Impressions

Adrian led us, a bunch of locals, again to some interesting hike. It was the beginning of June, wonderful weather!  By wonderful I mean – not hot, light cloudy skies, best for hiking. One could never wish for more in this desert…

We started in the upper part of our park and went up the Pastel canyon:

Crows saw us off:

And desert flowers met us on the way:

The canyon got thinner and narrower:

We needed to use ropes twice:

We had to sneak through thick bushes and climb slippery sandy slopes:

But we reached the top where the canyon joins East Rim Trail:

Some of the last hard climb on the top:

And there we had lunch. From that point there was no climbing any more, mostly descending, very lightly, very nicely, at first on a nice forest path:

With abundance of flowers here and there:

Then the forest opened up and disappeared in the back… but the flowers were still there:

Doesn’t it look like a path to Eden?

From there we could see our end point in the distance in the bottom of this canyon. But to reach that point – oh, it was a rather long walk – around and around the edges of canyons of which there is no lack in this country:

Thanks God there were different interesting flowers on the way:

Adrian says we walked totally 5 miles, but to me it seems we walked very long miles. Here is the finish line, with a cold bottle of beer (thanks to one of our fellow hikers):

…………the end……….

If you want to see our flowers at their best  -May is the time to come. After that everything  more or less fades till October, though there is always some plant in bloom. But not in abundance. What else can you expect in a desert…So here are our roses:

Evenings are saturated with Honeysuckle smells…

Here are the flowers that come from seeds every spring by themselves, I guess they are called volunteers. But we don’t know their more particular name:

Finally – my husband’s favorites, the dragons as he calls them, they sit in front of our windows, catching insects:

I am sorry, I guess my mind was somewhere else, that I didn’t describe our New Year’s celebration in St. George. First of all  – we do it every year. Since we figured out that it is so much fun. Maybe it was the fourth year we participated in the First Night – that’s how they call it. I consider it to be an incorrect name – because the celebrations go from 7 pm on the 31st of December till 12 am. Which makes it the Last Night. But  maybe it would sound too gloomy, like “the last night of your life” , almost reminds Halloween, so they named it  optimistically.

No pictures from St. George, sorry. It was dark already, lots of trees diligently wrapped with red and blue lights and several very tall pine trees all decorated with colorful lights to the very tops. I bet they did a lot of work there. The celebrations were held in the Ancestor square – newly arranged square in the place where old library was demolished. There were stages with rock music going, vintage car show, painted kokopellies and food booths, but the main thing for us was in the Arts center – they were showing short movies non-stop from 7 pm till 11:45 pm. The movies that had won prizes in Red Rock Film festival. On the top floor of that building there is a fantastic newly remodeled hall for dancing. With a small orchestra playing swings and foxtrots. So our evening looked like this: first figuring out what where the movies worth watching and then running up and down the building – to see some movies, to dance, then again to watch, etc. The only time we sneaked out of the building during the evening – was when we literally ran to a school on the other side of the square to watch a magic show by Max the local Magician. Which was entertaining and good. The room was over packed, everyone laughed and happy so that that the good mood spread around. I think people who live around could even feel it. Why not to be happy  – no traffic jams, no problems to park the car, all the events going on close around, just relax, consume and enjoy.

At 12 am people gathered from dances, movies and shows and saw a 15 min firework show which was fantastic! I mean fantastic for a small city like St. George, because maybe a good 10 years ago I happened to see the Independence Day fireworks in Washington DC  – they were similarly good. And that is it – no more activities, you just find your car and head home. Oh, one more detail – no alcohol in this celebration, it is run by Mormons. Who else would desire to sacrifice their New Year’s night and volunteer…except for the saints. Therefore I doubt other cities with non Mormon population can have such a First Night.  And the last detail – all this costs $5 a person, totally, food not included. Except for some cookies with hot chocolate in the dance hall. They were included .

Meanwhile we managed to visit Bellagio in Las Vegas and here is what they had for Christmas and for the Chinese New Year which started on January 24th:

Those snowmen are all made of white carnations. They smelled good!

Based on the Chinese calendar this is the Brown Cow year. Some call it Ox year. Whatever – but this bull is standing on a platform covered with real mandarin oranges…

My mom came to visit us, so here we are after we picked her from the airport.

With another version of cow in the background…

This is how she enjoyed the fountain show by Bellagio. They start at 3 pm, so we had to wait for some time and then they start it with American Anthem. Another song follows after – it means we were lucky – we got two shows! for the price of one (the price was our waiting time).

And that is it from Las Vegas.

Happy New Year, Happy Brown Cow year!

This spring guests showed me a nest that the lady hummingbird has built on the right edge of our B&B sign right in front of the main doors. It was the beginning of May. Soon she lay two tiny eggs and sat on them for three weeks:

How did we know that there were two eggs – I climbed a stool and put a mirror on top of the nest to peek into, while the hummingbird mom was gone to eat some. While she sat – her nest and the surroundings were clean. Not so after when the super tiny chicks appeared :

Actually it took again three weeks for them to grow to this size seen in the picture, train their wings and fly away. For the first ten days you could see nothing in the nest, just the mother coming and feeding them now and then. When I looked with the mirror – I saw two breathing featherless bodies with three downs each, without distinguishing where their beaks or butts were. Then the vertical beaks started to appear:

And then one day we notice that there is only one bird still in the nest, the other is gone. The second one was hesitant to fly out, he still sat on the edge of his nest and trained his wings which to my eyes seemed too small for flying…the first fly ended in a bush close by:

And then another bush:

and then the tiny bird disappeared in the big pine tree. You could only wish them the best. So may have them are killed by predators. But the ones who make it – they live up to 18 years, a real record for such a small creature which has his heart beat at times he flies with an enormous speed.

Interesting as it is we had two families this summer in that same nest. The other one was a different mom for she was much more intimidated by passers by. The fathers don’t play any role in sitting on eggs or raising the family – that fact I read in the internet and i never saw a brighter bird there (males are usually more colorful).

If you enter Zion National Park from the West entrance, after crossing the Virgin river you find yourself doing switchbacks, back and forth until you reach a much higher level and can really enjoy the big picture of Zion mountains. There are some pockets by the road there for you not to slow the other traffic. And then you reach a tunnel which was exploded and created around 1928. Before that people would send mail or logs for houses on a cable connecting the top part of the area to the bottom of the canyon. Therefore one of the mountains here is called Cable mountain. So this tunnel was of great help for locals as well as travelers. Its length is 1.1 mi and it is pretty narrow. It has two lanes for sedan cars, but once those houses on wheels try to get through – they stop the traffic on one side. So sometimes when lots of people who can’t part with their houses travel here, there is a wait period before you can enter the tunnel. It is not so bad if you don’t rush because the views are magnificent. And then the tunnel has three holes-windows in the rock that are supposed to ventilate and give some light. But don’t plan to stop your car and look around through them. Once you get from the tunnel – there is a parking for a really cute trail – Canyon Overlook. I highly recommend it to everyone, it is only 1 mi round trip and is very diverse. But this time we decided to drive further from the tunnel and check the slot canyon on the right from the road. When it rains that canyon becomes a force of nature full of water. But as it is a desert here and it rarely rains, it is mostly a dry exotic path on the bottom of imaginary river with real fantastic walls:

The passage is sometime very narrow and those types of formations are called slot canyons.

At some places the canyon is so dark, gloomy and still have some water in deeper pools, that you have to find your way out to the top top and walk around those unpleasant places:

But then they open up again and there you can see trees growing and turning into fall colors:

It is usually much cooler in those slots than in the area around. Here and there you can notice the signs of the force of water when it rains:

Water and wind have created different forms in slots, arches being one of them.

There is a feeling of being a dust in the vastness of our Mother Nature:

Meanwhile on the high up walls winds are sculpting another arch. I am not sure how many millions of years it takes them to finish their job:

Those little maples are not the regular ones we are used to. And I am sure they are not the sugar maples, ether. They grow in the bottom of the canyon by this imaginary stream and have the form more like bushes, than trees. But nothing can beat their redness in autumn:

Once you get enough of slot canyons you can look for a less vertical slope towards the road and climb you way to there, to your car parked in one of the pockets. The other side of the road has also several interesting trails, which are not designated and are left wild for various wanderers to improvise their walks. It is usually by following the bed of a dry stream, tracking the waterways. One of such walks is called Many Pools trail. We didn’t have time to do it that day, just a little portion of it. It is late autumn and the sun is setting pretty early. Just two images of Many Pools:

For the end – a little pine that grows in a sandstone rock as seen from the road on this same Eastern part of Zion NP: