Entry #2 (Eng 102) - VACATION!

Vacation All I Ever Wanted...

That was essentially me after I left my history class, Friday, after my mid-term.  I hopped into the car with my husband and we set off for Southern Utah.  About seven hours later we finally made it to our resort at Brian Head, UT.  It. Has. Been. Glorious!  So, yes, this was our (slightly late) 10-year anniversary vacation.  Our anniversary was actually October 6th but life doing what it usually does, we weren't able to work things out to have that weekend off. 

So here we are now, finally on vacation and a few things have occurred to me over the past few days.  The first being that this is the first real vacation we've had since our honeymoon.   By "real" what I mean to say is it's the first vacation we've taken that wasn't to visit family for fun or due to a situation in the family.  Ten years.  Ten years to get to this point of being able to be on vacation that's just the two of us!  >.>  That may or may not be why I'm only just now getting these blog posts done.  Why?  Because that's the other thing I realized this weekend!  I completely scrapped my original 'self-generated' post idea and decided to do a post on vacations.  Because everyone loves vacations!

I really hope that no one minds lots of pictures.  I've taken an obscene number of pictures, however, I have picked out my favorites and attempted to keep the number within a respectable limit.  That said, I am afraid there will be fewer memes than usual, as the pictures will take their place.  I hope none of you are too terribly disappointed. I also hope that any of you reading through this actually enjoy the photos themselves, I had a grand time taking them all.

So that's the summit of the mountain on which our resort was located, granted the resort itself (along with all the other resorts around the area) was nestled down a few thousand feet lower.  Well.  Barely.  The town of Brian Head is at an elevation of 9.800 feet with a local (year round) population of 83 people.  Granted, they only have about 6 weeks of 'off-season' as people are either here for skiing or here in the summer to enjoy the breathtaking scenery.  And speaking of scenery, let's get to the pictures!

The pictures really don't begin to do it justice to standing right at a cliff (or more accurately about 15 feet away from a cliff cause I don't have a death wish) and taking in the full breadth of this kind of view.  Of course, the biting wind attempting to cause frostbite on my fingers and making the elevation feel even higher were some interesting aspects I hadn't been anticipating either but hey, it was worth it!

This is Parowan Gap 

There's a small town nearby (about 15 miles down a steep as hell two-lane highway) called Parowan that has this really amazing cultural attraction called the Parowan Gap Petroglyphs.

The oldest of the petroglyphs has been dated back to 500 A.D. although as various  nomadic peoples traveled through the area, they sometimes left additional carvings into the rocks that eventually became part of the same petroglyph system. 

Two major studies on the petroglyphs, one in the '60s and a ten-year study that started in the '90s, have been performed.  Both studies are still under review by both scientific and Indian communities!  So there may yet be even more information to come from these once these studies have gone through their own form of peer-reviewing and been published!

The glyphs might "only" be 1500 years old, but the gap itself was formed originally by a river that flowed through the land.  The rocky areas on either side actually grew up around the river and the rushing waters cut the gap through the rock as it formed up.  This makes it a 'wind gap', an ancient, now dry, river cutting its way through the hills.  In fact, the gap itself dates back over 200 million years ago!  The petroglyphs are also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Some scientists believe that the 'zipper' like carving in the picture to the right could be indicative of a solar calendar.  When scientists overlaid an outline of the glyph onto a topographical map and found that the lines of the 'zipper' carving conformed to the contours of the gap on the map.  This has led scientists to believe that the tick marks along it, giving it the zipper appearance, were used to note the days between spring and harvest.

And of course, hubby and I had to go see these because even on vacation we feel a need to learn something new.  (Cause we're nerds, but we're okay with that!)



Of course, going to see the petroglyphs at Parowan Gap was only part of what we did over the weekend.  We also spent a whole lot of time hiking around. (Or in some cases driving up one heck of a long road to reach the summit of the mountain.  Cause there was no way on God's green Earth I was going to hike that up and back down.  Nu uh.)  There were some unbelievable locations to see and some places I forgot to even take pictures because I was too busy staring and just taking it all in.  However, I did remember at some important times!

It's difficult to describe how beautiful it was to really see the varying shades of blue that were present.  I didn't use any kind of filter at all on my camera when I took any of these pictures, this is exactly the way that the colors had manifested and it really was amazing.

 And then, of course, we had to go back for sunset and make sure to get as many pictures we could of that.  It was too amazing to pass up and hubby and I both knew that the stone 'hut' would make for a superb backdrop.  And what do you know, we were right!

Then of course there's the surrounding area just as the sun was setting.  It was something that was nearly indescribable.  Humbling would be a good descriptor.  It certainly had a way of making me feel small and yet connected to something so much more than just myself.  The entire trip has been like that, just going up and down the mountain and exploring different areas, it's really been a trip unlike any other I've ever been on.

And two more, some of my favorites.  Although, to be fair, most of these have been my 'favorites'.  I'm seriously considering getting some of these framed to hang on the walls at my house.

Sadly, now, tomorrow we have to check out and make the long drive back to Peoria.  This has been one of the most amazing weekends of my life.  Not a lot has compared to this trip and all of the sights that we've seen.  It's been wonderful to be able to spend time with hubster and be able to change plans at the last minute if we felt like it because driving 20 miles the wrong direction just to check out an interesting place we were told about sounded like fun.  That's the best part of vacations I think, just doing something because it sounded like fun and keeping the spontaneity alive and well. 

 Now, sadly, I have to deal with packing.  I'm not looking forward to it.  Packing is the final nail in the coffin of 'it's really over' and I don't want it to be over.  I am sad.  This, I am afraid, is the best you're going to get from me for a goodbye meme.  The fact my vacation is over is enough of a goodbye.  I'll be seeing you all real soon anyway, so it won't  be goodbye for long.