Snowbowl, Wupatki, Sunset Crater

I've shared some of these photos on Facebook already. These are actually from two separate trips up to that area.

First, I got Jeff out of town for a day trip to celebrate his birthday. We rode the chairlift at snowbowl and enjoyed some wonderful views.

It was freezing on top of the mountain.

We drove over to Sunset crater too. It is a pretty cool place. This is Apache Plume. It has regular white flowers first and then they turn into these plumes.

A different day, I finally went to Wupatki. There are several different ruins in the area. They are really cool! This is the Lomatke ruin. These were Hopi or Pueblo Indians.

You can see the ruin on top of the hill in the background. This one is called the Citadel. Then there is this smaller ruin in front.

There was an amazing storm going on around me with beautiful views of shadow and light, cliffs and mountains in the distance.

 The Wupatki ruin was amazing. It was huge. They say over 100 rooms. What I found really interesting about it, was that it was an intersection between various Indian groups and cultures. A place where they could come, trade and interact. There are references to Wupatki in wide ranging native American groups all over the state.

They had a ball court, which is a part of the pueblo cultures in New Mexico, not Arizona.

 And an Amphitheatre or maybe an extra large Kiva. I had never seen anything like it before.

This snake petroglyph was by the trail

 This is a different ruin a mile or so away.

 There was a beautiful double rainbow! I don't know if you can see the second one very well.

Back at Sunset crater area, looking towards the San Francisco Peaks.

 Amazing lava fields.

Sunset Crater

Lava and me

Near Sunset Point on the way home

Last Post from Georgia/South Carolina Trip

 Just a few last pics. On our way from Savannah back to the Charleston airport, we made a few stops, besides cemetaries!
We stopped at this old plantation. It was mostly a gift shop, but it had this awesome huge oak tree out front that had been planted more than 250 years ago. It was pretty amazing to think about it. And it was covered with all this moss and fern.

 They did have a bit of a display in one room.

 We saw this awesome green lizard outside. I just looked him up and he is a Green Anole. So pretty.

 We saw these turkey statues at the entrance to another old plantation that is someone's home. I thought they were fun.

 There was a little marshy nature walk area with a boardwalk. We walked for a little ways. It's so different from any southwestern area.

This is the only wildlife we saw besides massive spiders with huge webs that went from tree to tree. I think this guy is a brown Anole.

Knobby roots

A pretty area, but I wouldn't want to ever have to walk through those woods without a nice path or boardwalk!

Telfair Art Museum

Almost have everything posted from vacation. We took a quick drive out to Tybee Island. The lighthouse was iconic. The community was more our idea of a beach town than Hilton head was.

 We enjoyed going through the Telfair art museum. It used to be the Telfair home and so there were a few rooms set up as they had been. Mary Telfair had started an amazing collection of art for a smaller city. Lots of photos of art ahead, bail if you aren't interested.

This is a painting of a teenage Kahil Gibran (the author) dressed in Arabic costume.

To walk into this room was kind of amazing. The spaciousness and size of the paintings.

This was a cool painting. It depicts going from being a child to old age.

Called Madonna of the fields.

Church in the Netherlands.

Lacemakers

 Above and below are details from the painting  a few back. I forget which prince this was (of England) reflecting on killing a worthy adversary, the former King.

Here, a younger brother is watching his older brother being taken in by a policeman.

A battle between Polish forces and Russian.

Some paintings by local artists.

This one is called crows on a fence

This is a painting of a local house that I toured.

The floor grate.

Across the street in the modern section.

Finally found the real Bird Girl

Paintings by Winston Churchill. There was a whole exhibit. Who knew he painted?