Snow Canyon State Park, Utah

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Feisty Harriet — 6 Comments ↓

A couple of weeks ago Blue Eyes and I spent a not-nearly-long-enough weekend in St. George, Utah as part of an Instameet. While our main event was some hiking in Zion National Park, we spent some time at sunset in Snow Canyon State Park, and despite it being a weekend at the beginning of the summer, this park was essentially empty. I could snap away to my heart’s content, capturing soaring red cliffs and tiny lichen clinging to the rocks.

I love the many colors of lichen, I’ve seen minty green, lavender, orangey-red, a deep inky blue, and this bright lemon-lime. Lichen is one of the oldest and slowest growing plants on earth. Most species grow 1mm-2mm per year, some grow as little as .5 mm per year! Point five! That’s something like 4 inches in 100 years. There are some lichen in the arctic that are thousands of years old. Dah, I just love these hardy plants so much!

Right before our trip to Southern Utah I finally splurged on a new camera, and I am so glad I did. My old Canon was 10 years old and just didn’t have enough oomph for the photos I wanted to take. Thirty seconds with my new Canon and I am in-love with photography all over again.

Honestly, I just don’t see how I’ll ever get tired of those blazing red walls, part of my heart will forever belong in the Rocky Mountains where I grew up, and the other part lives in these fiery canyons and cliffs.

Can we talk about this Instameet for a minute? I’ve never been to one, but have seen photos for years of various events in a number of locations. The idea is that a bunch of internet friends and strangers descend on one location for a day or a weekend, the itinerary was pretty loosey-goosey, with a few planned activities and a whole lotta time to explore on your own. Blue Eyes and I met up with old friends (Hi, Kristin!) and made a whole pile of new ones (Hi, friends!). I learned so much about the industry of travel blogging, which I wasn’t expecting and found quite intriguing. Now, I’m not a travel blogger, far from it. I love to travel, and I love to take photos, and I love to blog, but that does not a travel blogger make. However, it was really interesting to learn about how so many of these Instameet-ers make a living by traveling around the world, this was all very informal, there wasn’t, like, a break-out session on it or anything. Just by chatting with people on our hikes and such I learned so much about their lives, their travels, and their business of blogging. I’m still ruminating on all of that.

See? More lichen. It’s my favorite.

The sun was sinking fast, and I was scrambling to get a few more shots in before the light was too low for even my tripod. But breathing in the piney-sagey scent, and feeling the warmth and heart of red rock country…this trip was so good for my soul!

Dah! New camera love!

All of these photos were taken at the Petrified Sand Dunes in Snow Canyon, a super easy-peasy walk from the parking area with plenty of places to scramble and vistas and views that will take your breath away.

This little aloe-cactus-thing was, maybe, 5 inches tall. Yup, totes in love with my new camera. I can’t believe how long I’ve survived on 12 megapixels, suddenly 24 seems like I’ve been unknowingly blind for YEARS and am finally able to see again. The detail! It’s flawless and stunning and has very little to do with me, that’s just mother nature and a proper camera.

I would love to go exploring some more in Snow Canyon. Hopefully my next trip to St. George will have some more time among these glorious (and EMPTY) formations!

Bryce Canyon National Park in the fog

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Feisty Harriet — Leave a reply

On one of my trips between Salt Lake and Phoenix I decided to make a slight detour and stop at Bryce Canyon National Park. I was hoping for some gorgeous photos of soaring ruddy cliffs and orangey spires in the setting sun. The weather had very different ideas. The entire canyon was smothered in fog, from the rim you could hardly see anything below.

On a whim I decided to hike down into the canyon, hoping for a few awesome shots. I was absolutely unprepared for such a hike, I was wearing sandals, no water, and no real rain protection. But, the Navajo Loop trail is just a little more than a mile, descending down the canyon walls, through Wall Street, wandering along the bottom of the canyon with the creek and the pine trees, and then back up again. I figured it couldn’t be that bad.

This is Wall Street, it’s easy to imagine these soaring cliffs as enormous sky scrapers, right? The trail was wet and pretty slick, I carefully picked my way down the switchbacks, big camera in hand. It’s hard to imagine how enormous these cliffs are, how tiny the hikers seem. But, lawsy, those views!!!

From the bottom of the canyon looking back towards the rim, I felt like I was in a completely different world from the one at the surface. There weren’t may people there, and it only added to the creepy-beautiful feeling, eerie and other-worldly and heart-breakingly quiet.

The weather cleared up as I made my way out of Wall Street and onto the rest of the Loop trail, there were cedar trees and sherberty colored stripes and outcropping hoodoos everywhere.

As I began to ascend the canyon wall, the weather began to make me a little nervous. The drizzle of rain turned much more sleety, it got colder and the wind whistled through the formations. The trail was slick and muddy, my sandals slapped and slipped on the rocks. I carefully picked my way upwards, trying to shield my camera from the rain and simultaneously keep my balance with my very inappropriate footwear. It got foggier and foggier, I could really only see about 20 feet ahead of me when I came across Thor’s Hammer, one of the more photographed formations in Bryce Canyon.

Within 30 seconds, the fog had swallowed this formation completely. I hurried as quickly as I could back to the rim, picking my way, slipping and sliding on the now completely empty trail. The fog topside was thicker and heavier than before, I was relieved to get back in my dry car and crank up the heat. Even though this was a very quick stop, I really loved my short hike and these images.

Have you been to Bryce Canyon? Have you ever hiked in the fog? Tell me your stories!

Capitol Reef National Park: Fruit Orchards

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Feisty Harriet — Leave a reply

I know many of you are still buried in winter, and I don’t mean to rub it in, but except for a day here and there we’ve been experiencing spring-like conditions since January. This is kind of good (yay! Spring!) and also really really scary (WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SNOW?!?!). I imagine our wildfire season will be worse than your snow season, so don’t throw stones at me quite yet.

That being said, last weekend while I was taking the very long way home from a weekend with my sweetheart, I kind of accidentally stumbled upon one of the most beautiful places I didn’t know existed; the fruit orchards of Capitol Reef National Park. Okay, I guess technically I did know they were there, but I did not realize how stunningly beautiful they would turn out to be. Mormon pioneers settled in Capitol Reef about 150 years ago, and they planted hundreds of fruit trees which in addition to a few houses and a school are all that remain.

The park rangers cultivate the trees and sell the fruit by the bushel or in overpriced fruit pies, and that is all fine and good, but in researching this park what I most wanted was to happen to be there when the orchards were in bloom. The image of rows of trees smothered in creamy pink blossoms sitting like a candied cloud at the base of towering red rock cliffs has been haunting my dreams for months.

When I found myself kind of in the area (meaning, if I drove 130 miles out of my way I would be “in the area”) I was immediately stunned by the gorgeous cliffs striped with red and orange, black and purple, creamy white and green. There are a few small stands of trees along the road through the park, I stopped at took pictures at all of them but was a little disappointed that most were just starting to bud and not yet in full bloom. I stopped at the Visitor Center to inquire if there were additional orchards, where they were, and if any of them were current in blossom.

The ranger gave me directions to the upper campground, located on Loop C, and told me a grove of 200 apricot trees were in full bloom a day or two before and he hadn’t been back since. I thanked him and headed that way, desperately hoping that there would still be a few petals on the trees.

I rounded a curve and was gobsmacked by rows and rows of trees just losing their white blossoms; I parked my car and as soon as I opened the door I could smell the sweet perfume from these trees and hear the bees. Kids were scampering through the orchard, a couple of people were having a picnic, some guy was taking a nap leaning against a trunk; it was magical.

I wish I had driven through the day before, many of the trees were gray-ish pink and has lost most of their white flowers, but I still walked through that orchard for almost two hours just reveling in the spring, the blossoms, the intoxicating aroma, and the red sandstone cliffs soaring overhead.

I need to go back to Capitol Reef, not only to explore a little more and do some hiking, but hopefully to spend a few nights in the campground adjacent to the apricot orchard. Honestly, this is the kind of place made of the stuff of dreams.

Feisty Harriet

"i" before "e" except when I'm feisty.

Tag Archives: Southern Utah

Snow Canyon State Park, Utah

Bryce Canyon National Park in the fog

Capitol Reef National Park: Fruit Orchards