Five Photos, Five Stories — Day Five
Thank you, Clare, at My Creative Cosmos for inviting me to join this photo challenge.
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Bryce Canyon, Southern Utah
Bryce Canyon in Southern Utah is about 400 miles from home for us. These pictures were taken in May of 2012 when we drove down to St. George for my niece’s graduation from Southern Utah University. Our pictures don’t really do the canyon justice (except perhaps for the one above with the arch) for the canyon is very, very red. The product of countless years of erosion, the ceilingless caves and rock formations left standing are called Hoodoos. The red rock is interspersed with beautiful forest, and this is an ideal place to hike. They have a full-moon hike each month (if I remember correctly) that takes you into the bottom of the canyon by moonlight.
You can see the park in a day if you’re just traveling through the area. I like this park much better than Zion National Park. It’s far more colorful and odd. My only regret from this little trip was that on the way out of the park we stopped at the visitors’ center and they had a cd I wanted to buy in the worst way. It was called Celtic Cowboys! For the life of me I couldn’t begin to imagine what that might sound like. I love both Celtic and country music. BUT they had just closed out the cash register for the day and I had to leave without it. I was so disappointed. And I’ve never found it anywhere else.
That’s my sad tale and the end of my Five Pictures Five Stories tales. We kind of went all over, didn’t we? The mountains of Park City, Utah’s Olympic Village; cruising in Bar Harbor, Maine; a European-like stop in Quebec City, Canada; way back down south the Kennedy Space Center in Port Canaveral, Florida; and finally back home via southern Utah. As far as I’m concerned, a vacation isn’t a vacation if you’re not learning something! Hope you found at least some of it interesting.
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The Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge rules require you to post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or simply a short paragraph – it’s entirely up to you.
Then each day, nominate another blogger to carry on this challenge.
Accepting the challenge is entirely up to the person nominated, it is not a command. Today, I’m inviting Jane of Making It Write to join the challenge.
(Actually, anyone can join in, so please do.)
Impromptu Promptlings 
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Wow, what a gorgeous place! I especially loved that tree. It looked like an Eastern Pine, but I’m not certain. There could be a Utah Pine that looks just like it. Inquiring minds want to know 🙂 You’ve been a great tour guide, and I’m looking forward to getting my old pics out and taking every on some nice journeys.
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I haven’t finished reading yet, but I went to see if I could find Celtic Cowboys. Now sure if these are the guys, but check it out: http://celtic-cowboys.de/
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I don’t remember the picture on the cover even, but I’m sure gonna check this out! Thanks!
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Do you live in Utah? Wow! I’ve always wanted to go there – the canyons, Salt Lake City, the Bonneville Salt Flats. I was a mormon. and I suppose every mormon wants to go there, but I wanted to collect some sand from the Salt Flats. I was told that because of the salt within each grain, it’s brilliant for drying flowers. Is that true?
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I’m not sure, but it kind of sounds logical. My sister dries flowers. If I think of it I’ll ask her. I’m not a native Utahn. I’m an Ohio Buckeye. But the country here is beautiful. High desert. A little bit of everything. Do you like racing?
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I’d love to see Ohio too. For some reason when I first saw your site I thought you were Irish, although it didn’t take long to realise I was mistaken.
Car racing? It’s something I could enjoy if I took the trouble. motorbike racing is exciting.
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They use the Bonneville Salt Flats to establish new land speed records a lot with experimental aerodynamic cars and such. But there is a speedway out there, too.
Whoo hoo! I’m glad if it came across as Celtic. That’s sure where my heart and soul are nested.
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I used to keep an eye on the land speed records, and those amazing cars.
Do you know anything about your geneology? You probably have a fascinating history. Are you descended from early settlers, or did your family move over there more recently?
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I have a distant cousin in my family who has done extensive genealogy work in our family. In fact, that’s how he found me. He called out of the blue one day and explained he’d been doing some research on his great-grandfather from New Mexico and when he went back far enough he realized Seth had a second family he didn’t know about — my dad’s family.
Dad came home from school one day when he was 13 and caught Seth (his dad) beating the crap out of his mom. Dad took a fireplace poker to him. That night at supper Seth said he was going out to get cigarettes. He never came back. Dad found him years later after we moved to Utah. Seth had remarried and had one son whom he named the same name as dad’s. Weird, huh? We did make one trip to see him before he died. I was 12.
Apparently our family is from England, though I’m not sure of the area. I’ve always wanted to get a DNA test done ’cause I’d bet you my sweet bippy it’s Cornwall. We came to America via Ireland where my family squatted for a few years. That’s about as much as I know about the early history. Hopefully before we take are retirement cruise with Mark and Amy in 2017 I’ll be able to get a dna test done. Do you know your family history?
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Isn’t it weird when you learn new family stuff?
I did my geneology when I was a practising mormon, 35 years ago, but it was before computers made life easier.
My father’s family were middle class. One of them was in the East India Company. Not very interesting all told. My mum was Scottish and there are so many stories… Her mother’s family made their fortune – or kept it – owing to their large swathes of forestry land.
They were all raging alcoholics. That’s where the addictive gene comes from. They disowned my mum’s mother for marrying an alcoholic barrister of whom they disapproved. They moved to Canada, where my mum and her twin sister were born, but while they were still very young their mum died after having an illegal abortion, and their dad couldn’t cope with them so he gave them to Native Canadians to raise. The British Consulate somehow learnt of this, and felt that British subjects shouldn’t be raised in such a way. They shipped the children back to Scotland to be brought up by a family who had rejected them even before they were born. Every time I mention this it sounds unreal, but it’s true. Mum and my Auntspent their childhoods waiting for their father to arrive “on a white charger and rescue them”. They never saw him again. He was fished out of a loch when I was a child – he had returned to Scotland.
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My gawd. What an interesting story! You should get your hands on a book called The Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline and read it. It’s a terrific, fast read and your family’s story reminds me very much of Vivian’s story in the book. Check it out on Amazon. There might be a book in your family’s history waiting to be written. A fictionalized account that includes the historical stuff you do know.
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I have been thinking about it for years, but now I’m addicted to poetry, and I have to the addiction thing.
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You should definitely follow your heart. And you’re so good at the poetry stuff. (Gawd! hated that Writing 201: Poetry class! LOL)
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Thank you. You didn’t need the poetry class. You’re in a class of your own.
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LMBO! Now who is making who laugh! That was a sweet thing to say. I guess I don’t see blank verse as real poetry. In my book, folks like you who can write in those classical forms are the real deal.
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But you say things that touch people’s hearts too… often things that they want to say but don’t know how. You don’t need the classical forms.
There’s more than one way to skin a … I don’t know.. a thing that needs to be skinned… a gunrunner!
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OMG! So laughing here! I love your sense of humor.
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Thank you. So do I. It helps.
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A great end to a great series, I’ve really enjoyed looking through all your pictures. I hope you don’t end there, but that we will still see some more at some point. In addition, it’s much more sunny in your pictures than it is here, so your pictures are therapeutic…
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Thanks, Matt. My husband and our best friends are all retiring in 2017 and planning a cruise around the British Isles. What time of the year — in light of your comment, lol — would you suggest is the best for doing that?
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Obviously depends where (and I’m miles from the sea), but June, July, and August, being summer are usually the sunniest (but probably also the most popular being summer holidays). As long as you don’t go in the depths of winter, when the rain is beating and the waves are several metres high I expect you’ll have fun. Enjoy it!
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The cruise leaves from Southampton with stops in Scotland, Le Havre (and a bus trip into Paris), then around the top and a couple stops in Ireland before sailing south and back to Southampton. I’ll let them know what you said. Thanks for the info.
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I wouldn’t put too much stock on what I said!
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🙂 Are you telling me to just get a weather rock? If it’s dry, it’s sunny; if it’s wet, it’s raining? LOL
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Wow, a place I must visit – one day.
Thanx for sharing Calen and thank you for embracing the challenge. I hope you had as much fun as I did.
Clare
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Yeah, I guess we’ve been some pretty interesting places.
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