  The Windows Arches (North and South) are a popular stop for folks.  The North Window (shown on the right) is quite huge – the folks standing within the Arch give you a very good perspective of the size! 

In the same vicinity of the Windows Arches are the Double Arch and another (unnamed) pair of arches.  You can see that the arch in the lower image is much thicker than one of the Double Arches (top image).  The thinner the arch span, the shorter the remaining life span, relatively speaking.  Arches do collapse, though.  Back in 2008, sometime between the night of August 4^th and the morning of August 5^th, an arch called Wall Arch collapsed, temporarily blocking a hiking trail.  And, in 1991, Landscape Arch (to see an image of this arch, visit https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&id=E9A4E074FE79A20B9DC5294912879F02450BE65C&thid=OIP.RFBireTQHhFGgoIl5NXoxAHaE5&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia-cdn.tripadvisor.com%2Fmedia%2Fphoto-s%2F01%2Fe4%2Ff8%2Fe6%2Fanother-view-of-landscape.jpg&exph=364&expw=550&q=landscape+arch+arches+national+park&selectedindex=0&ajaxhist=0&vt=0&eim=1,2,6 ) partially collapsed with a couple of people standing under it when it did.  Luckily, no one was hurt, but access to stand under the Arch has been closed to the public from that point on.  We did hike to see that arch once, but not on this trip.

The most iconic of the arches in the Park is Delicate Arch.  In fact, this arch is the one that is pictured on the Utah state license plates.  I’ve never hiked up to it, but my niece did a few years ago, and said the hike is a bit strenuous in places.  However, she’s young and in great shape, so it was no problem for her!  I’m happy just to photograph it from the view area!

Perhaps my favorite stop in Arches is Sand Dune Arch.  This arch is somewhat hidden, and you need to walk into what seems like a bit of a canyon to get to it.  There are a couple of different entries into the area and both are quite beautiful.

I love standing under Sand Dune Arch and photographing it along with the wall behind it.  Of course, given what I just said about Landscape Arch, perhaps I should rethink doing this in the future!!

Enjoy!

The White Place

Although I have been a Georgia O’Keeffe fan for a number of years, and have visited her museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I never really thought about where she painted those paintings known as “The White Place”.  A couple of years ago, when we visited the national recreation area near Abiquiu, New Mexico, we toured her home in Abiquiu (different from where she lived on The Ghost Ranch).  From her home there, The White Place was pointed out to us.  I was instantly curious, and we got directions to it.

The rock formations known as The White Place – or Plaza Blanca in Spanish – are located on grounds of the Dar Al Islam mosque and Islamic education center.  They generously welcome visitors without any admission fee and without prior arrangements.  It is, however, closed on weekends.  We turned on a dirt road with the Dar Al Islam sign on the gate and followed it until we came to a fork in the road.  Off to the left is their facility, but off to the right is a parking lot (and a little way down) for The White Place.

As we approached what could loosely be called the “entry” to the canyon, I couldn’t help but think of this quote by Georgia O’Keeffe.  I feel like I know what she meant – I love to share what I love about New Mexico with people, too, but I wouldn’t want too many people to move here, as part of what I love are the open spaces!

Before we walked down the canyon, Jeff thought it might be neat to walk around the outside of the canyon.  And, what should we see?  The moon setting alongside the spires – what a pretty view!

After a bit of a walk around the outside, we did start walking down the canyon.  What pretty views we saw!  If I had been alone, I might have felt some of the spiritual feelings I’ve read about – however, with Max running around all over, feeling spiritual just wasn’t in the cards!!

When I saw this formation, I was reminded of one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings.  I am certainly not comparing my work with hers – I just wanted to show the similarities in the view.  I think she had a slightly different position, perspective and interpretation!

I never expected to feel like I was walking through a garden when I entered the canyon, but there was an amazing amount of green in the midst of a desert canyon.  I’m thinking that when it does rain, the water runs down the canyon wall and this is the result!

This was the last of my walk through The White Place.  Due to the outside walk, I ran out of energy and stopped at this point.  You can clearly see the path and the promise of more amazing sights.  We plan to visit again next year, and I’m planning to make it to the end of the canyon then!!

Enjoy!!