Days three and four: to Capitol Reef

Battling to the car in Scott of the Antarctic conditions, we leave the plateau and drop down into relative calm, still cold but sunny, and investigate some further delights on Scenic Route 12.  Best along the route is the Petrified Forest at Escalante.  There is an easy walking trail up the hill, to visit the 150 million year old remains of trees, that were buried in shallow lake deposits and molecule by molecule replaced by mineral crystals, to produce an exact likeness of tree trunks.  Some are so detailed that you can see the exact form of the bark and even in some cases the tree rings within.  

To run your hand over these and feel the exact shape of the tree, just as it would have felt when it fell -- and it feels just like its current coniferous descendants -- is quite an experience.  

This area is known as the Grand Staircase, and all around are the terraces of sandstone and alternating limestone sediments descending, layer upon layer.  From about 200 million years ago, there was a great shallow sea between where the Rockies are today, and the Appalachians. Into this at various times descended the shells and bodies of chalky creatures to provide limestone strata; material was eroded from the surrounding mountains to form sand bars, or sand dunes invaded the site; volcanoes spewed out vast deposits of ash and lava bombs.  Layer upon layer, miles deep, until there was a great tectonic squeeze and the whole area was uplifted way above sea level to produce a vast plateau.  Then rapid erosion cut in the deep canyons leading to the Colorado.  The "staircase" is the exposure of the different layers, some softer, some harder, eroding at different rates and providing different profiles as they get exposed.  In the deeper canyons tens of millions of years are exposed to view.  

All day the temperature remains below zero, but at least the wind has dropped.  We ascend to 9400 feet and extensive aspen woods, interspersed with pines: the temperature drops even further and the weather  closes in with snow flurries and heavy skies.

We finally reach Torrey, where we are staying for two nights.  Our motel is perched on an outcrop facing a great layered wall, glowing in the late afternoon sun for a while, until the weather here too deteriorates and the cloud descends until nothing is visible.  By morning there's a good covering of snow everywhere and it's still falling. We drop into the Chuck Wagon General Store for breakfast.  It feels a little like Twin Peaks in this remote corner, so I order cherry pie and "dam' fine coffee".  The town is tiny but with a few much older buildings harking back to the original settlers, and a fine avenue of trees lines Main Street. 

The weather clears enough to let us visit the Capitol Reef National Park.  On the left are huge ranges of red sandstone, some layers incredibly detailed, others great blank walls. And on the right there are huge incisions many hundreds of feet deep further into geological time.  We are able to go to the edge of Gooseneck Canyon and look into its depths. Once it was a meandering stream on a low lying plateau.  Then as the rock was rapidly forced up, the stream cut down through the Mesozoic layer cake, maintaining the loops and bends of its course. We carry on to the Grand Wash, another such canyon where we can walk along its bed around 13 bends, looking up at the looming walls, some heavily overhanging our path.  As we walk, the snow starts up again, in flurries, then something stronger. We turn back and by the time we get to the car it's getting serious and we're getting soaked by freezing sleet (but it turns out Tilley hats are also waterproof). 

Just time for a visit to the old Gifford homestead, one of the few artefacts of early Mormon settlers in this remote area, the last to be explored and mapped by Europeans in the continental US. A good place to buy patchwork place mats, cedar rolling pins and home made rhubarb and strawberry pies -- at least that's what we came away with. 

Day two: to Zion and Bryce Canyon

An early start and we headed for Zion National Park, via its doorstep little resort village, Springdale, where we were all persuaded to buy Tilley hats, "made with Canadian persnicketiness" and guaranteed for life: perfect, we were assured by the charming lady who sold them to us, in sun, wind and rain.  Little did we know how well they would be tested over the next days.

Certainly it was getting windy as we walked in the park's canyons, but still sunny and fine.  The hats' ingenious cords held them firmly in place, once we had mastered the technique.  The canyon we followed wound deep into Zion's heartland, with a small river flowing out surrounded by cottonwood and juniper trees and many shrubs and spring flowers.

We continued on our way through a narrow tunnel then out into a completely different, dry, chaotic landscape.  We soon realised that the landscape changes completely over each horizon.  Wonders that we found amazing here don't even get national park status, because the parks have even better stuff!  We followed Scenic Byway 12, "Utah's first All-American road", and scenic it was. We were especially taken by Red Canyon, a collation of weird shapes resembling Asian temples or Castilian castles.  

So for our second night, at the Grand Hotel in Bryce Canyon City (population 300).  We had been steadily climbing since St George, and getting out of the car were almost flattened by an icy blast.  (Tilley hats up to the challenge though.). Even the locals were surprised by this late cold snap.  There were warnings of high winds gusting to 60mph, and temperatures dropping to minus 7 ("feels like minus 15").  From the tropics to the Arctic in one day?  

Nevertheless we managed a late afternoon visit to the adjoining national park.      The town sits on a rather bland plateaus, but offers up its great treasure as a surprise to unsuspecting tourists.  The land falls away into the vast canyon filled with layer upon layer of rock, fantastically carved into turrets, walls, and endless features, all looking splendid in the late afternoon sunlight as cloud shadows scudded across.  We visited several lookout points and walked along part of the rim, to get the most of the changing views.

A new trip to.the south west US

Time to restart my blog! We are in the southwestern U.S. on a tour of the national parks and having such a wide range of experiences that I'll forget it all if I don't write it down. I'm touring with Ian and Kathleen (with whom we stayed in New York before flying out here -- more on NY later). Five days into the tour and we have run out of adjectives.  We have only travelled across the bottom edge of one state so far (Utah) but the sense of space, of immensity, and of our infinitesimal place in nature, is very strong. Space -- and time -- because this is a region where you come face to face with the workings of the earth over geological timescales, with layer upon layer of sediments deposited miles deep, but here exposed to view.  But enough waffle! On to 

DAY ONE

We flew out of JFK to Las Vegas, which we dashed through like a nun in a brothel, our aim being to see the wonders of nature, not the excesses of Mammon.

We did cruise the Strip, which nowadays seems more Disneyland than ever.  Soon though we were out on the interstate across the Arizona desert, heading for our first night stop, just across the border into Utah, at St George.

A very pleasant little clapboard housed, picket fenced place, dominated by its whited sepulchre of a Mormon church, all under an immense red sandstone cliff.  Temperatures were tropical after New York and there was time for a dip in the hotel pool.  We found a surprisingly good restaurant with a panoramic view of the cliffs and watched as the sun set, shadows moving across the cliff, then the light twinkling on in the town below.  We were also introduced to the delights of Utah's microbreweries: it turns out they produce some fine IPAs and porters.  Come to Utah for craft beer -- who knew?  The omens seemed good for our trip.