Circuit board neighborhood, Las Vegas

Another unusually shaped Las Vegas neighborhood: in this one, the cul-de-sacs seem truncated, losing much of their surface area, and their shape and layout reminds me of contact points on an electronic circuit board.

Space invader neighborhood, Las Vegas

The shape of the roads in this tight-packed Law Vegas exurb makes me think of nothing so much as a space invader from the old-school video game.

Patchwork settlement, Las Vegas

Towards the outskirts of Las Vegas, the relative uniformity of suburbia breaks into a patchwork of dense housing and remnant desert, tiled together rectilinearly but with no apparent pattern.

Luxury Cul-de-sac-lettes

Little miniature cul-de-sac neighborhoods full on the outskirts of Las Vegas, each surrounded by large houses with pools in the desert.

Color coded housing, Las Vegas

These housing developments on the outskirts of Las Vegas are all organized into patches with different colored roofs. I wonder how different the different colored sections are to live in.

Las Vegas strip

A view into the heart of the Las Vegas strip: gleaming gold, pyramids, castles, circuses, and fake New York.

Las Vegas, rising from the desert

There is nothing near Las Vegas but Las Vegas, and it rises from the desert like a shining boil, gleaming in gaudy screams for attention.

Arizona highway bridge

The highways of Arizona have wonderful art on all of their road bridges, all emphasizing aspects of their desert land and its history and culture. I'll have more of these on posts from a future trip, but on this one we barely touched a corner of the state where Interstate 15 cuts through between Utah and Nevada.

Cloudy Utah Dawn

Clouds obscure the shining sky of dawn, while the last below remains in shadow.

Dawn-lit Mountains, Utah

Mountains catching the first reddish rays of dawn as we drive out of Utah.

The long road home, Zion NP, Utah

End of a long day on our last day in the park, tiredly walking out the last half mile of flat trail back to our car, along the river as the valley widens out to the end of the park.

Dragon Van, Zion NP, Utah

I liked this van with the dragon, spotted in the park with a dragon on the side. It's actually not somebody's individual style, but commercial decoration for rental expedition vans---I later spotted others with other types of fancy colorful designs. Still, I like that company's style a lot, and especially this instance of it.

Branch in silhouette, Zion NP, Utah

The same branch, now darker and in silhouette against a cloud.

Sunlit branch, Zion NP, Utah

A tree branch, shining in the late afternoon sun.

Glory, Zion NP, Utah

A glory shining out from the cliffs above The Narrows, rainbows dancing in the bits of water or ice suspended far above, and lensing around the blocking silhouette of the clifftop crenellations.

Undercut cliffs, Zion NP, Utah

One of the other things I love about the shape of Zion is the way the cliffs are undercut: ancient slumps and slides have pulled the rock out from under them, leaving them to lean above you, intensifying their apparent height and narrowing the feeling of the canyon.

Clifftop waterfall, Zion NP, Utah

A thing tracery of waterfall, spilling off the tops of the cliffs and visible most clearly by its shine and stain upon the rock face.

Eroded rocks, Zion NP, Utah

Another yet different face of erosion in Zion National Park: these holes bubble into the side of a vertical face, some combination of wind and water that I have seen appear in many other places around Utah also.

Slide, Zion NP, Utah

Another, smaller slide resting down on the side of the canyon walls, just above the river. I looked up to it and thought of climbing similar slopes in Baxter Park back in my youth, up those crumbling ways with the crumbling soil sinking and shifting beneath ones feet, frustration and triumph one brief upward push at a time.

Blocked slide, Zion NP, Utah

Despite its apparently small and tame appearance, the Virgin River is quite an active force in the Zion canyon, tearing away with abandon during frequent flash floods. Complementing this are the slides coming down from the sides occasionally, like this ride slope on the right, which a few years back blocked the river and caused it to tear away the road overnight, stranding people at the lodge upstream. Now cleared and tamed again with the rough rock retaining wall seen here, it is only a matter of time before it bursts loose again to remind us about the forces that shape this land.

Overhanging rock, Zion NP, Utah

An overhanging rock beside the canyon-bottom road in Zion, leaning out to provide me delightful shade in the hot noonday sun.

Browsing deer, Zion NP, Utah

Despite the crowding of the popular paths, in Zion, like in most other parks, one only has to step a little out of the way to find quiet oases with minimal other people. I met these browsing deer on a little flat trail through the woods between two bus stops, green and quiet and wonderfully deserted, an antidote to my people overload in the skies above.

Steep trail, Zion NP, Utah

A lovely view of the way back down the Angel's Landing trail, snaking off in front of me as it works its way off the side of the canyon and back toward its floor, further peak of the lower rim bluing down off into the distance.

Emergency Pooping Only, Zion NP, Utah

Another sad sign (literally) of the overcrowding of Angel's Landing: if you zoom in, you will see that this warning guards the outhouse in the upper part of the picture, warning that it is for "Emergency Use Only" and that "Due to extreme overuse, these toilets have reached capacity and may need to be permanently closed in the future."  I fear to think about the potential state of the edges of these narrow rocky trails.

Narrow fin, Zion NP, Utah

I would have loved to make it to the top of Angel's Landing, but frankly, I was satisfied quite well by the view from the saddle just before it, looking down the same precipice over the river, across the narrow fin at center of the bend below.

Waiting in line for Angel's Landing, Zion NP, Utah

And this is why, in the end, I didn't make it to the top of Angel's Landing. The last stretch is quite narrow and steep, with thousand-foot drop-offs on either side, so there are chains on the rocks that you climb to make your way up. So far, no problem. But with such dense crowds, what that translates to in practice is standing in line, cooling your heels and waiting for the people in front to you to move. I waited for about 15 minutes, advancing something like 20 meters, and decided that I'd had enough. I hike to feel myself moving through the wilderness, not to stand packed in a human traffic jam. I turned around and made my way down, some helpful fellow line-standers jeering at me on the presumption that I was overcome by fear or vertigo.

Overcrowded Angel's Landing, Zion NP, Utah

Angel's landing is an extremely popular hike, and the trail quite crowded. From here on this narrow saddle, through the mall-density mob, you can see the line forming for the final ascent up the steep fin to the summit.

Up Walter's Wiggles, Zion NP, Utah

After a walk through a narrow canyon, the next steep climb up to Angel's Landing is a set of brick-walled ramps known as "Walter's Wiggles," for the park ranger who arranged their construction.

Carved cliffs up Angel's Landing trail, Zion NP, Utah

Here is what it looks like when you are actually hiking up the switchbacks carved into the cliff wall on the way up the Angel's Landing Trail.

Carved cliffs up Angel's Landing trail, Zion NP, Utah

The trail up to Angel's Landing climbs a canyon wall too steep for ordinary switchbacks, so early in the history of the park they carved into the canyon wall instead.  If you look closely, you will see little colored dots of people climbing up below the rough-hewn overhangs.

Angel and Contrail, Zion NP, Utah

Angel's Landing, pierced through with contrail.

Angel and Contrail, Zion NP, Utah

The Angel's Landing outcrop stands out stark against the deep blue sky, a jet about to drag its contrail through behind it.

Zion bus, Zion NP, Utah

Back in Zion: most of the canyon is closed off to visitor's cars, and one primarily goes up and down throughout the park on these double-length buses that circulate past every ten minutes or so.

Graduating Classes, Orderville, Utah

On the cliffs above the little town of Orderville, Utah, spray-painted years appear to mark the graduating classes, going all the way back to at least the 1940s.

The Rock Stop, Orderville, Utah

We never did stop at The Rock Stop, but we admired their funky building every time that we went by.

Mountain mural, Mt. Carmel Junction, Utah

Mural of a bucolic mountain scene on the side of a building at Mt. Carmel Junction, the last stop for gas outside of Zion National Park.

Broken windmill, Utah

A broken wooden windmill, just outside the park above a cow pasture.

Checkboard Mesa, Zion NP, Utah

The reason for Checkerboard Mesa's name seems pretty clear to me. Again, I am fascinated by what geology might have created these sort of cross-hatchings.  My guess is that the horizontal came first, as part of formation and abrasion, and the then vertical lines came later from water erosion.

Fortress mountain, Zion NP, Utah

I don't know if this crenellated cliff even has a name, but to me it looks like a fortress: one of those old European castles with many defensive bends and points along its walls.

Counterpointed scrapings, Zion NP, Utah

 I'm not sure what types of geological activities could have produced these bands of back-and-forth patterning on this cliff face.  Is this how it was laid down in the sediments of ancient ocean floors, or are we seeing different directions of scraping in how it was exposed, or something else entirely?

Scraped raw mountainside, Zion NP, Utah

Another mountain face, layered and scraped on its surfaces.

Fingerpainting rocks, Zion NP, Utah

Another textured rock face in Zion, this one looking to me like it was painted with the strokes of giant fingers.

Melted ice cream rocks, Zion NP, Utah

More "melted ice-cream" rocks, this time heaping higher into an optically wavering pile.

Melted ice cream rocks, Zion NP, Utah

These rocks, on the upper East side of Zion, make me think of nothing so much as melted ice cream.

Short Rock Tunnel, Zion NP, Utah

Looking out through the Zion short tunnel into the sunlit wilderness beyond.

Short Rock Tunnel, Zion NP, Utah

Another, shorter tunnel follows the long one rising out of Zion, beautifully rough-hewn from the rock with no ceilings or linings added.

Tunnel Window, Zion NP, Utah

At the point where the slope becomes too steep for switchbacks to be an option, the Eastern road out of Zion plunges into a mile-long tunnel, punctuated with occasional windows out of the cool and darks back out into the blazing bright valley as one rises gently up the sheer rock walls on their inside.

Zion valley ascent, Zion NP, Utah

The other exit from Zion is a road switchbacking up a side canyon to the East, rising dramatically up out of the valley along the angled slopes until it has risen to the level where the slope is about to go straight up vertical.

Got any food buddy? Zion NP, Utah

Indeed, these well-fed squirrels are quite aggressive---and much more fearless than their less protected urban cousins.

Fat rock squirrel, Zion NP, Utah

Everywhere that I went in Zion National Park, the rock squirrels were both quite plump and also rather aggressive in seeking food. Despite big signs everywhere telling people not to feed the squirrels, there are so many people in the popular parts of the park that even a small fraction of people ignoring the signs or accidentally dropping things would be enough to support a quite unhealthy population.