Utah- A Land Of Big Ideas

Everyone has seen the pictures in magazines. We've all watched the PBS or Travel Channel documentaries. But as we approached Kanab, Utah from the East on Highway 89, there was nothing that could have prepared us for what we found when we passed through these red walls, standing tall against that un-photo shopped blue sky.( please click on all the pictures for full effect. thanks )

When you drive to work past sights like this,
you know God was in a good mood the day He created the world.



After the first two days in Kanab, we did almost nothing about setting up housekeeping, so eager were we to get out and explore the area we'll be living in for the next several months. Once our huge snowstorm (see blog entry April1,2010) went away, we began driving around. With Christie Smith as our guide and fellow Geocacher, we set out.

I can't climb very well anymore but I found my share of treasures and managed to document them. The biggest find was the discovery that it's almost impossible to take a bad picture here. Here's one of Chris and Jim after finding a cache.
Later I simply had to stop for a "framed shot". It wasn't until I got home that I realized my shutter failed to open all the way but look what I got!

Utah has an interesting history, quite different from the settlement of most of our country. I hope to learn more about it and share some of that with my patient followers as the season progresses. But I do know that in this land of stark contrasts, people were frugal and nothing was ever allowed to go to waste. Food storage is a way of life. The old adage make good, make over, or make do, has evolved into reuse, recycle, or re-purpose. Nature itself has taught that lesson well.

Look at those red and ocher hills above in the "Before" pictures. Similar hills stood the Anasazi and the Navajo people in good stead for homes and protection for a millennium, then they began to erode.

Now look at them a couple of million
years later in these "After" pictures.

They've been recycled or re-purposed into one of the softest places on Earth!

Clancy had a wonderful time at

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. She dragged me to the top of a dune and then just stood there for a few seconds while we both caught our breath. (Not an easy thing to do as the vista was breathtaking.) Then she became ecstatic! She began racing around and around as I swiveled her extension leash, it's full length, around my head . She didn't walk or really even run she seemed to bounce. In fact, the only word we could use to describe her ebullient playfulness was an old fashioned word coined apparently just to describer Clancy that day. She frolicked in that soft powdery pink stuff.

( frolic v : to gambol merrily; to play in a frisky, light-spirited manner; romp: The children {or dogs} were frolicking in the snow.)

Yes, Clancy "gamboled merrily" She kicked it into the air and circled me as fast as her stubby little legs would let her go until she finally stopped and grinned at me, as if to say, " Warm Snow!!"

I think this is going to be a good summer!

See ya soon down a red sandy road,
Yarntangler