by Don McGowan | Sep 18, 2021 | Monthly Archives, September 2021, Uncategorized
For a week I have been car-camped in the Santa Fe National Forest at 10,200′ in elevation fifteen miles outside historic old city of Santa Fe in a wonderful area called Aspen Basin. A great fire in the 1880s gave the aspens, because of their capacity to...
by Don McGowan | Sep 11, 2021 | Monthly Archives, September 2021, Uncategorized
The Colorado Plateau is a geology masterclass in visual form; and nowhere on the plateau is this more in evidence than within that 70- x 45-mile ancient dome of sandstone, limestone and shale known fondly as the San Rafael Swell. Seen head-on with magnification from...
by Don McGowan | Sep 4, 2021 | Monthly Archives, September 2021, Uncategorized
The contorted erosional patterns of this small watercourse are probably better known in the downstream stretches of Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons; but for me the upstream magic of Canyon X, the lesser known of the three slot canyons that Mother Nature has...
by Don McGowan | Aug 28, 2021 | August 2021, September 2021, Uncategorized
It is easy to get caught up in the present of being on top of Clingman’s Dome – quite possibly the namesake of Ole’ Smoky of Appalachian ballad fame – and overlook the cloud-filled valleys of Kephart’s Back of Beyond in the mists below...
by Don McGowan | Aug 21, 2021 | August 2021, Uncategorized
Although it is no longer called “Luftee Overlook,” nearly all of the Internet resources have not yet caught up to the fact, and they probably never will, for it has been Luftee for more generations than the mind can recall; and because it is so accurately...
by Don McGowan | Aug 13, 2021 | August 2021, Uncategorized
Over the twenty years that Purchase Knob has been part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, its Beauty has given Bonnie and me countless hours of pleasure and creative opportunity. Often we have navigated to the Jonathan Creek Valley thinking that our drive was in...
