Weekly Photo Challenge: Summer

I missed the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge from May 25, because I was vacationing in Moab, Utah. Even though it wasn’t officially summer when I went, today is the first day of summer in the northern hemisphere. For me, this post is about summer vacation.

Gemini Bridges Trail, a photo by Fergiemoto on Flickr. (Click on image to enlarge).

We enjoy outdoor activities and a couple of those include hiking and off-roading. Hubby also enjoys mountain biking. The Moab area with its breathtaking national parks and Slickrock biking is a great place for these activities! One of the trails we took during our trip was the Gemini Bridges Trail. It is one of the more famous mountain biking and popular 4×4 trails in Utah. The trail’s namesake destination, Gemini Bridges are natural bridges; a “massive rock span that has been cleaved down the center into two parallel bridges.” The trail leads you on to their flat tops where you can experience spectacular views and look 250-feet down over the edge, if you aren’t afraid of heights.

You will see many spectacular rock formations along this trail, like the one in the above photo. If you’re like me, you will need to be with patient travelers who don’t mind stopping frequently so you can fill your camera’s memory card with the surrounding beauty, large and small, and experimenting with different camera settings. In this photo, there is a dune buggy parked in the shade of the tallest rock (lower left side of photo), but it’s too dark to see. I hoped it would be visible to give a perspective of how massive the rocks are. I was also intrigued by the number of airline contrails in the sky that day.

The following photo was taken when we reached Gemini Bridges. To understand how large this formation is, you can see my hubby standing on the bridge taking a photo of me taking a photo of him. I didn’t look down over the edge, though. The cautionary butterflies in my stomach were holding me back, it was windy, I really didn’t want to get any closer to the edge, and I got some of the photos I wanted!