2018 Utah Trip Ends

Our trip to southern Utah has ended. We visited 5 National parks - Zion, Canyonland, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, and South Dakota Badlands.

We are now resting and hope to depart for Hawaii in late January. Thanks for your attention.

Public Flickr photos from this trip are available for viewing.

South Dakota Badlands

We decided to use the camper one more night. The temperature is cool and the crowds were small so we decided to stop at the South Dakota Badlands

Wall Street Drug is the ultimate in self-promotion. Most people have heard of it, but are not certain if it actually exists. Sure enough, the tourist complex in Wall, South Dakota is real.

It took a while moving from one souvenir shop to the next, but I was finally able to locate the actual drug store.

I can also verify as advertised on the roadside signs, but they do sell coffee for a nickel.

Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Arches National Parks have well-deserved reputations for natural beauty. All are very impressive. All are also very crowded. I thought the experience in Badlands National Park was nearly the equal in beauty and far less crowded with the tinge of Fall that I really enjoy.

Vodka for the cold

We are on the way home and likely to stay in motels rather than campgrounds. The temperature differential from yesterday (Zion National Park) to today (Green River, Wyoming) was 50 degrees. A few hundred miles and back to fall. This will likely be our final use of the rPod for the year and it is time to take it in to have it winterized.

The topic of winterization came up when we were visiting our Russian friends in Colorado Springs. They suggested that I winterize the camper with cheap vodka noting that when Spring came it would be far better if our drinking water line filled with vodka than antifreeze. Okay - I agree that this makes some sense, but I am also wary of the possible practical joke that could await my asking the technician at the camper store whether he would winterize our camper with vodka. 

I did an online search and the use of vodka to winterize your camper is a thing. The topic is commonly discussed on camper blogs and discussion sites. It is a controversial tactic. Evidently, the remnants of vodka in your water line might be more pleasant than traditional antifreeze, but vodka evidently dries out rubber fittings possibly leading to leaks. 

Hairy Fellow

We tried Zion National Park again today. We got up early. Evidently, you must have to reset your Amazon Echo for a new time zone because the alarm (Beethoven's ninth) went off at 6 instead of 7. This would not have been an issue a week ago when my body was on Central time, but I adapt quickly and it was a bit too early to take on the heat of southern Utah.

You don't bring your Amazon Echo with you when you go camping? How do you get the morning news and time the meal in the magic pot or whatever that cooking gadget is called?

Anyway, we got to the park early enough to find a spot to park the car and take the shuttle. It was close and we were in the final third of the last parking lot with space. Maybe the Echo knew something we did not anticipate. That Amazon guy who is so rich is pretty bright.

We got in a couple of hikes about 5 miles in all. Pretty good for an old guy. We finally saw some wildlife. We each spotted one deer. This is about our average for driving out of our Wisconsin cabin driveway, but it is hot here and the larger animals must be hiding during the day.

We did see this fellow.

You have to look closely because these spiders camouflage themselves so well against a background of brown leaves and sticks. The image could have been better, but you can hopefully pick out the spider. This was the first tarantula I have ever seen in the wild. So this spider was a much better find than the deer which I must usually avoid rather than search out. On second thought, I would also avoid close encounters with a tarantula.  

Zion is kind of the opposite of Arches. With Arches you are mostly looking down into the result of millions of years of erosion that has cut out unusual structures such as the arches and hoodoos and spectacular canyons. With Zion, you are at the bottom of the canyon mostly looking up. Great hiking in Zion, better photos in Arches. This picture was taken just as the sun rose over the top of the canyon causing the bit of flair you see. 

Desert Zen

Today was a day for laundry and relaxation. Tomorrow we want to get up early to head to Zion so we can find a parking place and try the shuttle to parts yet unexplored.

We did find time today to visit Snow Canyon State Park. It was a great experience and allowed the type of walking around exploration we enjoy.

This seems to be the region of the country where they seek energy from the vortices and do related strange things outside. Yes, I know this is someone striking a yoga pose (do you strike a yoga pose). Our daughters and daughter-in-law do this kind of thing and they tell me it is good for you. It was in the mid-90s so it must be something like hot yoga. I saw a van in the parking area from a nearby resort so perhaps they take interested parties to the pretty red rocks for an outing.

I tried to talk Cindy into posing with the mountains and maybe the setting sun in the background, but evidently, she did not think much of my photographic skills because try as I might she just ignored me.

I did take a few photos I liked so I guess I will just have to humor myself.

Geolocation

I had to write a quick addition to my previous post explaining how to geolocate an image. I was aware of this capability and I have explained in multiple times as a capability educators and their students might use. What I learned today was that this capability could be utilized in Blogger and my travel blog.

So, here is a tutorial on geotags in photos taken with the iPhone. When used on the iPhone geotagged images can be geolocated as shown in the following image. I then used the location assigned in the photo collection on my phone to recognize that these images were taken near Green River, UT, and used this address to assign a location for the post in Blogger.

I don't have an android phone at this time, but I know previous phones I have owned would also allow the addition of the geotag to the EXIF (information available from the camera such as camera settings and the geotag) stored in the image file. 

Hoodoo Scan

We made the effort to visit both Zion and Bryce Canyon yesterday. This meant we had to drive several hundred miles just to reach both from our base camp. It was not a particularly successful day as far as exploration goes. Both parks were overrun with people. In Zion, you could drive through but people were being urged to park outside of the park and take a shuttle to the park and then take another shuttle to explore the park. Certain areas were available only to people taking the Internal shuttle. Reminds me of taking a shuttle to explore Denali many years ago. Zion is different in structure from Arches so it will require a different strategy. It is more of a canyon so there are few areas to pull off, park, and take short walks to see things. Arches had many larger parking areas I suppose because the topography was suited to providing these opportunities to park and walk.

You can't be upset when the National Parks are so popular. We realized this would be the case from other recent trips, but we thought we would avoid the heavy season by exploring after schools had started. We don't see many children but many, many folks speaking languages other than English. Buses and buses loaded for foreign visitors. The U.S. has spectacular parks and folks with the means to visit will make the effort. The recent willingness of politicians to questions the value of reserved and protected recreation areas need to get out of Washington or New York and take a look. The opportunity to travel and just look is a true gift that makes America great.

I did take some photos yesterday, but my favorite was not taken in one of the parks. Windmills have always been a family thing because we used a windmill on the family farm. I have several unique images in my photo collection.

I did take some other photos. The image below is from Bryce Canyon showing the tall structures called hoodoos. I guess I had heard the word before, but I associate hoodoo with "the blues" as in hoodoo the hoodoo man. The meaning in the blues genre is to black magic (I think). I don't know if there is a connection to the geological use or not. 

I just realized there is a feature in Blogger that allows you to geotag a post with a location.  Cool. It just took me several years to discover this feature and I will have to use it more regularly from now on. I have my iPhone set to geotag all images I collect so in theory I should be able to go back to older images collected with my phone and precisely locate the image. Sounds like a lot of work, but maybe on some cold winter day I will give it a try and update my travel log. 

Reading Signs

Weird things capture my attention. We stopped in Green River, Utah, to get a cup of coffee at the roadside McDonalds. We parked next door so there was room for our car and camper and I was walking to McDonalds when I spotted this sign guarding the drive-through lane. It struck me as odd and I paused to try to understand just what it said.

My experience as a reader of English assuming the meaning of words should be interpreted from left to right automatically triggered my interpretation as a warning related to the direction one should take through the drive through and the car behind the sign seemed to be moving in the wrong direction based on this interpretation. This all happened automatically in my brain and how my brain works has always been a source of personal fascination. Psychologists may be more prone to find such things fascinating. Upon further reflection, I decided that the sign creator was a poor designer and could have used a little more training.

By the way, Green River watermelons are a thing and after trying one I am a fan. Evidently, hot days in the desert in combination with the water from a nearby river provide great conditions for producing great watermelons.

Caffeine is everywhere

Some folks like craft beers or fine wine and hone an appreciation for the difference between average and superior beverages. Me - I am an above average coffee consumer. I can differentiate Folgers from pretty much everything else and know that Starbucks despite its efforts to offer a consistent product does not necessarily offer the best brews or the most skilled baristas. I am partial to the light roast or Pike Place rather than the dark coffees when working at Starbucks. I drink dark coffee only as a cafe au lait.

One of my personal joys in travel by car is to spend long days (today was about 8 hours) on the road listening to sporting events, podcasts, MSNBC, and audio books (Woodward's Fear for this trip). We stopped at this drive-thru on our way out of Moab this morning and the lattes were pretty decent, but a little expensive. You have to expect inflation in tourist towns.

Stay awake out there.

Vistas

I have decided that Utah is great for creating panoramic images. As I explained yesterday, the iPhone makes this fairly easy. Here are four images taken near Moab, Utah.

Arches National Park - The Camera You Have With You

It is easy to find spectacular images online and I have little hope of competing with the pros. I thought I would take a little different approach with this post. When I take photos, I often use both an iPhone and a high-end camera (Canon 7D). I thought it might be kind of interesting to see if you can tell the difference. I will add four images I took today and before I comment more on my use of two "cameras", I want you to see if you can spot the images taken with the iPhone and which with the 7D.

First - the answers. The top two are iPhone images and the second were taken with the 7D.

This is not a fair test for several reasons. The images are shown here at the same size and at a reduced quality. I think it fair to say the reduction in quality was the same as all were uploaded at 80% quality. The other issue I would add is that the 7D is capable of many personal adjustments. I do the best I can and try to take advantage of some of these adjustments when I think the conditions warrant. For example, when I want a greater or lesser depth of field. Most of the shots today were in bright sun and often with dry, bleached vegetation. I tried to make adjustments as I took pictures. Just the brightness of sun made it a challenge just to use both the iPhone and the 7D because it was difficult to read what appeared on the screen when making adjustments or even when trying to examine the pictures as I collected them.

I like the message - "the best camera is the one you have with you". Whatever the advantage of a quality camera, most of us do not have it with us at all times.

Here are a couple things I would argue as advantages.

1) The iPhone can do panoramas and while there are other ways to create panos, I find the iPhone very easy to use for this purpose (first image).

2) Cameras typically allow the use of lenses suited to different purposes. I shot the final image with a high quality 70-200 telephoto. It was in the mid-90s today and the arch I wanted to photograph would have been a lengthy walk away. Shooting at a distance also allowed me to avoid including other tourists in the photograph.

One final issue. I use both a phone and a camera because of the geo-coordinate data the phone embeds with the image file. I can use this feature to precisely locate where an image was taken and by combining some phone images with my other photographs, I can come close to matching the locating of a shoot and even individual photographs.

Colorado Springs to Moab

We spent the day transitioning from Colorado Springs to Moab. Pulling a camper behind a car on mountain roads makes this an all day trip.

The natural beauty of the route was great. The route close to Colorado Springs is starting to show fall colors. Moab is pretty much about the rock formations and I am certain I will post more images from this area in the days to come.

About halfway between Colorado Springs and Moab is wine and Colorado peach country. The peach harvest has just finished, but we were able to pick up some fresh fruit and visit a farm.

Queen's Tea at Glen Eyrie

Natasha took us to Queen's Tea at the Glen Eyrie Castle. As I understand the story, Glen Eyrie was the wife of the Colorado Springs city founder and ended up in this foreign land missing Ireland. Her husband who had become quite wealthy built her this residence to provide a bit of her homeland. The grounds and buildings have been developed to promote their historical value.

I should probably search for Queen's Tea online so I know more about what I experienced. I am not exactly a tea fancier, but I do drink tea on occasion and did enjoy the tea options made available to us and the accompanying delicacies.

The castle itself and the grounds were spectacular especially against the background of the mountains.

We have visited some similar historical sites over the years, Somewhere I know I have pictures of the estate of a Hawaiian sugar baron that has been preserved. Ironically, we could not help but note that the Pillsbury house in Minneapolis had recently based razed because there was no one to take it over  so the prime land was desired for development. 

Food blog for a day

This post is intended mostly for those who follow me on Facebook and may have encountered posts by lisado5 as a consequence. Lisado5 is Natalia Provotorova who we call Natasha. She has tried to explain Russian names to me many times, but I can never figure out how it works. They seem to have several names each. They seem to be able to keep the system straight, but I cannot. Many of those I have met seem to sometimes use the same names - e.g., Dima, Natasha. I used to call these folks our Russian friends, but this has not really been accurate for several years so I should describe them as our friends out west.

Natasha is famous among her Instagram and Facebook friends for the pictures of what she makes in the kitchen. She makes amazing things both in taste and appearance. We have been enjoying her treats since we have arrived, but I thought the following picture best described her approach. Yes, it is a picture of her refrigerator.

Maybe your fridge looks like this too, but not ours - very organized and neat. You can see the cake we enjoyed last evening and I am told there are more to come.

Natasha told me I was getting a guest sized piece. She described this as mousse cake with tart cherries and chocolate biscuits. I would say as hobbies go, I am certainly glad this is hers. There has to be a business her somehow. I can imagine sitting in a fancy coffee shop having a piece (smaller) of this cake and a latte.

We had a great evening on the patio retelling old stories and catching up.

Oleg, Lindsey, and Natasha

Big windmills and big corn

As promised yesterday, here is the photograph of corn fields and wind turbines. We have driven through Iowa many times and the number of these turbines keeps growing. We must have observed hundreds as we drove west on Interstate 80.

I have no idea why wind energy has surged in Iowa. We have long been familiar with wind energy as North Dakota has many turbines and the large blades for many of these turbines are manufactured in Grand Forks. North Dakota is windy, but Iowa would be able to feed electricity to larger metropolitan areas.

Iowa knows it has established itself as a leadership role in renewable energy and featured this commitment at this rest area.

Before we hit the large concentration of turbines I found a way to photograph, I saw a large billboard stating “wind is not the answer”. I frequently write in opposition to conservative policies on Facebook, but I did not intend to allow my opposition to bleed over to my travel blog. However, when I followed up on the message from the billboard I found that the things I value continue to draw my attention. I assumed the message originated with farmers promoting alcohol production from corn as an energy source.  It turned out to be a little more complicated and weird.

Starting from zero

Eighteen days is usually not long enough, but we will try to fit in a quick fall road trip to Colorado and Utah. This may sound like a lot of time, but we have to drive about 60 with the camper. I remembered to take a picture of the dash data center so I can demonstrate the time we spend on the road. 

Long days in the car are my favorite way to travel. There is plenty of time to watch the scenery flow by and think. We are heavy into tech so we are switching back and forth between two football games. Both North Dakota and Iowa State are losing. UND is playing #9 Washington so there was no hope for that. Iowa State is losing to Iowa so this game is more disappointing. Wait, I found gopher football. I think we have a winner. 

We also have plenty of cell data to burn so we can do pretty much whatever we want online. I am thinking we will watch Vikings football tomorrow. Of course, the driver will just have to listen. Maybe a glance now and then. 

There is not that much to see in Iowa and Nebraska so tomorrow will offer few photographic opportunities. Maybe a picturesque shot of a big cornfield against the setting sun or a picture of those giant wind turbines would be impressive. Yes, I may have said this to miff our many friends in Iowa and yes, we did spend most of our adult lives living in North Dakota with the exception of those funny hills in the west of the state is about as flat and uniform as it gets. I also have friends in Iowa who take some very nice photos so good photographers can find interesting shots anywhere. We will see.