End of the Trip

Somewhere in Navajo country, a monsoon rain shower.

One More Arch

This one's along the highway south of Moab.

Canyonlands

The view down into the canyons along the Colorado here feel almost like looking down from an airplane. Everything is thousands of feet below and spreading out for many miles. The canyons almost look like they have ruffles, with all the steps along the walls.

Skyline Arch

Delicate Arch

This is from the viewpoint closest to the road.

Double Arch

The small white specks under the arch are people...

The Moab Fault

This is Arches National Park, in Utah. The wall on the west side of the highway marks a fault line. The rocks on the east side dive deep, with the layers on the two side misaligned vertically by some 2,000'.

Balanced Rock

Near the north end of the Monument. The road has already descended most of the way off the plateau and the wall towers over it.

Long Way Down

Kissing Couple

This formation is toward the north end of the road, not far from the Visitor's Center.

The Coke Ovens

The rounded shapes of these formations resemble (if you squint hard enough) old-fashioned coke ovens.

Colorado National Monument

If you look at the top of the picture, you can see the road cuts above the canyon walls here. The road hugs the lip of the canyons and that creates a very intimate look at the beauty of the place that's different from, for instance, the Grand Canyon. Everything is much closer.

Book Cliffs

Near Grand Junction, the scenery has changed to western desert and the Book Cliffs line the highway on the north.

Colorado River

Getting close to Glenwood Springs, the canyon opens out and the river begins to meander a bit. We watched the rafters and kayakers come past.

Glenwood Canyon

I-70 runs along the Colorado river for several miles through this canyon. At times the bottom is so narrow that the highway is on two levels, with the westbound lanes higher up the wall than the eastbound. It's a beautiful place.

Small Reflection

There are a series of ponds along I-70 west of the Eisenhower Tunnel and this log caught our eye at one of them.

I-70 Road Cut

This is just west of Denver. There's a lot on the west end of the cut where you can park and walk along a path that provides information on the various layers in the rock. Pretty cool.

Arizona isn't all that much different in August

August in Kansas can certainly compete with Mesa for heat and humidity.

Sunflowers

Western Kansas and eastern Colorado are dotted with fields of sunflowers, making stripes of yellow along the roads. This one is just south of Oakley, KS.

Birdies!

"Shuttlecocks" by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City, MO.

Full On

Looking east...

Optical Illusion

Looks bent, doesn't it? Pretty cool effect. The base on each side is a triangle, with a point on the inside of the arch. As it goes up, the arch narrows, too. This shot is a composite of two, taken from the north leg, leaning against the west face of the base.

The Arch

I love the arch. I first saw it in 1972 and have been trying to take pictures of it ever since, mostly not succeeding in capturing it very well. This is from the north end of the park.

Meramac Caverns

Cave pictures on a tour are tough to get right. There's a pool of water under this formation.

At Night

The Keeper is 44 feet tall and the new base is 30 feet. There are several flames that light on the rocks placed in the river. I'm told that they light them for 15 minutes on the hour at 8 and 9 PM, but I can only say that they lit the fires at 8 PM on one Sunday night in August...

I can also say that the new presentation is much more dramatic even without the fire than the old one was. I'm very glad that they made the change.