Day 47
“Good Morning Class, Today’s lesson is about Miss Geology and our new best friend, Mr. Erosion.”
“Aww, com’on Teach! We’re sick of all these lessons! Just give us a free period so we can play video games!”
“No can-do kids…. But I do promise that the accompanying photos will make any video game pale in comparison!”
Silence.
I know that I’ve used the word “otherworldly” before and there is a part of me that hesitates to use it again, but sometimes it’s the perfect adjective to describe a scene.
Bryce Canyon National Park is just that.
Bryce Canyon National Park is located in Utah just north of Zion National Park. Utah seems to have the enviable position of the Star State of National Parks….. there are still many left that we may need to save for another trip.
Bryce Canyon is not really a canyon in geological terms, but more of an amphitheater as you can see by the photos. There really is no other opposing side of the “canyon”. It has been a National Park since 1928 and is named for Mr. Bryce, a Mormon settler who homesteaded the area back in 1874. It is also quite small in comparison to its neighbors at a mere fifty-five square miles. But what it lacks in size is more that made up for in grandeur.
So now we get into the meat of the lesson!
Once upon a time there was a giant ocean that covered the area. There were lots of little critters (diatoms, where diatomaceous earth comes from) that eventually croaked and fell to the seafloor. Add in a bunch of other sedimentary minerals that deposited themselves on this seafloor, stir in millions and millions of years and then wait for the baking process to begin. Eventually the seas receded leaving all of the sediment behind. The playground bully, Mr. Gravity, added his weight and helped compress all of this into more solid alluvial layers, each with their own special color and characteristics. Some were softer than others which added lots of drama in the coming years as they all started to wear away at different rates!
This is where we meet our new best friend, the aforementioned Mr. Erosion. Without him and his handiwork, we would never be able to see all of these layers that have waited so long to put on a show for us. Mr. Erosion not only uses rainwater to his benefit, but he also uses the freeze/thaw process to his advantage as this really speeds up his work by having chunks of material fall away a little more quickly. (Think potholes in the road suddenly appearing out of nowhere!)
This evolution of the land here is still in this progression of wearing it all away right before our eyes. Well, maybe we will be lucky enough to witness a large collapse of his work, but in reality the place looks pretty much the same as it did when we first saw it.
It takes a long, long, time for this recipe to finish.
We hiked along the Rim Trail here. The elevation averages about 8300 feet above sea level, which makes breathing a tad difficult if you are flatlanders like we are. Except if you’ve been in the area, and at elevation for a while (like we have been). We are not acclimatized enough to try Mount Everest yet, but we have noticed a marked difference since the beginning of our stays at the elevated Parks. It’s a good thing because you would not want to experience any sort of oxygen-related dizziness as you walk along this ledge. The ever-present Mr. Vertigo provides enough of that already!
As we walked along, I noticed several peculiar trees that dotted this somewhat harsh environment, especially right along the edges. I’ve never seen a Bristlecone Pine, but I’ve always wanted to see one in person. So, after checking it out and finding that these longest-living things on our planet do, in fact, live here, I am proud to show you an example of these marvelous non-sentient living beings!
These troopers here at Bryce average about a thousand years old, and the oldest is approximately 1600 years. This pales in comparison to the oldest living thing on our fine planet, which is a Bristlecone Pine, that lives near the border of California and Nevada in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This particular tree has been named the Methuselah Tree and for a good reason, as it is over 4650 years old!
I am pleased to report that our dinner plans with our new friends Sherry and Scott did come to fruition. We had a very nice time catching up on family news that we did not know that we even needed just a little over 24 hours ago. We’ve been doing this vagabond lifestyle for about two years now and have never really met anyone else except the folks that park next to us in any random RV park along the way. It’s always a short, nice conversation, but nothing more. I hear about others that go to RV group functions, or meet up with other people who travel around, not necessarily full time, but at least this is their preferred leisure time activity, and have these far-flung relationships. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to meet some others that could become genuine friends, even though you live thousands of miles apart.
I believe that I can say that we now know what that feels like, and we could not be happier to include Sherry and Scott in our group of extremely fine friends.
Nicely, I believe that the feeling is mutual 😊
Class dismissed.