Saturday September 27, 2008 Thursday it was time to move on to warmer climes. Santa Fe was on our list, as was art by Georgia O’Keeffe. In our new Pitt Meadows home, there are two fireplace walls just waiting for special decoration and one of our ‘must do’s’ on this trip was to find some southwestern art. Santa Fe is famous as an artist haven, and it more than lived up to the reputation. We approached Santa Fe from the north on highway 84. Little did we know that when Kayla called several halts on the highway just north of Santa Fe to take photos of the glorious layered cliffs and spires, we were also photographing Georgia O’Keeffe’s home at Ghost Ranch. Right away we recognized the photos of Ghost Ranch taken by others, some of ... read more

Sunday, September 21, 2008 Moab is famous for its location near Arches National Park and the Colorado River Gorge. It is also famous for mountain biking on “slickrock’ - a hard smooth yellow Navajo sandstone than caps a wide area around the hills overlooking the town. Our mountain bikes made it to Moab chiefly for an opportunity to ride the slickrock. To our dismay the slickrock biking trail is classified as expert with steep ups and downs and intimidating to us flatlanders. So we did an internet and visitors centre search for a milder trail and found the Bar M trail, 9 miles north of town. The second problem was the high temperature - 30 deg C today and too hot to ride anywhere except in an air conditioned truck camper. So we drove back to ... read more

We spent the whole day in Arches National Park just a few miles north of Moab, Utah. Juts off highway 191 the park road climbs steeply into the park and highway noise is left behind. And then the vista opens up with huge red rock towers and wide sage covered valleys. The first and most impressive group of red rocks rises up in front of the car about a ½ hour drive into the park. These red towers have no erosion slope and rise straight out of the desert with sheer faces and long slender horizontal shapes. We spent an hour viewing and photographing Balanced Rock. A 10 metre football shaped mass of sandstone balances on 30 metre high tower of red rock which tapers to 2 metres under the football. We tip toed around the ... read more

We’re settling into a nice comfortable routine now after working out all the usual bugs when first starting out. This is the third time renting a camper truck, so we’ve pretty much got this routine down to a science, with only a few hiccups. We’ve even added a few more nice-to-haves this time that will seem like must-haves for future trips: extension cord for the laptop and charging things inside, telescoping car washing brush, microfiber dish washing and drying cloths (forget cotton, these things rock; wet cloths can be squeezed almost completely dry and are completely dry within an hour), a whole roll of the sticky shelf liner for the table and counter tops so that things don’t slip and slide while on the road. After breezing through Grand Teton Park, and deciding we could see ... read more

Having mastered the art of cinematography using a tripod, (apologies to anyone who has to suffer through our learning curve in the first video clips) and seen enough thermal features for now, we decided that Yellowstone Canyon deserved another visit. This time it was to see the Upper and Lower Falls up close and personal. We definitely were not done with Yellowstone Park yet. There is a trail that leads to the bottom of the Lower Falls. However, ‘trail’ is a loose description of the 300-step descent on metal stairs clinging to the side of the canyon. Oh, it was really easy getting down there for some incredible views and memorable photos and video, but coming up was another matter altogether. And don’t forget, this was all taking place at an altitude of 8,000 feet. However, ... read more