Wupatki National Monument

The first time I visited Wupatki it was a very hot June day and I can remember taking the short walk around the site vividly. I drank almost all the water I had with me and got very hot….and the walk to the ruins is short - within sight of the visitor’s center. In January - it was cold and breezy with snow still on the ground. We didn’t need to carry water although I did refill my water bottle and drank most of it as we drove away; high altitude and dry air is dehydrating even if it is cold.

It is easy to visualize how the ruins could have been homes. They are a neat cluster of walls even today. The stone walls often incorporate larger boulders of the site.

Sometimes the lintels above the windows and doors held….and sometimes they didn’t.

There is a community room in the center of the settlement in a natural depression that still held some snow. Further away there was a ball court.

The old wildlife I saw was a very cold rabbit sitting in the sun. Note the pock marks (like mini-potholes formed wind and sand) and striations on the rock above the rabbit.

Next time I go to Wupatiki I want to plan more time to see some of the other areas...but I enjoyed this area near the visitor center even more than I did the first time around.

Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument

We had Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument to ourselves when we were there a few weeks ago. It was cold and breezy with snow and ice still clinging to the cinders in all the places that did not get full sun. It was quite a contrast to previous visits to the monument that were extremely hot with the sun glaring off the rock.

I did notice a pine tree that had probably been struck by lightning at some point. Part of the tree managed to survive and is now almost as large as the original trunk! Surely it was there a few years ago - but I didn’t notice it then.

The trail was too covered with snow and ice to be passable without boot spikes and poles - so I contented myself with a few pictures from the trail over the cinders. Some of the lava is very black and some shows the colors that gave the crater its name.

I like the idea of visiting this monument during the cooler months. It would be the best time to the hike (as long as there is not ice and snow). I was glad I didn’t have any altitude problems since it is quite a bit higher than Tucson; I did focus on making sure I drank water even when I wasn’t thirsty.

Grand Canyon National Park

I’ve been to Grand Canyon National Park three times:

• When I was in high school - in early spring 1971 when I walked a little ways down Bright Angel Trail then turned back when it started snowing.
• In May 1983 when my husband and I walked down the Bright Angel Trail to the plateau level. I remember blisters from the too-new hiking books and my legs feeling like jelly for most of the walk back up.
• In January 2015 when it was cold and breezy. We drove to the park through early morning light and saw a bald eagle landing in the top of a pine tree beside the highway. I wasn’t fast enough to get a picture but it started out the day right. The pictures below are from the visit a few weeks ago.

It is hard to fathom the sheer size of the place. The rim trail on the South Rim - accessible from many points - is an easy walk to try to get perspective. We were early enough that the haze had not burned off completely and sometimes the vegetation seemed to glow from light within.

There has been a lot of building in the main park facilities since 1983. I liked the way the paving incorporated different colors of concrete to make designs - spirals and gentle curves. But we didn’t stay in the developed area long. We decided on our plan for the day - settled on where we would eat lunch (Maswik Lodge Food Court) and began working our way toward Hermits Rest stopping at just about every overlook. After lunch we headed in the opposite direction (toward Desert View) where we would leave the park and head to our hotel about sunset. Along the way we saw rapids and twists of the river below, a mini-snowman, beefy crows, and the zigzag of a trail into the canyon. Sometimes I took pictures of lichen and small plants just to not be overwhelmed by the Grand Canyon vista!

I am already thinking about when I can go again!

Petrified Forest National Park

I’d been to Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona several times over the last 40 years. This visit was different in at least two ways:

• It was colder. It does get chilly in January even in Arizona! The other visits were during the summer when it was blazing hot and I remember lizards being as fascinating as the petrified logs. This time it was too cold for lizards to be active.
• I was keen to take pictures. Until the past few years I’d left picture taking to others. Now it is one of my favorite activities when I travel.

The very large logs look like long toppled tree trunks. They are in sections - cleaved by the pressure of sediments over the many years they were buried rather than a chain saw. The one above looks like it carried part of its root ball into the water where it was ‘petrified’ along with the rest of the trunk. ‘Petrified’ means that minerals replaced the wood fibers of the trees to create colorful crystals we see today as agate.

On the outermost part of the logs - the rough texture looks like bark.

Sometimes the cross sections are a jumble of minerals. But there are still some remnants in places of the tree rings.

And sometimes a knot where a limb came out of the tree is obvious. I show a log section and then a close up of the knot below.

Some of the logs were rotting when they fell or were swept away. I hadn’t noticed before that there are some sections that have holes in the center which shows that they were already rotting before they fell.

Some of the crystals appear to have grown inside wood fibers - preserving some of that finer structure inside the trunk.

And - last but not least - I couldn’t resist some close ups of some big crystals.

All of these pictures were taken on a short hike from the Rainbow Forest Museum.  There is a lot to see in a small area.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 10, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Birding in the National Parks: Return of the Snowy Owls - It looks like this winter will be another one for seeing Snowy Owls in the northern states of the US! There were some sightings in Maryland last winter so I am hoping…

Did Venus Once Have Oceans of Liquid Carbon Dioxide? - Maybe the geological features on Venus (rift valleys, river-like beds, and plains) were may be liquid carbon dioxide rather than water like they are on Earth.

From the Feature Well - This is the summary of 2014 special issues from The Scientist. Looking back at them provides a good review of Biology issues and progress for the year.

The "Rule of 50" Helps You Know When to Give Up on a Book - How do you know when to quit reading a book? Usually I decide via scanning before I every start reading rather than determining ahead of time a number of pages I’ll read before deciding. I can’t remember the last time my scanning failed.

Monarch Butterflies May Soon Be an Endangered Species - The population has declined by 90% since the 1990s. It’s very sad. The agricultural changes in the mid-90s killed the milkweed (food plant for the caterpillars) at the edges of fields. Now there needs to be a concerted effort to increase the availability of milkweed.

The Most Amazing Meteorological and Space Observatories Ever Built - Beautiful and functional architecture from around the world.

Top Planning Trends – 2014 - A look at traffic data on Planetizen…popular tags overall and popular posts for each state. The most popular post for Maryland was about high-rise, mixed-use suburban developments.

Significant link between daily physical activity, vascular health - These type of studies come out frequently…with some nuance defined a little better than before. Hopefully no one is waiting for another study to transition some sedentary to active time every day. Now that I think about it - do these studies prompt people to become more active?

A Look Back at Our Most Popular Photos of 2014 - From the National Wildlife Federation. The very first one (a snowy owl) caught my attention.

National Park Service Launches Website Honoring 22 World Heritage Sites in the United States - Did you know that there are 22 World Heritage Sites (a UN designation) are in the US?  Most of them are National Parks…but now all. The list can be found here.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 3, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

2014 in Numbers: Huge Valuations, Shocking Security Stats, and a Big Climate Deal - Factoids for the year. The last one was the one that caught my attention the most 4.4 zettabytes = all digital information in the world….and it is growing by 40% per year!

2014: An amazing year in space exploration - Philae, Orion, SpaceX Falcon 9, and Mar Rover Opportunity setting off-Earth, off-road distance record.

2014 in Materials: Rhubarb Batteries, the Gigafactory, and Printing Body Parts - It’s hard to keep up with all the innovations. How fast can any of these really get to market and be affordable?

Researchers create method that recovers high value metals for industries while protecting the environment - A step in the right direction. Hopefully the metals recovered will be valuable enough to drive the technology from the lab to application.

The Year in Pathogens - Ebola tops this list from The Scientist.

2014 in Computing: Breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence - Seeing the aggregate for the year….2014 was quite a year for AI in a number of areas.

2014 in Energy: The Year in Energy and Climate Change - Increased urgency of warnings….only slow progress. Frustrating.

Young entrepreneurs innovate in green energy with an in situ organic waste digester - Kudos to the young Mexican entrepreneurs….and the company that is implementing their innovation.

American cities are many times brighter at night than German counterparts - The US could learn from German….and help us all see more stars in the sky too.

Social Media Sites Offer a Nice Sampling of Winter Scenery in Parks - Winter brings a different perspective.