Some friends were getting married in Salt Lake City, so Pat and i decided to make a vacation of it and check out a little bit of Utah. If the rest of Utah is anything like the parts that we visited, i'd go back in a minute. It's amazing.

Verbose links to photos:

• First, we went to Salt Lake City and found a lot of art, a little nature, met fun and interesting people and participated in a wonderful wedding. Unfortunately, i'm not a wedding photo kinda person, so you won't see any here - it was my one day off : ) October is a great time to be there - it's temperate by day, just a bit chilly by night, and the forests are on fire with color. It is an honor to have witnessed the bonding of a pair of soul mates, and we thank them doubly for causing us to make our first visit to Utah.
• After a few days we drove to Moab and wandered around Arches and Canyonlands. Arches was the first day, and we had gorgeous weather. That night was full moon, so you'll see a couple of photos taken at night there - what an incredible place to be by moonlight! By the time we got to the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands the next day, it was grey and raining so there aren't many photos from there. We did, however, see amazing things through the mist and got back from a canyon rim hike just in time for a massive downpour to begin.

  You'd think that with all of that open space, you'd just be able to stomp around wherever your heavy feet would like. But it turns out that straying from established paths can do more damage than you think. The soil is very much alive, and is being kept that way by a fragile community of bacteria, algae, lichens and other beasties that form what is called cryptobiotic soil crust. Here's a photo of one of the best examples of it that we saw in our travels, and it was well off of the beaten path. It can take the crust 50 years to recover from our footsteps!

  Arches National Park web site
  Canyonlands National Park web site

• Very near the upper section of Canyonlands is a small and stunning park called Dead Horse Point. We got there just as a large storm was rolling in, which provided wonderful drama until we saw the signs that said, 'Extreme lightning strike danger!' Then we headed to Canyonlands and the drama of the approaching storm gave way to the dull grey raininess mentioned above. Later in the week, we did a bit of off-roading and took a downright driveable dirt road to a lower level of Dead Horse Point, and the weather was lovely again. This time we were all alone with the river, the lucky birds and the wind whispering down the canyons.

  Dead Horse Point State Park web site

• The town of Moab was such a cool place in itself that we decided to make it our home base. It was a friendly and laid-back small town with friendly and laid-back people and the outdoors-oriented feel that you'd expect from a place where Nature provides so many choices for adventure. There were good restaurants and interesting shops and it was so funky and beautiful, nestled at the bottom of canyons just beside the Colorado River. We spent a day near there off-roading and seeing the sights.

  Part of the sights were petroglyphs made by Natives hundreds of years ago. Wandering through that amazing landscape, i felt a palpable sense of what it must have been like for people to live and thrive there before Europeans showed up with disease and Mormons showed up with religion and everyone took their toll. While not perfect angels themselves, the Native Americans were the early people, the people of the land, and the people whose presence i felt in the stones. The Utah State Historical Society has an interesting and extensive online history of Utah which includes a large section on the local Natives.

  While i'm here, i'll put a plug in for the all-wheel-drive Volvo station wagon that we rented - you'll find a photo of it in this set. It was built like the tanks that Volvos are, drove really nicely, was incredibly comfortable and had heated seats, a moonroof, great sound system, 3-setting driver seat memory and the whole luxury bit. But the best part was how well it went off-roading, and handled the (admittedly rated 'easy', which makes me wonder and be afraid of the more 'difficult' ones) 4WD-only roads that we took it on. It even got us unstuck from being beached on a big rock 8 miles from pavement. Woohoo!







All photos, except as noted, by Stacie Wolny

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