Places
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Goosenecks of the San Juan
Two views of the Goosenecks of the San Juan River
north of Mexican Hat, UT off Utah highway 261 where
the river makes ten hairpin turns – you can count ‘em
on a map – through deep canyons before going on to
the Colorado River. Three of them and part of a fourth
are visible at the overlook. The bend on the right in the
first photo shows on the left in the second. You have to watch your step near the edge here.-- there are no
guardrails.
Zion National Park
Zion National Park is as unique a place as Canyonlands'
Needles District or Bryce Canyon. and very different from both. The main canyon in Zion is the canyon of the North
Fork of the Virgin River, a fairly wide canyon with massive
cliffs of Navajo Sandstone rising mostly straight up for as
much as 2640 feet. The word monumental is what comes
to mind in describing Zion.
I visited Zion in the spring, and it was so jammed with
crowds I didn't want to deal with the main canyon, so I
went around to the east entrance that comes in on a high
plateau that has plenty of monumental scenery of its own. Eventually I came to a short trail to an overlook of this
huge amphitheater. The massive cliffs and huge canyon
are a smaller version of the main canyon but awesome on their own. You can see where the road goes ultimately to
the bottom by switchbacks that seem endless. You have
to leave your car at the entrance to the main canyon and
ride shuttle buses if you want to go farther.
The massive high cliff on the right and the narrowness of
the road at the bottom give a sense of the monumental
scale of Zion.
Bosque del Apache
Bosque del Apache, south of Socorro, NM is a large wildlife
refuge noted primarily as a wintering place for sandhill cranes
and geese. Large flocks of cranes can be seen in fields near the
12-mile dirt road that crosses the refuge, as well as from walking
trails. Tours and educational talks are offered by refuge staff. A
Festival of the Cranes is held yearly in February. On a visit with
friends years ago, we also saw a group of seven does taking
cover in the tall vegetation, and I got this photograph of one with
a 55-250 mm zoom lens.
Waterpocket Fold
The Waterpocket Fold is a 90-mile long north-ridge of sandstone contained in the narrow Capitol Reef National Park. There are only
two places where a road crosses it, here in the southern part of the
park and in the northern part where the Fremont River cuts through
the Fold. Here the Burr Trail Road snakes its way down a series of
steep switchbacks from the mesa on the west side of the Fold down
to Hall's Creek Canyon on the east side. You can see the road in
light gray in several places in the photograph. The Fold was formed
when two tectonic plates collided, slowly but violently buckling and twisting the rock at their meeting point into dramatically wild forms,
especially in the southern part of the park. It's an amazing place to
visit. It's designated a Top Tier Dark Sky Park due to having almost
no artificial light near it, a great place to see the Milky Way in its
astonishing clarity.
