If you grow up outside America, by the time you turn 12 you know about the Grand Canyon.
You've seen pictures of it, and of the surrounding countryside: all these weird, strange coloured rocks and of course the prairies. You know there are a couple more canyons and you leave it at that.
Then you travel IRL through this landscape, on your way to one of the most beautiful features of Nature: Bryce Canyon.
And suddenly it dawns on you that there is no such thing as only one immense and one very beautiful canyon. The place is riddled with canyons - come to think of it: of course. Yeah. Bright thinking.
This landscape cracked and eroded over the past 300 million years and just about every crack got into a canyon of its own: some small, some nowhere near spectacular, some dainty and on a human scale.
Like our First Ever Canyon.
Just at the side of the road.
We had started the day seeing spectacular, apocalyptical clouds and they were the last clouds we saw for days to come. The road South wasn't very spectacular, we now drove in a valley all the time. But after Pioche - more about Pioche later - the landscape suddenly changed.
We saw the aforementioned cracks.
And a sign to Cathedral Canyon, plus a rock formation in a ravine that made us turn around and head for the visitors parking.
And there we were: looking at our first canyon, a human sized, cream-coloured canyon aptly named the Cathedral Canyon: its rocks definitely looked like the spires of a Gothic cathedral.
We found a path to the floor and walked around like children: look at this! this is beautiful! look over here!
We were there all alone. The sun had come out, at the canyon floor the temperature was very pleasant, the creamy rocks glowed. Our own canyon. You can visit it, you can drive past it.
This is an amazing country.
You've seen pictures of it, and of the surrounding countryside: all these weird, strange coloured rocks and of course the prairies. You know there are a couple more canyons and you leave it at that.
Then you travel IRL through this landscape, on your way to one of the most beautiful features of Nature: Bryce Canyon.
And suddenly it dawns on you that there is no such thing as only one immense and one very beautiful canyon. The place is riddled with canyons - come to think of it: of course. Yeah. Bright thinking.
This landscape cracked and eroded over the past 300 million years and just about every crack got into a canyon of its own: some small, some nowhere near spectacular, some dainty and on a human scale.
Like our First Ever Canyon.
Just at the side of the road.
We had started the day seeing spectacular, apocalyptical clouds and they were the last clouds we saw for days to come. The road South wasn't very spectacular, we now drove in a valley all the time. But after Pioche - more about Pioche later - the landscape suddenly changed.
We saw the aforementioned cracks.
And a sign to Cathedral Canyon, plus a rock formation in a ravine that made us turn around and head for the visitors parking.
And there we were: looking at our first canyon, a human sized, cream-coloured canyon aptly named the Cathedral Canyon: its rocks definitely looked like the spires of a Gothic cathedral.
We found a path to the floor and walked around like children: look at this! this is beautiful! look over here!
We were there all alone. The sun had come out, at the canyon floor the temperature was very pleasant, the creamy rocks glowed. Our own canyon. You can visit it, you can drive past it.
This is an amazing country.
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