Utah: Bryce, Sego & Arches

More driving through endless dry and nondescript land and random frustrating towns (Page, AZ you know who you are) brought us to the Utah phase of the geology portion of our travels. Brace yourself for lots of pictures of rocks.

The parks always make it easy to pull over and get a pic of the sign. There are usually other people doing the same so we always ask someone to take our picture together.

A mule deer. Before we set up the kids with their own blog pages, Drew chose a lot of animal photos for ours.

At Sunset Point just before sunset, of course. I don't know why Drew made a John C. McGinley face.

Hoodoo town. This picture looks unbelievably flat and does not do it justice at all.

Planning a hike.

Just a pretty photo that sort of gives the sense of the scale of the place.

Getting ready for the Queen's Garden Trail. Now go do that hoodoo that you do so well!

Different stages of hoodoo formation. Rain, wind, and the freeze and thaw process all contribute to these amazing shapes.

Kiddos on the trail.

Iron in the sandstone makes for orange spots.

Continuing down.

Hoodoo town.

More interesting formations. 

Rocks.

Queen Victoria!

Rocks and a tree.

Coming back up through the rocks. 

"I promise to look at more rocks and look up where the word hoodoo comes from because I forgot to ask." We ended up spending another night so Andy could continue to try to unwind a bad case of identity theft.

Before we got to Arches we decided to take a detour to Sego Canyon to look at some petroglyphs. We were on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land. The road was rough and we came pretty close to losing Ginger in a deep trench in the road. But there was no place to turn around. You can camp for free on a lot of BLM land but we never tried it. 

This is where Drew's birthday wish came true! On our way in we were very lucky to spot this herd of almost totally camouflaged desert bighorn. 

The babies were really cute.

Pic through the binoculars.

Ewe and lamb.

We watched them clambering over the rocks for a long time.

We finally arrived at the petroglyphs on a huge rock. Too bad there was graffiti on some of them. 

The painted ones are called pictographs. What do they symbolize? These made a later appearance at our visit to Roswell, NM.

A little explanation.

We unhitched Ginger and drove further on to visit a ghost town. There was no information available but we're guessing it was a little mining village. This was the graveyard which had a modern headstone in it as well as the old grave site markers. 

An old grave.

No idea.

Maybe an old mine entrance?

We saw a large herd of pronghorn on our way out of the area. 

Blurry binoculars picture. Must.Get.Kids.Own.Blog.

Hurry! Take a picture! It's freezing out here! 

Our whole visit to Moab and Arches was rainy and chilly. This is balancing rock.

North Window.

A view from North Window.

North and South together.

Let's take a break from the rocks and look at a bunny! Squueeeeee! Soooooo cuuuuute!!!

Double Arch.

Double Arch again. Did I mention there were a lot of pictures of rocks?

Hey, look. It's Double Arch. 

A view of rocks from Double Arch. Are we almost done?? The road to Delicate Arch was washed out so we didn't get to see it. Sad for us, lucky for you.

Tree and rocks. 

A darkling beetle will break things up.

Deer among the trees and rocks.

Snow on the San Juan mountains. Phew! We're done and heading toward Colorado. But get ready for the next entry: Houses built in to rocks.