From Las Vegas to Page

For more of the stories behind these pictures, please see my previous entry: Too Hot to Blog, Part 2.

The view from our hotel room in Las Vegas.


Pipe Spring National Monument, and the main building of the Tithing Ranch, Windsor Castle.


I love the landscape of southern Utah, and the area around Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was particularly stunning. These pictures are taken through the not particularly clean windows of a moving vehicle, but they give you the idea. I'd love to go back to the area some time when it's cool enough to go hiking.

Despite my numerous trips to this part of the country, I've never been to Lake Powell before. This is probably because I've always felt it shouldn't be there in the first place. Of course the decision to build a dam in Glen Canyon was made long before I was even born, but I guess I've considered it an abomination and held a grudge anyhow. However, when planning a trip to the desert with a child in the middle of the summer, proximity to water based recreation was suddenly more appealing.

When we drove down the hill and caught our first glimpses of the blue waters of Lake Powell against the red Navajo Sandstone, it was breathtaking. However wrong it was to fill a natural wonder with water in the middle of the desert, the result was spectacular.