Nancy's Garden

 

Nancy’s Garden

While in the Pacific Northwest, we visited Jeff’s sis, Nancy, and her family, attended a wedding, and had a great visit.  Nancy is a marvelous gardener, and this blog is devoted to her lovely green thumb!!  I’ve looked for some quotes that spoke to me about each of the flower photos, and these spoke to me.  Let’s wander through Nancy’s Garden….

 

Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature. (Gerard De Nerval

Bright light is injurious to those who see nothing. (Prudentius)

Thanks, Nancy!

Enjoy!!

Chicken Corners

 

Chicken Corners

This was a new off-road to us, and one we didn’t pursue to the end – but, we will in the future!!  Let’s take a look at what we did see…

This road starts out hugging the cliff face, as do many off-roads around Moab!   As you can see from the top of the image, it was a sunny day.  The cliffs kept us nice and cool, though!!

Here are a couple of views from different sides of the road.  One is the cool shade of the cliff faces and the other is the floor of the canyon in the bright sunshine!  All of these scenes were new to us, since we’d never been on this road before.  Interestingly, we were accompanied on this road by lots and lots of ATVs and UTVs.  We realized that the reason there were so many of these vehicles on the road was because the road didn’t end in a National Park, where those vehicles were prohibited.

As we traveled down the road, we saw some petroglyphs at what was called The Birth Rock.  The petroglyphs depicted childbirth, especially the one on the far left.  This huge bolder is found just a few steps off the road.

As we continued on the road, you can see how it’s winding its way further into the canyon.  At this point, the road wasn’t too bad, although we did head down quite a steep slope to head further down toward the floor of the canyon.

These images truly illustrate the fact that sometimes rocks from the cliffs fall close to the road.  As you can see that one big boy is mighty close to the road!!!

When we reached a bit closer to the canyon floor, the scenery was really spectacular for another reason.  Wide open spaces, shrubby growth and the appearance of stripes on the rock formations that tell the tale of how old they really are.  I’m sure an archeologist could explain exactly what all the “stripes” mean, but that’s not me!!

As we progressed down the road, we saw yet more rock formations, including this one with the rock (boulder) that looks rather perilously perched!! 

If you look closely at this image, you’ll see a few camping folks!!  Throughout most of what we drove past, on the canyon floor, folks were boondocking (dry camping, with no hook-ups).  I thought this might be fun, except that the temps were predicted to be in the low 90s, and if you’re boondocking, that means no AC!!  Yikes!! At around this point, we decided to turn around and not pursue the rest of this road on this day.  The ATVs and UTVs were rolling down the road much faster than we felt comfortable doing, since this was our first time on the road.  So, we decided to turn around and save the rest of the road for our next trip in September!! 

Enjoy!!

 

An Old Favorite

 

An Old Favorite

There are some off-roads around Moab that we love to do, no matter how many times we’ve done them before.  The combination of Potash Road and Shaffer Trail is one of those roads.  The familiar always seems new and exciting!

Potash Road starts out by following alongside the Colorado River.  Blues and greens dominate, with the LaSal Mountains in the background.  Just looking at this scene makes one feel comfy and cool, no matter the temperatures outside!

There are always towering rock formations, although I’m not certain if I’ve photographed this one before.  The sky makes it look almost surreal, and like something I’ve not seen before.

We always make a stop at the location where the final scene of the movie “Thelma and Louise” was shot.  This is not the view that many may recognize, but it’s where I bet the background movie equipment was staged here.  Every time I think about all that’s involved with shooting a movie, in terms of equipment, I’m always left wondering how they managed to get the large trucks, etc., up to this point.  The road leading here is at times, quite steep, rocky and a bit narrow.

Here's a sort of panorama shot of the ledge that Thelma and Louise drove off.  The area is called The Gooseneck and standing somewhat close to the edge is a bit breathtaking and can make someone who is not all that afraid of heights stop and pause for a moment!!

As we drove on from the movie site, the rocks on the side of the Jeep, are quite high and rocky.  This shot was taken looking up thru the open roof of the Jeep.  It’s enough to make you a bit dizzy!

Here are a couple of views of the Shaffer Trail.  The image on the left is the trail from a distance.  If you look closely, you can see a bit of the light tan road weaving its way toward the cliff face.  The image on the right is as we begin the climb up the cliff face – that is the Shaffer Trail!!  It’s a really fun drive, but perhaps a bit scary if one doesn’t like heights.

Here we are halfway up the Shaffer Trail (top image).  Beautiful view!!  And the bottom image gives you an idea of how sharp the switchback turns are heading up (or down) the trail.  Folks take it slow, so we can always accommodate a vehicle coming in the opposite direction.  One time, we even saw a man riding a unicycle down this switchback trail!!

Here’s a view from very near the top of the cliffs.  You can see how we came from Potash Road to Shaffer Trail (arrow indicates the junction of the two roads).  You can see the Shaffer Trail appears to keep going from the point where it intersects Potash Road.  That becomes another road – one that can be followed for about 100 miles, I believe.

Even when we’re very near the top of the Shaffer Trail cliff, there’s still a bit of rock overhang above us!  Here you can see the trees along the overhang, and even a few at the very top!  By the way, at this point, we are technically in Canyonlands National Park – another back way into a National Park!!  (We have the Lifetime Senior Pass, so we aren’t breaking any rules by not paying our way in!!)

Enjoy!

New and Old

 

New and Old

Our first stop on this latest trip was to Moab, Utah, for a few days.  We love checking out the many backroads in the area.  The first road we ventured down was a new one to us that ended in one of our favorite national parks, Arches National Park.  Take a look….

The road is called Willow Springs Road, and after passing some areas where campers were dry camping, we started to see some really lovely desert landscapes, and some prickly pear cacti as well!  I am always drawn to the vivid colors of the desert – green shrubs, red clay early and beautiful blue skies with white puffy clouds.

At the first stop along the way, Jeff and Max set out in search of something very cool to see….

Dinosaur tracks!!  The tracks are set in a boarded off, somewhat protected area.  The rangers seem to make sure that no shrub growth starts in the boarded off area.  These tracks were made approximately 165 million years ago by a human sized predator.  The dinosaur walked in these areas which were tidelands of an inland sea that lay just to the east of the area where we were standing.  To date, more than 2500 tracks like this have been found in the area.  However, the winds of time will still eventually reclaim these footprints of the past. It was nice to be able to see these before they are gone!!

When Max gets a bit warm, he often will look for shade where he can find it, including behind the Jeep!!

Good thing we have a book that maps the road!  Looking back, it’s a bit tough at times to see the road we just drove down!!  And, up ahead, we can see the La Sal Mountains.

About mid-way through our drive, we passed from BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land into Arches National Park.  You can see it as a bit of an outcropping of rocks in the distance.

As we drove closer and closer, more of the features of Arches National Park became visible, until we finally ended up on the road within Arches at the formation known as Balanced Rock (right, above).

At that point, we simply drove on the paved road out of the park, passing familiar formations such as The Three Gossips (seen in profile on the right) and a view of a lovely easy hike called Park Avenue (on the left).  This was a fun new road with a nicely familiar ending to it!

Enjoy!