CANYONLANDS!

 The Colorado Plateau is found in the "four corners" area of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.


The plateau is a raised area (130,000 square miles) which lifted when tectonic plates shifted.  Scientists offer their best guesses at its age and why it happened.

An alternate view is that the Creator God spoke it into being in the blink of an eye.  As Mike and I surveyed the mountains and chasms of the Colorado Plateau, we decided He really pushed the "enhance" button when He made this Western eye candy.

Here's the satellite view of the Colorado Plateau.  To the top left is the Great Salt Lake, on the right are the green Rockies (with snow-capped peaks), the canyonlands in the middle are easy to spot by their color, and the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River is on the left (below the middle).

Kodak can't do justice to these red-rocked canyons and words can't express them...yet they paint an undeniable picture of "vast" and "timeless" and "majestic", much like the Designer Himself.

Since our canyonlands visit, Mike and I have ricocheted between gratitude (for realizing something that has been on our bucket list for years) and awe (as each beauty-trigger drew our hearts upward).  My fun was watching Mike drink it all in; my husband LOVES the West.  And truly, Americans have been given a gorgeous place to call home.  Here are just some random thoughts:

Bryce Canyon

*Our path led through Flagstaff's Walnut Canyon, Sedona, AZ, Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce Canyon, and Monument Valley.  Each had high places and
valley floors, but each was a bit unique and "Ooooh!" inspiring.

*We rubbed elbows with people from all around the world.  Perhaps because it was May and Americans aren't traveling yet, but we heard more foreign tongues than English spoken.  Mike's comment was "THIS is our best foreign policy".  Our anecdotal survey found the majority to be Germans (who seem fascinated with the American West)...followed by Japanese, French, Dutch, and Canadians.

Grand Canyon

*It's good to find something that our government does well.  We consider the military and our National Parks to be in that category.

Grand Canyon National Park receives MANY visitors with great functionality.  On the south rim, free natural gas buses (handicap accessible) run constantly and the nine scenic overlook stops allow travelers to get on and off at will.  There are free places to fill water bottles (a necessity) and the bathrooms are up-to-date with slot machines for wet hands.  Mike likes to say our best ever $10 investment was the park pass (available after age 62).  That little plastic card has gotten us into lots of national parks and presidential libraries for free.

Sedona, AZ

*We wondered if the scenery being perpetually gorgeous would cause us to glaze over after a while.  Would we lose our appreciation (as in, "bleh, another canyon")?  It helped to hold a thought in mind from this year's Genesis study.  With infinite creativity, the Almighty thought up and made what we were seeing.  Then just as surely, one day He will destroy the earth by fire and restore the original splendor of the Garden of Eden.  With those thoughts in mind, we wondered what possibly could be coming that would be more beautiful than what we were seeing.

*After 40 years in Little Rock at 335 feet, we considered Fayetteville's 1,400 feet to be high sky.

But when you're in 8,000 feet regularly (and the highest place at Bryce is Rainbow Point at 9,100 feet)...not only do you long for a full, satisfying breath, but your skin turns to white powder, the unopened chip sacks swell, and the ballpoint pen cartridges burst.

Here are just a few notes from some of our stops:

@WALNUT CANYON.  The Anasazi ("ancient ones") carved their existence from these rocks.  Can you see the caves where they lived in the side of these mountains?  Mike hiked down to see the remains of their cliff dwellings.  Imagine raising children in such an area!

Then one day, just like the ancient Pueblo people of Mesa Verde, the Walnut Canyonites just left their pots and disappeared.

@SEDONA.  We saw this canyon first and it tied with Bryce as my favorite.  It would be a real treat to spend some days in Sedona, waking up to these red rocks.

Leaving Flagstaff and driving less than an hour south, we dropped 2,000 feet down into Sedona's  sanctuary.  The walls of this "outdoor room" are all painted iron oxide (claypot).  No wonder the rich and famous have homes here!  We smiled at a bumper sticker that said "God made the Grand Canyon, but He lives in Sedona".

@GRAND CANYON (South Rim).  Think 217 miles one way, ten miles from the north to the south rim, and some places a mile deep.  When we looked down there was an immediate speck effect.  Isn't it good to be humbled by something larger than self?  The vastness brings Psalm 95:4 to mind.  "In one hand He holds the deep caves and caverns, in the other hand grasps the high mountains."

The firsthand canyon experience is dazzling, but just outside the park an Imax theatre puts the canyon in context historically.  It was amazing to think of those first explorers who had no idea what rapids were ahead when they fearlessly plunged ahead in a rowboat.  The actual boat is on display at the park Visitor Center, and the replica used for making the Imax movie was on display as you exited the theatre.  One of my "take-away" thoughts from the film narration was "the canyon has no need of man".  Neither does God, the Self-Existent One...but He still taps you on the shoulder at the Grand Canyon.

@GRAND CANYON (Hermit's Rest).

The most western stop on the south rim was where we found one of only two Bible verses in the whole park.  The park ranger at Hermit's Rest explained that the plaque verse was there originally, someone complained and it was taken down, and then someone complained and it was put back up.  It is able to be displayed because it was original to the founding.  The verse is powerful as you looked out over the view.  "Sing to God, sing praises to His name; cast up a highway for Him who rides through the deserts, whose name is the Lord, and exult before Him."  Psalm 68:4

@GRAND CANYON (Desert View Watchtower).

This spot that is so high and lifted-up...was #3 on my list of favorites.  Built and designed in the 30's to have an ancient look, you find this site on the east end of the southern rim (about 30 minutes from the main entrance).

The watchtower is a 70 foot stone tower which offers a dizzying, 360 degree canyon view.

The inside walls are painted with Indian murals and reproduction petroglyphs.  The antique chairs were carved from a crotch of wood and had animal skin seats.  Even the lighting is cleverly hidden in Indian pottery.

On the backside of the tower, one level has a walkout patio which puts you on eye-level with ravens, which are prevalent in the area.  Ravens have a huge, glossy blue/black-patent body with beady little eyes and they make a cry like a child in distress.  Perhaps an old Hitchcock hangup caused me to be unnerved by this carrion-eater, but it was fun to watch the ravens glide on the wind currents.

@ZION CANYON.  As we headed into Utah's Zion National Park, the rocks seem poured out.  Tour buses were available in this canyon, too...they took visitors into areas where cars were not allowed.

Just as in the Grand Canyon, there were "discoverers" who came into this area and claimed it.  Think that discovery might have come as a surprise to the Indians who already lived there?

Next door (at the Grand Canyon) it was the Spanish who first discovered the area in the 1500's.  Then in the 1800's, it was re-discovered by Mormon missionaries.  They advised an American (the one-armed Major John Wesley Powell) who led the expeditionary team to map the Colorado River through the canyon.  The Imax theatre told that story.

Zion Canyon was settled by Mormons in the mid 1800's.  When Isaac Behunin (who lived in a log cabin close to where Zion Lodge is today) entered the canyon, he exclaimed "this is my Zion!"  Mormons named many of these mountains and these triplets (above) are "The Patriarchs" for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

@BRYCE CANYON.  Welcome to hoodoo land.  More than a million people come to Utah to see this National Park each year.

Each "hoodoo" (rock formation) has a soft sandstone lower level and a harder stone top which protects.  They are constantly changing as freezing and thawing makes cracks, which then shear off in the rain.  The differing minerals in the columns cause differing colors and it's fun to look for recognizable shapes.

Mike is looking at Natural Bridge in Bryce.

 

    

In the morning when the sun is behind these whiter hoodoos, they appear as porcelain.

 












Can you find the Totem Pole hoodoo?

We are in Utah, but we can see Arizona from here.

@MONUMENT VALLEY.

Everyone who has seen a John Wayne/John Ford movie knows about Monument Valley on the Utah and Arizona line.  This spot is named "John Ford Point" because he used to sit out on the point to get his storyboards in his head.  Ford was known for only keeping the movie path in his brain (nothing written down) and only wanting one "take".

Many movies were shot here, and the latest was shot on the day we were there ("Transformers 4").  They used the mesas for Tom Cruise's opening of "Mission Impossible", for a Chevy truck commercial, and for the new movie coming out in July ("Lone Ranger").  Forrest Gump turned around his cross-country run in this valley and the movie "Cars" called it "Ornament Valley".  RoadRunner cartoons were set here, "Thelma and Louise" drove through, it was in both "Easy Rider" and "Back to the Future", and there's no telling how many Westerns.  The two nights we spent in the campground, we checked out and watched the original 1938 "Stagecoach" and "The Searchers".

We loved hearing about the history of this valley and a blog is coming about Harry and "Mike" Goulding,  the original homesteaders who in the early 20's were able to buy a square mile of Monument Valley right next to the Navajo nation.

The video below was shot from the patio of a wonderful restaurant (and motel) built/run by the Navajo on their reservation.  What a view!

Thanks for persisting through this lengthy blog.  I couldn't stop myself!  Mike and I felt so full of awe for the towering rocks in the Canyonlands.  They mirror strength and immovability and eternality like their Maker.

But there are differences.  When the tectonic plates shifted, these huge mountains moved; God doesn't.  And while the canyons dazzle in their beauty, NOTHING is more beautiful than God's plan to redeem man in the incomparable willingness of the Son to take on our guilt.  The lyrics to "Be Thou My Vision" say that God is our best thought by day or by night.

The Canyonlands are a terrific prompt for those best thoughts.