Tag: photography

Bryce Canyon-It really is orange!

If you have ever seen photo’s of Bryce Canyon (like mine you will soon see), you might wonder what the big deal is.  You truly have to visit this place to understand the shock and awe of what is there.

I know I am a few days behind on my blog so let me first catch you up. I drove from Salt Lake City to Bryce.  I was excited to go see the place that thousands of people from all over the world travel to each year. My drive went from sunny to stormy quickly.  In fact, I have never had so much rain dumped on my car at once. It is amazing how big the raindrops are here. They are huge!

As soon as I arrived at my hotel (I stayed at the Best Western Grand-A+ for the room, grade C+ for the breakfast), I decided to check out the tourist traps across the street.  (It was cloudy and not a good time for pictures so there was nothing else to do.) Here they have your typical huge store where hundreds of tourists flock to buy their “one of a kind” overpriced vacation memento.  Can you tell I am not impressed with places like this? But of course, I had to go check it out.  I confess I did try on a cowboy hat. Anyway, after having fun tourist watching a bit, I headed back to my hotel to go to bed early. I wanted to beat the tourist buses that head into the park at 8:30 a.m.

Foodie Fact Alert: The best thing you can do at a place like this is to bring your own food.  The restaurants are way overpriced for food that is pretty bad.  The only place I would recommend here is Subway. It is still pricier than ones at home but at least the food is fresh and not greasy.

So I need to give a big thanks to Dana’s friend Kim and my cousin Heidi!  They told me to head to the park early in the morning and to take the Queens Garden Trail.  This was the perfect advice!  I entered the park at opening, 8:00 a.m., and beat the tourist buses by a good half hour or more.  Then instead of starting this trail where the tourists do (sunrise point), I started my hike on the opposite end (sunset point). This gave me additional time to take pictures without a lot of tourists milling about. I did not run into the tourist bus visitors until the very end of the trail. Here are a few pics I took along the way:

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Believe it or not, this is just a small fraction of the pictures I took. I still can’t believe how many pictures of rocks you can take and still want to take more here. Mind-boggling.

All in all-a great place to visit!

Have you ever been to Paris

and Dingle in one day?  I now, can say I have!   Dingle’s welcome sign states that  it is “The Capitol of the World” while Paris boasts a population of 479!,

Ummm, what can I say about Dingle?  It is very small. There are a few red barns. Since pictures are worth a thousand words, it looks like this:

Paris in the summer, ahhhh.  As you can see by the signs, Paris is older than Dingle even though they are only across Bear Lake from each other.

Just as Paris, France has the Eiffel Tower, Paris, Idaho has the Paris Tabernacle:

                                                                                                                                            

The average visitor may not believe their eyes when they hear that all the wood is made out of pine in the tabernacle.

Apparently, the settlers who built this tabernacle thought pine looked cheap, so they hand painted all the wood to look like oak.

                             The reason the ceiling looks like it should be on a ship is that a shipbuilder made it!                                                                                                        

To get stone to build this building, people would wait for the lake to freeze over in the winter,  then cross the lake,  cut the rock and then bring cut stones all the way back across the lake.

Side note for my antique lovers out there: There is only one antique store in Paris. Everyone in town agrees that the store is overpriced but the owner makes really great pizza.  (It is amazing the things you find out from a tour guide, isn’t it?)