The tour of rocks
G'day all!
We are back from our trip and recovering from driving from U-tah! in two days via a rather circuitous route. There are some mountain ranges that I would like to have a few words with.... We drove over 2000 miles in a week. Doesn't sound like much but it sure cut into my knitting time cos I drove. All. The. Way.
So, I got hardly any knitting done - half a sock and the first (ie easy) 25 rows of a top down raglan cardi were my knitting triumphs. I managed to read most of one small book. I read through a book on the southwestern states of the US. We saw gobsmacking scenery. DH and I took over 2500 digipics - that'll take a while to edit out the good ones, which will mostly appear on my travel blog.
Now I am back into shopping at the farmers' market, cooking, cleaning, clearing the car out, doing the clothes washing, all that sort of boring stuff. And dying of heat exhaustion.
We went from this:
(Wednesday, Grand Canyon, embiggen the pics to see more detail and no I have not put a texture on them!)
to this:
Camden at Winchester, Campbell, California (PWS)
Updated: 1 sec ago
Partly Cloudy
90.3 °F
Partly Cloudy
Humidity: 15%
For those of us who have left the imperial age behind, that would be 33. Yep, from 33F to 33C in just a few days. And it is forecast to hit 38 tomorrow! It is only APRIL guys! The record for April in SJ is 90F. Oh dear.... and we just used up roughly 70 US gallons of petrol. Ah well, I'll be back on my bike this week.
I've added a pic from each day to my flickr account and you get to see them right here!
Sunday
Elephant seals - females and juveniles on the beach, moulting. They moult off their epidermis along with the fur - no wonder they have to do that on land!
Monday
The outdoors pool at Hearst Castle. Can you believe that I did not get one good shot of the castle itself? Very difficult lighting - backlighting on it.
Tuesday
Some people love this place but we found Vegas waaaay too much for us!
Wednesday
Occasionally the clouds almost parted and let us see the Grand Canyon. The next day we visited Zion National Park, which we found much more exciting.
Thursday
We saw a LOT of views like this as we drove. I didn't realise that the parts of Nevada, Arizona and Utah (and a little of California) are all sandstone/limestone/siltstone escarpments, not just deserts. This pic is just inside the Utah border - can you believe that there is a street view on Google maps for this road?
Friday
We could well call this a trip of ups and downs - sea level to 8000-odd feet and back again, sometimes on the one day! Death Valley was not as blasted as I expected, but it is spring and it must've gotten a little rain.
Saturday
June Lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada. OMG, how pretty! I loved this area even though it was too early for wildflowers.
And I got back to SJ 15 minutes before Cookie A's booksigning finished. *phew* I was SO over driving by then - we had had a 12 hour day on Friday and 9 hours on Saturday.
Sunday? Collapse time, in between doing necessary stuff.
Well that is your bloomin' lot!
Next time, if you are lucky, I'll put some knitting content and pics up 8-)
anon!
We are back from our trip and recovering from driving from U-tah! in two days via a rather circuitous route. There are some mountain ranges that I would like to have a few words with.... We drove over 2000 miles in a week. Doesn't sound like much but it sure cut into my knitting time cos I drove. All. The. Way.
So, I got hardly any knitting done - half a sock and the first (ie easy) 25 rows of a top down raglan cardi were my knitting triumphs. I managed to read most of one small book. I read through a book on the southwestern states of the US. We saw gobsmacking scenery. DH and I took over 2500 digipics - that'll take a while to edit out the good ones, which will mostly appear on my travel blog.
Now I am back into shopping at the farmers' market, cooking, cleaning, clearing the car out, doing the clothes washing, all that sort of boring stuff. And dying of heat exhaustion.
We went from this:
(Wednesday, Grand Canyon, embiggen the pics to see more detail and no I have not put a texture on them!)
to this:
Camden at Winchester, Campbell, California (PWS)
Updated: 1 sec ago
Partly Cloudy
90.3 °F
Partly Cloudy
Humidity: 15%
For those of us who have left the imperial age behind, that would be 33. Yep, from 33F to 33C in just a few days. And it is forecast to hit 38 tomorrow! It is only APRIL guys! The record for April in SJ is 90F. Oh dear.... and we just used up roughly 70 US gallons of petrol. Ah well, I'll be back on my bike this week.
I've added a pic from each day to my flickr account and you get to see them right here!
Sunday
Elephant seals - females and juveniles on the beach, moulting. They moult off their epidermis along with the fur - no wonder they have to do that on land!
Monday
The outdoors pool at Hearst Castle. Can you believe that I did not get one good shot of the castle itself? Very difficult lighting - backlighting on it.
Tuesday
Some people love this place but we found Vegas waaaay too much for us!
Wednesday
Occasionally the clouds almost parted and let us see the Grand Canyon. The next day we visited Zion National Park, which we found much more exciting.
Thursday
We saw a LOT of views like this as we drove. I didn't realise that the parts of Nevada, Arizona and Utah (and a little of California) are all sandstone/limestone/siltstone escarpments, not just deserts. This pic is just inside the Utah border - can you believe that there is a street view on Google maps for this road?
Friday
We could well call this a trip of ups and downs - sea level to 8000-odd feet and back again, sometimes on the one day! Death Valley was not as blasted as I expected, but it is spring and it must've gotten a little rain.
Saturday
June Lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada. OMG, how pretty! I loved this area even though it was too early for wildflowers.
And I got back to SJ 15 minutes before Cookie A's booksigning finished. *phew* I was SO over driving by then - we had had a 12 hour day on Friday and 9 hours on Saturday.
Sunday? Collapse time, in between doing necessary stuff.
Well that is your bloomin' lot!
Next time, if you are lucky, I'll put some knitting content and pics up 8-)
anon!
Looks like you had a wonderful trip. I'm going to enjoy looking at your pics. That is a lot of driving!
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