Thu, Oct 4th - Monument Valley Tour

Today many of us went on a Goulding's Tour of Monument Valley. Here are some pictures of our tour.

Our transportation.

This is a Native American making yarn from sheep's wool. Their houses are called a "Hogan" where the door always faces the east in order to greet the morning sun. It is octagon shaped inside and covered with the red powder like dirt mixed with water and sun baked in the sun, so that the outside makes it look round. Our Native American tour guide is in red. See picture below.

Here's a picture of an arch OR the "Sun's Eye" with eye lashes.

Now this is called "The Thumb" OR:

"John Wayne's Boot"

Here's a picture of some of the Petroglyphs that were etched in the stone using bighorn sheep antlers or antlers from other animals, like elk. If the Petroglyph had alot of animals, it meant that there were alot of that kind of animal in the area and it was good hunting.

"Ear of the Wind"

This is a picture of Russian Thistle or Tumbleweed. When we had a windy day, you could see this tumbleweed blowing around.

Along the tour, many stands were set up so we could shop for Native American jewelry at a very reasonable price!

This rock formation is called "The Three Sisters-Faith, Hope and Charity".

Here a horseman is posing for us. Doesn't this look just like a scene out of an old western? Many movies were made here in Monument Valley.

This is the tarantula that we saw!

Can't you just see a western being filmed here!

Here we are in front of the "Totem Pole" rock. They have used a helicopter to put vehicles on top of the totem pole rock for commercials.

Now isn't this just a beautiful picture of Monument Valley!

Wed, Oct 3rd –Torrey to Monument Valley, UT

Wow, what scenery we saw today on our drive over Hwys 24, 95 and 191 to Monument Valley. We drove thru the towns of Hanksville (where we had cell phone service for a short time) to Glen Canyon where we drove over the Dirty Devil and the Colorado Rivers, to Blanding, then south to Bluff, thru Medicine Hat (there is a rock that looks like a hat there--see tomorrows pics) into The Navaho Nation Indian Reservation in Monument Valley. This reservation is in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. They call this area "the four corners" and you can stand in one spot with your hands in two different states and your feet in the other two! After Happy Hour down at LaVerne and Bob's coach, 6 couples went up to the Lodge for dinner. Chuck tried their Navajo flat bread and a HOT green chili dish that was too hot for me! I had tacos on flat bread. Antacid here I come!

Here's another picture of that gray rock that looks like elephant hide!

Here's the Colorado River from my side window in the coach. Sometimes the light from Chuck's side window casts light onto my window and that is what happened here. We've seen a lot of this river, all the way from the Rocky Mountain National Park at its head waters down to Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam.

Here's the bridge over the Colorado River down in Glen Canyon. It's hard to capture the depth of some of these canyons in a picture because here the land looks kind of flat--but it's not!



I liked this picture because it reminded be of pieces of brown Play Doh stacked on top of one another.

This is close to Medicine Hat and looks like wind blown sand, but it's hard rock! This reminds me of those bottles that you can put different colors of sand in and make sand art.

This is the San Juan River and the bridge we crossed to go into the Navajo Reservation.

And here's our first view of Monument Valley where so many movies and commercials have been filmed, such as Forest Gump and John Wayne movies and the car commercial up on top of one of the small tall rocks.

Here's our view from Goulding's Campground. These rocks encircled our campsites. We are having 5:00 o'clock Happy Hour!

Here's the Bryan's and Wittenberg's coaches and our new Discovery flag.


http://www.gouldings.com/english/index.htm Gouldings Lodge and RV Park
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_Valley Monument Valley Info (great pictures here)

Tue, Oct 2nd – Backcounty Travels to Northern part of Capitol Reef Naional Park

Six couples in three vehicles drove miles and miles of backcountry unpaved roads to Cathedral Valley. This is in the northern part of the Capitol Reef Park and only accessible by this road. We rode with Junior and Betty Mertz in their jeep. Again the terrain was so diverse--beautiful aspen trees high up in the mountains in the Fishlake National Forest and then down into the Park valley of rock formations. We all had packed picnic lunches and we stopped and ate among the aspen trees. This trek was about 100 miles long--but we did make it back to the campground for happy hour--just a few minutes late!

There was one porta-potty up in the Fishlake National Forest that we stopped at and the Aspen trees there were beautiful in the COOL morning air.

Here we all (Wagners, Jim Madole, Wittenbergs, me, Mertz and new Discovery members, Linda & Bill Johnson) are looking down at the Cathedral Valley from up in the forest.

Here we are having lunch in a beautiful setting in the forest among the Aspen trees.

Driving down out of the forest area, we found this beautiful pond.

Here's the view we had of Cathedral Valley below.

And this is why they call it "Cathedral Valley!"

Here's Betty Mertz standing in front of the "Cathederals" next to their jeep.

Here we are taking a short trek in to see the Gypsum Sinkhole. Pictures just didn't show the depth of the sinkhole.

Grandkids and Nephew Mason:

Who is Kokopeli?





According to Hopi Indian legend, Kokopeli (the flute player and traveling prankster) was the symbol of happiness, joy, and fertility. He would visit villages playing his flute, carrying seeds in his backpack (the "hump" he is pictured as having). Everyone would sing and dance through the night. Then, while the people slept, Kokopeli would roam the corn fields, playing his flute. The next morning the people would awake to find the corn almost full grown and Kokopeli gone, and many of the young women of the village pregnant. One legend has it that he is responsible for the end of winter and the coming of spring. When, the story goes, Kokopeli comes playing his flute, the sun comes out, the snow melts, the green grass grows, the birds begin to sing, and all the animals gather around to hear his songs.

This design is on alot of shirts and jewelry here in Utah. And now you know what he looks like!

www.students.sbc.edu/hoover07/kokopellipictures.htm

Mon, Oct 1st - Capitol Reef National Park

Now here's our view out the front of the coach at the Torrey Campground!

Today a lot of us drove to the Capitol Reef National Park close by. We stopped into the Visitor Center and watched a video about the Park. While there, we took a group photo of five of the couples attending our Discovery Rally. See below.

Bill & Judy Wagner, Judy Wittenberg, myself & Chuck, Betty & Jr. Mertz, John Wittenberg, and new members from Virginia, Violet & Bob Radd (they only live about 30 miles from us in Warrenton, VA and we had to come all this way to get to meet them!)

Below are some of the rock formations that we saw. Several of us took a short hike into one of the canyons called the "Grand Wash" where we saw some unusual rock formations. It's amazing just how many different rock formations and colors there are in just this 12-1/2 mile stretch of road!

These rocks look like gigantic pieces of chocolate!

Here's part of the Scenic drive into the park.

Aren't these weird formations in this rock? Some were like seats and each couple sat in them and we took their picture!

What a sky! This area is called "Capitol Gorge." Kind of looks like the capitol building in Washington, DC, hugh?

This evening we had a wonderful meal cooked by the folks that run the campground! Chuck had a huge ribeye steak and I had ribs along with salad, potatoes, baked beans and scones with honey butter! Oh and ice cream and cookie for desert. We had enough steak and ribs leftover to have for dinner the next night!

Grandkids and Nephew Mason:

What are pictographs and petroglyphs and what did they depict? (When we get to Moab, we hope to take some pictures to show you.

Pictographs are painted pictures on rock surfaces and petroglyphs are carved or pecked pictures. They both are pictures of people, animals and other shapes and forms left on rock surfaces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyph

Capitol Reef: www.nps.gov/care

http://www.capitolreef.travel/

Fremont Indians:
http://www.thefurtrapper.com/fremont_indians.htm Great pictures

http://www.nps.gov/archive/care/petpull.htm

Sun, Sep 30th - Travel from Bryce Canyon to Torrey, UT

It got down to 23 degs F last night and everyone had unhooked their water hoses and brought in anything that would freeze from their coach basements. Today we drove in small groups of 2 or 3 coaches up Scenic Hwy 12 to Rt 24 to Thousand Lakes RV Park in Torrey, UT.

Irrigation is the main reason there is green grass in the valleys here in Utah! They seem to be spouting water somewhere all the time. Because it was so cold this morning, the water was making ice on the grass in many places.

This is such an unusual rock coloration with the stripes of brown in it.

Here's where the road got kind of curvy!

We followed this river bed for many miles and even saw some horses down in it out on the open range.

Out the front window of the coach. We were climbing up the side of a mountain with dropoffs on the drivers side and then we got to a place, which I think was called the Devil's Backbone, where the dropoffs were on both sides of the road as we rode along the top ridge of the mountain. It was kind of scary and I didn't get any pictures of that area!

After getting back into the forested area, we drove by an area that had these lava rocks!

Here we are heading down the mountain into Boulder, UT.

We have great fast WiFi here in Torry, but no cell service. We have a beautiful view out the front window of the coach. Check out tomorrow's pictures of the view!

Check out the pictures that I finally posted of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Mon, Sep 24th!


http://www.thousandlakesrvpark.com/ Thousand Lakes RV Park