When I drove cross country last fall, I didn’t take enough time to do what I really enjoy doing on such journeys, stopping along the road to delight in the beauty of our great nation.  This time, when I decided to visit my family in Colorado, I elected to give myself three full days to get back to LA.  I have done the drive in one day of heavy driving, so this really gave me the chance to explore.

I did decide to stay a little longer with my family so I got to go on a great hike with my twin nieces and their little brother, along with their parents and my Dad and his wife.  That was wonderful.

Wish I could have shared the landscape I saw in the following days with them.  In Utah, I stopped at a rest are just east of Green River on I-70, followed this path up a little hill and delighted in the openness of the landscape around me, noticing the interesting contours of the barren hills around me, the contrast of this dun stone to the blue sky around me.

The real beauty of Utah (to me at least) is not just the open spaces, but those very contrasts.  Perhaps one reason, Zion National Park is one of my favorites where you see the red stone set against the pine trees and other verdant foliage and the blue skies–even the brown trunks of the trees made the vista richer.

The following day, I took more time to explore the Beehive State.

So, since I finally figured out (easier than I ever imagined) how to upload pictures from my digital camera, I thought I’d share with you a picture I took just outside Bryce Canyon National Park which shows these contrasts.  Herewith the first picture from my own camera posted to this blog:

UPDATE: It was so easy to do this, I thought I’d add in this picture of the Natural Bridge in Bryce Canyon National Park: