Moab and Surroundings

Blair and I arrived in Moab Sunday morning around 11:00am to find out our unit was just being vacated.  We went for a walk and sussed out Moab, a small town [~5k] with a single main street. Trying to kill time when it's near 100ºF...

We drove back to see how things were moving along, and we met the cleaners who told us check-in time was 5pm.  Damn...

We decided it was lunch time and found this great hamburg & brew type place that had good salads, fish & chips, and decor. The wall behind the staircase really fit with the name of the place: Spoke.

Just driving around, the scenery is stunning.

This little Pinyon pine is likely decades old, but severely stunted. Life on the rocks is tough.

Next is Wilson Arch, popular stop along the highway.

Here are a few people climbing up to the arch; it kind of gives you an idea of scale...

Some of the vistas are stunning.

This is a close-up of the aftermath of a forest fire. The regeneration is very quick.

Some stone is harder than others and resist the erosion of water over the millennia. Closer shots will follow.

Sometimes small plants take over an area and make interesting patterns on the foothills.

  
Here's a close-up of the structures above. This shot was made from quite a distance away so you have the haze changing the colours of the red stone.

Nearby, these are shots of a fairly slim monument that is well over 5 stories high.

This boulder split and showed its pale interior.  I couldn't get the 'pale' interior to show you the light turquoise that it actually was.

Here's a close-up, but again, the turquoise does not show up.

This next little plant is also quite turquoise in colour which did not come through. It's all of about 8 inches tall, and growing in the most arid of conditions.

This fuzzy grass-like plant was about a foot high, and it too grows in arid conditions.

Here's a group of plants shown in the picture before the last above.

Next is another Pinyon Pine, possibly many hundreds of year old, and still struggling to keep alive.  It should have many stories to tell if it could.

This is likely a decades old juniper that has succumbed after a tough life.

This next plant grouping is growing on essentially solid rock. Those that can split stone with their roots do, and eventually, they make a home for themselves.

I eventually entered Dead Horse Point State Park. The Park is home to one of the most iconic shots in any park.  I had not realized that this scene was here and welcomed the chance to see it live.

Next is another Pinyon Pine, again hundreds of years old, struggling to remain alive.

And here is an iconic photo-op: the horseshoe bend named Dead Horse Point.  Unfortunately, mid-day light is not the best to make this picture.  I suspect that the mighty Colorado River is not always this murky green...  This will just have to 'do'.

Some cliff faces can be quite interesting, like this protruding chunk, the size of a five story building, is beautifully highlighted in a darker stone material.

And lastly, still in the State Park, these turquoise evaporation pools are part of a salt and potash mining process.  They pump water underground, it collects salt and potash which is then evaporated in these pools, then harvested.  The beautiful colour is due to the fact that the pools are lined with vinyl.

All these pictures were made in temperatures in excess of 100ºF.   but as the locals say, it's dry a heat.

Maybe so, and my throat was dry, but it's still stinking hot.  The guys returned from their mountain-bike ride positively exhausted, and there's lots of sitting around going on...