Thursday, October 9, 2014

As Sam and I were on our morning walk, I found a floor heater that had been thrown out.  I thought I should at least take a look at it to see if it could be repaired.  When it was opened, I found two parts that were clearly bad.  All of the smoke had leaked out of a capacitor and that had damaged a 1-watt resistor next to it.  We have the same model heater with a failed processor.  I had simply bypassed the relays on it, so it would still provide heat.  This meant I had ready access to a lot of spare parts.  

"Smoke leaked out of a capacitor" is apparently an insider electronics quip.  OK, I get it.

After replacing the two bad parts, the heater was again fully functional! This is where the need to minimize (because of limited RV space) and the urge to retain stuff (because it might be useful later) creates problems.  For now, I guess we will just make room for two heaters.  

Moab has been having its annual Plein Air Art Festival (Plein Air is French for "open air") so we walked around town for the afternoon.

The portico on the side (with the roof deck) would make a great place to park the motorhome.  Just need to transplant it into the north Georgia mountains.

At the recreation center, we saw a lot of people leaving with blank (event registered) canvases.  One of them stopped to pet Sam, so I had to ask.  The downtown Quick Draw competition was just starting. Each artist was to create their painting and bring it back by 7:00 pm (about 3 hours) for judging and display, and ultimately, to be sold.

Around town, there were artists everywhere.  They all seemed to be enjoying themselves and were open to conversation as they worked. There were 114 people participating in the Quick Draw and there were just as many different perspectives on the town in their compositions.

This was Wanda Mumm, under the UV shade.  I could not believe what she created (see Oct. 10) in only three hours.

The streets were crawling with artists.  How cool is that?

***Spoiler Alert*** This is Paul Bergquist and this will become the winning painting.

The clouds looked promising, so we headed back to Arches National Park to try to catch some nice sunset landscapes.  I think the lighting, clouds and scenery came together for some very nice vistas.  

I tried straight exposures, in-camera HDR and manual, 5 exposure HDR brackets.  The manual HDR pictures below were, by far, the best representation of the sunset lighting.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

There were a few more clouds today and it seemed like a good idea to head to Arches late in the day (closer to sunset) which allowed me to finish up another book - a thriller from Brad Thor entitled Lions of Lucerne.

On the way to the park, I stopped in Parriott's Salon to see if I could meet the owner, Jason Parriott.  He was just inside the door and was happy to meet another Parriott.  We both realized we had never met anyone with our last name outside of our immediate families.  We could be related since both family lines trace back to Iowa in the 1800's.  Hopefully, we will get to talk more while we are here.

Across the street in the Moab Visitor's Center, Joani spotted a unique looking bread truck make-over.  Several people were admiring it from every angle.  One guy said the owner, Mac, shows up every year and was inside the Visitor's Center using the WiFi.  

The Art Car, "Chundra" is well known in these parts. 

You know me, I turned to google and found Chundra has its own blog!

I did not see access to the party deck above, so there is either an interior stair and roof hatch, or they have to set up a ladder outside.  I suspect there have been some wild parties in and on the Dream Machine!

When we reached Arches National Park, the clouds were high and uniform, so the lighting did not support any really fantastic landscape photos.  Walking a little way along the Park Avenue trail did not provide any better opportunities, although you have to admit, this park is beautiful in pretty much any light.

The high cirrus clouds, with their ice crystals, created some "Sun Dogs", but they were not pronounced enough to be captured well by either camera.  As the pictures of the "Three Gossips" below show, there was quite a contrast between the sky and the foreground.  Even my camera's HDR setting at 6ev, could not capture both in a single frame.

We gave up early on the sunset and headed back into Moab for a quick dinner and a few crosswords puzzles on the tablet, before getting back home to Sam and a relaxing evening.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Most importantly for the day - Happy Birthday, Jon!

As Sam and I walked around the park this morning, we saw the Jeep parade getting ready for the day's ride.  There were ten Jeeps which I thought was pretty impressive, but I was told there were twelve headed out the day before.

We drove to Canyonlands National Park with no plans for hiking so we could take Sam with us.  We really just wanted to get a feel for this rather large and fairly new park.  The park is celebrating 50 years as a National Park this year.  

The park included three distinct regions, each bounded by the rivers through the park.  We visited the Island in the Sky, the most popular (and most accessible) area of the park.  It was bordered by the Colorado River to the east and south and the Green River to the west and south.  The Maze, west of both the Colorado and Green Rivers, is only accessible by high clearance, four-wheel drive vehicles so we won't be driving it.  The Needles, to the south and east of the Colorado River, will have to wait until we are camped in Monticello, UT (50 miles south of Moab).

There were a lot of restored Model A's in the park taking part in a driving tour.  It must have been just about perfect weather for these old cars with no A/C. 

After watching a short movie about the park in the Visitor's Center, we listened to Ranger Nathaniel talk about desert bighorn sheep.  He went into a lot of detail about their tracking programs to understand their lives and migratory patterns.  He said he once saw a herd of eight animals.  I wanted to say something about our sighting at Zion, but someone else beat me to it and had pictures.  Nathaniel said we would likely not see any animals in the park today, so maybe we should just drive over to Zion (he sounded just a little bitter, but I'm sure he was kidding).

Yet another ranger talk was scheduled, this time at the Grand View Point Overlook.  Ranger Gretchen did a very nice job of walking us through the 200 million years of deposition, uplift and erosion that created the park features seen today.

The intermediate floor in the picture below was about 1,400 feet lower than our overlook and the Colorado River (not visible here) was another 600 feet below that.

The Green River was a beautiful sight off to the west from the overlook. We could just make out (with the rangers help) where the Green and Colorado Rivers meet.  Aerial pictures in the Visitor's Center made the confluence look amazing as the brown and green waters swirled and mixed.

Back at the Visitor's Center, I had to stop for one last parting shot of the La Sal Mountains as a backdrop at the Schafer Canyon Overlook.

Friday, October 3, 2014

Most importantly for the day - Happy Birthday, Kate!  

We headed into Arches National Park for a ranger-guided tour at 10:30.  It was obvious we are not morning people - nearly missed the start of the hike from the Windows Wall parking area.  It was also clear you need to get to the parking area early in the busy season. Good thing our car is small - I cheated just a little on parking to get to the hike on time.

Ranger Glenn wanted to give us a little archaeology mixed with geology, to give us a sense of the people who have lived in the area. First stop was Turret Arch.

From here we could look back and see the Parade of Elephants as he pointed out the Carmel and Entrada Sandstone layers in the rock.  If you spot the elephant, he is in the entrada layer of sandstone and he is standing on the Carmel layer. (The color does not necessarily change between the two layers.)

This is called the Parade of Elephants.  Can you see the Elephant in the center of the picture?  

The Windows Section of the park was named for the North and South Windows in the wall below.  As we rounded the wall, the trail became more primitive.  At one point, an arrow just pointed left at a big rock.  A few of the group had a little trouble scrambling up the big boulders, but we all made it.

The La Sal mountains were visible in the background of many of our pictures, which was nice since there was no cloud drama.  I guess the beautiful rock formations should have been enough on their own, but I always like a little something extra.

Ranger Glenn was a wealth of information, pointing out different plants that the indigenous people used to survive and why they (the people) disappeared.

David is holding a twine made from yucca fibers.  The yucca was also used to make paint brushes (by chewing the leaves until they become fibrous.)

 The brown beads are dried pinyon tree pine nuts.  (Pine nuts (pignolias) sell for $16 to $25 a pound and are delicious!)

I bet ranger Glenn was in his element around late night campfires - he clearly liked to tell ghost stories.  He was trying to impress young Lucas (in the blue coat to the ranger's right) with a tale of the mysterious disappearance of the native people 600 years ago.

We usually get home and query "What did the ranger say?"  So, I decided to video the talk.  We have already referred back to the video a couple times.

The double arch was a short 1/4 mile starting from the end of the ranger-led hike.  This was one impressive piece of nature's handiwork. The arches were even more impressive as we got closer.  There are some people in the picture below to help give some scale to the arches.

The close arch spanned 148 feet and had a height of 104 feet.

The people below climbed up as far as they could in one of the arches - they said it was about a 100-foot drop on the other side of their perch. I asked if they wanted their picture framed in the arch and he asked how good was my catch.  No way I was going to try to catch his camera!

I hope their picture turned out well and they have a great souvenir from Arches NP.

David has done this for so many people across the country, but this takes the prize for the most extreme.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

It was lightly raining at the coach, but I decided we should head to Arches National Park anyway.  At the worst, it might still be raining there, and at best, we should see a lot of cloud drama behind the rock formations.  The first turn-out inside the park is something named Park Avenue.  The size of these fins is staggering.

Park Avenue is a 2-mile round trip hike we will do on another day.  I would like to see this area at sunrise.

The looming, threatening rain clouds did indeed make a nice backdrop for the formations looking towards the east.

At the La Sal Mountains Viewpoint, Joani caught the reflection of the sky in puddles on the rock making for a unique picture.  Unfortunately, the LaSal mountains were completely covered in clouds

The view looking toward the Window Section of the park.

Balanced Rock is one of the park's iconic landmarks.  We stopped for a few pictures even though the breezes were starting to get just a little cool (Joani would say cold).  We had not planned well and had no jackets (or scarves, or gloves or earmuffs) so we could not get out of the car for any length of time.

Balanced Rock is about 128 feet, with the balancing rock rising 55 feet above the base.

The big rock on top is the size of three school buses.

We cruised through the parking area for another of the parks main attractions, the Double Arch.  I got out for a quick picture, but we will definitely be back for a more in-depth exploration.

The picture below called for a pretty abrupt stop along the roadside for this opportune alignment of the moon with the rocks on top of the Courthouse Towers. 

We were losing our light fast. I think this is the top of the Tower of Babel, part of the Courthouse Towers (the placards were vague).

We stopped back by the La Sal Mountain Viewpoint on the way out of the park to see the changing colors by the setting sun.