|
In August 2000 I had the good fortune to take a whirlwind trip by van from St. Louis to Las Vegas. It was a marathon drive through Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Kansas. The scenery was so awsome that I spent five days just staring out the window, pointing, exclaiming, and sometimes trying to capture what I was seeing on film. Here is just a sampling of the pictures I took and could have taken. They can't begin to convey the sheer immensity of this land, the widely divergent habitats we saw, the hardiness of the life that lives in them, or the amazing works of man himself.
There is just no way to break this up into little quick loading pages without loosing the amazement of the journey, so please bear with me. There's 26 pictures here and the whole page takes about 4 minutes to download with a dialup connection at 45333 bps. And of course the pictures don't download in exactly the order I have them on the page. |
The American West
Sunrise leaving Tucumcari NM
|
Crossing New Mexico
|
A hint of things to come.
|
And finally we begin to feel the mountains around us. From here until we left Denver,
no matter what the land looked like as we crossed it, the mountains were always there
in the distance surrounding us.
|
The Continental Divide, rainfall to the west drains into the Pacific, to the east into the Atlantic.
|
|
A sobering warning as we stop at the welcome center just across the Arizona border.
|
|
And it only got harder to believe man could live out here. No that isn't a lake in the background.
|
And then the character of the land began to change again.
|
Leaving Kingman AZ as the sun was just rising.
|
Just a few minutes later on the other side of the mountain.
|
Switchbacks down to Boulder Dam.
|
In the middle of these arrid mountains, Boulder Dam.........
|
..........and Lake Mead, holding a three year supply of water.
|
A river running through a deep canyon in Nevada, the only green
to be seen in this land is on the margins of these rivers.
|
Just across the border into Utah.
|
Cove Fort UT. The terrain is changing from flat plains laced with canyons to more mountains.
|
But still stark and forbidding at higher elevations.
|
The Green River outside of Green River Utah. About 100 miles west of Colorado.
|
The Colorado River in White River National Forest. Finally some trees on the mountains.
|
And the mountains are getting taller.
|
Tall enough that at 10,666 feet the only way to get to the other side is to go through them.
|
Literally.
|
To see vistas like this. Unfortunately, our road would now take us east instead
of north and higher into this awsome land. But another time..........
|
Sunrise just east of Salina Kansas. The mountains and deserts are behind us; and
the land is becoming rolling and familiar looking again.
|
|
This page created on 29 Aug 2000. |
Email: Daydreamer@DaydreamersGarden.net |