Salt Lake City, Utah Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints being restructured

 

The basic outline of the temple is recognizable but the entire structure is covered with scaffolding. This major reconstruction effort began in December of 2019 for general remodelling and seismic renovations. The reconstruction will take approximately four years. Meanwhile, the rest of of Temple Square is also affected. The North Visitors Center is presently being demolished as was the South Visitors Center. Although this video is out-dated, it is helpful in understanding what is going on.

https://youtu.be/67po6CtPCNY

Starting Macro-Photography

 When you look closely at the world around you, you will see beauty in unexpected places. These dried flower stocks are waiting for the first snow of the year. I will be exploring the macro-world more frequently than I have in the past. 

Dinosaur bones at the Dinosaur Quarry, Dinosaur National Monument, Utah-Colorado

 

This a photo of dinosaur bones at the Dinosaur Quarry, Dinosaur National Monument, Utah-Colorado. The bones are on the side of a huge cut into a hill where bones have been found since 1909. They are still working on extracting the bones. Her is a quote from Utah.com about the monument. 

In 1909, paleontologist Earl Douglass was searching for fossils for the Carnegie Museum when he discovered a formation layered with prehistoric plant and animal fossils. A quarry was established and in 1915 Dinosaur National Monument was created to protect 80 acres in the quarry area. Today the monument includes 210,844 acres. 

Many fossils are embedded in a sloping rock formation that was once a sandbar on the edge of a large river. As the river carried animal carcasses downstream, many became stuck on the sandbar, which eventually turned to rock. As a result, fossils from hundreds of creatures are concentrated in a small area. Many fossilized bones have been partially exposed but left intact in the rock where they can be easily seen. A building was constructed over the area, which is now known as "The Quarry" at the monument.

Research is ongoing. In Feb 2010, a team of paleontologists from Dinosaur National Monument, Brigham Young University, and the University of Michigan announced the discovery of a new, large, plant-eating dinosaur, Abydosaurus McIntosh.

The Quarry area makes up only a small part of the land included within the national monument. The remaining area includes canyons cut by the Green and Yampa rivers. The park backcountry is incredibly rugged and remote. It is very scenic and some areas have high wilderness value.

Green River at Split Mountain, Utah

 

The curious case of the Green River at Split Mountain

Arizona and Utah are full of geological surprises and quite a few mysteries. One of the most intractable mysteries is how and why the Green River runs through the middle of the Uinta Mountains  and specifically why it runs through Split Mountain. Rivers don't usually run uphill but it appears that this is what happened with the Green River as it curves west and south through the mountains. You can click on the link above to read a short history of the geologists trying to understand and explain this phenomenon. The photo above was taken at the Split Mountain Campground, right at the mouth of the canyon. 

A Web by a Large Spider

 

Here is a poem about a spider web by Emily Dickinson.

A spider sewed at night
Without a light
Upon an arc of white.
If ruff it was of dame
Or shroud of gnome,
Himself, himself inform.
Of immortality
His strategy
Was physiognomy.

Remembering Summer

The temperatures are starting drop below freezing here at the edge of the Wasatch Mountains. But I ran across this photo taken in the summer and thought it might warm someone up. Living this close to the mountains had its advantages but since I spend most of time indoors, I need the photos to remind me that the mountain trails are only a hop and skip up the hill. 

Just as the Sun goes down

 

In the late fall during a few days, the sun goes down behind the trees in front of our house. Eventually, the motion of the earth, causes the sun to set behind the edge of the hill next to our house and we can't see the sun from about 2:00 in the afternoon. Because we are so close to the hill (which is really a bench or beach of the prehistoric Lake Bonneville, our house is in the shadow of the bench except for about and hour in the middle of the day. 

Pipes and Rocks in Kodachrome Basin

 

Unusual rock formations appear in pockets around southern Utah. This is part of what is known as Kodachrome Basin. The thin tall structures are pipes whose origin is disputed. The sandstone cliffs are ubiquitous but the pipes are only found within Kodachrome Basin State Park or in the immediate surrounding area. There are some trails up along the tops of the sandstone ridges but these trails are not for anyone suffering from a fear of heights.  

Time Travel through rocks

 

Each of these Southern Utah rock layers took millions of years to form. 

Kodachrome Basin State Park is located on the Colorado Plateau, an uplifted region that covers much of the four corners area of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. Within the park, the exposed formations range from the middle Jurassic Period (180 million years ago) to the Cretaceous Period (95 million years ago). Here is a description of the layers from a Kodachrome State Park Brochure:

Carmel Formation: Deposits from an inland sea that existed 180 million years ago formed this layer. This is the oldest exposed formation in the park. The Carmel Formation is characterized by solid layers of the mineral gypsum, which forms white striations in the red colored cliffs in the lower elevations of the park.

Entrada Formation: Lying just above the Carmel Formation is the red colored Entrada. The Entrada was formed from deposits that were laid down during the mid-to-late Jurassic Period, approximately 180 to 140 million years ago. It is primarily composed of fine grained sandstone along with gypsum, shale, quartz and clay. This formation is one of the most scenic in the park due to its color. It also forms the ubiquitous “slickrock” of southern Utah. Most of the sedimentary pipes found within the park occur in this formation.

Henrieville Sandstone: Deposited near the end of the Jurassic Period, the Henrieville Sandstone is white to tan in appearance. Deposits of Henrieville Sandstone are almost unnoticeable in the main part of the park. However, Grosvenor Arch, located approximately 11 miles south of the park, was formed within this sandstone.

Dakota and Tropic Shale Formations: These are the uppermost formations visible in the park. They were deposited approximately 95 million years ago when a vast seaway covered much of the interior of North America, including most of Utah.

Sandstone and Pipes

 The formations that look like pillars are called "pipes" and how they formed is a mystery. They are not composed of of the same sandstone as the surrounding rocks, they are intrusions of a harder conglomerate. You can read more about this landscape with this article called, "Clastic Pipes and Dikes in Kodachrome Basin", by Ariel A. Roth. 

The Land of Rocks and Sky

 

Southern Utah is the land of rocks and sky. Almost everywhere you turn off of the freeways and highways you will find places that seem so different as to be almost alien landscapes. This sense of the unreal has been used hundreds of times for movies that depict alien worlds. If you need a sense of dislocation, there is an almost endless variety of places to visit. 

A Model Ship

 

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

I am fascinated with the time and effort it took the builders to build these fabulous model ships. These models were made to scale and were used to build the actual ship. In most cases, the models you see in the museums of sailing ships were part of the plans and promotion to raise money to build the ship. Military ships were no exception. It is interesting because a few of the model ships never became full-scale ships due to failure to raise the money or changes in plans by the governments. We have seen some very impressive collections of model ships in the Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 

Gilded Model Cannon

 

This is a gilded model cannon from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It is dated to around 1745. There is some measure of controversy with this and other objects because they are accused of being obtained by military actions during the Dutch Empire. I think of all the, perhaps, millions of objects in many of the museums in the world that were obtained during conflicts. It is just one of those issues that keep smoldering out there in the world like U.S. Civil War statues. 

Chainmail

 

This is chainmail from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. I cannot imagine how heavy this was to wear. Here is a very brief explanation about this form of protection from Wikipedia: Chain mail.

Chain mail (often just mail or sometimes chainmail)[1] is a type of armour consisting of small metal rings linked together in a pattern to form a mesh. It was generally in common military use between the 3rd century BC and the 16th century AD in Europe, and longer in Asia and North Africa. A coat of this armour is often referred to as a hauberk, and sometimes a byrnie.