On The Road Again

Thursday afternoon Lloyd and I headed out on a road trip. He has a seminar he has to attend in Las Vegas next Thursday and Friday so we decided to drive to our place in Arizona for a few quiet days, and then head home via Las Vegas.

We're using Lloyd's Dodge Laramie for transportation. This is the first big trip for the truck so we'll see how well it performs. So far, so good. It's a very comfortable truck with lots of power.

The drive from Edmonton to Phoenix is very beautiful, once you get south of Great Falls, MO. We weren't expecting all the varied weather though.


We wanted to leave the last vestiges of winter behind us in Alberta, but unfortunately we kept running into it. This picture was taken in southern Utah. The clouds were low and seemed to cut the mountains in two.

These unusually colored yellow mountains were in the Panquitch, UT area. Here's an interesting link Lloyd found about this mountain, called Big Rock Candy Mountain. Interesting stuff.
http://geology.utah.gov/surveynotes/geosights/candymtn.htm





The first place we ran into snow was in the mountains south of the Bryce Canyon, UT area. It seemed the farther south we went, the colder it got, but I think it was because we kept getting so high in the mountains. It wasn't so bad when we got to lower land.

These beautiful red cliffs were peppered with caves and holes. They were really beautiful but in most places there's no place to pull over and take some proper pictures



We were able to stop at the Glen Canyon Dam (Lake Powell) in Page, Arizona. It's a spectacular site. The gorge is just beyond the swirly rock formation.


You can see the cars driving across the Glen Canyon Dam.

The scenery for the next 25 or so miles south of the dam was incredible, scary and beautiful. I'm glad Lloyd was driving though - it's a rapid descent to the bottom of the plateau to the desert floor of the Navajo Nation Reservation.

We hit snow again in Flagstaff when we were at an elevation of 7000 but it disappeared as we got down off the mountains again - a very up and down day both in climate and elevation.

It's nice to be here in Surprise again. The air here is incredibly sweet - I love the smell of it. There's always something in bloom. I'll rest for the next couple of days and try to get rid of this cold.