After a long drive to Moab and finding a hotel, I finally managed to get into the Arches National Park. It was already quite late and sunset was immanent. So I decided to only briefly enjoy the extreme bizarre, but very beautiful landscape and mountains and head more or less directly to the “Delicate Arch”, probably the most famous arch in that park as its also imprinted on the number plate for cars registered in Utah. Looking at the description of the hiking path, I
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Looks like everyone wants to be at Moab, near the Arches National Park, this time of the year. At least the hotels are fully booked. I had to try in several places to get a bed for two nights and the prices where exorbitant at all three places. I actually ended up in calling my credit card company to check on my limit.
Hard to be believe, but you can actually touch a real dinosaur – or at least what has been left of it after 150 million years. The territory around Jensen is so rich of dinosaur bones, that on the small guided tour at the “Dinosaur Quarry”, visitors are actually encouraged to touch the stones and bones. Scientists have recovered enough material, and there is still plenty, that the potential damage tourists create is not worse than the natural erosion to which these pieces are also
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That little critter seems to be used to be observed. After some initial “runawy” action, it started to igonre me and did feed on seamen.
Hard to catch with a camera are the impressive canyons at the “Dinosaur National Monument”, which by the way for the greater part is NOT a place to see the remains of dinosaurs. Those can be observed in a corner of it at the nearby “Dinosaur Quarry”. Those canyons where formed by the two rivers “Green River” and “Yampa River”. Those rivers did carved deep canyons (over 700 meters from top to bottom) into the various layers of the mountains.
All that electronic equipment needs to be handled daily. Especially loading the batteries of the camera or GPS device used to track the location the images where taken, is part of the daily routine. Also of course, a session of usually around an hour, to update the travel log is part of that ritual. On those days, where multiple and completely different locations have been visited, that is also a nice refresher of what I have seen throughout the day.
With the relative flat land in Wyoming or Utah, the horizon is far away. One side-effect of this is, that the sun goes down really low on the horizon – in contrast to the normally “high” sunset at home. Also, due to the far visibility, the cloud pattern can be observed over a long distances. And one can easily be in full sunlight but observe a thunderstorm some 20 or 30 miles further down the road. This often results in very nice sceneries. Being able
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In the “Springhill Suites” at Vernal, where I will stay for two nights, so I have some time to explorer the dinosaur hill around Vernal, looks quite comfortable too. My room even features a very nice living room area, where it would be comfortable to read a book at the end of the day. However, I fear, that will not be my activity soon. I just don’t have enough time to also read a book. The day easily fills with traveling and visiting interesting places.
On my way further down south, I came through some very remote and wild landscapes. Along the longer part of the way only grassland or bushes lined up with the street. It must be a very difficult trip for the first settlers to travel through these terrain’s – without modern navigation systems or freeways, that make traveling comfortable these days. Those travelers only had – I guess – rather rough descriptions of landmarks, such as the “Pilot Butte” a characteristic table mountain on top of
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Quite obviously, today I arrived in the Wild West. While there was a touch of it at West Yellowstone too, at Jackson you definifely know where you have landed walding or driving through the streets. Of course there is a purpose for creating this abidance. Given that many of these Wild West style buildings house a gift shop, art gallery, restaurant or are otherwise linked to tourism, this village seems to be living from its visitors. At the city border, a group of ski lift
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