Work... wanderings and other thoughts...

Soldier's waiting for orders... info inside                                           May 2013

Nine days of questions and answers... thank goodness for a good volunteer staff. No interp. panels yet... but coming soon to a visitor center in red canyon... outside benches maybe next week... then have a seat, loosen your laces, let the air out of your shoes and drink in the blue sky and red rocks. Lots of visitors coming through this past April and now May... almost looks like our normal September crowd...  lots of senior passes being sold, the best deal in the Gov.... U.S. citizen , sixty two years old and entrance into every National Park in the U.S. for the rest of your life... all for one Hamilton note or two Lincoln's !!  Cash no plastic in red canyon. Turn out construction along Hwy. 12 going on west of the VC has increased bus traffic by leaps and bounds... some for only photo ops. of the totems, others for the whole enchilada, photo's, VC, restrooms, and short hike... five to seven per day. It is going to be a very busy season by the way things are going now, come in and visit we are there seven days a week now 9AM - 6PM.

Seiver River running...                                                                    May 04 2013

The Sevier is running higher and faster with the last of the not enough snow melt from this winter... a bit higher and full of silt not good for the fishing... but good for the fields in Panguitch that needs all they can get and more.  Drive the back door  BLM road #1700 out to the mouth of Casto Canyon  and you can see how dry we are, the washes that drain the plateau are not running at all... and the road surfaces are un-rutted and in good shape even for the family sedan. Also just discovered Agate hill outside the mouth of Casto canyon... might be a good place to walk about and look for treasures if rocks are your passion or as a "token" of a place visited. I am still trying to determine agate from chert... more time and research, both have silica and i do believe can spark with steel and also be knapped into points. Do not know flint from chert or if they are the same thing, just different names... i don't know rocks very well at all. Though i have been known to collect those that i like not knowing what they are... but taking them out of the context of where they were found... like tearing the page out of a book. I am getting better though and making an image and then putting the rock back in place where i found it... more often now then in the past. 

BLM road #1700... Agate hill                           May 04 2013

?? Agate... Chert...         May 04 2013

Last but not least for this peek into my world this week... previously disturbed camping spots, Some hearty souls still want this experience even though the red canyon campground is now open... though it is a treat for the VC staff, sometimes, to smell a good campfire on visitors, this might be and age thing on my part, but it seems to be the lack of a vacation budget for the younger visitors that come seeking these sites. This is what a previously disturbed site might look like:

Previously disturbed site... nice view also.                                 May 04 2013

The up or down side of this kind of camping, if done at the last of a day and in the dark, you might not get too choose the view you have in the morning! but ya know sometimes life is best as a surprise (-;

Its great running about on these back roads watching the dust behind you in the rear view mirror, and then eating that same dust when you stop to make and image or get a closer look at something. 

"Deserts are not aberrations. They are one of the quintessential environments of the earth, a quarter of the planet's solid surface covered by them. As landscapes they are tricksters, shape shifters." Craig Childs; "Apocalyptic Planet" page 7




From my daily readings: "...ye cannot say that ye are are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you."   Book of Mormon; Mosiah 2: 25

 Find joy in your journey/sojourn here in southern Utah...        Cheers