Just returned from a terrific vacation to Utah and Arizona. Spent a lot of time at Bryce Canyon NP, Grand Canyon NP (North Rim), and Zion Canyon NP. All were very nice, but Zion ..... WOW! Any of you in the group ever been to Zion NP? Go! I gotta take a geology course to understand better how these places happened. Ken
Ken, I know what you mean. I just got back from Rapid City SD, Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse and the Iowa, Chicago & Eastern RR. Went to the local Geological Museum and sort of understand the stuff. Ship IT on the Frisco! Rick
We had a neat Park Ranger led tour of Zion one morning. It all happened from uplifts, plate collisions, and water erosion over millions of years. Saw lots of UP action around Salt Lake and during a side-trip up to visit friends in SE Idaho. The UP moves fast out there! Ken
I love Utah. Most schools of geology require "summer field camp" between one's junior and senior year. I did mine at Gold Hill, Utah, a ghost town near the Nevada border. Among other things, we mapped the gossan zones with a plane table alidade. Nothing like turning 21 in a ghost town in western Utah. We did celebrate the 4th of July with dynamite, which we used for our "source" for running a seismic survey. On the way to and from Gold Hill we toured most of the NP's, toured many of the mines, and in general, got a good feel of the geology of the state. It all paid off later when I conducted two coal exploration programs, one in the Book Cliffs and the other on the Wasatch Plateau. I saw lots of D&RGW and Utah RR action over Soldier Summit. The Rio Grande was still running the Zephyr, and the Utah RR was running Alco's on its coal trains. This was all before the slide that burried Thistle, Utah.
this spring I went out there. Had to cut a cross KS on I70 But western Colorado was amazing. Then went down to Moab UT. There we went to Dead Horse point and Arches national park. and from there we went to the grand canyon. No I didn't get to ride the train there, but I got to see it stopped at the station.
To me what's really wild is what ice and water can do to solid rock. My first exposure to the effects of glaciation was based aroung northwestern Wyoming, especially Grand Teton National Park. Add to that Yosemite National Park (WOW), the Great Lakes Region and finally the Finger Lakes in New York State. Let's throw in all the canyons in the west (too many to name) and one of the prettiest little canyons; Watkins Glen in New York State. Here in Missouri, we have our own mini-canyons in the southeast of the state at Johnson Shut-Ins State Park on the Black River and Silver Mines National Recreational Area on the St. Francis River.
To bring this at least slightly on topic: remember that the Frisco's 19th-century corporate predecessors, like so many other railroads, originally aimed to reach San Francisco (duh!) or some other point on the California coast. Financial woes, bad management, the Civil War, lack of political support, and manipulation by the Santa Fe kept it from achieving this goal, but a person who REALLY wanted to model Frisco trains rolling through the deserts and mountains of the far southwest would have some historical basis for imagining such an "alternate history". "The St. Louis - San Francisco Transcontinental Railroad : the thirty-fifth parallel project, 1853-1890", by Craig Miner, describes the boardroom battles and corporate schemes involved in this failed effort. Bradley A. Scott
