Arches National Park

The Great Wall

Baby Arch 

Looking down on Arches Visitor Center and the winding road to the top!

Park Avenue

Queen Nefertiti 

Rock shelf

This rock formation on Park Avenue looks like it could have come from Easter Island!

While we were on Park Avenue, we looked up and these boys were exploring the crack in the rocks!  It gives you some idea of the size of these amazing monoliths!

Courthouse Towers

Three Gossips

Sheep Rock

Tower of Babel and The Organ

Prince's Plume

Spires atop Courthouse Towers (Scott's name: Two Nuns and an Old Crow!)

Courthouse Wash

Petrified Dunes

North Window and South Window

Water and ice, extreme temperatures, and underground salt movement are responsible for the sculptured rock scenery of Arches National Park.  Over 2,000 catalogued arches range in size from a 3-foot opening, the minimum considered an arch, to the longest, Landscape Arch, measuring 306 feet base to base.

Landscape Arch

La Sal Mountains

Balanced Rock

Top of Balanced Rock

Globemallow

Ham Rock - can you find the ham?

Ham Rock

Prickly Pear Cactus

Turret Arch

Cove Arch

Parade of Elephants

Double Arch

Yellow Cryptanth (Borage)

Dune Evening Primrose

Fiery Furnace Viewpoint

Garden of Eden

Badlands Mule Ears

Delicate Arch - this is the arch seen on Utah license plates.

Wolfe Ranch - disabled Civil War veteran John Wesley Wolfe and his son, Fred, settled here in the late 1800s.  A weathered log cabin, root cellar, and corral give evidence of the primitive ranch they operated for over 20 years.  

Sandstone Fins

Broken Arch

Skyline Arch

Devil's Garden

Prickly Pear Cactus

Red cliffs near Devil's Garden Campground.

Skyline Arch

Campground Amphitheater 

Sandstone fins

Prince's Plume

Skyline Arch

Dry creek wash becomes the road in the Salt Valley.

Dune Evening Primrose covers this hillside.

Up-close view of Dune Evening Primrose

Globemallow

Salt Valley Road

Look around...  on this remote unpaved road we got a flat on the pick-up!  Scott had it changed before another vehicle came down the road!  

Wild Purple Aster

Hillside of Prince's Plume.

Cryptobiotic Crust is a mixture of bacteria, mosses, algae, lichens, and fungi.  This remarkable plant community holds the desert sands together, absorbs moisture, produces nutrients, and provides seedbeds for other plants to grow.  This crust is so fragile that one footprint can wipe out years of growth! 

 

Salt Valley

Wild Heliotrope

Another looks at the fins later in the day when the shadows created "holes" in the sandstone.

This is a great example of the red Entrada Sandstone and the buff-colored Navajo Sandstone.

More sandstone fins...

Yellow Cryptanth

Entrada Sandstone monolith

We think this monolith looks like it's built with Legos - La Sal Mountains are visible in the background.             

 

Georgia O'Keefe

Georgia O'Keefe Museum

Waterfall - No. III, 'Ioo Valley, 1939; this picture was painted on a trip to Hawaii with Ansel Adams, sponsored by Dole Pineapple.

Black Hollyhock Blue Larkspur, 1930

Black Mesa Landscape, 1930

Georgia O'Keeffe - Hands, 1919, photo by Alfred Stieglitz; Stieglitz photographed Georgia's hands with painting, Green Lines and Pink, 1919

Jimson Weed, 1932

Cottonwoods, 1952

The actual cottonwood trees that Georgia could see from her Abiquiu studio.

Abstraction, found in museum courtyard.

Abiquiu House and Studio

In December 1945, Georgia O'Keeffe purchased a 5,000 square foot, Spanish Colonial compound in Abiquiu, then in ruins, from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. With her friend Maria Chabot, O'Keeffe spent the next 3 years restoring the 18th century structure.  By 1949, the property was habitable and O'Keeffe moved from New York to become a permanent resident of New Mexico.

The large window in this photo is to Georgia's bedroom, her studio is next to the bedroom.

Studio, the studio is just as O'Keeffe left it when she moved to Santa Fe in 1984 at the age of 96.  

After the main road was moved and paved, Georgia wrote about the view from her bedroom, "Two walls of my room in the Abiquiu house are glass and from one window I see the road toward Espanola, Santa Fe, and the world.  The road fascinates me with its ups and downs and finally it's wide sweeps as it speeds toward the wall of my hilltop to go past me.  I had made two or three snaps of it with a camera.  For one of them I turned the camera at a sharp angle to get all the road.  It was accidental that I made the road seem to standup in the air, but it amused me and I began drawing and painting it as a new shape.  The trees and mesa beside it were unimportant for that painting - it was just the road."

This is the view from her bedroom.

Blue Road, the same road viewed from her bedroom.

View from parking area at Abiquiu house.

Adobe wall surrounding compound.

Acequia or Irrigation ditch, water comes from a cistern higher on the mountain and fills this acequia once a week - the flood irrigation is enough to keep Georgia's gardens suffiently watered.

Garden gate 

Roofless room window, smaller Abstraction sculpture.  Georgia O'Keeffe chose to roof this room with screen, creating an enclosed space with interior access that is both inside and outside.

Hollyhocks

View of mountains in the distance, notice crude fence on this part of the property.

Pedernal

I thought this photo must have been the same view O'Keeffe saw when she painted the Pedernal below.  

Pedernal, 1942

I took several photos of the red hills as we drove the 18 miles from Abiquiu to Ghost Ranch.

Grey Hills, 1941

Ghost Ranch

The Cliff Chimneys, 1938

One of the many adobe cottages that can be rented at this spiritual retreat.  Georgia O'Keeffe bought an adobe house and 7 acres at Ghost Ranch, a dude ranch amid spectacular red and yellow cliffs.  Georgia learned to drive and outfitted her car as a mobile studio that she drove out into the desert to paint.  She lived at Ghost Ranch in the summer and Abiquiu in the winter.  Her home at Ghost Ranch is not open to the public but we were able to drive around and look at the amazing landscape.

Ghost House

Cholla

One last look at the Pedernal before heading back to Santa Fe.  What an amazing day!