Zion National Park

Eye of Elk

This was an enormous bull, about eight years old. How do I know? His owner told me. There's a bizarre zoo-ish thing in Springdale, just outside the park. They have elk, bison and ordinary livestock.

Unidentified Frog

We hiked to a few strange pools, created by water seeping out of the canyon walls. At one of the pools, we saw dozens of these tiny frogs, about the size of the end of my ring finger. Not sure of the species.

Walking Stick

I found this right in the middle of one of the trails. Plenty of other people had walked right by without noticing it was there. It was about 6 inches long.

Fat Rodent

This is either an incredibly fat squirrel (from frequent tourist feedings) or some other species of mountain rodent. Anyone know for sure?

Court of Patriarchs

These peaks are pretty magnificent. Zion is mostly sandstone, but quite a bit tougher stuff than the hoodoo forming sand and mudstone at Bryce.

Typical Canyon

Zion is full of little sub-canyons off the main river gorge, many of which are quite a bit deeper than this one.

Straight Up

This is what it looks like overhead in the deeper canyons

Weeping Rock

The sandstone walls are very porous, so water that falls on top eventually percolates down through the geology and drips out in places like this ledge.

Mineral Paint

As that water runs down the walls, the minerals dissolved in it produce these outlandish paterns.

Mineral Detail

Zion is actually a pretty crowded park, so it's difficult to take the kind of photos that it deserves. I would have preferred large format for this site.

Showering Rock

It' really hard to keep your camera dry at this one. If there is any wind at all, a humid mist blows everywhere.

Shower Detail

We would have been happy to stand there all day and watch the water pouring out of this place.

Turquoise River

Minerals also get disolved into the main part of the river as it cuts through the canyon, coloring the water cyan at times.

Emerald Pool

You can hike to a number of places where so much water pours out of the cliffs that large pools form. Algae grow in them, producing outrageous colors.

Showered Rock

According to the Park Service, the water from the cliffs can take as long as 1,000 years to percolate down through the sandstone. Pretty amazing.

Slot Tree

It's amazing how life will take any opportunity it finds. It's hard to imagine how a tree could survive in this dark slot, but it obviously did.

High Pool

This is the place where we found all the frogs. It's very weird to go from high desert to almost a tropical rain forest in a matter of yards.

Sandstone Cliffs

This picture and the next one were actually taken after sunset. We had hiked to a cliff that overlooks the main valley, but found the light disappointing. Even so, these formations along the way back were incredible.

Sand Formation

I didn't really see any evidence of fossils at Zion, in spite of all this sedimentary rock.

Virgin River Bridge

Here's where the pictures start to descend into pretentiousness.

High Pool Color

This one also came from that pool that had so many frogs. We watched some lizards tussling there too.

River Debris

Some guy asked me whether I was shooting color or black & white. I told him digital, and he seemed dissapointed. He had a good point though, as this one hints.

Red Flower

Wow, a title almost as dull as the picture. There are actually an incredible amount of wild flowers at Zion, even in the late summer. Spring must be spectacular.

Rock Man

John Kerry couldn't make it onto Mount Rushmore, so he found some out-of-work Cubists to do this one up for him.