Category: National Parks

Wupatki Natl Monument – Gallup, NM – Saturday October 3, 2015

Friday I got out and took some wildlife pictures.
This guy was directing traffic.

This guy was in charge of everyone on the north side of the hill.

I also got some more night pictures.

I just think this is cool, we are really so small in the bigger world around us.  The white line is a satellite.

Saturday was a driving day.  We had people lined up to take our site at Lees Ferry ( it really is a GREAT site ).  Left camp at 8:30 because we had a 330 mile day to get to Walmart in Gallup, New Mexico.   Got to Gallup at 8:00 p.m. and headed right into Walmart for our every other week’s worth of shopping.  This being the first of the month the store was full of people and many many of the shelves were empty.

On the way to Gallup we stopped at Wupatki National Monument for a revisit.  Jean and I first stumbled onto this monument September 15, 2004 and we thought it was time for a revisit.
Some of the wild life.
The wood beam in the middle was put here around 1100.  I wish the beams on the front of our house had lasted this long.

White Sands National Monument – Tuesday October 14, 2014

The sand at White Sands is really white.
I took this picture so there would be something in the picture that wasn’t just white.
One with a couple of plants.
This is the edge of one of dunes.
and I have a bunch of pictures showing the waves in the sand.   Hank had a great time walking around on the sand.
This evening I took a bunch of night pictures. It is really hard to believe how many stars there are in the sky.  The Milky Way is much easier to see in a picture, these are all about 20 seconds long.
I just missed a shooting star in this picture, it was just to the left of my picture.

Grand Canyon, North side, – Thursday September 25, 2014

We spent two nights at Jacob Lake Campground and most of the day on Thursday at Grand Canyon.  It is still a 55 mile drive from Jacob Lake to the canyon rim.

I took a lot of pictures and Hank learned the fine art of getting in and out of the car at every view point.

At 9000 feet I could really tell the elevation in my when we walked out to the view points.
This is the classical view of the window and the walk it 0.6 miles out to the end from the parking lot.  No dogs were allowed on the walk way so I hurried out and back so Jean didn’t have to wait to long.

The aspen has already started to turn.  This side of the canyon closes on October 15th of each year.  It was a fun day.

Vacation – Zion Narrows – Saturday September 18, 2010

Saturday September 18 Tanya and I went on a Zion Institute guided walk up the Zion Narrows.

We got on the 8:00 a.m. tram for the 40 minute ride to the end of the tram road and the beginning of the River Walk which leads to the starting point of the Zion Narrows river trail. There is tons ofinformation about the Zion Narrows (plan a visit) already on the net so I’ll skip most of the Narrows details. We started the day’s walk at 9:00 am and returned at 3:45 pm. Went up river to the first Y, turned right and up Orderville Canyon to the turn around point, returned to the Y and up main river to Wall Street. At Wall Street we turned around and headed down river. I’d say about 80% of the time is spend walking in the river.

It was a great day with a really nice group of people. I scheduled the hike with the Zion Institute so we’d have the opportunity to learn something and I thought it would be more enjoyable going with someone who knew what they were actually doing. We could have walked up river on our own however going with someone who had done this a couple of hundred times was much more enjoyable. Gene could read the river and picked the easiest and fastest route up and across the river 99% of the time. I didn’t see how really good Gene was until the trip down river. We didn’t encounter many people early in the morning however on the trip down river we saw hundred’s of people. Watching them stuggle to pick the route up river showed Gene’s understanding of the river.

Our Zion Institute guide was Gene (as I mentioned above). He is in his 70’s and volunteers to lead programs for the institute all year round. Gene said his wife’s father was actually born at the same location as the current Zion Museum.

We had a great day. I’ll include a couple of pictures now and maybe some more later.

This is one of the 191 pictures I took during the day.

This is most of the group.
Have a Great day, Harry

 

Vacation – Friday September 17, 2010

It’s Friday and vacation is a great thing. We should do this more often.

It is warm as in the lower 90’s and Hank is uncomfortable. He’s not grouchy as he was the first couple of years he’s just can not get comfortable. He’ll lay in one place for about 10 minutes and then he has to move.

It’s the couch

chair

floor

under the table

different spot on the floor

chair

couch

he’s a warm puppy

In as much as Hank is a warm puppy Jean is ecstatic. She loves the heat and it’s actually quite nice this sunny and warm in September.

On a non vacation topic since I got this new laptop I’ve been working with OpenOffice for word processing and spreadsheets. MsOffice is just to expensive for a non work related activities. I think I’ll continue use OpenOffice for a while. One of the driving forces is my version of Office is Office 97 and it will not work with 64 bit Windows 7, at least I don’t know how to make it work.

OpenOffice wants to save text as ODF whatever that is however I’ve been saving text documents as rtf’s. Not really sure how odf’s will paste into wordpress blogs so I’ll stay with rft’s for now, may try odf’s later.

Got to go get a picture or two for today.
Our campsite for the week.

View of the west rim valley about half way up to the rim.

Zion National Park – Saturday June 6, 2010

Sunday at Zion and more than likely stay in camp all day. It’s going to get to 104 today. At 11:45 it is 90. The weather channel says 89. Jean is laying in the sun and I’m hiding in shade of the MH.

We leave here tomorrow morning and head east up and out through the tunnel. They are starting road construction tomorrow so it only be open to MH from 7:00 am To 9:00 am in the morning and two hours in the evening. You can drive around but that’s about 50 miles. We’ll get all shower’d up this evening, dump & fill with water. I don’t think the two Parks we are go to have water. I don’t want miss the open tunnel time waiting to get water in the morning. It can take a while to take on 100 gallons of water, with the tunnel open for 2 hours everyone may decide to leave at the same time.

HAPPY Birthday to the UW Executive MBA Candidate.

The picture of day is camping thing:

Extra picture, weather channel says 98 this is under our awning not in the direct sun.

 

Zion National Park – Friday June 4, 2010

It’s Friday and we have been gone for a week. As you all know this vacation thing is much better than billed.

Hank and l got up and went for three poo morning walk, that’s anything over 3 miles. We actual did just over 4.

Today is also a two picture day. These where taken within minutes of one another. One was taken were Hank wants to spend the middle of the day and one is where Jean spends the day. Jean’s picture has gone up 2 degrees since l took it.

Have a Great weekend, we’ll be back to Enumclaw weather in a week.

Zion National Park – Wednesday June 2, 2010

Wednesday at Zion Natl Park. Today’s entry will have two pictures, one from the East Rim trail and the other is a mystery picture. If you think you know what the mystery picture is you can add your guess to the comments. I left home with the comments set as moderated and l’ve had no luck getting that changed. You’ll have wait for me to approve comments.

I caught the 5:45 a.m. bus this morning and hiked up to the East Rim trail 4.5 miles up and 4.5 miles back down – a long ways for me. It got to 90 today and should reach 100+ this weekend.