Glacier of Stone...

Most people drive across southern Utah looking at large formations, never realizing that they are crossing the site of a gigantic collision of tectonic plates. The San Rafael Swell was raised thousands of feet when the Pacific Plate crashed into the Continental Plate.

In the countless millions of years since, the Swell has been eroded and shaped as you see in my earlier posts over the past few days.

Spotted Wolf Canyon and Black Dragon Canyon mark the spot where Highway 70 soars up onto the Swell:

As we get closer, we realize that the Swell rises sharply above the desert, and Highway 70 has to wind its way to climb those mountains.
A few days ago, I showed the view from the top of the Swell:

Now, on the last day of my visit, I roared up the highway from the Eastern entrance as that truck above did:

Spotted Wolf and Black Dragon Canyons intersect at the top of the long, sinuous climb:

After climbing the eastern face of this glacier of stone, we continue West across the immense highlands of the San Rafael Swell. Along our way, we encounter several high overlooks where we can look out across the top of this colossal raised portion of Utah:

There is more on the Swell, Goblin Valley and my other recent adventures here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Rafael_Swell

It isn't diving with great white sharks, but it is a wild experience!

Little Wild Horse Canyon-only for the slender...

Little Wild Horse Canyon is a slot canyon somewhat like those in Page, Arizona and Kanab in Utah. Right off--if you are not slender, don't come here. These are REALLY narrow slots!

I protected my cameras and tripod at all costs, and staggered out with blood leaking from both arms and legs. I haven't gotten this beaten up since Havasupai! Still, it was worth every ding--I'm going to love processing hundreds of these subtly-hued pictures!

Eventually, one emerges from the slots into beautiful wide portions of the canyon: The Sun pours down and the rocky walls soar up into the sky above you.

Little Wild Horse Canyon is only five miles from Goblin Valley, so I went back to photograph a few formations, such as these giant chess men near the entrance:

This entire area is filled with large formations, some like these right by the side of the road near Hanksville.

.The long drive home is tomorrow. The pictures I've put on the blog these past few days are just a few I grabbed on first scanning through 40 gigabytes of material. Now I can sit happily in the airco during the Vegas Summer and play for hours and hours with goblins and ethereally-colored slots.

Oh, look! Aren't they just adorable?...

Oh, well. I suppose not. But in their day, very effective.This is the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, a major source of fossil exhibits for museums around the world. There are many thousands of bones here, representing 70 individuals of 11 species, including more than forty Allosaurs.

The location of where every bone was found, color-coded by species, are on this chart. That's a lot of (veeeery careful) digging! This gives new meaning to the word 'meticulous.'

The star of the show, and a creature of great personality, is an assembled Allosaur.If you can even try to imagine being in the neighborhood when forty of these were hunting you won't sleep tonight. Apparently, they hunted in packs and could swarm and overwhelm larger dinosaurs.

When I look at these, I keep being reminded of big sharks and barracuda I have met. Very large barracuda develop thick brow ridges and massive lower jaws similar to these. Clearly, Mother Nature doesn't throw away good ideas.

This place is in the middle of nowhere in southern Utah, dirt road for many miles--but it is worth experiencing if only for that primordial dread it summons from deep within us. I mean, 'aren't they just adorable?'....

Of course, if you are Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Barosaurus or Camarasaurus, Immense, meaty plant-eaters, you were like the chum behind the shark boat. Barosaurus reached lengths of 70-80 feet--lot of tasty meat there. Diplodocus reached 90 feet, a very large sub sandwich indeed. Side of fries?

Off to Little Wild Horse Canyon tomorrow, deep in the San Rafael Swell. More adventures ahead! 

Goblins and geysers...

Goblin Valley is a delight. Walking amid the Goblin Army provides a new visual treat every minute. Looking down on the valley, it is very hard to pick out two school buses full of kids making their way among the formations.

Perhaps a video makes it easier to scale the scene:

Waling among the weird shapes, it is hard to accept that this is all from Nature's natural processes. First you create a vast ocean, let it deposit sand for a few hundred million years, then arrange for erosion to sculpt the various hardnesses of stone into a phantasmagoria of shapes.

 Whoa! Who put a Mummy among the goblins? Are we in he Valley of the Kings? No, but the desert here is similar to Egypt's.

After a morning wandering through Goblin Valley, I had the bright idea to spend the afternoon waiting for an eruption of Crystal Geyser.. After a couple of hours a couple arrived. He was a local who had once observed the geyser going off 60 feet into the air for more than a half hour.

"But that was before the local environmentalists sabotaged it," he said."They didn't like it pouring minerals into the river, so they put a lot of stone down the shaft and dynamited it."  Oh.

My perfect metaphor for green activism: The minerals still pour into the river and the tourist attraction is destroyed. "You have to judge us for our noble intentions, not by the disasters we leave behind."

And so I left this monument to morons and went off to find new adventures.
Still, it's hard not to imagine the thinking (or not thinking) that has reduced the great plume to this.

My car hates me, but...

Yes, I fear another Toyota Rebellion--628 miles today, part of it offroad across the desert. Axle-breaking ruts and the kind of bone-rattling terrain we see in the SUV commercials, but the attractions were worth it.

First, I did manage to get to the Dinosaur Quarry, approximately in the middle of nowhere at all.

Why do all my favorite friends have such impressive teeth? This is an Allosaur: They have found fossil remains of more than forty at this one quarry.

From there I raced to the immense cliffs known as the San Rafael Swell. this is the view from the top of the swell down into Spotted wolf Canyon.

At the end of a very long day, I made a quick trip to the crystal geyser. Unfortunately, it had been erupting for quite a while when I got tthere, so this is only the view as it finishes. As the Terminator said, "I'll be back!"

Off to Spoooooooky Goblin Valley in the morning!

Still photos from the Grand Canyon

In my previous post I put up some videos shot from the helicopter flying out from the South Rim on a gorgeous day.

I took some extra time to drive into the National Park itself, so I could stand on the edge of the canyon and look out over the vast scene. I love standing with my toes curled over a thousand-foot drop!

Yavapai Point is one of many along the South Rim which are uncrowded in the morning before the tour buses arrive. Since nobody else seems to want to join me out here on the edge of the cliff, I have the best position for taking pictures all to myself.

The view is immense, I apologize that it is impossible to do more than hint at the scale of what you see here in any photograph:

From the helicopter, everything changes. You soar out from the rim and look down on the meandering river and the steep cliffs lining the canyons: Unlike standing on the cliff, you fly over mile after mile of canyons and cliffs.

We followed the river, and some of the cliffs reminded me of Toroweep over on the North Rim, where the drop from the cliff-top to the river is 3,800 feet--straight down!

Wheeeee! As I said, this is the kind of view that brings on delusions of grandeur. Please check the post below this one for the short videos taken from the helicopter. This is a blast!!

Helicoptering over the Grand Canyon

Well, the plan worked perfectly. A quick drive from Vegas over to Williams, Arizona, and then North 50 miles to the South Rim portion of Grand Canyon National Park. I climbed on a helicopter at the national park airport:

We soared out over the Kaibab National Forest and out over the rim. By the way, anyone who thinks we don't have a lot of trees--or a lot of space--in this country should take this ride.

The flight is a difficult experience to describe in words, but a video clip does it all. It is during moments like these when one envies the eagles, who do this in silence and solitude, and do it every day.

On the other hand, you have to eat rodents. Oh, well....

Flying around in a noisy, throbbing bubble over scenery like this is a privilege. Given my health history recently, I don't take this or anything else for granted. That just makes it all the richer.

I hope everyone I know can do this flight. It is profound and thrilling !