This is going to be the longest of these I do this year, on account of there being ten photos.
A big part of the reason we went to this particular spot this year is that my brother and sister-in-law are trying to go to as many national parks as they can, if not all of them, and this was a great chance to check another one off their list. I really hope they make it, even if I won't be able to join them for many of them.
Since I was there for this one, I got some pictures to put up here to show that I'd been there. These first four are ones I got right after we went in through the east entrance:
It's a beautiful but desolate landscape, and I'm glad it's being preserved as a national park. It's a place I've been at least once before, but was probably very young at the time, before we had means to get pictures like this.
After that first stop, we went and got lunch at one of the diners in the park, which was by a gift shop. Those of us who were so inclined picked up souvenirs. What with everything that happened along the way, I forgot to get stills of my pick-ups there, which is OK, because the mug would have been difficult to get a decent one of anyway. With that in mind, I'll embed a YouTube video showing my stuff off here:
On our way out of the visitor center after lunch, my top-heavy build and wonky balance got the better of me, and I took a bit of a tumble, in the process of which, I think I further messed up an injury I got way back in high school. This means that all the pictures from here on out this year were done with my having a very sore ankle that may still be more messed up than I realize. These next several came from overlooks or trails that were smooth and level or improved in some way, like a boardwalk. This one was from an overlook, I believe:
And this one from the far end of a boardwalk trail:
I also got a couple wildlife shots while I was there, too. For example, this interesting bird:
I'm not sure how well these are going to come through because I did a little image cropping in Photoshop on one of my laptops. I think it's a meadowlark. I recall my dad saying something to that effect when I showed him the original, but he wasn't well when I showed him, and it's been a busy month since then.
I think this one might be a little easier to identify. Pretty sure it's a bighorn:
I could be wrong, though.
We went on a short, easy sorta educational loop trail about some of the plants and animals that lived in the area, but I didn't really get any pictures of that, mostly because of the previously mentioned messed up leg making it harder to keep up with the others I was with. It's also why this last one is from where it is:
That's more of a slope than it may look like in the picture, and I didn't do well on hills like that before I wrecked my ankle again.
From here, there's one more of these this year, maybe two, depending on how ambitious I want to get about all this. We'll just have to see how all that plays out.
Until next time, safe travels.
No comments:
Post a Comment