#top10of2020

#ICYMI We're looking back on the favorite posts of 2020 and we simply had to include a summer shot from Paradise #Top10of2020

Paiute Indians occupied the area around what is now Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah starting around 800 years ago. This dramatic plateau was used for seasonal hunting and gathering activities, but there is no evidence of permanent settlements among the curious red rock formations. The tribal legend of Bryce Canyon was explained to a park naturalist in 1936 by a Paiute elder who then lived on the Kaibab Reservation: "Before there were humans, the Legend People, To-when-an-ung-wa, lived in that place. They were of many kinds - birds, animals, lizards and such things, but they looked like people. They were not people. They had power to make themselves look that way. For some reason the Legend People in that place were bad... the tale is not clear at this point. Because they were bad, Coyote turned them all into rocks. You can see them in that place now all turned into rocks; some standing in rows, some sitting down, some holding onto others. You can see their faces, with paint on them just as they were before they became rocks. The name of that place is Angka-ku-wass-a-wits (red painted faces). This is the story the people tell." Photo by National Park Service. Reposted as we look back on the favorite posts of 2020

Canyonlands National Park in Utah is a showcase of geology. In each of the park's districts, visitors can see the remarkable effects of time and erosion on a landscape of sedimentary rock. For millions of years, rock was broken down and carried here by wind and water, creating deposits that eventually became distinct rock layers. Many of the rock's layers were deposited near sea level, but after a long period of uplift, the average elevation is now over 5,000 feet above sea level. As this area gradually rose, rivers that once deposited sediment on the lowlands began to remove it from the emerging plateau. The Green and Colorado rivers carved into the geologic layer cake, exposing buried sediments and creating the canyons and rock spires of Canyonlands that amaze us now. Photo by Randy Smythe (www.sharetheexperience.org). #ICYMI We're looking back on your favorite posts of 2020. This display of incredible geologic formations really rocked our feeds this year.  #Top10of2020