Trip to Australia and New Zealand Dec 14, 2024

 We are planning to leave the house at 12:30pm on the 14 th for our flight at 3:30 that arrives in Sydney at 7:30am on the 16th. We will spend one week in Australia and two in New Zealand.

Our first walk in Sydney was to Hyde Park near our hotel. This is kind of fig tree. Planted all over the park in the 1930's.

Australian ibis

Dessert shop 

Mango drink. The yellow balls are little mango flavored ampules that burst in your mouth.

Fig trees 

Cactus garden 

Magnolia 

Old oak tree 

Hyde Park 

 

Fig tree

Hanksville 2024, October

 We did Hanksville October 14-18. First stop was a side trip to the Spire. It is a one mile dirt drive and another 1 mile hike to see it. About 7 miles this side of Hanksville.

Brenda for size reference.

Some kind of fossils behind the Spire at the base of the cliff there.

The 1 mile hike in is very uninteresting.

The next day we went to Wild Horse window and to the Ocher Alcove pictographs

You can see the alcove where the window is behind the sign at the right edge of the photo.

Zoomed in shot

The pictographs in the alcove are said to be fake.

Then we hiked down to the adjacent wash to hike to the real pictographs. About a mile away.

The wash starts off shallow but eventually has a steep slab on the right where you climb up to the pictographs

The steep slab to the pictographs.

They are up there at the overhang.

These could be 3000 years old based on the style and comparison to other pictographs that are more studied.

Goblin Valley is nearby and these are a few shots from there.

There are pictographs near the Goblin Valley turn off as well.

Little Egypt is just down the road and is like Goblin Valley but smaller and free and with more color in the rocks.

Next stop was Leprechaun Canyon a few more miles down the road. 

Tall Primrose were blooming

An arch high on the canyon wall.

Small slot before the main slot

Nearby Pictographs and Pictographs

The weather turned bad and we did a short hike in the Chinle hills west of Hanksville.

The last day when most of the participants had left for better weather we tried to drive out to Colonnade arch but the road proved too much for enough of our vehicles so we turned back. We did see these dunes along the road in high winds.