Highlights from the trip: July 4

[cjsmith]

Bryce Canyon airport has a log hangar. It dates from the 1920s. Its tin roof still has a painted arrow pointing to Salt Lake City, from the old navigation system (point to the next big airport west).

The hotel we stayed at is marked on the sectional chart. There is nothing else out there.

I forgot to pack shirts. Um, oops.

Bryce Canyon is stunning, but I really wish they'd have some indication of which beautiful overlooks are accessible and which aren't. The map shows them all as being right on the road, when many of them are a good ten-minute walk uphill on basically gravel.

Great fireworks! We were so close we could see the launcher.

Wonderful stargazing! Bryce has some of the darkest skies in the continental US. Four volunteers with telescopes showed people all kinds of stuff.

Comments

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I bet it's dark at Bryce. Grand Canyon North Rim made me wish I'd had my telescope, too.

I've managed to hit Utah from three different directions, and Bryce is one of the last places I have left still to see in that state.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Dark enough to make me want to move out of cityland, yeah. :-) From where you are, can you see the Milky Way, just looking randomly at the sky some fine night? Us, we are lucky if we can make out a handful of stars in Scorpius. Rob had never before seen the Milky Way. It's sad when you think of it. Light pollution IS pollution, and downright wasteful as well.

I haven't seen much of the natural beauty in Utah, myself. Bryce = handy to an airport that's just about First Fuel Stop distance from home; Salt Lake City = been to several times for random reasons. Everything else would be a dedicated trip, and there always seems to be someplace else ahead of Utah national parks when it comes to allocating precious free time.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I can see a decent amount of larger stars from my house, except to the SW where there's a big Fry's parking lot with heavy light polluntion. I only have to go down to my sister's farm about 60 miles south to be able to see the Milky Way very well.

I've only hit so much of Utah thanks to several visits to a close friend in Denver who took me to Moab a few times to see Arches and Canyonlands (even my first mountain biking experience!), a business trip to Salt Lake City during which I checked out the mountains south of the Lake to the west and also those to the northeast, and my Grand Canyon North Rim photo seminar for which I flew into Las Vegas and drove to, catching Zion both on the way there and back.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Not too bad! I suppose in 60 miles we can probably make out the Milky Way too. Farmland is only about an hour and a half from here in a couple of directions.

How did you like Arches? I think I might have to put that one on the list. I like natural stone arches and bridges.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Arches is one of my favorites. Of all the parks in Utah I've seen so far (and I only count Zion as once, even though it was on the way to and from the Grand Canyon), it's the one I've seen twice, and I'd go again. And again. :-)

There are several decent accessible vantage points, except for the vantage point shown in the photo on this page for Delicate Arch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicate_arch) - it's 1.5 miles, mostly up, mostly on slickrock. There's another accesible viewpoint for the same arch from the south that's farther away, though.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Wow. Yeah, maybe I gotta go see that place some day!

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

You do. I'd point you to some of my shots, but they're not up anymore (my business web site domain finally expired, and I'd need to track down the local files and upload them elsewhere, one of those projects that's still on the to-do list), so if you haven't already, look at some of the shots from there that are in joedecker's Utah gallery (http://www.rockslidephoto.com/cgi-bin/gallery.pl?gallery=4). :-)