Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Vacation was good, but too short

It was interesting spending several days without a TV, radio, or computer. We all need a break now and then.
The trip started on 5/24, we made fair time down to Moab, since the traffic wasn't too busy. The Memorial Day weekend can be quite hectic; it is the traditional first weekend that a lot of people use to travel down to Lake Powell. We spent a couple of days around the Moab area, both out in the deserts, and up in the alpine regions of the Manti-Lasalle mountains outside of Moab. After leaving Moab, we meandered over towards Escalante, stopping at various places such as Goblin Valley. If you saw the movie Galaxy Quest, they filmed the scenes that featured the giant rock creature in Goblin Valley. We stayed in a small town called Torrey, just a few miles north of Escalante, and west of Capitol Reef National Monument. Capitol Reef is always enjoyable to travel back in the gorges and washes, and there are some old pioneer buildings and such there to look at. South toward Escalante, you first come to the Aquarius Plateau, so named because it is the watershed for the whole area. There was still a fair amount of snow on top, but we were only at about 9600 feet elevation when we crossed over, so we weren't in the snow. Did see a bull and a cow elk near the top, but they were heading uphill. We stopped at the small town of Boulder partway down the side of the Aquarius, to see how the progress is going on an Anasazi village they have been excavating there. The place has grown a bit since we were last there, but is still fairly small. Boulder is right at the junction of the Burr Trail and Highway 12, so we took a trip down it for a ways. It brought back memories of backbacking in the back canyons of that are back in the late Sixties. We were going to hike down Calf Creek, but it was so crowded this weekend that we decided to do it another time when there were fewer people. The town of Escalante has grown quite a bit, but there wasn't much there we were interested in, so we stayed out in the back roads away from people as much as we could. We could have used a few more days in both Moab and the Escalante area, but all good things must end, so we got back 5/28.
Below are a few samples of what we saw; there are a few others in my Flickr account that can be reached by the widget in the sidebar. Click to see full size.
1. Balancing Rock
2. Manti-Lasalle Mountains
3. An arch (I forget which one)
4. Part of Goblin Valley
5. Part of the Hogback Road between Boulder and Escalante; the sides drop off a thousand feet or so to the bottom, and it is barely two lanes wide.
6. One of the gorges in Capitol Reef.






8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful photos! Sounds like a wonderful weekend.

Editor said...

beautiful pics, glad you had a great time.

Arcadia Iris said...

Great pics! Glad you're back... your vacation and Hammer's overlapped, and that's left a hole in the bloggy-goodness.

Scott Freeman said...

Looks and sound great.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful pictures :) Glad you had a good time and btw thanks for visiting my blog again ^^ hope to read your comments on it more often ;)
W.

The Conservative UAW Guy said...

IS THAT A CONTRAIL IN THE BACKGROUND OF THE BALANCE ROCK?!?!?!?

MIND CONTROL!!! CANCER!!! NEOCONISM!!!! AAAAAAGGGHHH!!!!!!

Anyhoo, nice pics! :)

BobG said...

Southern Utah skies are full of contrails; I think a lot of main flights go over the area.

Speedcat Hollydale said...

I too loved these photos. Minnesota has great lakes, forest areas and bluffs, but nothing like this. Great blog Bob G. :-)

Speedcat