Lucky – Howard Johnson

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After arriving at the “Capitol Reef National Park” and browsing through the visitor center, I decided to stay for two nights, in order to have enough time to explore this place. But where? As I had no phone connection or other internet access in the part, I drove towards Torrey and pulled out on the first gas station a bit outside the town, assuming this place should be fine for some kind of a connection. Indeed it was. Before I actually turned on the data Read More +

Old Town of Hanksville

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Not that the attached pictures represent the entire town of Hanksville, a tiny town in Utah. But it looks like this community does preserve its “Old Town” quite well…

Playing with Ravens

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Time flies in this area. It was already around 4 pm, when I arrived at the trail head, which leads to the congruence of the colorado and green river. I planned to go there, to see how the green and reddish water mix or actually does not mix, but creates a two colored river. However, the path to that place is around 5 miles / 9 km. So I probably could have it made by daylight under the best circumstances, but the return trip would Read More +

First Floor

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The way to the concurrence of the colorado river and the green river follows the base of the top layers of rocks. The “First Floor” is quite green and there are even some farmers taking advantage of the large area. In contrast the “Second Floor”, the top of the surrounding mountains, is quite arid and only plans and animals adapted to a desert like environment can survive. Here approximately 100 meter below the world looks quite different though.

Strange Stones

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A bit outside of Moab, one can find a short “Dino Track”. Directions to which are available a the local land management agency and basically involve driving into no mans land 15 miles north of Moab on a dirt road. Once there, there should be a short track, where dinosauric bones and petrified wood can be observed. However, the track is hardly visible and I just went past it on something like the “long loop” around two of those fancy mountains. That track, which took Read More +

Little Frog in the Desert

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Its not that surprising, that lizards, snakes – yes I have seen some – or beetles can be found in the desert around Moab. There the waves are “frozen” into the sand or the sand even is wrapped in thin layers, like dry sheet of paper. Yet there seems to be an environment for a little frog to survive.

Three Levels of Life

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In “Canyonlands National Park” the main attraction are of the canyons. But the main actor in that arid desert actually was and still is water, which has been building all those structures. The entire landscape is more or less divided into three layers as erosion cut away meterial, but was stopped by some intermediate harder layer build from wind blown sand (in desert like environments). If the ranger, who gave a presentation about the geology remembers his lectures correctly rivers, such as the colorado or Read More +

Wormholes in Canyonland

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No, this is not about science fiction or physics. The wormholes I observed are for real and they are preserved in stone. That particular stone actually once was mud at the beach of an ocean or inland lake, where worms left their traces. As the mud got harder, mud cracks developed. All of which was then covered by the next layer preserving those structures for some time (actually quite a bit of time).

Catching Horus

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In order to use the morning sunlight, I quickly returned to Arches National Park before heading for the Canyonlands National Park. The feature officially labeled as the “Penguins” right at the entry of the park, kind of reminded me to some stone status I saw on another continent. Horus, the falcon headed egyptian god, is what came into my mind, when I noticed that formation. Maybe I was in Egypt to many times. Anyway, I will go there again, soon actually. In a way I Read More +

Plenty of Arches

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Today was fully dedicated to the arches and other formations as the “Arches National Park”. While there are explanations about layers of mud, dunes and salt seas being deposited at various intervals and then eroded again over a period of millions of years – we are talking about around 100 million years even, it is still hard to imagine that this all could result in such a spectacular landscape. But questions remain. For example at the arches or other locations where material obviously broke, where Read More +