Catching Up

Just a quick note to let you all know we're still out here having a great time. No photos with this post - I've got lots to come, but they're all in the laptop, and we don't have electricity for a few more days. You've probably gathered these updates are all a little out of date - we are so busy I can't post every day. Coming up soon, you'll get photos of Sunset Crater National Monument and the Grand Canyon - both fantastic. Right now we are in Bryce Canyon National Monument, which is outrageously, almost otherworldly beautiful. We are only a couple of weeks into this trip and I'm already running out of superlatives to describe all these gorgeous places. Even the drives from one place to another are wonderful - the desert scenery changes all the time, and is always inspiring. We drove up the Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument to get here - look that up!

We've also been seeing wildlife. Usually I don't have time to get a photo before it's gone (with one exception I'll post soon). In Texas I heard wild turkeys gobbling at dawn, then that same evening saw a road runner in New Mexico - I was surprised how much it looked like the cartoon. We have heard canyon wrens, a beautiful song, and seen a white-tailed ground squirrel and quite a few other unidentified chipmonk/ground squirrels. Yesterday we saw about half a dozen mule deer early in the morning, and then a small group of pronghorn antelope later. The ravens are entertaining (and well fed, they tend to hang around picnic areas), and we have seen some swallows swooping around the cliffs.