U, C, a U A (part 4)
16-June-2008 - Monday:
At long last... another entry from the Utah, Colorado and Utah trip! (I'm sure you could hardly sleep...)
We woke up this morning, and went out to ride the Klondike Bluffs trail. The trail starts north of Moab, and heads east ending up in Arches National Park. Since bikes are illegal in the park (off road), the trail just ends kind of in the middle of nowhere at a fence, and there's a bike rack sitting there. Park your bike, and there's a short hike up to the Klondike Bluffs overlook.
Lynne and I with the Klondike Bluffs in the background.One extremely cool thing about this trail is that on the edge of the trail at one point there are some dinosaur tracks. Yes, actual dinosaur tracks. There's six or seven (?) of them and they just sort of curve around and disappear into the rock on the side of the trail. Here's one of them with Lynne's foot for reference.
Dinosaur track! Three toes pointing the same direction as Lynne's foot.It's pretty cool to think that a dinosaur had walked RIGHT THERE. What was he doing? Where was he going? What did he look like? Why do I keep calling it a he? Just some of the mysteries that we may never know the answers to...
17-June-2008 - Tuesday:
Temperatures remained ... well ... too dang hot, so we got up early again and went up to ride the world famous Slickrock trail. Pretty interesting stuff. Not a beginner trail, that's for sure. But there are some pretty fantastic views up there (just as there are all over the place in Moab and Utah in general, really).
17-June-2008 - Tuesday:
Temperatures remained ... well ... too dang hot, so we got up early again and went up to ride the world famous Slickrock trail. Pretty interesting stuff. Not a beginner trail, that's for sure. But there are some pretty fantastic views up there (just as there are all over the place in Moab and Utah in general, really).
Lynne riding Slickrock.After the morning ride, we went and got some breakfast and decided to head up to Arches yet again. We did the semi-long hike up to Delicate Arch, and then when it seemed to be even hotter, we did the very short hike up to the viewpoint.
Lynne walking up the trail. There's a little arch (don't remember its name!) in the distance to her left. Delicate Arch is up around the wall to her right.It wasn't that long a hike (I think three-something miles), but it was 95+ degrees F. And a lot of it was over rock. It just felt like we were out there baking... But as soon as we turned that final corner and got a look at Delicate Arch, it was worth it. (Well, *I* think so; I'd guess you'd have to ask Lynne if she thought so...!) So here it is:
That's Lynne in the center of the arch.
A little closer view with me under the arch this time.Here are some stairs that are cut into the sandstone along the trail. It looked like someone came along with one of those mesh screens that they use to catch sandcrabs at the beach, and just carved out the steps one scoop at a time.
So, now that we're completely out of water, and it's still really HOT, we decided to do the short walk (less than a mile round trip) up to the Delicate Arch Viewpoint to see where we'd just been.
Lynne taking a picture of the arch.
Another picture. You can see a person up on the ridge. That's where we walked to get right up to it.And then we got back in the car, turned up the A/C, and drove back into town to get some water and food. A fine vacation day...
Okay, only one or two more entries to go. It's only a couple of months later that I'm writing this... I'm not that late am I? Well, maybe so...
Okay, only one or two more entries to go. It's only a couple of months later that I'm writing this... I'm not that late am I? Well, maybe so...
posted by pablo @ 9:40 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I have been enjoying the pics you’ve posted and marvel at the processes that have created them – from the land formations to the sky to the human interaction and endurance to the camera which has captured it all to the internet which brings the images to me to the mind which absorbs and ‘interprets’ them – not to mention the represented time from the first visual to these words. Seeing land formations millions and billions of years in the making the same day an Olympic swimmer wins a race by one one-thousandth of a second - a mind-boggling contrast. Especially when the former is dismissed (if known) and the latter is celebrated as an historic event of great significance.
Curious that I am currently reading a fascinating (to me) book about the ‘recent’ theory concerning the disappearance/extinction of the dinosaurs. The writer suggested that if the original yard-measurement between the king’s nose and fingertip were illustrative of the time span of earth’s existence, one light stroke of a fingernail file would wipe out human evolution totally.
Coincidentally and incidentally both, we went to see Walking with the Dinosaurs last night. What an amazing show! One just has to remember that no one has actually heard a dinosaur roar or seen his or her spines turn red in warning or seen a mother brontosaurus protect her baby from a raptor. But there is lots of interesting stuff which can be documented and is known. The discussion about dinosaur footprints was particularly appropriate for this set of photos I might, and will, add! I recommend the show, including the logistics and theatrical aspects of it; that's awesome by itself - for theater majors – and for anyone interested in all such things.
And so I am back to deep time, a phenomenon which is truly beyond my ability to comprehend even though I can speak of it here. I got a “C” in astronomy because I couldn’t comprehend the speed of light. Or how the Foucault pendulum worked either. No wait, that was physics. Maybe its science that stupefies me.
However, the concept of deep time helps me understand why people are awestruck at a thousandth of a second. The other is too hard.
And where was the bridge that fell down?
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