Monday, September 11, 2017

May 25, part 1 -- Kolob Canyons

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Here is a link to the interactive expedition map.  I added a link for the viewpoint that is as far as you can drive into the Kolob Canyons section of Zion National Park.



The office and the kitchen (for breakfast) in our hotel were not in the same building as our room.

Walking back to the room after breakfast.  There is a place that rents gear for hiking in the river in the park.  (Special footwear, wetsuits, etc.)

This chalked sign is on the pavement outside the door into the rental place.  "Remember your power" is good advice, I think.



I wonder how long it would take to get used to this view in the back yard................




Zion National Park is large, and because we come at it from ground level, instead of from the top of the plateau (as in Bryce), there are places in the park that you have to go outside the park to get to.

We decided to visit the Kolob Canyons part of Zion National Park on the 25th because it was supposed to be hotter than the 26th.  Instead of hiking in Zion on the hotter day, we thought we'd drive, mostly, and walk at higher elevations when we walked.

So we drove out around the southwest corner of the park, and up outside the west side of the park, to get to Kolob Canyons.  The next several pics are places along the way.

I hadn't seen any rock like the very dark gray rock at the top of this hill.



Closer crop.  Very angular.  This does not look like small bits have been falling off (as with the hoodoos in Bryce).  These are large chunks of rock.



Still pleased with what I can often get from a moving car........  Out the side.



Definitely not Michigan.








Looking back toward the expressway from the Kolob Canyons visitors' center parking lot.  That road going over the bridge is the highway.  There aren't that many expressways out here.  There just aren't enough flat places to put them..........



Flowers growing next to the parking lot.



With a leetle teeny bug.



Now we are inside the park.



Unlike Bryce, Zion is really canyons, really carved by real rivers.  Here's a river.



I didn't see any big oak trees in the southwest, but I saw a lot of these shrubby oaks in Zion.





Rocks that look like they started as mud.  Trees on the edge.  And pavement(lower left corner) that matches the red-brown rock.








Scratched-up info board at a view point.




Isn't it cool that GoogleMaps has this level of granularity, even out more or less in the middle of nowhere?  This is the identical parking lot we can see in the previous image.



And, of course, GoogleMaps will scroll out as far as you want.  Here's an image that gives you some idea of an eagle's eye view of the land east of that parking lot.




The camera just doesn't do a good job with exposure when faced into the sun.  I've messed with this, but it's still way too light in the center.



This is a closer crop of the above.  I am thinking about all of these trees, and comparing them to the trees we saw up high at Bryce.  These seem much more secure in their "footing" than the ones at Bryce, for the most part.


Here's a link to the next post about the Grand Canyon trip.

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