Hard to believe we had left Green River just a few hours ago! Now snow and elevation and more of Utah than I ever knew existed. The aspen were just beginning to turn green with buds. I kept seeing these lovely mountain sides with aspens shadows between the aspen groves. I could never capture them with my camera. Perhaps if we were not just passing through but actually staying a few days I might have gotten the photo my heart wanted. I think we were at about 8,000 feet in elevation?

Weren’t we just amidst colored slabs of rock and sand and oh gosh. Can hardly keep track of the splendor!

I love icicles that are curved. Exactly how did they get curved?

At about 12:45 we were chiding each other that we would never arrive if we kept stopping for photos! There was a family of four traveling just about our speed. Dad kept making them all pose together at lovely photo opportunities. We saw them at the next pull off and Bob decided he would just take a look. He came back to the car to get me. I was not thrilled to walk to the edge of a crevasse to see what had him fascinated. Oh my! I am not a fan of heights, but way below was likely the Escalante River.

But I did see a hiker resting. A gargantuan hiker that is! If you cannot pick him out in the first photo below, I tried to outline him a bit in the photo the next one.

Our next stop was Bryce Canyon. After Arches, I kept saying that all I wanted to see was red rocks with snow. I was not disappointed! Since it was one of my most favorite places on our journey I think I will devote tomorrow to just photos of Bryce. (By the way we made it to Cedar City, just barely before dark. Sadly, there was no elevator and they put us on the second floor! Getting too old to haul stuff up the stairs like that. Decided next time we would ask for a different room or help getting luggage in and out of the room.)

We awoke tired from our extra-long day, but happy from our travels. Seems we had landed in another era. The motel hallways the night before were full of what seemed like sister-wives, girls who looked like teenagers in long dresses of various colors roaming the halls with younger children, doing laundry, in and out of rooms together. We honestly could not tell who was in charge of them. If they were one family or married into one family. And more strange, the next morning it was as if they had never been there. Not a one showed at breakfast. Yes, we were in Utah, but all those kids? It seemed as if they would have fed them before departing? Do not think it was a residential situation as they were doing things like purchasing laundry soap at the front desk the night before. Just weird.

There are animals in the US that never appear when the daytime traveler is driving: elk, moose, big horn sheep, mountain goats, cougar or mountain cats. We saw the warning signs and never saw the animals!

This was Day Ten of our travels.We were almost on stimulation overload from the scenery changes. Little did we know there were more dramatic changes before us. I had absolutely no idea how beautiful Utah was! I had only been to the Salt Lake area airport and north areas. Most of the comments below are from Bob, photos are from Molly.

“Quoting from my husband’s travel journal: “This was another day of endless surprises and unexpected panoramas. I did not anticipate the majestic beauty before us. And I had no idea that there would be so much snow. It was a beautiful and nealy cloudless day as wdrove from Green River. We were to drive the scenic route from there to Cedar City via routes 24, 12, 89, and 14. It was an all-day drive of some 320 miles.

Quoting Bob again: “We started with typical high desert. Sage and sand and range land with grazing cattle. Very few other cars, few houses, fewer towns, the occasional butte or other sandstone formation that was seemingly dropped in its current location. These alien structures became more numerous and more varied in shape and color. It was like Legoland met the Mad Potter! Sometimes it seemed as if a draftsman had designed perfectly straight lines and other times it was a modern abstractionist messing with my mind.

“The colors changed with some regularity: reds and yellows, blacks and grays, white Navajo sandstone and a whole crayon box full of other colors. Some were pure, others striated.”

“The Capitol Reef area is where it began to get bizzare; tall thin tablets, honeycombed faces, piles of perfectly symmetrical slabs of stone, smooth faced cliffs and groves of pillars. Some of the formations were hundreds of feet tall; others simple hoodoos. There were even petroglyphs.”

Molly: I have friends who had recently put down a new floor for an Aunt in Washington State. It took them several weeks to accomplish. When I saw the photo below I thought of them with piles and piles of flooring to be installed!

Bob was really good about watching how much time we spent in amazement in each area. This was all before noon

Yes, you should plan a trip next spring to this wonder of the world. The Sandhill Crane migration is the largest in the world and well worth your time. Your sense of adventure will rise to a new height as you marvel at these birds. Fly, take a bus, drive, get there any way that you can to witness this extraordinary event. We planned to spend two nights there so we could be certain to witness one sunrise and one sunset. We did not book any special tours or bird blinds and yet we saw plenty.
If I had not seen them in New Mexico I likely would have missed them in the fields at first.

Here is a very short clip

Here is a clip from Geographic.

This video is phenomenal. Yes, 8 minutes long, but their photography captures what I could not. Even Bob was challenged in the low light conditions of sunrise and sunset along with the skittishness of the birds themselves! We supported the Sandhill Trust while we were there.

Then off to Cheyenne Wyoming, 338 miles away. As we drove through Nebraska along the Platte River we saw fields with birds, and then more birds!

So I spoke with Shannon at Word Press and she taught me how to publish my videos on the blog through You Tube (or other sites). Yippee!

So here is my best video of what it is like to be surrounded by thousands (and the official count that day by the bird counters was a record breaking 650,000) of Sandhill Cranes during the spring migration in Nebraska! They glean the fields during the day time eating last year’s dropped corn from the autumn harvest. Perhaps the red truck will give you some perspective and the traffic sounds in the background the clear idea that no, we were not out in the wilderness.

I am delighted to finally figure out how to post my videos without spending more money for this site ;-D