Ashton Gardens

 The Timpanogos Storytelling Festival is held in the beautiful Ashton Gardens at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah, just south of Salt Lake City.

The gardens were created by Karen Ashton who is also the founder of the Timpanogos Festuval.  The gardens are fifty-five acres of beauty ranging from the rose garden to the Italian garden to the Monet garden to the Biblical sculpture garden.  The plants are beautiful and endless.

There are also beautiful waterfalls that can be turned up and down to manage noise for events in the garden.  Apart from the festival, we simply love being in this lovely place.

Ready for Timpanogos

 Trish are I are now in LEHI, Utah, getting ready for the 32nd Timpanogos Storytelling Festival.  We arrived on Monday, had a library program Tuesday, did a school performance visit yesterday, and last night had our orientation session with the other tellers in the beautiful Ashton Gardens where the festival begins today.

After our dinner, we all had a golf cart tour of the gardens and the festival layout so we will know where to go for each of our sessions.  The caretaking this year is being done with great care.  Listeners arrive in the tents, we are then brought in for our performance after which we are returned to the green room with no up close audience contact.

Karen Acerson, shows us one of our performance tents during our tour.  We also visit the large amphitheater hillside where some of the evening events center,  Tomorrow we will be all ready to go!  This feels a bit strange after more than a year of no live performing, but, everyone is very excited.

Goblin Valley

 Goblin Valley State Park in Utah is not a place you would happen to pass by accident.  It is a destination.  About an hour off of Interstate 79 west of Green River, you cross what looks like open dry country with nothing different up ahead.  Then, suddenly, you come to Goblin Valley State Park.

Trish and the Goblins.

There is no way to describe this place except by being here.  You walk down in and amongst hundreds of goblin like formations which you discover are solid rocks sitting atop clay like bases.  The more erosion, the more goblins.  We wandered around, almost lost among them all, with wonder.

This is a place to visit if you have a chance!

Canyonlands

 Yesterday Trish and I spent the day on a trip to Canyonlands National Park nearby.  We drove out across the Island in the Sky Mesa to what seems to be the edge of the world where you can look out for endless miles across this vast Park.

You clearly see the white rim of the upper canyons from here.

Later we hiked out to Mesa Arch where the view looks for miles back towards Moab.

The most striking views, however, come when you look down into the canyons and see the roads that were once traveled by the huge potash trucks when there was mining prior to park establishment.  Today the road is open if you wish to drive there…we did not!

Our last stop of the day was at Dead Horse Point State Park where the views run from the present potash ponds below to the Colorado River at Dead Horse Point in the distance.  It was a wonderful day in a world totally different from Arches.

Moab

 I first came to Moab about 30 years ago and have since been here many times both for pure fun and doing school visits.  It is one of my favorite beautiful places. Trish, however, had never been here, so, I was very excited for us to be here together.

Our first day was, of course, spent as Arches National Park just to the north of town.

Looking down “Park Avenue.”

One of the nice things about Arches is that the beauty begins as soon as you enter the Park. More than just the arches, all of the stunning rock formations here are breathtaking.

One of our favorite little walks was to Sand Dune Arch, hidden a bit off the road, it is a treasure not to be missed.

Sand Dune Arch.

The best thing about this day is that we have three more days here!

Mesa Verde

 Yesterday we drove from Durango to Moab, a drive that included a visit to Mesa Verde National Park on the way.  As early as 7,500 BC the cliffs of Mesa Verde were used as seasonal dwelling places by Paleo-Indians.  But, by about 650 CE there were permanent residents here.

Trish and I walk down the Spruce Tree House trail.

The basket making culture built the complex structures we see here today and lived here full time until a series of drought years pushed them to other places by about 1,285 CE. 

Spruce Tree House dwellers had a fresh water source at the foot of their dwellings and they climbed to the flat surface above to farm crops as successful agricultural settlers.

The largest cliff dwelling in North America is Cliff Palace House where several hundred people lived at the height of its lifetime.  After the dwellers departed, the cliff houses were undiscovered for  more than six hundred years.

Cliff Palace House.

Durango

 We are now in Durango, Colorado, and, yesterday we spent the day riding the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.  

Ready to board.

Our train left the station in Durango at nine am.  We were booked in Presidential Class in the Alamosa Parlour Car at the end of the train.  We were glad to be in this car as it was a chilly day with scattered rain showers and an open car might have been uncomfortable,

The 45 mile route to Silverton goes up the gorge of the Animas River.  At the route’s zenith, we traveled on a ledge nearly four hundred feet above the river below. It was spectacular.  Being at the end of the train we had great views of our engine as it curved far ahead of us.

The scenery of the entire trip was beautiful and the soft rainfall made things greener and brighter than ever.

After a lunch stop in Silverton, we started back, arriving back in Durango after nine hours and  85 miles from our start.