The packing up and moving to a new place every day, or at least every second day, is over for a while now as I've now arrived at the Uni where I'll be for the next few months. It's actually quite nice having your own place to go to when you just want to veg and also knowing where you are going to sleep each night.
The travelling through the states was fantastic and I saw heaps, but didn't scratch the surface of all that the country has to offer. We can't even say that we saw everything in the parks we visited. In many parks, a lot of the area is not accessible from the roads and you have to go backcountry which is great as you get away from the crowds, but just takes a lot more time which we didn't have. I can't complain about how much I have been able to see though.
Before we made it to Yellowstone which was the last update (ran out of time to write up the rest) we stopped at Lower Antelope Canyon which is just outside of Page in the Navajo nation. Antelope Canyon is one of those places that photographers just love because the walls of the canyon have been carved out by the water into these amazing curves with only a narrow opening at the top. This means that around lunchtime when the sun is overhead the light shines through the narrow opening providing you with a wonderful play of light and shadows on these curved walls. If you kick up a bit of dust as you walk through the canyon and happen to turn around, you see these beams of light falling to the canyon floor with these sparkles of dust floating around in them. Every corner that you walk around there is another photo waiting to be taken and Steve had a ball in there taking several rolls of film before we left.
After Antelope we drove north to Dinosaur National Monument and that drive took a bit longer than expected with another tyre giving out. Dinosaur has several entrances to the park, each leading to different areas, but only one takes you to the area where they've been excavating fossils from. Our first stop was the fossil quarry and we checked out the fossils that had been left in place in the quarry wall, as well as seeing some of the information that had already been gleaned from the rich fossil bed. It's a little different from the fossils back at home in the Naracoorte caves with largely complete skeletons just left exposed on the surface of the quarry area.
After checking out the fossils, we headed to camp and set up the tent again alongside the river before heading off to see a bit more of the area, and saw some more peteroglyphs and an early settlers cottage and farm. That night sitting along the edge of the river, saw lots of bats flying down and swooping over our heads as they picked insects off from near the water surface - no mozzies bothered us that night.
The next day we went to one of the other park entrances and followed a self guided tourist trail which explained some of the features of the landscape and area. We then decided to head down to Echo Park, and that was an interesting drive as it was a 13 mile unpaved road which headed down into the bottom of the canyon - not quite straight down like they used to drive the horse and buggies down (with the horses tied to the back of the buggy to stop it running down the hill out of control), but still pretty steep. This is where a four wheel drive would come in very handy.
The area at the bottom of the canyon was very beautiful with another old settlers ranch, different styles of peteroglyphs as well as a Whispering Cave. Just standing at the opening of the cave you could feel the cold breeze coming out and as you walked down (or rather moved sideways along) the narrow pathway it bacame even cooler - certainly a place to go on those hot days. Right at the bottom of the canyon area is a river which does a big horseshoe loop around a large rock wall making for an interesting view as it looks like there is this huge rock rising out of the water. We didn't get to stay down there for very long as dusk was quickly approaching and we wanted to be up the steep
section while we could still see!
Next stop was Yellowstone at which spent about five days in looking around. On the way into Yellowstone we drove through the Grand Tetons although we didn't stop and explore. That area gave us our first taste of rain (well hail even) in over a month. I was thinking the states was just all desert and mountain with no rain, but there must be more to it than that!
Well that's got this log now up to the end of Yellowstone (not quite in order but that's the way it works with poor computer access). I'll continue on with the rest of the travel through the states in the next entry now I have more time on a computer.
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