Cats and Trails and Garden Tales
Musings on cats, travel, gardens and life
For the Beauty of the Earth – the Great and the Small
For this week’s Sunday Stills challenge and coming #Earth Day, I went through my archives to find some of the West’s most magnificent scenery. It wasn’t hard, except the whittling down to a few.
I’ll start with the dramatic California Coast, at Big Sur, one of earth’s most beautiful coastal drives,
where you’ll even find a hidden waterfall.
Further out in the Pacific, you’ll find a marvelous canyon, Waimea on Kauai, also known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. This view alone is worth a trip to the Garden Island.
There’s another Grand Canyon of sorts, on the Yellowstone River, in Yellowstone National Park,
where you’ll also find Grand Prismatic Spring, a jaw dropping view especially when seen from above.
Mt. Rundle is in Banff National Park, in the Canadian Rockies,
where marvelous views of mountains and lakes abound. If you’ve never been there, I suggest you go while the Canadians still welcome us.
Keep going north to see one of many fjords and glaciers in Southeast Alaska. I hope there’s another cruise in our future.
On the opposite side of the color and climate spectrum, is red rock country in Arizona, this near Sedona. I can almost smell the dry heat.
I love Mt. Rainier in my own backyard and visit multiple times a year. I’m happy they dropped the reservation system, so we can take a drive south whenever the mood strikes.
Isn’t it wonderful how the sun sinks below earth’s horizon every night? If you’re lucky you’ll see it set on Maui at least once in your life.
I have too many photos of our beautiful earth, many taken at national parks, where the rugged scenery has been spared from commercialization and preserved for posterity. I think that’s what Earth Day all is about: appreciating and enjoying what we have, protecting it wherever possible.
But if you never make it to a national park, just look around at the smaller glories where you live.
They’re everywhere.
Till next time,
~ Susanne
Cats and Trails and Garden Tales 
An awesome collection of photographs depicting the beauty of our precious earth! Thanks for sharing them.
Thank you so much, Darlene! It was hard to choose just a few! 🙂
You picked some of my favourites. xo
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Fabulous photos, Susanne. Spectacular, in fact xx
Thank you so much!
Beautiful Earth.
Yes! 🤩
wonders galore!
Yes indeed! 🤩
Thank you for a lovely collection of photos and descriptions.
Thank you! I’m so glad you enjoyed them.
Beautiful photos. You have been to a lot of amazing places.
Thank you so much! I’m rather amazed myself, looking back at our travels!
Amazing scenes in our national parks, Susanne! Some wise folks saw the vision and set the lands aside for us and future generations. Love all the pics, someday I’ll get over to Glacier, areas of Canada and maybe Alaska in summer 2027.
Thanks, Terri! We have a treasure store of awesome parks in the West, and all are worth a visit!
I’m happy to hear that they’ve discontinued the need for a reservation to enter the parks! When we visited Arches we discovered that policy… Your photos are beautiful!!